The time is December, 1660; the scene, the county jail in the English town of Bedford. A young man sits in a cold cell. This dangerous criminal will spend about a third of his adult life behind bars. His offense? Preaching the gospel without a license. Oh, yes, and he's a Baptist, which makes him even more a threat to society. Few people outside the local area had ever heard of this jailbird in that first winter of the reign of King Charles II. That would not always be the case.

The jailed preacher was John Bunyan, later the author of a book that would go through more editions and be translated into more foreign languages than any other piece of English literature. It was of course, The Pilgrim's Progress, an allegory of the Christian's difficult but eventually successful journey to the Celestial City of Heaven. It was based on Bunyan's own pilgrimage in life as a prophet of God.

Let's examine briefly that journey and take heart, perhaps even some lessons, from it. The historical record tells us little of Bunyan's early life. He was born in 1628 in the village of Elstow, near Bedford. His father was a tinker, one who mended pots and pans and other household utensils. Bunyan attended a local grammar school long enough to learn to read and write, after which he took up his father's trade.

When he was eighteen, Bunyan was conscripted into the Parliamentary army, then fighting the forces of King Charles I in the English Civil War. That conflict had several causes, among them the desire of Puritans to persuade the Church of England to reform itself in the direction of the doctrines and practices of the Genevan Protestant reformer, John Calvin. The Parliamentary forces won the war, after which they executed the king and then went on to try to establish a government based on republican principles and a national church which reflected Puritan views.

It was in the turbulent times of the English Commonwealth that John Bunyan underwent a religious struggle which he later set down in his spiritual biography, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners. Influenced by local Puritans, especially some earnest Christian women, Bunyan began to examine his spiritual condition. Soon, life for the young tinker became a dizzy see-sawing between hope and despair. He sought help from local Separatists who had formed an independent Christian fellowship outside the bounds of the Anglican communion. Bunyan also read Martin Luther's commentary on St. Paul's letter to the Galatians. At last his inner storm was stilled, replaced by calm. Bunyan later retold his conversion experience in allegorical form in The Pilgrim's Progress. Three shining figures came to Christian, as he stood weeping. "The first said, 'Thy sins be forgiven.' The second stripped him of his rags and clothed him with change of raiment. The third . . . set a mark on his forehead and gave him a roll with a seal upon it, . . . that he should give it in at the Celestial Gate." From that point on, Bunyan, like the character Christian in his book, was a marked man.

In 1655 the Bedford Separatist Church invited the young man to preach to the congregation. Later, he wrote, "I preached what I felt, what I smartingly did feel." During the next five years he continued as a lay preacher, speaking at many places in the local area, always testifying to what God's grace had done in his life. That authoritative voice of personal experience appealed to his hearers.

Bunyan's freedom to preach ended in 1660, with the restoration of the monarchy and the Anglican Church. The government only allowed licensed clergy to preach, and only members of the Established Church could obtain licenses. Bunyan knew that he would likely get into trouble with the law if he went on preaching. Friends warned him to flee the county after a warrant was issued for his arrest. Bunyan refused to do so. His fidelity to the gospel outweighed his obligations to the state. When, following his incarceration, a justice of the peace offered to release Bunyan upon his promise to remain silent, he replied, "I should not leave off speaking the word of God . . ." or do anything to "dishonor my God, and wound my conscience."

Bunyan remained in jail for the next twelve years, during which time he wrote Grace Abounding. Upon his release, he became pastor of the Bedford Church. He spent most of the rest of his life preaching and writing. It was during a short further imprisonment in the mid 1670s that Bunyan began writing The Pilgrim's Progress. His books and tracts totaled nearly sixty in number, among them The Holy War, an allegory about the spiritual contest between the forces of Christ and those of Satan for the souls of men and women. Bunyan died in 1688.

I have referred to Bunyan as a prophet, and so he was, in a line of persons who spoke for God which reaches back to the Old Testament and forward to our own time. His life and work can speak to us in several ways. Among them, perhaps, is to force us to consider several questions. How willing are we to speak and live God's word and way? If it came to it, could we face imprisonment for our beliefs as did Jeremiah, St. Paul, John Bunyan, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, among others? Second, how open are we to recognizing the possibility of true prophets of God in our own time? It is difficult, indeed, when he know about the Jim Jones, the David Koreshes, and the Marshall Applewhites. But there have also been the Harry Emerson Fosdicks, the Peter Marshalls, the George W. Truetts, the Billy Grahams, the Martin Luther Kings, and many others. Will we be willing to listen to God's prophetic message in our own time? Will we be willing to be a part of that process ourselves, whatever way God may lead, even if it should cost us our freedom and comfort, as it did for a Bedfordshire tinker over 300 years ago?

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