A Biblical History Timeline Gives A Creative Way To Help Teach Biblical Characters And Events And Facts
In our Sunday Bible group years ago, a woman 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 referring to the pre-mosaic law) I wonder just how many Christians will really pick up the error in this statement. Moses came about 500 years after Abraham and so it is an impossibility. I have since then made up a Biblical chronological banner and shown more visually the chronology of men and women and events.
Alas, a large number of preachers and teachers in our churches go on and preach superficial, flimsy, shallow, light weight messages and their Church members barely grow in biblical knowledge. Preachers love to preach'moral essays' and'warming affirmations' because supposedly, if we really love our people this is what we'll do. Too bad it seems, if God's people are falling through the cracks'for an absence of knowledge' as long as we're positive and loving to all. In truth, the more relevant we become to the world, the less relevant we're to the world.
Years ago, I was speaking on the death, resurrection, life and burial of Jesus, and a retired pastor and powerful 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 remarked 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 teaching anything of a heretical nature at all, to which he replied"No". I continued to explain that in the case of that particular verse, it was not speaking to examining the Bible but to the false teaching and school of thought of the Gnostics, but he wouldn't have it. Let me ask, how can a forty year preacher & laborer in the Gospel, not know and understand about a thing that probably 1/2 the books of the New Testament discuss?
How can he study and preach the Bible clearly without being familiar with 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 understand their Bible well, if they are not informed?
Why do we get stuck in a rut of our pet subjects and feel good messages?
We teach on a text from Jeremiah and a story about Adam and a topical from the book of Zechariah and then the obedience of Matthew or the strength of Samson - bits from here and everyplace, but we do not put it all at once in an apparent understandable, simple to remember, perspective with a decent Bible TimeLine with Church History as well. Constantly we're bombarded with new books, modernist ideas, some of them dangerously edging toward Progressive thinking, but if we were to be instructed the basic principles of Church history, we then wouldn't be so bound to do the same again.
Let's us as instructors and preachers sew 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 rest of life, helping them to understand God, His Eternal Plan, the function of the Church and how to better interpret the Bible to live by.
It's 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 maybe you can employ a Bible Timeline as well.
For more info about a Bible TimeLine check out our Bible TimeLine Chart website and consider the Bible study resource.
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