Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
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This is your
program for discussions
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of religious
liberty and its importance
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in this day and age.
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My name is Lincoln Steed,
editor of Liberty magazine.
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And today I'll be
talking to you by myself.
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Sometimes, in fact,
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usually I have a
guest on this program.
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But I want to take
time in several programs
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to share with you some
of the important aspects
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of religious liberty
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and in a number of
cases go back away.
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In my own case,
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I can go back further
than I ever thought I'd go.
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And when I think back
to growing up in Australia
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a few years ago,
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a few decades ago because I came
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to the United
States as a teenager,
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I was 16 years old.
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But I grew up in Australia.
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And when I first began school
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in the City of
Sydney in Australia,
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it was a public school.
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And I'm not that old
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but when I look back
on that public school,
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it had a lot in
common with Charles Dickens
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and the horrific situation
that existed in England
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when he wrote
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the back at the time
of the French Revolution.
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Because I used to walk
maybe two miles from my home
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as a five year old
till eight years old,
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I'd walk about two
miles down the main street,
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then under a railway underpass
then down another street,
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then over a railway,
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overpass at a train station
and then around a few corners
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and finally I would
arrive at this public school
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that looked like either
a Charles Dickens' building
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or something more
contemporary scene,
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I guess is, is the Harry Potter
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sort of Gothic scene.
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And it was divided
between boys and girls
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and we all sat
there in very careful,
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quiet rows and we would look up
at the master sitting higher up
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and if they deign
to ask a question out
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into the general audience
of trembling young boys,
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and you didn't know
the answer, you were gone.
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I don't know where they went.
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Down, I think to the beginning,
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prep schools but they
certainly were no longer there.
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So the stakes were high for us.
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And I used to love though,
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not the school but
the walk to school,
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pedaling in the muddy, soggy,
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leech infested waters
under the railway underpass,
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that was exciting
for me at that time.
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And I can remember one
day clearly coming home
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and minus my shoes,
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which were brand new
that day and my mother
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couldn't quite grasp
how I could lose my shoes
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on the way to school.
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She, I never told her
about some of these adventures
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that included money
on the railway tracks,
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you'd get, you know,
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your penny as big as
a small pancake almost.
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It was fun.
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But what I remember particularly
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was on that walk home
coming by an empty lot,
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house was not there,
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overgrown with grass
and a few piles of sand
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and we would play marbles there,
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we'd smooth out a spot,
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scribe a circle
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and put the
marbles in the middle
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and then you'd
shoot at them and the ones
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that you bumped
out you got to keep.
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And of course,
having a ball bearing meant
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that you have a
certain advantage.
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But I remember
this one summer day,
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coming past that empty lot,
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thinking of all the good times
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there playing in the
sun and just wasting time,
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time didn't seem to
matter as much back then
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which reminds me
of a WB Yeats' poem
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but that's for another day.
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And when I got to this
block this day was different.
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Instead of empty,
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instead of a
potential marble playground,
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there was a
canvas tent pitch there.
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Further there were
pictures out front.
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And this was in the
early days of television.
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People had TV, we didn't,
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but it wasn't so
generally part of the culture.
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And here were big posters.
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In fact two of them
as I remember very large
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bannering what was on
in this, in this tent,
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and there was a guy
up front pitching it.
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And he was
calling to the young kids
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who are walking
home from school,
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come in, young people, come in,
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there's a program just for you.
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And one of the
pictures I remember
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was a knight in full
armor, ready to do battle.
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And another one was of a dragon.
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You know, a
mythical medieval beast,
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you know, Saint
George and the dragon and,
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and dragons and
dungeons which people like now,
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it was really guaranteed
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to catch the
interest of young kids.
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And he said, "Come in,
we'll tell you the story"
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Every day after school,
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you can come and find out
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a little bit
more about this story
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of a man on a journey
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from a city to
the celestial city.
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And, of course,
what they were telling
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and I didn't know at that time
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that I soon got
to know and love it,
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they were telling the
story of John Bunyan's
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pilgrim's
progress, where Christian,
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he is from evangelist,
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the call of God on his heart
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and the call to leave
the city of destruction
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where he was living
with his wife and children,
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leave the city of destruction
and go through an arduous way,
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pursuing the
dream and the certainty
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in his case of
the celestial city.
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It's a fantastic
story told in an allegory,
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but as John Bunyan
in his own writing says,
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in the similitude of a dream.
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And I've got to tell you
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that even these
many, many years later,
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I can tell that
that's really shaped my view
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of what the Christian life is
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and the
environments that we live in
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and travel
through as Christians,
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not neutral, not always easy.
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Sometimes a battle on the
march but taking those figures
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that Paul used, you know,
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where we take on
the whole armor of God,
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if we're armed, not
as a medieval knight,
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you know, John
Bunyan, used that image,
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but if we're armed spiritually,
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we can withstand,
of course, Apulian,
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the personification
of the evil force,
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we can withstand and
reject giant despair.
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And we can be
victorious in the end.
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You know, John
Bunyan's an interesting figure
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and not coincidental to really
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how we see
religious liberty today.
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John Bunyan was a soldier
in the English Civil War.
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And I want to take
time on another program
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to talk at greater length
about the English Civil War,
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barely 100 years
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before the American
Revolution of independence.
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But John Bunyan was
a soldier in that war.
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He was irreligious found master
fellow by his own testimony,
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and a little bit
after the Civil War during,
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I think the reign of
the victorious general
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Oliver Cromwell who
ruled instead of king,
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he ruled as Lord
Protector of England
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for a very short time
until he died of an illness.
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But during that period,
John Bunyan got religion,
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something clicked in his life.
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Whereas before he was so profane
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that people
complained about his language.
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He became the model
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of a vibrant active
irrepressible Christian.
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And in a time
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when there was an
established church
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and unless you had a
license from the state
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to preach, you
were not free to do so.
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And in that time, John
Bunyan felt compelled to share
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whatever the caste even though
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he didn't belong to
any form or religion.
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The best you can say
he was a proto-Baptist,
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an independent
Bible believing preacher.
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And he preached
pretty vigorously
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until he ran afoul with the law
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because he didn't have a license
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and he spent 14
years in Bedford jail.
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Fourteen years.
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There's a
classic story of his wife
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chasing the magistrates around
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begging them to
release her husband
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who'd been many years in jail
by the time of this anecdote.
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And she says,
"Please let my husband free.
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You know, I'm his
wife, I have no support."
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He was actually
making things in prison
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as prisoners still do,
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wasn't license plates in his age
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but he was doing
something and sending
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a little stipend
to her but they were,
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they were
suffering and she says,
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"We have
children. He has children.
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Let him go."
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And the magistrate is
reported to have said to her,
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"Madam, we will let him go
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just as soon as he
agrees to stop preaching."
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And the reply was quick,
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"Oh, that he will
never do," she said,
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that he will never do.
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There's another
classic story of that era.
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Probably the well,
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most well educated churchmen
of the time was John Owen.
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He was an
Oxford don and had been
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the chap was the
chaplain to Oliver Cromwell.
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And amazingly when the
people invited the king sun back
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after the Civil
War in that revolution.
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The king son, of course,
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was the deadly enemy
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of those
Cromwellian revolutionaries.
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But amazingly, he became
the chaplain to the king too.
00:10:29.22\00:10:32.76
And at that late point, one day,
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he was preparing to go downtown
to hear John Bunyan preach
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which tells you that John Bunyan
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was very popular and
well known in his time.
00:10:42.27\00:10:45.44
And the king said to him,
"Why are you an educated man
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going down to hear
that uneducated Tinker."
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You know, just a man
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that sold pots
and pans basically,
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"Why would you hear such
a person," said the King.
00:10:59.32\00:11:02.22
And John Owen reportedly
answered the king, he says,
00:11:02.26\00:11:05.59
"Your Majesty," he said,
00:11:05.63\00:11:06.96
"I would give
all of my learning,
00:11:07.00\00:11:09.06
all of my attainments,
00:11:09.10\00:11:10.77
if I could preach
00:11:10.80\00:11:12.13
and move people
like that tinker."
00:11:12.17\00:11:14.74
So there was
clearly something powerful
00:11:14.77\00:11:17.87
in the message that
John Bunyan was presenting.
00:11:17.91\00:11:21.84
Clearly something powerful.
00:11:21.88\00:11:24.41
I want to share with you,
00:11:24.45\00:11:26.95
not so much stories
from Pilgrim's Progress
00:11:26.98\00:11:30.19
and I can't do
anything better I think
00:11:30.22\00:11:32.85
than recommend that everybody
00:11:32.89\00:11:35.06
that's listening to me
and watching this program,
00:11:35.09\00:11:38.83
make a resolution to go
and read Pilgrim's Progress.
00:11:38.86\00:11:43.13
It's powerful stuff.
00:11:43.16\00:11:44.70
It's not as
allegorical as you might think.
00:11:44.73\00:11:47.47
You know, when you
talk about giant despair
00:11:47.50\00:11:49.40
and doubting castle,
we've all been there.
00:11:49.44\00:11:51.94
That's part of the
Christian experience.
00:11:51.97\00:11:54.24
You have second thoughts,
life gets you down, right?
00:11:54.28\00:11:57.85
And at the very end
where he has Christian
00:11:57.88\00:12:04.35
with Faithful, I think
it was, Hopeful, sorry,
00:12:04.39\00:12:08.16
Faithful was his early companion
00:12:08.19\00:12:10.33
who was martyred at Vanity Fair.
00:12:10.36\00:12:13.70
In other words,
00:12:13.73\00:12:15.26
the cares of this life
00:12:15.30\00:12:16.97
and the
persecutions of this life
00:12:17.00\00:12:19.33
can be hard on Christians
00:12:19.37\00:12:21.44
and Faithful was martyred,
00:12:21.47\00:12:23.54
but Hopeful was his companion
for the rest of the journey.
00:12:23.57\00:12:27.64
And when they came to the,
00:12:27.68\00:12:30.41
to the River Jordan
which causes figurative
00:12:30.45\00:12:33.82
for passing from
this life to the next,
00:12:33.85\00:12:36.42
which is also is
part of the description
00:12:36.45\00:12:38.69
of Pilgrim's Progress
from this life into the next.
00:12:38.72\00:12:42.62
When they came to
that Jordan River, it goes,
00:12:42.66\00:12:46.96
figurative of
passing from life to death
00:12:47.00\00:12:50.07
and then to eternal life.
00:12:50.10\00:12:53.94
And in the process of
dying pilgrim despairs,
00:12:53.97\00:12:57.77
he can't feel the bottom,
00:12:57.81\00:12:59.17
he's lost his assurance
00:12:59.21\00:13:00.91
or at least can't
feel his assurance
00:13:00.94\00:13:03.24
that the celestial city
00:13:03.28\00:13:04.88
is there that the shining
ones are waiting for him.
00:13:04.91\00:13:07.68
And hopeful as
it says but I can,
00:13:07.72\00:13:11.59
I can feel the bottom.
00:13:11.62\00:13:13.25
I can see them
waiting for us there.
00:13:13.29\00:13:15.66
And pilgrim says
or Christian says,
00:13:15.69\00:13:17.93
he says that it's
for you they're waiting.
00:13:17.96\00:13:20.30
He says that you've
been hopeful all along.
00:13:20.33\00:13:24.80
It's an amazing commentary
on a Christian dynamic.
00:13:24.83\00:13:31.34
We've all been there.
00:13:31.37\00:13:32.71
But I want to take
a little bit of time
00:13:32.74\00:13:35.34
and I think I'm
gonna have to do it
00:13:35.38\00:13:36.71
after the break
or after a break.
00:13:36.75\00:13:38.88
But I'd like to take a
little time to share with you
00:13:38.91\00:13:41.68
from another book
that John Bunyan wrote,
00:13:41.72\00:13:45.15
he was not a one note author.
00:13:45.19\00:13:48.36
Pilgrim's Progress is
his main claim to fame,
00:13:48.39\00:13:51.29
but he wrote a fantastic
book called The Holy War.
00:13:51.33\00:13:56.06
And he wrote a biography called
00:13:56.10\00:13:58.47
Grace Abounding to
the Chief of Sinners,
00:13:58.50\00:14:01.47
it's his biography
00:14:01.50\00:14:03.81
or his narrative
of how he got to be
00:14:03.84\00:14:07.81
where he ended up as the
author of this incredible tale
00:14:07.84\00:14:12.01
and as a preacher who would,
00:14:12.05\00:14:14.68
by his visceral communication
of spiritual values
00:14:14.72\00:14:18.85
gather people by the
thousands from the poorest
00:14:18.89\00:14:22.19
to the most educated
as John Owen would show.
00:14:22.22\00:14:25.99
Stay with me,
00:14:26.03\00:14:27.36
after a short
break I'll be back.
00:14:27.40\00:14:29.23