The Tinker Who Chose the Cell Over Silence

In 1661, a Bedford tinker named John Bunyan stood before English magistrates who offered him a simple bargain: stop preaching and go home to your family. Bunyan was not ordained. He had no university credentials. The authorities considered his open-air sermons a nuisance and a violation of the Conventicle Act, which forbade unlicensed religious gatherings.

Bunyan had a blind daughter, Mary, who depended on him. His wife Elizabeth pleaded his case before the courts with a courage that moved even hostile judges. Every incentive pushed toward compromise. Just say the words. Just promise to stay quiet.

He would not. "If I were out of prison today," Bunyan told the court, "I would preach the gospel again tomorrow, by the help of God."

That refusal cost him twelve years in Bedford jail. Inside that cold cell, separated from the children he ached to hold, he wrote The Pilgrim's Progress — a book that would shape the faith of millions across centuries and continents.

When Peter stood before the Sanhedrin in Acts 5, the command was identical: stop speaking in this name. And the apostles' answer rang with the same unmovable conviction — "We must obey God rather than human beings." They understood what Bunyan would learn sixteen centuries later: that faithful obedience sometimes leads through a prison door, but the God who raised Jesus from the dead never abandons those who bear witness to His name.