No Armor for the Back: Readers’ Club Watches Christian Face Down Apollyon in the Valley of Humiliation
By a Correspondent | GospelBellsRadio.com
There is a reason John Bunyan named this valley humiliation rather than merely difficulty. On Sunday, September 27, 2026, the GospelBells Radio Readers’ Club left the mountaintop behind for good and followed Christian into the most harrowing episode of his pilgrimage so far — a face-to-face confrontation with a monster named Apollyon that began as a conversation, curdled into a threat, and ended in a battle so fierce it lasted, in Bunyan’s own telling, more than half a day. By the time the class had finished working through it, they had not only watched Christian nearly die on the ground with his sword knocked from his hand; they had also confronted an uncomfortable truth about themselves, one the moderator returned to again and again: this valley does not merely test a believer’s strength. It exposes the truth about how little of it he actually has.
Where We Left Him
Before opening the new chapter, the moderator briefly recapped the previous week’s study — Christian’s descent from the Palace Beautiful, armed from head to toe by his hosts, escorted down to the foot of the hill by Discretion, Piety, Charity, and Prudence, and still, despite all that protection and companionship, stumbling once or twice on the way down. That stumbling, the class was reminded, had opened a discussion about everything a believer descending from a mountaintop experience might face: discouragement, doubt, grumbling, fear. Tonight, the moderator said, the class would watch those abstractions take a name and a face.
An Introduction Written in Dread
The moderator read the chapter’s own overview aloud before the reading began, and it set the tone for everything that followed: Christian, having descended from the spiritual heights of the Palace Beautiful, was now entering a season marked not by peace and fellowship but by loneliness, temptation, and outright spiritual attack. This chapter, the class was told, chronicles Christian’s encounter with Apollyon, and they were asked to pay particular attention to how that encounter progressed — from inducement, to misrepresentation, to deceit, to outright threat, and finally to bloody physical combat. Some readers, the moderator noted, consider this one of the most poignant chapters in the entire book. The class opened, fittingly, with a prayer that the God of peace would crush Satan under their feet, a request the moderator promised would feel considerably more urgent by the time the reading was finished.
A Monster Assembled from Every Fear
Two volunteers took the reading — one for the narration and Christian’s lines, another for Apollyon’s — and the class paused early to take in Bunyan’s description of the fiend itself: covered in scales like a fish, wings like a dragon, feet like a bear, fire and smoke pouring from its belly, a mouth like a lion’s. Christian, seeing this dreadful thing crossing the field toward him, felt afraid and genuinely weighed whether to turn back or stand his ground — until he remembered a detail the class would return to repeatedly throughout the evening: he had no armor for his back. Turning away, he realized, would only make it easier for his enemy to strike him down with a dart in flight. So he made the harder choice and stood firm.
The Argument Before the Battle
What followed was not, at first, a fight but a negotiation, and the class walked through it exchange by exchange, testing each of Apollyon’s claims for whatever grain of truth might be hidden inside the lie. Apollyon opened by claiming Christian as his own subject, since he had been born in the City of Destruction, a territory Apollyon insisted belonged entirely to him. Asked whether that claim was true or false, one participant answered without hesitation that it was true — all believers, she said, belonged to Satan by nature before Christ, tracing the point back to Adam’s fall and citing Isaiah’s declaration that we are brought forth in iniquity. The class agreed this was the pattern running through the entire exchange: Apollyon’s claims were never outright fabrications but partial truths, twisted just enough to justify a return to bondage. Christian’s own answer supplied the missing piece Apollyon conveniently left out — yes, he had been born in that dominion, but its service was harsh and its wages were death, so when he came of age he did what any thoughtful person would do and sought a better master.
Apollyon pressed on, offering Christian anything his country had to give if he would simply return, and when Christian refused, pledging himself instead to the King of princes, Apollyon tried mockery: Christian had merely traded a bad master for a worse one, and besides, plenty of professing believers eventually slip back to their old master anyway, so why not do the same? The class lingered over the sheer audacity of this line, one participant recalling a conversation about how Satan had once dared to offer Christ Himself all the kingdoms of the world, fully aware he was lying to the very One who could not be deceived. That same brazenness, several agreed, shows up whenever temptation tries to make backsliding sound ordinary, even harmless — “everybody does it eventually” being one of the oldest and most effective lies in the enemy’s arsenal.
When flattery and minimization failed, Apollyon turned to accusation, cataloguing Christian’s actual failures in painful and accurate detail: his near-drowning in the Slough of Despond, his foolish attempts to shed his burden on his own rather than waiting on his prince, his sinful sleep at the Arbor that cost him his scroll, his near-collapse at the sight of the lions, even his secret craving for others’ praise. Christian did not deny a single charge. All of this is true, he admitted, and more besides — but the very sins Apollyon listed were picked up in Apollyon’s own country, and Christian’s prince, unlike Apollyon, was merciful and ready to forgive what had been confessed and forsaken. The class held this moment up as a model worth imitating: the correct response to an accurate accusation of sin is neither denial nor despair but honest confession paired with confidence in a forgiving Savior.
From Persuasion to Threat
Having failed to win Christian back by flattery, offer, or accusation, Apollyon’s tone shifted decisively. Casting off all pretense, he declared himself Christian’s outright enemy, hater of his prince and his people, and swore by his infernal den that Christian would go no further — his soul, Apollyon promised, would be destroyed right there. With that, he hurled a flaming dart at Christian’s chest, only to have it caught and turned aside by the shield Christian carried. The class noted the precision of the image: the very armor received from the household at the Palace Beautiful, discussed at such length the week before, was now doing exactly the work it had been given to do.
A Battle Fought Facing Forward
What followed, the class agreed, was the most physically violent scene the book had offered so far. Apollyon rushed Christian, throwing darts like a storm of hail, wounding him in head, hand, and foot despite his best efforts to defend himself, forcing him to give ground. The battle raged for more than half a day, Christian weakening under his wounds, until Apollyon finally knocked him flat, his sword flying from his hand, and stood over him gloating that he had him now. It was at his very lowest point, sword gone, pinned beneath his enemy, that Christian reached out, recovered his weapon, and delivered the line the class treated as the turning point of the entire encounter: “Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy: when I fall, I shall arise” — a direct quotation of Micah 7:8. With that declaration, and a following thrust accompanied by Romans 8:37 — that in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us — Apollyon staggered, spread his dragon wings, and fled, never to trouble Christian again.
The class dwelt for some time on what it meant that Christian’s decisive counterattacks were not merely physical but verbal, each blow paired with a spoken scripture. Victory in this valley, several agreed, did not come from Christian’s own strength or skill with a sword but from his refusal to stop declaring, even flat on his back with his enemy standing over him, what God’s word had already promised him.
Why There Was No Armor for the Back
The discussion’s most extended and searching thread began with a question one participant raised almost as an aside: why, if Christian had been armed from head to toe at the Palace Beautiful, was his back left completely undefended? The class turned to Ephesians 6 and read the full armor of God aloud together — the girdle of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, feet shod with the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, the sword of the Spirit, all of it sustained by prayer. And as they read, the pattern became unmistakable: every single piece is either front-facing or upward-facing. There is a breastplate but no back-plate. There is a shield to be carried, not strapped uselessly behind. The moderator drew out the deliberate theology behind that omission: the armor was never designed to protect a soldier who turns and runs. Isaiah 58:8 was read as the answer to the apparent gap — your righteousness shall go before you, and the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. The believer’s back is covered not by armor he wears but by the very presence of God following behind him, provided he keeps facing forward. Several participants supplied further texts making the same point: Isaiah 30:21’s word behind you saying, “this is the way, walk in it,” Psalm 139’s declaration that the Lord has hedged us behind and before, and Psalm 23’s assurance that goodness and mercy follow, rather than lead, the believer through life. One contributor summarized the lesson memorably: to turn one’s back in spiritual battle is to trade the Lord’s rear guard for the enemy’s open target, and there is no halfway retreat available in a fight like this one.
A participant recalled Christian’s own earlier temptation to flee at the very sight of Apollyon, and the class connected this directly back to Timorous and Mistrust, the two pilgrims Christian had met before ever reaching the lions, who had turned back in terror and urged him to do the same. Christian’s reasoning then, the class recalled, had been just as decisive as it was here: where exactly would turning back lead him, except to a city already marked for destruction? Better to press forward and, if it came to that, perish while seeking the heavenly kingdom, than to survive by retreating into certain ruin. The class agreed this settled resolve — no turning back, whatever comes — is the only posture a pilgrim can safely hold in a battle of this kind.
Why “Humiliation”
Having established what the valley represented in general terms — a season of temptation, tribulation, testing, trial, loneliness, and wilderness — the class turned to the sharper and more personal question of why Bunyan specifically called it the Valley of Humiliation. The answer that emerged, built collaboratively across several contributions, was that this valley strips away every illusion a believer might have been carrying about his own strength. A participant put it plainly: the valley tests everything you thought you knew, and the places you assumed you were adequate, you will discover you were not. Another added that even the presence of onlookers offers little comfort here, since those watching often cannot understand what is happening or worse, quietly wonder what the sufferer must have done to deserve it — echoing exactly the kind of question Job’s own comforters once asked him. A third description, offered late in the discussion, crystallized the theme for the whole class: this is a place of brokenness, where a believer who has never truly been broken before God discovers, often for the first time, just how much pride he has been carrying without realizing it.
The moderator tied this back deliberately to the previous week’s extended discussion of spiritual pride, recalling Paul’s own thorn in the flesh, given specifically to prevent him from being exalted above measure after his experience of the third heaven, and Peter’s overconfident vow never to deny Christ, followed almost immediately by his threefold denial and bitter weeping once his eyes met the Lord’s. Without that kind of humbling, the class agreed, a believer remains dangerously prone to pointing to his own gifts, his own victories, his own spiritual experiences as though they were his own achievement rather than grace received — a danger the moderator noted is especially real for those who have been used mightily by God, since visible fruitfulness can just as easily breed pride as it can gratitude.
The Lie Behind Every Good Death
In the meeting’s final substantial exchange, the class examined one of Apollyon’s most subtle arguments: his claim that Christian’s fellow believers had, almost without exception, come to bad and shameful ends, and that Christian should expect the same. Was this true or false? The class agreed it was, in the narrowest and most worldly sense, entirely true — the apostles were martyred, Stephen was stoned, countless believers throughout history have died in poverty, sickness, or violence, unmarked and uncelebrated by the world. But the class insisted this was, once again, only a partial truth weaponized into a lie. What Apollyon calls the end is not, in fact, the end at all. Hebrews 11:13 was read aloud as the passage that exposes the deception for what it is: all these people died still living by faith, not having received what was promised, but having seen it and greeted it from a distance, confessing themselves strangers and pilgrims on the earth. The class agreed that only a believer who has genuinely internalized that identity — a stranger and pilgrim, permanently unsettled in this world — can withstand Apollyon’s favorite tactic of pointing to visible, worldly outcomes as though they were the final word. One participant connected this directly to the frustration of unanswered prayer, observing that believers often pray urgently for outcomes that never arrive as expected, not because God has failed to answer, but because He alone sees the end from the beginning, and what looks like delay or denial in this life is never the actual conclusion of the story.
Closing Reflections
As the meeting drew to its close, the moderator gathered the evening’s threads into a single sober conviction: this valley does not exist to punish Christian but to strip him of every illusion of self-sufficiency, so that whatever strength carries him through it can be recognized, unmistakably, as belonging to God rather than to himself. The battle with Apollyon was won not by Christian’s swordsmanship but by his refusal to stop declaring God’s word even while flat on the ground with his enemy standing over him — proof that the decisive weapon in this valley, as in every valley, is not human strength but the sword of the Spirit wielded without retreat.
Looking Ahead
The Readers’ Club will continue next Sunday, God willing, as the class returns to the Valley of Humiliation to finish tracing Christian’s path through it — a chapter the moderator promised still holds considerable ground left to cover, even after tonight’s dramatic battle.
🎧 The full recording of the September 27, 2026 session is available for anyone who wishes to hear this gripping study of temptation, combat, and brokenness in full.
Those who would like to join the GospelBells Radio Readers’ Club or make enquiries are warmly invited to get in touch:
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Christian’s armor covered him from head to toe, front and shield, but never his back — because the God who dressed him for battle never intended for him to need it.
