The Two Valleys

“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” — Psalm 23:4 (ESV)

Below the House Beautiful the road drops into the Valley of Humiliation — and a monster comes across the field to meet Christian. Apollyon: scaled like a fish, wings like a dragon, feet like a bear, fire and smoke pouring out of him. Christian’s first instinct is to run, until he remembers his armour has nothing to guard his back. So he stands.

Apollyon’s attack is mostly words, and the strategy is the oldest one there is. First he claims Christian: “You’re mine, you were born in my country.” Then he offers a deal: come back, I’ll forgive it all. Then he goes for the throat, listing every failure Christian has committed so far in this very book: fainting in the Slough, trying the shortcut, sleeping and losing the scroll, secretly showing off when he tells his story. And here’s the thing — every accusation is true.

This is exactly how it works when you try to follow God. The voice in your head doesn’t invent things; it uses your real record against you. You prayed and then blew it. Apollyon’s whole game is to get you to draw a false verdict from true facts: so you’re a fraud, so give up. Watch how Christian answers, because it’s the answer. He denies nothing: “All this is true, and much more you left out — but the Prince I serve is merciful and ready to forgive.” He agrees with the accusation and goes straight over its head to the forgiveness. He doesn’t argue that he’s good. He argues that Christ is.

Then it stops being words. Darts fly thick as hail; the fight lasts over half a day; Christian is wounded in the head, hand, and foot, knocked flat, his sword thrown from his hand, and Apollyon says, “I am sure of you now.” At the last second Christian’s hand finds the sword again and he cries out — “when I fall, I shall arise” — and drives it home. Apollyon flies off. You will get hit. You may get knocked flat. The victory isn’t never going down; it’s reaching for the sword one more time than the enemy expects. As the Bible says — resist the devil, and he will flee.

But the road doesn’t ease up. Next comes the Valley of the Shadow of Death — and Bunyan says this one is worse. It’s not a monster you can fight. It’s darkness: a path so narrow there’s a bottomless ditch on one side and a sucking bog on the other, pitch black, with the mouth of hell right beside the road belching flame. Here Christian can’t use his sword at all; he switches to a weapon called All-prayer and just keeps walking, crying, “O Lord, deliver my soul.”

This valley is depression, doubt, and darkness — the seasons where you can’t feel God at all and every horrible thought seems to come from inside your own head. Bunyan includes the cruellest detail: one of the wicked ones slips up behind Christian and whispers blasphemies so quietly that Christian thinks he himself is thinking them, and it horrifies him. If you’ve ever been ambushed by dark thoughts you’d never choose, and then hated yourself for “thinking” them, Bunyan saw that centuries ago, and he’s telling you they may not be coming from you at all.

Then — a voice up ahead in the dark, someone else walking the same valley, saying, “I will fear no evil, for you are with me.” Christian can’t see him, but now he knows two things: he isn’t the only one in here, and God is with people in this valley even when they can’t feel it. Then the sun comes up, and he sees the traps he was carried safely past in the dark.

One thing to do when you’re in the dark valley: two moves, both from Christian. When you can’t fight, switch weapons — stop trying to think your way out and pray the plainest prayer there is: Lord, get me through. And find the voice ahead of you — the honest testimony of one person who has walked this and made it — because the single most important thing to know in that valley is that you are not the first one in it.