Reggie Weems Blog

One of the most amazing aspects to John Bunyan’s life is simply His faithfulness to God in his time.  The overwhelming majority of what has made Bunyan famous amounted to his responses to the world around him.  He did not make himself great.  He possessed no aspirations for greatness.  His early life did not prepare him for, not did he ever prepare himself for the place that is assigned to him in history.  He simply was…and was faithful to God in the circumstances in which he found himself and to which he responded.  Therein was his greatness and for it, he is remembered in history.  In that regard then, every human being may also be equally as great, though, as Bunyan’s own time revealed, a person may never recognize the greatness of their own life within their own lifespan.  This was true of Bunyan and it is true of many people who, simply by their reactions to the life God designed for them, they respond in faithfulness to that God.  Therein is great encouragement to live faithful to God every day of our lives.  No biblical hero or villain ever dreamt their lives would be recorded in the Bible to be read for millennia after their earthly demise.  Nor did Bunyan ever contemplate the greatness of his own life.  Only history has revealed him as he truly was.  We should also know that every moment of our lives is being recorded, to be revealed in a much more ‘holy’ moment than a mere biography…but to be played out before the very throne of God.  So it is with our lives and so it was with Bunyan.  Hence, not “The Life and Times…” but “The Times and Life of John Bunyan” -   

 
No man lives outside of the time in which God has ordained his existence.  Every man is confined to that particular time, with all of its opportunities and limitations, to which God has sovereignly consigned his life.  Thus, only the God Who gives life, gives reason.  Breath cries “Why?” and the answer dwells in the being of God.  Understanding and living in the light of this knowledge, is the summum bonum of human existence.  Each human being finds definition and destiny only in the divine purpose of his creation.  Thus, any human perspective void of the celestial mind cannot correctly interpret any life’s success.  All, and that is no small word, a man can do is be faithful to the God, Who has assigned him both place and purpose.  And there is no place without purpose and no life without reason.  All of life and every life is sequential.  Every life builds upon the next. It is true that no man is an island, but this applies to time as well as space.  Every life builds upon the existence of lives before it; lives that are unknown except to God, actions so small as to be unworthy of recognition, events so common as to be regarded only from the human perspective.  Few biographies about John Bunyan have reflected on the times that created the man and the legend.  The intent of this short biography is to consider John Bunyan inside of and as a reflection of the events into which God wrote his life.  For, if ever a man was subject to his time, faithful in his time, defined by his time, and created by his time, it was the tinker of Bedford, John Bunyan (1628-1688). 

 
Although opposed to Puritan ideals, Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556) may have been the most influential person in the history of English Puritanism, outside of Henry VIII, himself.  Perhaps even more famous, although certainly not as influential in his time, John Bunyan endured the infamy and events of unsought fame as a good solider of Jesus Christ.  His was a time unlike any other in English religious history.  It was an era that thrust itself upon a humble man whose only religious goal was to propagate the simple truths of a gospel that gloriously saved him.  It was an era that made him great.  Though desirous of a simple life, he could not live simply, for his times were complex.  He had been forewarned by His Master that passionate love could be met by equal, though contrary passion.  As a result, John Bunyan’s life was too surreal even for a fiction story.  So it was his love for Christ above all others, even himself, that caused him and his family to endure terrible grief for much of his Christian life.  He was a disciple of love for God, family, church and sinners, reborn into a world of hatred set against gospel truth and all who love it.  He was a man made great by the great times ordained of God for his life. He was a man for whom, “the fullness of time” (Galatians 4:4) had come. 

More tomorrow…