A Biblical History Timeline Offers A Creative Way To Help Teach Biblical Events And Characters And Facts
In our Bible study some years ago, a friend who had been a Christian and laboured in the local Church for years, made this statement,"Yes, but Abraham had the Law and so he understood about......" (they were not referring to the pre-mosaic law) I wonder just how many Christians will actually notice the error in this statement. Moses came about 500 years after Abraham and so it is impossible. I have since then made up a Bible timeline chart and shown visually the dating of men and women and occasions.
Regrettably, a many preachers and Bible teachers in our churches continue to preach superficial, shallow, light weight, flimsy messages and their members hardly grow in biblical knowledge. Preachers love to preach'moral essays' and'warming affirmations' because supposedly, if we love our people this is what we will 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 nice and loving to all. In truth, the more like the world, the less relevant we're to the world.
Years ago, I was speaking on the life, death, resurrection and burial of Christ Jesus, and a retired pastor and powerful preacher of Scripture, who had been a minister for forty years, marched 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 humbly asked him if I was teaching anything of a heretical nature in any way, to which he replied"No". I continued on to spell out that in the case of that particular verse, it wasn't speaking to exploring Scripture but to the false teachings and school of thought of Gnosticism, but he would not have it. So, how can a forty 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 can he study and preach 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 understand these things and be in a position to interpret their Bible properly, if they are not informed?
Why do we dwell on our pet topics and sugar coated messages?
We preach on a verse from Judges and a story about David and a theme from the book of Esther and then the example of Joshua or the healings through Peter - bits from here and there, but we do not put it all together in a plain understandable, easy to remember, perspective with a capable Bible TimeLine and Church History as well. Constantly we're bombarded with new books, modernist ideas, a few of them hazardously edging toward Liberal thinking, but if we were to be instructed the basic principles of Church history, we then would not be so doomed to do the same again.
Let's us as tutors and preachers sew together the fragments of the Bible and His plan into a complete picture that our people are able to draw on for the rest of their lives, helping them to understand God, His Eternal Plan, the role of the Church and ways to better translate the Bible to order our lives by.
It is not difficult 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 make use of a Bible Timeline as well.
For more info about a Bible TimeLine go over to our Bible TimeLine Chart web site and read up on the Bible study resource.
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