A Biblical Timeline Offers A Graphical Mode To Aid And Help Biblical Characters And Events And Truths
In a Bible class years ago, a lady who had been a Christian and been involved in the Church for over 15 years, said,"Yes, but Abraham had the Law and so he understood about......" (they were not referring to the pre-mosaic law) I wonder how many Christians would actually pick up the inaccuracy in this claim. Moses existed five hundred years after Abraham and so it is not possible. I have since compiled a Bible chronology chart and explained visually the chronology of men and women and events.
Regrettably, a large number of Pastors and Bible teachers in our churches go on and preach shallow, light weight, flimsy, superficial sermons and their Church members scarcely grow in Bible knowledge. Preachers love to preach'moral essays' and'warming affirmations' because supposedly, if we love our people this is what we will do. Regrettable it seems, if God's men and women are falling through the cracks'for an absence of knowledge' as long as we are positive and loving to all. Truly, the more like our world, the less relevant we are to our world.
Years ago, I was teaching on the life, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, and a retired pastor and strong preacher of the Bible, who had been a pastor for 40 years, came to me and reproved me smartly over some fascinating points I made and he noted 1Ti 1:4'Neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which minister questions, rather than godly edifying which is in faith: so do.' I quietly asked him if I was teaching anything of a heretical nature at all, to which he replied"No". I continued to spell out that in the case of that particular Scripture, it wasn't referring to examining the Bible but to the false teaching and philosophy of Gnosticism, but he wouldn't have it. So, how can a 40 year preacher & worker in the Gospel, not understand and know about something that possibly half the books of the New Testament discuss?
How can he understand and teach the Bible fully without being aware of something that was so influential in the New Testament church? And then how can the congregation hope to comprehend these things and be able to interpret their Bible properly, if they're not told?
Why do we get stuck in a rut of our favorite subjects and sugar coated discourses?
We instruct on a text from Nahum and a story about Paul and a theme from the book of Timothy and then the example of John the Baptist or the miracles of Jesus - bits from here and everywhere, but we do not put it all together in an obvious understandable, simple to remember, perspective with a decent Bible TimeLine and Church History as well. Constantly we are bombarded with new books, modernist ideas, a few of them hazardously leaning toward Progressive thinking, when if we were to be coached the fundamental principles of Church history, we then wouldn't be so doomed to do the same again.
Let's us as teachers and preachers stitch together the fragments of the Bible and His plan into a seamless tapestry that our people can draw on for the rest of life, helping them to comprehend God, His Eternal Plan, the role of the Church and how to better translate the Bible to order our lives by.
It is not hard to do, and it's not boring if we are ready to put in a bit of study and prayer and fervor, and just maybe you can use a Bible Timeline also.
For added information about a Bible TimeLine go over to our Bible TimeLine Chart site and check out the scriptural study resource.
Related to bible history timeline poster: