A Biblical Timeline Banner Offers A Creative Approach To Aid And Help Biblical Events And Characters And Principles
In our weekly Bible study years ago, one person who had been a Christian and laboured in the local Church for many years, said,"Yes, but Abraham had the Law and so he understood about......" (they weren't talking about the pre-Moses law) I wonder just how many Christians would actually notice the inaccuracy in this assertion. Moses lived five hundred years after Abraham and so it is not possible. I have since then put together a Bible timeline and shown more visually the dating of individuals and events.
Alas, a numerous preachers and Bible teachers in our churches go on and preach shallow, light weight, flimsy, superficial messages and their members scarcely grow in Bible knowledge. Preachers love to give us'moral essays' and'warming affirmations' because supposedly, if we really love our people this is what we will do. Too bad it seems, if God's people are falling through the cracks'for an absence of knowledge' as long as we're nice and loving to all. In reality, the more like this world, the less relevant we're to this world.
Years ago, I was speaking on the life, burial, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and a retired pastor and powerful preacher of the Bible, who had been a minister for 40 years, marched up and reproved me smartly over some fascinating points I made and he mentioned 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 said"No". I continued on to spell out that in the case of that particular verse, it wasn't referring to exploring the Bible but to the false teaching and school of thought of the Gnostics, but he would not accept it. So, how can a 40 year preacher & laborer in the Gospel, not understand and know about something that probably half the books of the New Testament discuss?
How can he study and preach the Bible fully without knowing about something 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 understand their Bible properly, if they are not informed?
Why do we get stuck in a rut of our pet themes and feel good discourses?
We preach on a verse from Phillipians and a story about Jacob and a theme from the book of Ezra and then the example of Jacob or the miracles through Paul - pieces from here and all over, but we do not put it all together in a visible understandable, easy to remember, perspective with a decent Bible TimeLine with Church History as well. Constantly we're bombarded with new books, modernist ideas, a number of them hazardously leaning toward Liberal thinking, when if we were to be coached the basics of Church history, we then would not be so doomed to do the same again.
Let's us as tutors and preachers stitch together the aspects of God's Word and God's plan into a complete picture that our people are able to draw on for the rest of life, to help them to understand God, His Eternal Plan, the role of the Church and ways to better translate the Bible to model our lives by.
It is not difficult to do, and it is not boring if we're ready to put in a bit of effort prayer and fervor, and just perhaps you can use a Bible Timeline as well.
For added info concerning a Bible TimeLine go to our Bible TimeLine Chart web site and see the Bible study resource.
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