The Celestial City

Renewing Your Mind

Ligonier Ministries

Religion & Spirituality, Christianity

4.8 • 4.9K Ratings

🗓️ 7 November 2025

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Every Christian's pilgrimage in this world will one day come to an end. Today, Derek Thomas describes Christian's arrival at the Celestial City in The Pilgrim's Progress and presents lessons we can draw from this happy ending.

For your donation of any amount, receive The Pilgrim's Progress book by John Bunyan, together with Derek Thomas' video teaching series on DVD. You'll also get lifetime digital access to this 19-message series and its study guide: https://gift.renewingyourmind.org/4401/offer

Live outside the U.S. and Canada? Get the digital teaching series and study guide with your donation: https://www.renewingyourmind.org/global

Meet Today's Teacher:

Derek Thomas is a Ligonier Ministries teaching fellow and Chancellor's Professor of Systematic and Pastoral Theology at Reformed Theological Seminary.

Meet the Host:

Nathan W. Bingham is vice president of media for Ligonier Ministries, executive producer and host of Renewing Your Mind, and host of the Ask Ligonier podcast.

Renewing Your Mind is a donor-supported outreach of Ligonier Ministries. Explore all of our podcasts: https://www.ligonier.org/podcasts

Transcript

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0:00.0	Pilgrim's progress is a tract to help Christians understand the reality of death and to be able to face it with assurance, with expectation, with hope, with confidence, that although we may fear the process of dying, we have no need to be afraid of death itself because Christ has conquered death by his resurrection
0:23.2	from the dead.
0:30.2	It's estimated that over 150,000 people die every single day.
0:36.9	That number seems staggering, especially because we live in a time
0:40.9	when our culture seeks to hide the reality of death. It often doesn't feel real until it impacts
0:47.3	our friends or family directly. But that wasn't true in John Bunyan's time. They were far more
0:54.0	aware that our days are numbered.
0:57.0	Hi, I'm Nathan W. Bingham, and thanks for joining us for this Friday edition of Renewing Your Mind.
1:04.0	As we come to the final chapter for Christian, as he now approaches the celestial city,
1:10.0	it means it's your final opportunity to request a copy of Bunyan's classic The Pilgrim's Progress,
1:15.6	along with Derek Thomas' complete 19-part DVD series that walks you through the book,
1:21.6	explaining the context and meaning of the various places and characters.
1:26.6	Request your copy of this Pilgrim's Progress
1:29.6	Resource Bundle when you donate before midnight tonight at Renewing Your Mind.org. For Christian,
1:37.3	the main character in the story, to enter the celestial city, he must first die or in the allegory
1:43.9	pass through the river. This is such a
1:47.2	beautiful and comforting part of the story, and it has been used by God for centuries to help
1:52.6	prepare Christians for their own death. Here's Derek Thomas to guide us through the last
1:58.2	leg of Christian's journey.
2:08.6	We come to what is one of the most wonderful descriptions of death and passing through the river and into the gates of the celestial city.
2:15.4	We were in the delectable mountains in our previous study, and do you remember, among other
2:21.3	things, Christian and Hopeful were taken to a mountain ridge called Clear, and then with the aid
	...

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