Kingdom Parables

THE KINGDOM PARABLES
confined to one place. It cropped up in all parts of the world almost
simultaneously.
In England John Wycliff having been saved through the word, began to
prepare a group of teachers for ministering the word to the common
people. He was protected by his friends by hiding him when the official
church tries to kill him. His followers made hundred of copies of the
bible by copying them by hand and distributed them all throughout the
country. Even though the priests tried to destroy them, people guarded
them even with their lives.
In Bohemia, John Hus (1373-1415) began to teach the bible to the
common man. This angered the Pope who invited him to discuss the
matter over. He was promised good conduct and immunity while in
Rome, if he appeared before Pope. However when he did, he was
arrested and burned on a stake. The church, they said, does not have to
honor the promises made to heretics. But this did not stop the growth
of the church in Bohemia, and in the neighboring Moravia. There
followed 200 years of persecution for Hussites until a rich Lord named
Ninderdorf joined them. He gathered the scattered churches into a
fellowship on New Testament lines called “Philadelphia” in 1722.
The there was Martin Luther (1517), a monk teaching in a German
Seminary who discovered the treasures of “justification by faith alone”
and “salvation by grace, free by the sovereign mercy of God.” At first
he did not wanted to be separated from the church. According to the
normal practice of the time, he laid open his 95 theses on the door of
the Cathedral. But the general mass and the German Princes (who were
not happy with the Papal ruling anyway) soon took up the issue. He
translated the bible into German and wrote many hymns.
John The Swiss Cantons were already on the side of reformation under
Huldrich Zwingli (1484-1531). Calvin of Geneva (born in France in
1509) gave Protestantism its precise form and clear definition. The
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