John BunyanJohn Bunyan is known throughout the world as the author of The Pilgrim's Progress, one of the greatest classics in the English language. He was born in Elstow, just outside Bedford, and lived from 1628-1688 - a period of momentous political, social, nd religious change in England. He received little education, just enough for him to read and write. He was converted and then baptized by immersion, as a Baptist, in 1653, and began to preach the gospel. Bunyan's veneration of the Scriptures as the only source and standard of certain religious knowledge led him in to frequent controversies. He preached against the unregenerate clergy of his day, and called believers to come out from among them. On November 16, 1660, Bunyan became the first preacher imprisoned under King Charles II, leaving a wife and four young children at home. Bunyan wrote Of Antichrist, and His Ruin long after his 1673 release from a twelve-year imprisonment, and after his final brief 1677 stint in prison. By then his popularity, with the runaway success of Pilgrim's Progress, had exploded. one biographer noted that with one day's notice he could preach to upwards of 3,000 people outdoors, and he once preached to 1,200 outdoors in London on a weekday 7:00 AM in the winter. The distinguished Puritan scholar John Owen - a contemporary to Bunyan - was asked by Charles II why a scholar like him would go listen to the preaching of an uneducated tinker like Bunyan. Owen replied, "May it please your Majesty, if I could possess that tinker's abilities, I would gladly give in exchange all my learning." Read More Read Less