Welcome back to another episode of five minutes in church history. On this episode we're

asking a very important question, what is the church? And rather than try to

squeeze our answer into five minutes, I thought we would make this a two-part

series so that we can answer this

question what is the church now to begin to answer this question I want to

look at a book with you the book is John Bunyan's Pilgrims. This of course is the beloved classic and allegory of Christian

and how he came to Christ and how he lived the Christian life and how he eventually made his way

to the celestial city.

The episode in the book that I want to look at with you is the episode we call the house

built by the Lord of the Hill.

Now in this scene we learn a lot about what John Bunyan thinks of the nature of the church.

In fact, I think we learn a great deal about what the Puritans had to say about what is the church.

This can be a very instructive portion of the book and want to spend a little bit of time going over it with you. Now at this point, Christian has already been to the cross, his sins have been forgiven, and he's making his way through his Christian journey.

It has not necessarily been a rosy path for Christian. He's had his challenges.

He's had his ups and downs. It seems like as we find ourselves at this

moment in the book you can picture the sun is sort of setting the evening chill

is setting in and all of a sudden Christian sees a house up on the hill.

And he comes upon the porter at the gate and he says to the porter, what house is this?

And may I lodge here tonight?

And the porter says to him, this house And may I lodge here tonight.

And the porter says to him, this house was built by the Lord of the Hill, and he built it for

the relief and security of pilgrims.

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