A Bible History Timeline Gives A Graphic Mode To Aid And Help Bible Events And Truths
In a Bible group years ago, a lady who had been a Christian and worked in the Church for over 15 years, said,"Yes, but Abraham had the Law and so he understood about......" (they were not referring to the pre-Moses law) I wonder how many Christians will actually pick up the error in this claim. Moses came about some 500 years after Abraham and so it is impossible. I have since compiled a Biblical history timeline and explained more visually the dating of men and women and events.
Unfortunately, a large number of Pastors and teachers in our churches continue to preach flimsy, shallow, superficial, light weight sermons and their congregation scarcely grow in biblical knowledge and understanding. Preachers love to give us'moral essays' and'warming affirmations' because supposedly, if we love people this is what we will do. Regrettable it seems, if God's people are falling through the cracks'for a lack of knowledge' so long as we're positive and loving to all. Truly, the more like our world, the less relevant we're to our world.
Some time ago, I was speaking on the death, life, burial and resurrection of Christ Jesus, and a retired pastor and strong preacher of Scripture, who had been in the ministry for forty years, marched up and reproved me smartly over some interesting points I made and he stated 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 had been preaching anything of a heretical nature at all, to which he answered"No". I continued on to spell out that in the case of that particular verse, it was not referring to examining Scripture but to the false teaching and school of thought of Gnosticism, but he wouldn't have it. Let me ask, how can a forty year minister & laborer in the Gospel, not know and understand about a thing that probably 1/2 the books of the New Testament refer to?
How could he understand and preach the Bible fully without being aware of 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 effectively, if they're not informed?
Why is it that we get stuck in a rut of our favorite topics and sugar coated preaching?
We preach on a text from Ruth and a story about Jesus and a topical from the book of Joshua and then the obedience of Jacob or the strength of Samson - parts from here and everyplace, but we do not put it all together in a plain understandable, easy to remember, perspective with a good Bible TimeLine and Church History as well. Constantly we're bombarded with new books, modernist ideas, a number of them perilously leaning toward Liberal doctrine, when if we were to be instructed the basics of Church history, we then wouldn't be so bound to do the same again.
Let's us as teachers and preachers stitch together the aspects of the Bible and God's plan into a complete picture that our people can draw on for the rest of their lives, to help them to understand God, His Eternal Plan, the role of the Church and how to better interpret the Bible to live by.
It's not difficult to do, and it's not boring if we're prepared to put in a bit of study with prayer and fervor, and just perhaps you can make use of a Bible Timeline also.
For more information about a Bible TimeLine go over to our Bible TimeLine Chart website and view the biblical study resource.
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