A Bible Timeline Banner Offers A Graphical Approach To Help Teach Bible Characters And Events And Realities
In a Bible class some 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 weren't referring to the pre-Moses law) I wonder how many Christians will actually notice the error in this statement. Moses existed 500 years after Abraham and so it is impossible. I have since then compiled a Bible timeline and explained more visually the dating of individuals and occasions.
Alas, a many Pastors and teachers in our churches continue to preach shallow, superficial, light weight, flimsy sermons and their Church members barely grow in biblical knowledge and understanding. Preachers love to give us'moral essays' and'warming affirmations' because supposedly, if we really love people this is what we'll do. Too bad it seems, if God's people are falling through the cracks'for a lack of knowledge' as long as we are nice and loving to all. In truth, the more like this world, the less relevant we are to this world.
Years ago, I was speaking on the resurrection, death, life and burial of Jesus, and a retired minister and strong preacher of the Bible, who had been a pastor for 40 years, came up and reproved me smartly over some interesting 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 in any way, to which he said"No". I continued on to spell out that in the case of that particular Scripture, it was not referring to examining the Bible but to the false teaching and philosophy of the Gnostics, but he would not accept it. So, how can a 40 year minister & worker in the Gospel, not know and understand about a thing that possibly 1/2 the books of the New Testament relate to?
How could he study and teach the Bible fully without knowing about a thing that was so influential in the New Testament church? And then how can the congregation hope to figure out these things and be able to interpret their Bible effectively, if they're not told?
Why is it that we dwell on our favorite subjects and sugar coated messages?
We teach on a verse from 2 Timothy and a story about Moses and a topic from the book of Zechariah and then the example of Adam or the strength of Samson - bits from here and all over, but we do not put it all at once in a plain 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 theology, but if we were to be coached the basic principles of Church history, we then would not be so bound to do the same again.
Let's us as tutors and preachers stitch together the fragments of the Bible and God's plan into a seamless tapestry that our people can draw on for the remainder of life, to help them to figure out God, His Eternal Plan, the role of the Church and ways to better translate the Bible to model our lives by.
It's not hard to do, and it is not boring if we are ready to put in a bit of effort prayer and fervor, and just maybe you can make use of a Bible Timeline too.
For added information concerning a Bible TimeLine check out our Bible TimeLine Chart website and read up on the biblical study tool.
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