A Bible History Timeline Presents A Creative Representation To Aid And Help Bible Events And Facts
In our Sunday Bible study some years ago, a woman 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-mosaic law) I wonder how many Christians would actually notice the error in this assertion. Moses lived 500 years after Abraham and so it is impossible. I have since then compiled a Biblical timeline and explained graphically the time period of men and women and events.
Alas, a large number of Pastors and teachers in our churches continue to preach light weight, superficial, flimsy, shallow messages and their members hardly grow in Bible knowledge. Preachers love to preach'moral essays' and'warming affirmations' because supposedly, if we really love our people this is what we'll 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 nice and loving to all. In truth, the more like our world, the less relevant we are to our world.
Some years ago, I was preaching on the resurrection, death, life and burial 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 interesting 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 humbly asked him if I was preaching anything of a heretical nature at all, to which he replied"No". I continued to describe that in the case of that particular verse, it wasn't speaking to exploring the Bible but to the false teachings and school of thought of Gnosticism, but he wouldn't accept it. Let me ask, how can a 40 year minister & laborer in the Gospel, not understand and know about something that possibly 1/2 the books of the New Testament discuss?
How can he study and preach the Bible clearly without knowing about something that was so influential in the New Testament church? And then how can the congregation hope to figure out these things and be in a position to interpret their Bible properly, if they're not informed?
Why is it that we dwell on our pet themes and feel good preaching?
We preach on a text from Haggai and a passage about Hezekiah and a topic from the book of Leviticus and then the faith of Paul or the faith of Noah - bits from here and there, but we do not put it all together in an evident understandable, easy to remember, perspective with a decent Bible TimeLine with Church History as well. Constantly we are bombarded with new books, modernist ideas, a number of them perilously leaning toward Liberal doctrine, when if we could be taught the basics 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 God's Word and His plan into a seamless tapestry that our people are able to draw on for the remainder of life, to help them to figure out God, His Eternal Plan, the function of the Church and ways to better translate the Bible to live by.
It is not difficult to do, and it's not boring if we are prepared to put in a bit of effort prayer and fervor, and just possibly you can utilize a Bible Timeline also.
For more info concerning a Bible TimeLine go over to our Bible TimeLine Chart website and check out the biblical study resource.
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