For the first 1000 years of Christianity, there was technically only one organized Church. Today, there are of course many different denominations and sects of Christianity. There are Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Baptists, Methodists, Pentecostals, and on and on and on. And within each “type,” there are tons of other differing groups. It was in 1,054 AD that the church split into Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox. The split became primarily geographical–Catholic in the West and Orthodox in the East. But, practically, there was still only one type of church.
An important event in the history of the world and the Church was the invention of the Gutenberg printing press in 1440. Up until this time, not everyone could read the Bible. Most people couldn’t read even if they had wanted to. But most of those who could read didn’t have access. Today, we have Bibles everywhere. I have at least 5 or 6 Bibles myself. But back then, you couldn’t just go buy a Bible and read it and believe it. Back then, you had to depend upon the priest to tell you what it said. Only the most privileged could know and read the Bible.
The Church as we know it in the book of Acts had started off right. Then, in 313, Constantine issued his Edict of Milan, which granted tolerance to Christianity. This was followed up by the later Edict of Thessalonica in 380, which declared Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire. The Church became an institution of the state. When Byzantium and Rome institutionalized the Church, it took on a Christianized version of the empirical domination and culture of the Roman Empire. It became politicized and very corrupt. Little by little, no longer did the Church stand solely on the Word of God, (as it was canonized in the late fourth century at the Synod of Hippo and the Councils of Carthage). The Church became steeped in rituals and tradition.
Here’s what I’m getting at—If everything someone knows about God comes from a priest who has been bought by the state, then how would anybody know the real truth of the Bible?
This is why the Gutenberg printing press was so revolutionary. Now, with the press, you could print off things regularly and get hundreds and thousands of copies of manuscripts into the hands of ordinary people. Before this, you had to copy everything by hand. Now, the Bible was becoming more available, especially as scholars began transcribing the Bible from Latin into common vernacular.
As a result, in 1517, Martin Luther challenged the Church’s teachings and authority in his 95 Theses, which began the Protestant Reformation. Basically, Luther was saying that over the last 1500 years the Church had strayed from the Bible’s actual teachings. He preached that the Church desperately needed to get back to what Jesus taught in the pages of the Bible.
Then in 1536, William Tyndale was burned at the stake for translating the Bible into English for the very first time. He was killed by the Church. He died putting the Bible into the hands of ordinary people. The Church deemed him too dangerous. The organized Church didn’t want to change; they wanted to retain control over what people believed.
Today, we have so much access. We have Bibles on our phones in our pockets. For those who have trouble reading, we have audio bibles. We have commentaries, countless resources, and various translations and versions. Tyndale was burned at the stake in order to get people the Bible; but today, so many Christians go through a whole week without ever opening the Bible or reading any Scripture at all. Men and women have literally died to be able to know what the Bible has to say; and now in 2025, so many Christians don’t even care. So many church-goers never stop to think throughout the week, “I wonder what the Bible says about what I’m facing?”
We have more access to the Bible today than any generation in human history. We have more technology and more tools at our disposal. We should be smarter and further along, but too often we have squandered our blessings and used them instead to our detriment and degradation. With all the ease and comforts we have, it seems we’ve become lazier instead of more studious. Rather than increasing our engagement with God’s Word, I think we have actually decreased it. It seems that the more access we have the less we read Holy Scripture. It’s shocking how little many Christians know about what the Bible has to say. It’s like we have reverted back in some ways to early Christendom where we only depend upon the priest to tell us what God has said in His Word; all we’ve done is substituted the priest with the pastor. And yet we can’t understand why marriages are failing, society is breaking down, anxiety and depression are at an all-time high, and churches are retreating from the onslaught of Hell.
Pick up your Bible, Christian! Read what God has to say. Access to the Bible is such a blessing that we often take for granted. Thank God for His most holy and infallible Word!
The Azusa Weekly 