What is a hero? Merriam Webster offers the following option, in contrast to the pop-culture reference to a thick, meat-laden sandwich: “A person admired for achievements and noble qualities. One who shows great courage.” One only needs to look at the heroes of our young men and women today. Few know or seem to care about those great heroes that have been men and women of honor and valor. The youth of today idolize those athletes, musicians, business icons, and actors predominantly living lives of immorality and doing little, if anything, to make the world a better place or build the kingdom of God, rather the opposite, as they influence, through the media, the false hope that popularity, riches, and power are what life is all about. Read the stories of some true heroes below:
Abolitionists Activists Brave Journalists Founding Fathers Religious Reformers Whistleblowers
Chronological History of all of the above True Heroes
John Rogers is Burned to Death at the Stake in Smithfield, England. The First of Queen “Bloody” Mary’s Reign
John Rogers burned to death at a stake at Smithfield, England on this Monday morning, February 4,1555. Among the onlookers who encouraged him were his own children. What monstrous crime had earned him this cruel death? Born about 1500, Rogers was educated at Cambridge. He became a Catholic priest and accepted a position in the church at the time that the Protestant Reformation was in full ...
Religious Reformer William Tyndale Burned at the Stake for Trying to Make the Bible Available to Common People
William Tyndale, 12 years after he left England, was led from prison to the stake where he was strangled, then his body burned. He had time to utter one last cry: “Lord, open the King of England’s eyes.” Tyndale had suffered for the cause “poverty, … exile out of my natural country and bitter absence from my friends, … my hunger, my thirst, my cold, the ...
Protestant Reformation Begins: Martin Luther Nailed his 95 Theses to the Door of the Wittenberg Castle Church, Protesting the Sale of Indulgences and Other Practices
Sometime during October 31, 1517, the day before the Feast of All Saints, the 33-year-old Martin Luther posted theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. The door functioned as a bulletin board for various announcements related to academic and church affairs. The theses were written in Latin and printed on a folio sheet by the printer John Gruenenberg, one of the many entrepreneurs ...
Erasmus Published a Greek-Latin Parallel New Testament
Erasmus, with the help of printer John Froben, published a Greek-Latin Parallel New Testament. The Latin part was not the corrupt Vulgate, but his own fresh rendering of the text from the more accurate and reliable Greek, which he had managed to collate from a half-dozen partial old Greek New Testament manuscripts he had acquired. This milestone was the first non-Latin Vulgate text of the scripture ...
Joan of Arc Burnt at the Stake in Rouen’s Market Square in France
A young peasant girl who could neither read nor write, she followed the voices and visions from God and completely reversed the course of the 100 Year War (with England occupying most cities) and kept France from becoming a colony of England. Greatly celebrated by her own people she was hated by the English who ultimately captured her and rigged a trial under the auspices of ...
Religious Reformer, Jan Hus, Burned at the Stake as a Heretic
Jan Hus, a Bohemian religious reformer, was condemned as a heretic and burned at the stake for his belief that Christ alone was the head of the church and that people should be permitted to read the Bible in their own language and in their own homes. Manuscripts of Wycliffe's bible were used as kindling for the fire that burned him at the stake. Ryan M ...
John Wycliffe, the First to Translate the Entire Bible into English, Dies
Wycliffe had been born in the hinterlands, on a sheep farm 200 miles from London. He left for Oxford University in 1346, but because of periodic eruptions of the Black Death, he was not able to earn his doctorate until 1372. Nonetheless, by then he was already considered Oxford's leading philosopher and theologian. In 1374 he became rector of the parish in Lutterworth, but a year ...
John Ball, a leader in the Peasants’ Revolt, is hung, drawn and quartered in the presence of Richard II of England
John Ball was born in St Albans in about 1340. Twenty years later he was working as a priest in York. He eventually became the priest St James' Church in Colchester. (1) Ball believed it was wrong that some people in England were very rich while others were very poor. Ball's church sermons criticising the feudal system upset his bishop and in 1366 he was removed ...
Freedom Fighter William Wallace of Scotland is Hanged, Disemboweled, Beheaded, and Quartered
Following the defeat at the Battle of Falkirk and his resignation as Guardian of Scotland, William Wallace's role in the Scottish resistance changed. He became less of a military leader and more of a diplomat, seeking to garner international support for Scotland's cause. However, he remained a symbol of defiance against English rule and a target for English forces. Wallace's capture came about in 1305, a result ...
