The Tinker Who Wrote What Oxford Could Not

John Bunyan mended pots and pans in the villages around Bedford, England. He had no university degree, no library of classical texts, no patron among the educated clergy. When he began preaching in the 1650s, the established ministers mocked him openly. One called him "an unlettered man." The local magistrates eventually locked him in Bedford jail for twelve years rather than let an unlicensed tradesman keep speaking about Christ.

It was there, in a cold stone cell with nothing but a Bible and a pen, that Bunyan wrote The Pilgrim's Progress. That single book, born in a prison, has been translated into more than two hundred languages and has never gone out of print in over three centuries. Oxford-trained theologians with vast libraries produced volumes that now gather dust. The tinker with dirty fingernails and no credentials wrote something that still makes people weep and believe.

Paul told the Corinthians he came to them "not with eloquent wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power." He wanted their faith to rest not on human brilliance but on the living God. Bunyan's story proves the point. The Spirit of God does not need our degrees or polish. He searches the deep things of the Father and reveals them to whomever He chooses — even a pot-mender sitting on a prison floor, writing by candlelight what the whole world would one day read.