A Bible Timeline Chart Gives A Graphic Approach To Help Teach Bible Events And Principles
In our weekly Bible group some years ago, a woman who had been a Christian and worked in the local Church for years, said,"Yes, but Abraham had the Law and so he understood about......" (they were not referring to the pre-Moses law) I wonder how many Christians would actually pick up the error in this statement. Moses existed 500 years after Abraham and so it is impossible. I have since compiled a Biblical timeline banner and shown graphically the chronology of individuals and events.
Alas, a numerous Pastors and Bible teachers in our churches continue to preach shallow, flimsy, light weight, superficial messages and their Church members scarcely grow in Bible knowledge and understanding. Preachers love to give us'moral essays' and'warming affirmations' because supposedly, if we truly love people this is what we'll do. Unfortunate it seems, if God's people are falling through the cracks'for a lack of knowledge' as long as we're positive and loving to all. In reality, the more like this world, the less relevant we're to this world.
Years ago, I was teaching on the death, burial, life and resurrection of Christ 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 fascinating points I made and he referred to 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 to describe that in the case of that particular verse, it was not speaking to examining the Bible but to the false teaching and philosophy of the Gnostics, but he would not have it. So, how can a 40 year preacher & worker 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 in fullness 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 are not informed?
Why do we dwell on our pet subjects and feel good preaching?
We teach on a text from Joel and a narrative about Nehemiah and a theme from the book of 2 Kings and then the obedience of Solomon or the miracles of Jesus - bits from here and all over, but we do not put it all together in an obvious 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 hazardously leaning toward Liberal theology, when if we could be taught the basic principles of Church history, we then would not be so doomed to do the same again.
Let's us as teachers and preachers sew together the fragments of God's Word and His plan into a logical whole that our people are able to draw on for the remainder of their lives, to help them to figure out God, His Eternal Plan, the function of the Church and ways to better translate the Bible to model our lives by.
It's not hard to do, and it's not boring if we're ready to put in a bit of study with prayer and fervor, and just possibly you can use a Bible Timeline as well.
For added information about a Bible TimeLine go to our Bible TimeLine Chart website and read up on the biblical study resource.
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