A Biblical Timeline Presents A Graphical Mode To Help Teach Biblical Characters And Events And Truths
In a Bible study years ago, somebody, who had been a Christian and worked in the Church for years, said,"Yes, but Abraham had the Law and so he understood about......" (they weren't talking about the pre-Moses law) I wonder how many Christians will actually notice the inaccuracy in this statement. Moses lived five hundred years after Abraham and so it is not possible. I have since made up a Biblical timeline banner and explained more visually the time period of individuals and occasions.
Alas, a large number of Pastors and teachers in our churches continue to preach light weight, flimsy, superficial, shallow sermons and their Church members hardly grow in Bible knowledge and understanding. Preachers love to give us'moral essays' and'warming affirmations' because supposedly, if we really love our people this is what we'll do. Too bad it seems, if God's people are falling through the cracks'for an absence of knowledge' so long as we're positive and loving to all. Truly, the more relevant we become to the world, the less relevant we're to the world.
Some time ago, I was preaching on the death, life, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and a retired pastor and powerful preacher of the Gospel, who had been a minister for forty years, marched up and reproved me smartly over some fascinating points I made and he said 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 teaching anything of a heretical nature at all, to which he said"No". I continued on to spell out that in the case of that particular verse, it was not referring to exploring Scripture but to the false teaching and school of thought of the Gnostics, but he would not accept it. Let me ask, 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 refer to?
How can he understand and teach the Bible clearly without being aware of a thing that was so influential in the New Testament church? And then how can the congregation hope to comprehend these things and be in a position to interpret their Bible properly, if they're not told?
Why is it that we get stuck in a rut of our favorite subjects and feel good messages?
We teach on a text from Obadiah and a passage about Paul and a theme from the book of Peter and then the example of Moses or the miracles of Jesus - pieces from here and everywhere, but we do not put it all at once 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, a number of them dangerously leaning toward Progressive doctrine, but if we were to be taught the basics of Church history, we then would not be so doomed to do the same again.
Let's us as teachers and preachers stitch together the aspects of the Bible and His plan into a logical whole that our people are able to draw on for the rest of their lives, helping them to comprehend God, His Eternal Plan, the function of the Church and how to better interpret the Bible to order our lives by.
It is not hard to do, and it is not boring if we're ready to put in a bit of study and prayer and fervor, and just possibly you can utilize a Bible Timeline as well.
For more info about a Bible TimeLine go to our Bible TimeLine Chart site and view the scriptural study resource.
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