The Christian Timeline – A Valuable Resource

Every Christian needs to know that they are a part of a 2,000 year old “family”, or institution, or “calling”.  Depends on how you view your church and Christianity.  No matter your denomination, we do share the same growing pains of a large family.  There are different opinions on many issues- and some of these differences will never be reconciled.  However, it is wise to know WHY these differences occured, and when and how.  Where do you, and your Pastor, fall on some of these issues?

How Did the Church Get to this Place- Here in 2012?

For this reason Abby Matzke and I co-wrote a Christian nonfiction book titled Top Ten Most Influential Christians- since the Apostles.  We used a list, or ranking, to illustrate the basic history of the universal church- by focusing on the most instrumental historical figures.  We orchestrated the order of chapters within the book to be chronological- in order to paint a picture that coincides with the true church timeline.  This helps us better understand why things happened.

To take that to the next level, every Christian should have in their back pocket an accurate and easy-to-read Christian timeline.  One such timeline is compiled by Christian author Neil Harvey, and can be found at the following link-

http://neilpharvey.com/ctl/ctl.htm

Neil’s newest book, “Beyond the Bible”, focuses on antiquity and the historical proofs of the Bible stories.  He also plans to release another book, which will cover the period from the 1st century to approximately 325AD (an increasingly important topic for today’s Christian).

To know where you are heading, you have to know where you have been.

Maybe clues about tomorrow’s Church can be realized from studying some of our collective heritage.  In doing so, maybe we can avoid some of the strife and focus on doing God’s will and works, and to fulfill the Great Commission.