Several years ago, when I heard people talk about church history or the bibles history, I’ll think to myself “none of this knowledge impacts or affects my faith in God, I don’t want anything to do with it”.

My intention was pure, I was wary of ending up like people who in search of more knowledge in history, started to doubt what they initially believed and from that, totally gave up the faith.

As an academic, I know more than anyone that questions only birth more and more questions. So I largely stayed away because I was convinced it wouldn’t increase my faith, or fuel my zeal for God.

But over the years, through study of the same word and the history within, I have come to accept that historians make good, or maybe even the best students of Gods word.

It’s so amazing how the bible is a compendium of histories across various generations.

And it’s more a delicate matter because the histories still tell us why some things of today are the way they are. Especially pertaining to nations. I’m often mind-blown.

I’ve come to understand fully why people get angry when history is rewritten. So much is lost when history isn’t told in truth.

I’ve been reading of the kings of old and I’ve seen how prophecies of past generations are still in effect over nations today.

I read about king Jehoiakim who came into power and immediately requested the book of old to be opened and read, and as that was done, he traced where the people had got it wrong and began to call for repentance and restitution. Only history could’ve revealed that.

I also see how kings of old always had historians in their cabinet. It was important that as kings, they didn’t rule only in light of what was present, but with consideration of what was past.

Even a pagan Assyrian king recognised the importance of history. After the exile of the Israelites from Samaria, the new settlers in Samaria realised that plagues followed them because the people who moved into the city didn’t know how to worship God and did it on their terms. So the pagan king asked that an Israelite prophet return back to Samaria to teach the new settlers how to worship God. It would seem that there is a way to worship God, and there has always been… it’s all stored up in history. We must read to know it.

I don’t think it changes much today. So much of history explains where we are in the world, as nations, and as individual people. Not that the past determines the end of the believer, but the past could be instrumental in understanding the present to better affect the future.

It’s amazing how stuck up we can be in our generation, thinking we’re the first at this place in time. But you read the bible and you see truly that there is absolutely nothing new under the sun and if only we will make ourselves students of history, we’ll get a lot of answers to our hearts most pressing questions.

The truth is that bible study isn’t only beneficial to the spirit man, it is for the equipping of the totality of man; spirit, soul, body and mind, because as we see history, we’re better informed on where and how to stand and relate with God. History explains so much and stops us from complaining when things have been prophesied from long ago.

As we face this history and get to know of the numerous things that happened long before we came into existence, we get humble and careful to speak of just the now, without understanding the past.

And this is why we must study to show ourselves approved, faithful workers that need not be ashamed, because faithful workers have full pictures, they don’t work with just the information of today, but a compilation of information that existed even before they came to assume that position.

God is calling more Christian’s back to the history of all things. We can attempt connecting the dots from the end and also from the start, but it’ll never work from the middle. And that’s what we try to do in our day today… making sense of all of it from the middle.

This will probably be a 3-part series. This is the first, the second will answer whether the blood of Jesus erases and rewrites histories. And the last part will answer ‘what happens when you find yourself on the ‘wrong’ side of history?’

For today, here and now, I want to encourage more believers to get back to intentional bible study. Much of our now is actually left at the stake of understanding what’s already happened.

Don’t be like me of the past who was scared of new knowledge challenging her current knowledge. God is able to preserve us and keep us from falling, so He helps us read and interpret history of and from the bible in light of His own interpretation, not ours.

And that’s so important! That the new knowledge we come into from searching out scripture and history is read and understood in light of the Spirits interpretation, not of our feelings, emotions or personal logic.