Page 27 - Heros of the Faith - Textbook w videos short

Study Section 4: Heroes between 1626 - 1708

4.1 Connect.

Today we are going to learn about John Bunyan. He was a preacher of God’s Word in England. The
King made it a rule that every preacher had to be licensed by the government to preach. Bunyan
told the authorities that God granted him his calling to preach and that the state could not grant
that authority. As a result, Bunyan was jailed for 12 years. His children grew up as he laid in a dank
prison. He was allowed to leave anytime, as long as he would receive the license to preach from
the government. He felt that to do so, put the government above God’s calling, so he refused. He
stood on principle. God used this time in his life as he wrote Pilgrim’s Progress, one of the most influential
books ever written. Let’s see how God can take a bad situation and produce good things out of it….

4.2 Objectives.

1. The student should be able to describe how God used John Bunyan’s life to touch thousands
through his preaching and writing.

2. The student should be able to describe the life of Jonathan Edwards and see how his sermons and
life sparked the greatest revival movement in America.

3. The student should be able describe how God used John Wesley to not only start an entire denomination, but
also contributed to the Great Awakening in England and America.

4.3 John Bunyan 1628 – 1788 by Norman Mable
https://www.wholesomewords.org/biography/bbunyan17.html

John Bunyan was born at Elstow, Bedfordshire, England, in 1628. People of
his name can be traced in that county back to the 12th century, but it is
quite possible he belonged to a caste of itinerant gypsies.

His education was of the most meager, little more than reading and
writing being taught to the children of his class in those days.

According to his own account, Bunyan was an idle boy, and notoriously ungodly,
particularly addicted to swearing, lying and blasphemy. During his early years he was terrified of evil agencies
and constantly fearful of malevolent spirits; but these apprehensions quite disappeared as he approached
manhood and came under the influence of the Holy Spirit, when courage and confidence became characteristic
of the rest of his life.

For a while, after leaving school, he followed his father's occupation of a tinker, except for a short period during
the Civil War, when he became a soldier. He was present at the siege of Leicester, and it may have been that this
experience, with its close proximity to death, awakened in him considerations of his personal state; for,
returning to Elstow, his thoughts were much occupied by his spiritual condition.

Shortly afterwards, when he was nineteen, he married a girl, a thoughtful wench, whose sole contribution to the
home consisted of two religious books, given her by her father: 'The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven', written by

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