Four Fascinating Facts About John Bunyan

In our current series, How God Changes a Life, we’ve looked at the stories of Augustine and Luther and how the word of God transformed them. This upcoming Sunday we’ll consider the story of John Bunyan, the 17th century English pastor and writer. 

Bunyan, admittedly my favorite, starts hitting closer to home. He was an English-speaker for one, and he was Baptist. He wrote a memoir about his conversion titled Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, and it’s marvelous. There’s so much to tell that I got a little carried away with the sermon draft. I didn’t want to completely toss my cuts, so voila: Four Fascinating Facts about John Bunyan …

#1. Bunyan became part of a Baptist Church in Bedford.

The Church of England — the Anglicans — was the established church, but then there was the Puritan movement that wanted a more biblical, Reformed church. Some Puritans wanted to reform the Church of England from within, others became Separatists and started independent congregations. And among this group were the Baptists. (It’s from this same Baptist world that we get the 1646 London Baptist Confession and later the 1689 London Baptist Confession — and this is our theological heritage. We trace back our Baptist lineage to this time.)

In the early 1650s Bunyan started attending a small Baptist church in Bedford where he sat under the ministry of John Gifford and was deeply influenced by him. What makes this especially interesting is that Gifford was a major for the Royalist Army in the English Civil War. Bunyan served in the Parliamentary Army. 

So just a few years before they met, the two were enemies.

#2. Bunyan often recalled verses and truths from Scripture, but couldn’t remember the reference.

The Bible became very precious to Bunyan during the ‘years’ of his conversion. He devoured the Bible and filled his mind and heart with its truth. In the midst of his battles with doubt and depression, he learned to tell the truth to himself. He’d recall a verse of Scripture, but forget the reference. So he’d go scour his Bible to figure out where it was (no google, remember).

He describes one such example. After several days of a “great cloud of darkness” he writes:

… as I was sitting by the fire, I suddenly felt this word to sound in my heart, I will go to Jesus; at this my former darkness and atheism fled away. … while I was thus overtaken with surprise, Wife, said I, is there ever such a scripture, I must go to Jesus? She said she could not tell, therefore I sat musing still to see if I could remember such a place … (90)

He pretty quickly landed on Hebrews 12:22–24, “But you have come to … Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant.”

These are goals. It’s not that we remember references, but that we remember truths. 

#3. Bunyan’s wife, Elizabeth, was amazing.

Bunyan’s first wife, presumably named Mary, was a wonderful woman too, and he grieved her death. He remarried a woman, Elizabeth, who mothered Mary’s four young children, one of whom was blind. She ended up giving birth to three children, but the first died within hours of delivery. It was shortly after Bunyan was arrested in 1660 and held for twelve years.

Twelve years is a long time. Elizabeth has a meeting with the authorities, pleading for his release on the grounds that he had been unjustly detained. They scoffed at her and said Bunyan preached in error, but she held her ground. The dialogue was recorded:

Elizabeth: He preacheth nothing but the word of God.

Authorities: He runneth up and down, and doth harm!

Elizabeth: No, my Lord, said she, it is not so; God had owned him, and done much good by him. 

Authorities: Good! His doctrine is the doctrine of the devil

Elizabeth: My Lord, when the righteous Judge shall appear, it will be known that his doctrine is not the doctrine of the devil. (See 161ff)

#4. Bunyan experienced the realness of Jesus.

Of his experience in prison, Bunyan writes:

I never had in all my life so great an inlet into the Word of God as now; those Scriptures that I saw nothing in before, are made in this place and state to shine upon me; Jesus Christ also was never more real and apparent than now; here I have see him and felt him indeed. (119)

Something we learn from Bunyan is how to put our emotions in their place. A sense of assurance is wonderful, but not essential. Jesus is real whether we have a fresh awareness of him or not. But man, when we experience it, when we know he’s real, thanks be to God! It is a good experience worth seeking.