A Biblical Timeline Offers A Creative Mode To Aid And Help Biblical Characters And Events And Facts
In our weekly Bible study some years ago, one person who had been a Christian and worked in the local Church for many years, made this statement,"Yes, but Abraham had the Law and so he understood about......" (they were not talking about the pre-mosaic law) I wonder just how many Christians will actually pick up the inaccuracy in this claim. Moses came about about five hundred years after Abraham and so it is impossible. I have since then made up a Bible history timeline and shown more visually the time period of men and women and events.
Unfortunately, a many preachers and Bible teachers in our churches go on and preach flimsy, superficial, shallow, light weight messages and their congregation hardly grow in biblical knowledge and understanding. Preachers love to preach'moral essays' and'warming affirmations' because supposedly, if we truly 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 are positive and loving to all. In reality, the more relevant we become to this world, the less relevant we are to this world.
Some years ago, I was speaking on the life, death, resurrection and burial of Jesus, and a retired minister and powerful preacher of the Bible, 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 quietly asked him if I had been saying anything of a heretical nature in any way, to which he answered"No". I continued to spell out that in the case of that particular Scripture, it wasn't referring to exploring Scripture but to the false teaching and philosophy of Gnosticism, but he wouldn't accept it. Let me ask, how can a forty year minister & laborer in the Gospel, not understand and know about something that possibly half the books of the New Testament relate to?
How can he study and teach the Bible clearly without being familiar with something 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 understand their Bible effectively, if they are not informed?
Why do we get stuck in a rut of our pet themes and feel good discourses?
We teach on a text from Esther and a narrative about Peter and a topical from the book of Haggai and then the faith of Solomon or the humility of Moses - parts from here and everywhere, but we do not put it all together in a visible understandable, easy to remember, perspective with a capable Bible TimeLine and Church History as well. Constantly we are bombarded with new books, modernist ideas, some of them perilously leaning toward Liberal doctrine, but if we could be coached the basics of Church history, we then wouldn't be so bound to repeat it.
Let's us as tutors and preachers stitch together the fragments of God's Word and God's plan into a complete picture that our people are able to draw on for the remainder of life, helping them to comprehend God, His Eternal Plan, the function of the Church and ways to better translate the Bible to model our lives by.
It is not difficult to do, and it's not boring if we are prepared to put in a bit of study and prayer and fervor, and just maybe you can make use of a Bible Timeline also.
For added information about a Bible TimeLine go to our Bible TimeLine Chart web site and see the scriptural study resource.
Related to bible timeline graphic: