A Biblical Timeline Chart Gives A Graphical Way To Help Teach Biblical Events And Characters And Realities
In our Bible study years ago, one person 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 weren't talking about the pre-Moses law) I wonder how many Christians will really notice the inaccuracy in this statement. Moses lived about five hundred years after Abraham and so it is impossible. I have since then made up a Biblical timeline banner and explained more visually the dating of individuals and events.
Alas, a many preachers and teachers in our churches go on and preach shallow, light weight, flimsy, superficial messages and their Church members hardly grow in Bible knowledge. Preachers love to preach'moral essays' and'warming affirmations' because supposedly, if we love people this is what we'll do. Regrettable it seems, if God's men and women are falling through the cracks'for a lack of knowledge' so long as we're nice 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 preaching on the life, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and a retired pastor and strong preacher of the Gospel, who had been a minister for 40 years, came up and reproved me smartly over some interesting points I made and he said 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 preaching anything of a heretical nature at all, to which he replied"No". I continued on to describe that in the case of that particular verse, it wasn't referring to exploring the Bible but to the false teaching and philosophy of Gnosticism, but he wouldn't accept it. Let me ask, how can a 40 year minister & laborer in the Gospel, not know and understand about something that probably half the books of the New Testament discuss?
How could he study and teach the Bible fully 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 able to understand their Bible well, if they're not told?
Why do we dwell on our pet themes and feel good discourses?
We preach on a verse from Ezekiel and a story about Hezekiah and a topical from the book of Acts and then the faith of Isaac or the 'water into wine' - pieces from here and all over, but we do not put it all at once in an obvious 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 number of them hazardously edging toward Progressive doctrine, 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 teachers and preachers stitch together the fragments of the Bible and God's plan into a seamless tapestry that our people are able to draw on for the rest of life, to help them to comprehend God, His Eternal Plan, the role of the Church and ways to better translate the Bible to order our lives by.
It's not difficult to do, and it is not boring if we're ready to put in a bit of study with prayer and fervor, and just possibly you can utilize a Bible Timeline too.
For added information concerning a Bible TimeLine go over to our Bible TimeLine Chart site and read up on the scriptural study resource.
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