A Biblical Timeline Chart Offers A Graphical Approach To Help Teach Biblical Events And Realities
In our Bible study years ago, a woman who had been a Christian and been involved in the local Church for many years, said,"Yes, but Abraham had the Law and so he understood about......" (they weren't talking about the pre-Moses law) I wonder just how many Christians would actually pick up the error in this statement. Moses existed five hundred years after Abraham and so it is not possible. I have since compiled a Bible timeline and explained visually the dating of people and occasions.
Alas, a numerous Pastors and Bible teachers in our churches go on and preach light weight, superficial, flimsy, shallow messages and their congregation scarcely grow in Bible knowledge. Preachers love to preach'moral essays' and'warming affirmations' because supposedly, if we really love people this is what we'll do. Regrettable it seems, if God's men and women are falling through the cracks'for a lack of knowledge' as long as we're positive and loving to all. Truly, the more like the world, the less relevant we're to the world.
Some time ago, I was preaching on the burial, death, life and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and a retired minister and strong preacher of the Bible, who had been a pastor for forty years, came to me and reproved me smartly over some fascinating points I made and he remarked 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 had been preaching anything of a heretical nature in any way, to which he said"No". I continued to explain that in the case of that particular Scripture, it wasn't speaking to exploring the Bible but to the false teachings and philosophy of the Gnostics, but he would not have it. So, how can a forty year minister & laborer in the Gospel, not understand and know about a thing that possibly half the books of the New Testament relate to?
How could he understand and preach the Bible clearly without knowing about a thing that was so influential in the New Testament church? And then how can the congregation hope to understand these things and be able to understand their Bible well, if they're not told?
Why do we get stuck in a rut of our favorite themes and sugar coated messages?
We instruct on a verse from Lamentations and a narrative about Abraham and a theme from the book of Hosea and then the obedience of Samuel or the humility of Moses - bits from here and everywhere, but we do not put it all together in an apparent understandable, easy to remember, perspective with a decent Bible TimeLine including Church History as well. Constantly we're bombarded with new books, modernist ideas, some of them dangerously edging toward Liberal thinking, but if we could be taught the basics of Church history, we then would not be so bound to do the same again.
Let's us as teachers and preachers sew together the fragments of the Bible and God's plan into a seamless tapestry that our people are able to draw on for the remainder of their lives, helping them to understand God, His Eternal Plan, the function of the Church and ways to better interpret the Bible to model our lives by.
It is not difficult to do, and it is not boring if we're ready to put in a bit of effort prayer and fervor, and just maybe you can utilize a Bible Timeline also.
For added information concerning a Bible TimeLine go over to our Bible TimeLine Chart website and see the biblical study resource.
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