A VOICE FROM THE PAST, John Bunyan(Norman – French Name Buignon) 1628-88, encouraging us to remain faithful in trials.
Bunyan had humble beginnings and little formal education. His father was a tinker and mended pots and pans, which trade he later took up. He was then called up to the army, an early stage of the English Civil War, for a period of three years and gained an appreciation of military procedure and language. Another soldier took one of his duties and was killed by a musket ball, God’s hand upon him! When he married he began to take an interest in the things of God and started attending an Anglican Church but hadn’t given his life to the Lord. One Sabbath afternoon he was playing a game with a bat on the local village green and he heard a voice from heaven say, ‘Will you leave your sins and go to heaven? Or keep your sins and go to hell?’
One day while he was out working he heard some women talking about a newly formed Puritan Church and soon became a member and was later encouraged to preach. However, preaching outside the Anglican Church was bitterly opposed and John Bunyan was jailed for three months and threatened with deportation if he didn’t recant of his preaching. He eventually spent twelve years in prison, one fifth of his life! His wife and four children, one blind, suffered poverty and hardship(though the Puritan Church helped them). Bunyan said, ‘I saw in this condition that I was a man pulling down his house on the head of his wife and children; yet I thought, I must do it, I must do it’. He couldn’t stop preaching, he had to do it.
Whilst in prison Bunyan wrote many books, the most famous, Pilgrim’s Progress, based on Hebrews 11:13…they admitted that they were aliens and ‘Pilgrims’ on earth. The Book told the story of Pilgrim and his journey to heaven and all the obstacles the enemy put in front of him as he journeyed onwards. He also wrote a famous hymn called ‘To be a Pilgrim’ also known as, ‘He who would valiant be’.
He who would valiant be, ‘Gainst ALL DISASTER, Let Him in constancy, follow the Master, There’s no discouragement shall make him once relent, his first avowed intent to be a Pilgrim.
Who so beset him round with DISMAL STORIES, do but themselves confound, his strength the more is, NO FOES SHALL STAY HIS MIGHT, though he with giants fight, He will make good His right to be a Pilgrim.
Since Lord thou(You) dost DEFEND US WITH THY SPIRIT, we know we at the end shall life inherit(Praise the Lord, eternal life), Then fancies flee away! I’ll FEAR NOT WHAT MEN SAY, I’ll Labour night and day, to be a Pilgrim.
God will give us the grace when we need it to overcome our own difficulties and COMPLETE OUR Pilgrimage. The circumstances may seem bad, but keep looking to Jesus ‘the author and perfector of our faith’.
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Go bless and keep you, make His face shine on you and give you His peace(shalom).