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One of the most read books in the English Language is ‘The Pilgrims Progress’ by John Bunyan. Bunyan was a tinker by trade and after his marriage he became interested in the Bible. After first attending the parish church he joined the Bedford Meeting, a non conformist group in St John’s Church Bedford. He later became a preacher but with the restoration of the monarchy the freedom of the non conformists was curtailed with only the Anglican Church Bishops allowed to ordain preachers, a practice rejected by Bunyan and those of the Bedford Meeting. Bunyan was arrested and spent the next twelve years in prison because he refused to give up preaching.
John Bunyan’s writings are a testimony to the strong convictions he held as a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. In ‘Election and Reprobation’ he wrote, “Sin where it reigns is a mortal enemy to the soul, It blinds the eyes, holds the hands, ties the legs, stops the ears and makes the heart implacable to resist the Saviour of souls.” A choice piece in,’Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ”, Bunyan makes reference to the return of the Prodigal Son to his father and uses it to go on to say, ‘He that is come to Christ, his groans and tears, his doubts and fears are turned into songs and praises. For he has now received the atonement (reconciliation) and the earnest (pledge) of His inheritance.’
The most famous of Bunyan’s writings is the classic ‘The Pilgrims Progress,’ with over 1300 editions being produced. It tells of the journey that Christian takes on his way to Heaven. Christian is carrying a burden on his back and is seen running till he came to a hill with a cross on it, together with a sepulchre at the bottom. “I saw that just as Christian came to the cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders, fell from off his back, and began to tumble till it came to the mouth of the sepulchre. It fell in, and I saw it no more”. A most heart warming way to illustrate that the burden of sin is lifted forever at Calvary’s cross by the expression, “and I saw it no more”. This is what salvation means, free from sins burden evermore.
