Derek Thomas

Hopeful, it's Christian who is most tempted to take his life.

Hopeful gives him 10 reasons why he shouldn't, and they're absolutely wonderful.

They're a Christian Puritan pastor,

giving reasons why you shouldn't take your life.

And on the Saturday evening, at the urging of diffidence, Giant Despair takes them out into the castle yard, and he shows them skulls and bones and skeletons of those who have been killed in the past.

bringing the temptation then to its peak, bringing the sense of despair and the hopelessness of the situation.

And they're beaten once more and giant despair doesn't carry out his threat to actually kill them because he too is under the sovereign control and direction of Almighty God.

And this is a wonderful section.

It's a dark section.

I find it quite astonishing.

But I also am impressed by the way Bunyan is actually ministering pastorally to an extremely difficult situation.

And he knows this is a family story.

It's meant for parents to read to their children.

And this book will become the most important.

read book in Christian homes and for probably 200 years, almost until the present generation, this was the most widely published book apart from the English Bible in English literature.

Consider for a minute the testimony of Spurgeon.

Spurgeon, of course, loved Pilgrim's Progress, often cites from it, almost take a sermon at random from the Metropolitan Tabernacle, and you'll see Spurgeon's love for Pilgrim's Progress.

Spurgeon tells us of a time in his autobiography, a man comes to the service, this is when they were in the Surrey Gardens, rather than the Metropolitan Tabernacle,

A man who came to the service and he's despondent and he's thinking of ending his life.

And then he hears Spurgeon one day and then he's delivered.