#20: Christian + Hopeful arrive at the Delectable Mountains. I like Bunyan’s name-choice here: 1 of those onomatopoeic words that sounds like what it is: stirs appetite, good enough to eat, eh? maybe describing BC here? After all their trials, here they have time to rest, reflect + re-focus. We need to do this at intervals; otherwise we lose our perspective. Their host Shepherds: Knowledge+Experience+Watchful+Sincere, welcomed them to Immanuel’s Land + showed them wonders: 1 Hill Error: corpses dashed to pieces by a fall from the top, lying unburied at bottom = they believed enemy’s lies. Don’t go there! 2 Mountain Caution: blind men stumbling aimlessly among tombs? = they’d gone astray +Giant Despair put out their eyes in Doubting Castle + now they wandered without purpose or destiny. Our pilgrims wept as they saw what fate they'd been saved from! 3 a door open in the hillside with dark, smoky, tormented cries rising? = byway to hell for hypocrites; so close to their destination; how could this be? ‘Few of them that begin to come hither do show their face on these mountains.’ ie many begin their journey, but not many make it this far, let alone finish! eg Esau +Judas +Alexander +Ananaias +Sapphira, put on a show of pilgrimage, but end up selling their birthright for temporal lusts - unsettling? 4 Hill Clear: telescope to see beyond to their ultimate destination: the gates of the Celestial City! We all need BIG picture revelation to put trials in right perspective + not let them become towering mountains to block our way… but these are Delectable Mountains, towering sentinels of hope + our pilgrims receive gifts: a map; warnings to beware the Flatterer + not sleep on the Enchanted Ground + prayer for God-Speed … and so must we!