It's
About Time--Biblical Chronology Made Easy!
Lesson 3: The Times of YOUR
Life
For every human, life is an unending series of events, and full of an
unending parade of people. In order to make sense of our lives, we divide our
memory of our past into a number of segments, each usually defined by the most
memorable events. For a ten year old, this may mean categorizing his short life
as periods before and after he started school, or further into periods before
and after a significant family move to another city. A twenty year old may add
those periods before and after she got her driver's license, before and after
high school graduation, before and after a first real job. A forty year old will
likely add such memorable events as a wedding, the birth of a first child, the
purchase of a first home, or a significant career change. We also remember
significant people in our lives in connection with these events: a high school
buddy, a neighbor next to a specific home we lived in for a time, a boss from a
certain job.
Without such segmenting of our lives, our memories would likely just blend
everything together into one great blur of activities and faces! Most people
also use a similar method of remembering certain facts of history inside and
outside their own lifetime. Even for just the limited amount of information in a
high school American History book, it is nearly impossible to commit to memory
every date mentioned. So we divide our knowledge of history into "eras." Most
people likely don't remember the dates for every president, for instance. But
most can remember the general time frame for Washington, Lincoln, Woodrow
Wilson, and Dwight Eisenhower. Since one of the most memorable dates in American
history is July 4, 1776--the signing of the Declaration of Independence--it is
easy to connect Washington with that general time period. Lincoln is connected
to the Civil War in the 1860's, Wilson to World War 1--about 1915--and
Eisenhower was the first president most "Baby Boomers" remember, during the
"Happy Days" of the 1950's.
When we think of other people and events in American History, we can "group"
them before, after, or around those four men and their lifetimes. Ben Franklin?
Around the time of Washington. Teddy Roosevelt? Before WWI. The Korean War?
Around Eisenhower's presidency.
But for some reason, when people start studying the Bible, and come upon
numerous people and events, they seldom think to try to put all of these in a
pattern. Characters and their adventures come and go--Noah, Daniel, Ezekiel,
Paul--throughout the Old and New Testaments, and to the average church-goer,
they really are just a blur of faces and events. It seems to many Bible students
that there are just "too many" of them to be able to "memorize"... so they just
leave their stories as isolated, unconnected events.
But there are many factors in understanding what we read in the Bible that
make little sense if we do not know when events happened in relation to other
Bible events and circumstances. As mentioned in an earlier lesson, it isn't so
vital that we know exact dates of Bible events--in fact, Bible scholars are
not sure of many such dates. But it is valuable for the serious Bible student to
know the relative timing of events and people in the scriptures. Did Ezekiel
live before or after Abraham? Did David live before or after the Exodus? If you
do not know these simple relational facts, you may become easily bewildered by
many things you read in the scriptures.
Starting with this lesson we will be suggesting a way to generally divide
much of the history of the Bible up into simple segments around the lifetimes of
five important Biblical figures: Abraham, Moses, David, Daniel, and Jesus. Once
you commit to memory the general time frame of the lives of each of these men,
you can begin to view other time information you read in the Bible in relation
to the lives of these men.
It is not necessary to find out
or remember the exact birth date or death
date of each of these men. In fact, that specific information for most of them
is shrouded in the mists of ancient history. But it is possible to pinpoint a
more general focal date in each of their lives that will be very helpful for our
purposes. For each of them lived along a timeline which can be conveniently
divided up into five hundred year segments. We do not intend to suggest that the
dates below are an exact mid-point in each of the men's lives. We merely suggest
that by focusing on these dates which did occur in their lifetime, you can more
easily memorize the sequence of events in the scripture.
Here are the general dates connected with these five:
Abraham: 2000 B.C.
Moses: 1500 B.C.
David: 1000 B.C.
Daniel: 500 B.C.
Jesus: 1 A.D. *
*Note that in our common calendar system, there is no such year as "0" either
BC or AD. The year 1 BC is immediately followed by 1 AD.
If you will make it a project to memorize just these five dates and the men
connected with them, you will find that the effort was well worth it! Each one
of us has a memorization technique that may work for us, so we do not suggest
there is any one best way to do the memorizing part. But here is one possible
method: Rather than memorize the facts given here in "pairs"... that is,
"Abraham + 2000 B.C."... you may find it helpful to memorize the names as a unit
first--"Abraham, Moses, David, Daniel, Jesus". This kind of list is usually easy
to memorize, as it almost sounds like a little poem when stated out loud
rhythmically! You can divide it up into two sections, perhaps ... "Abraham,
Moses.... David, Daniel, Jesus.
Then clarify in your mind that the first date in the series is 2000, followed
by intervals of 500 years. You can then write down the names in order in a
column, just as given above, and "tack onto" them the appropriate dates.
As soon as you have these five names and their associated dates memorized, it
is also very helpful to visually lay them out on a "time line" such as the one
below. Then as you find other names, events and dates in the scriptures, you can
place them on that line in their relative positions.
It may seem silly to actually make your own time-line on a piece of paper
since you can just look at the one below. But it is a valid educational
principle that the more senses you use when memorizing facts, the more
solid your memory will be. By actually picking up a pen and paper and creating
your own time line, you will impress upon your subconscious the facts you are
writing down. And by writing down the list of the five names--perhaps several
days in a row until you have them solidly in mind--you will reinforce your
memory.
In the next lesson we will consider this simple time-line more carefully and
explore ways to use it in your personal Bible Study.
SIMPLIFIED BIBLE TIME LINE
Go to Lesson
4
Lesson 1
Lesson 2
Lesson 3
Lesson 4
Lesson 5
Lesson 6
Lesson 7
Lesson 8
Go to the Introduction to It's About Time
