John Bunyan's journey

In many ways, the story of Christian in Pilgrim's Progress is John Bunyan's story. You can't understand one without getting to know the other. So let me tell you the story of John Bunyan.

John was born in 1628 in the town of Elstow in England, in the white cottage on the left. His father was a tinker, a mender of pots and pans, and Bunyan inherited his trade.

It's hard to imagine more difficult teenage years: Bunyan's mother died when he was 15, his sister a month later, and his father remarried within a month. In his spiritual autobiography, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, he says "I was the ringleader of all the youth ... in all manner of vice and ungodliness" like "cursing, swearing, lying, and blaspheming the holy name of God". ...

read the rest at EQUIP book club