We've been talking about John Bunyan's "The Pilgrim's Progress", and I wanted to share a great new take on it I discovered recently.  It's by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and it is called "The Celestial Railroad''. It is only about 20 pages long, and it is profound in content. it is basically a survey of Christianity in the 1800's, It is a parody of "The Pilgrim's Progress" except everything is modernized. Pilgrims can now take a railroad and make a carefree journey to the Celestial City. He apparently wrote it to attack the Unitarian and Transcendentalist beliefs of his time. It is a fascinating read, and it almost reminds me of "The Scroll Saga" which I have blogged about earlier ( The Scroll Saga ) It shows the ways the Devil can invade the soul and create a false Christianity that will ultimately send you to hell.  Here is a link to read the whole thing for yourself: The Celestial Railroad by Nathaniel Hawthorne (online-lit

For those poor souls who do not know about this wonderful book, “The Pilgrim's Progress”- an allegory by the widely known English author & preacher, John Bunyan, is the most widely read book besides the Bible for about 200 years. It tells the iconic story of a man named Christian who goes on a quest to reach the Celestial City, an allegorical rendering of heaven in Bunyan’s work. Here is my favorite quote from the book: What God says is best, is best, though all the men in the world are against it. This is extremely true and applicable, and there’s lots more where that came from, though I don't have time to go through all of my favorite quotes today.  The characters in this work are iconic figures in historic Christendom. Let’s take a look at some of them. Christian , the main character and a representation of humankind, Faithful, Christian’s companion for half the book, who is murdered by the men of vanity fair, and last but not least, Christiana, Christian’s wife, who ha

 whether or not life begins at conception is one of the hottest issues in our society today. Unsaved, hell-bound sinners would have you believe that life begins when the baby is born, and at any time before that, the baby's life can be aborted. Whereas Christians believe that all human life begins at conception, like the Bible says. Let's take a look at some verses in the Bible to see what God says about the sanctity of Life. "For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s  womb." -Psalm 139:13 "... and even  sacrificed  their sons  whom they bore to Me, passing them through  the fire,  to devour  them." - Ezekiel 23:37  There are many more that I could list here, but this should make the point that God deeply cares for each of His people, and He obviously would not support abortion.  Sometimes, I think of it like this, how many more William Tyndales, John Bunyans, Issac Newtons, or Martin Luthers would we have, if their lives were not cut sho