The Strait Gate Or, Great Difficulty of Going to Heaven

A TREATISE EVEN MORE RELEVANT NEARLY 350 YEARS LATER

The Strait Gate is a treatise written by Puritan author, John Bunyan, author of The Pilgrim’s Progress. This treatise was originally published in 1676 with the purpose of the wickedness prevalent among many professing believers in Bunyan’s day. One of the issues arose from the general laxity in the preaching the gospel; and near kin to it, was the ease with which someone could make a confession of faith— having no conviction of sin, nor fruit of repentance, and no holiness of living. John Bunyan took the matter to task.

Free from his incarceration at the Bedford Jail for two years (after 12 years in prison), Mr. Bunyan exhorted his readers to embrace a pure gospel, a Biblical gospel. Bunyan viewed the Person and work of Jesus Christ the mainspring from which every aspect of acceptable Christianity was produced, be it doctrinal, dutiful or devotional. “Good works must flow from faith, or not at all,” wrote John Bunyan in his 1663 treatise, Christian Behaviour (first published in 1674).

FROM GEORGE OFFER IN 1862

In his “Editor’s Advertisement,” prelude to this treatise in The Complete Works of John Bunyan, George Offor wrote, “If any uninspired writer has been entitled to the name of Boanerges, or a son of thunder, it is the author of the following treatise. Here we have a most searching and faithful display of the straitness or exact dimensions of that all-important gate, which will not suffer many professors to pass into the kingdom of heaven, encumbered as they are with fatal errors. Still ‘it is no little pinching wicket, but wide enough for all the truly gracious and sincere lovers of Jesus Christ; while it is so strait, that no others can by any means enter in.’ This is a subject calculated to rouse and stimulate all genuine professors to solemn inquiry; and it was peculiarly intended to dart at, and fix convictions upon, the multitudes of hypocritical professors who abounded in Bunyan’s time, especially under the reigns of the later Stuarts.”

More than 150 years since Mr. Offor wrote his advertisement, and nearly 350 years since Mr. Bunyan wrote this treatise, error has multiplied and, worse, been magnified to nearly culminate with a mishmash of every error and corruption of the gospel since the birth of the church in the first century.

With Mr. Bunyan’s treatise, The Strait Gate, the discerning believer will agree that the Bedford tinker-turned-preacher’s exhortation to receive knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior must come from the scriptures alone, and that this knowledge must be received and understood by the light of the Holy Spirit; and logically presenting the Biblical truths in Mr. Bunyan’s unique and indefatigable way, you will be encouraged by this work and rejoice in its purity of propositional truth, revel in its sincerity toward practical application, and resolve to take up a more passionate devotion to Christ’s person as God and Savior.

SPURGEON ON BUNYAN’S WRITING
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Of John Bunyan and his classic story, Charles H. Spurgeon had this to say: “...he cannot give us his Pilgrim’s Progress— that sweetest of all prose poems— without continually making us feel and say, ‘Why, this man is a living Bible!’ Prick him anywhere; his blood is Bibline, the very essence of the Bible flows from him.” Although Mr. Spurgeon preached this concerning Bunyan’s famous allegory, once you’ve read this treatise, you’ll readily agree, that Bunyan’s blood is indeed Bibline in everything he writes.

May you benefit greatly from the puritan heart and mind of John Bunyan, forged by God’s Word and formed by Christ’s Divine Light.

John Bunyan (1628-1688) was born in Elstow, England, approximately 1/2 mile from Bedford. The former tinker became a mighty preacher of the gospel and his unwavering conviction to preach wherever he anyone would listen, sent him to prison for 12 years from 1660 to 1672 in violation of the Clarendon Code (preaching as a non-conformist within 5 miles of an Anglican Church). His wonderful allegory, THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS, is one of the most read books in the English language, second only to the King James Version of the Holy Bible. John Bunyan wrote many poems, treatises and allegories until his death in 1688. He is considered one of the greatest writers among the Puritan authors.