Chronological History

Sometimes we speak of world history as though it belongs to people. It doesn't—it belongs to God, and though people play prominently within the historical narrative, it always remains under God's auspices and control. The problem with losing the right perspective isn't that we'll get the facts wrong, it's that we'll fail to understand what they mean, what the purpose of past events is, and what we can look forward to.

Human history began all at once in the same place: the Garden of Eden, where God made Adam and Eve as the crown of all Creation. He told them to fill the earth and take dominion of it, and He also told them not to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. They ate the fruit anyway, and mankind was removed from paradise and introduced to tension, pain, and resistance.

The story of the world is in many ways simply the story of adversity. For the enemies of God, it's adversity in the form of the failure and futility of purely human endeavor; for God's people, it's the story of fighting for the truth against secular philosophies, fighting for holiness despite the pervasiveness of sin, and fighting for the Gospel in the face of persecution and death.

Jesus Christ is our only hope. He is the Prince of Peace, the defeater of Death, and the King of the Universe, the saver of souls and the punisher of wickedness. His kingdom is the restoration and glorious fulfillment of the paradise from which Adam and Eve were removed, and we work, wait, hope and pray for the quick fulfillment of His will in all things.

This is our framework for history. While it's important to study things like the Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution, and the ancient Near East, it's only important when investigated through the lens of God's ultimate sovereignty and plan. The story of mankind is the story of redemption, and only when we analyze battles, kings, treaties, and catastrophes from God's perspective can we truly make sense of them.

Otherwise, it's all fairly irrelevant and useless. Sure, there's Napoleon's dictum that those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it, but a quick survey of the past will show that each successive generation does repeat the sins of their fathers, and that without Christ's real physical life on Earth as a centering point, there's no real cause for optimism or hope of any kind.

Christ's love not only makes the trajectory of history cause for hope; it reveals the truly great moments of the past, events that to the secular eye seem insignificant or even pernicious. We're speaking of the progress of the true Church, of course, and of each soul that God calls and makes His own through the agency of His Holy Spirit. These are the milestones we look for and celebrate.

We carry a lot of world history products. Because it's the story of God's work in the world and our human responses, we believe it's important to know and understand. Not everything we carry is Christian; there are plenty of secular resources here. We encourage you to use whichever ones work best for your situation, but that you do so with a view to understanding the will and work of the One who made history in the first place.

Review by C. Hollis Crossman
C. Hollis Crossman used to be a child. Now he is a husband and father, teaches adult Sunday school in his Presbyterian congregation, and likes weird stuff. He might be a mythical creature, but he's definitely not a centaur. Read more of his reviews here.

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78 Items found Print
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Admiral Hornblower in the West Indies
Hornblower Series #11
by C. S. Forester
from Little, Brown & Company
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Admiral Hornblower in the West Indies
Hornblower Series #11
by C. S. Forester
from Little, Brown & Company
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Beat to Quarters
Hornblower Series #6
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Beau Geste
by Percival Christopher Wren
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Beyond the Sacred Page
Book of Books #2
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Black Rose
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Brethren
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Classic Adventures
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Codfish Musket
by Agnes Hewes, illustrated by Armstrong Sperry
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1937 Newbery Honor Book
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Commodore Hornblower
Hornblower Series #9
by C. S. Forester
from Little, Brown & Company
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Commodore Hornblower
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Daisy Chain
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Dark Venture
by Audrey White Beyer, illustrated by Leo & Diane Dillon
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Darkness and the Dawn
by Thomas B. Costain
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Defender of the Faith
William and Mary Trilogy Volume 2
by Marjorie Bowen
from Inheritance Publications
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Earth is the Lord's
by Taylor Caldwell
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Endurance
by Alfred Lansing
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Farewell to Manzanar
by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston
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Flames of Rome
by Paul L. Maier
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Flying Colours
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For God and the King
William and Mary Trilogy Volume 3
by Marjorie Bowen
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Fortune of War
Aubrey/Maturin #6
by Patrick O'Brian
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Glimpses of Truth
Book of Books #1
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Gods and Generals
by Jeff Shaara
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Grapes of Wrath
by John Steinbeck
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by Constance Irwin
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Hitch
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Hornblower and the Atropos
Hornblower Series #5
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Hornblower and the Hotspur
Hornblower Series #3
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Hornblower During the Crisis
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House Divided
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I Serve
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I Will Maintain
William and Mary Trilogy Volume 1
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Killer Angels
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Kitchen Boy
by Robert Alexander
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Lady of Arlington
by Harnett T. Kane
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Lieutenant Hornblower
Hornblower Series #2
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Life and Times of Horatio Hornblower
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Lord Hornblower
Hornblower Series #10
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Lord Hornblower
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Lysbeth
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Mary, Bloody Mary
A Young Royals Book
by Carolyn Meyer
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Midshipman Bolitho
by Alexander Kent
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Moneyman
by Thomas B. Costain
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Morbid Taste for Bones
Brother Cadfael
by Ellis Peters
from Mysterious Press
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Never Dies the Dream
by Margaret Landon
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Parzival
by Katherine Paterson
First Edition, First Printing from Lodestar Books
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Pearl Maiden
by H. Rider Haggard
from Christian Liberty Press
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Pontius Pilate
by Paul L. Maier
2nd edition from Kregel Publications
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Pontius Pilate
by Paul L. Maier
2nd edition from Kregel Publications
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Prince and the Pauper
by Mark Twain, illustrated by Frank Merrill
from Reader's Digest
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Rabble in Arms
by Kenneth Roberts
from Doubleday & Company
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Ranch under the Rimrock
by Dorothy Lawson McCall
from Binford & Mort Publishing
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Ride With Me
by Thomas B. Costain
1944 Edition from Nelson Doubleday, Inc.
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Rifleman Dodd
by C. S. Forester
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Road from the West
by Rosanne E. Lortz
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Romulus
Makers of History series
by Jacob Abbott
from Yesterday's Classics
History for 8th-12th grade
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Roots
Book Club Edition from Doubleday & Company
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Scarlet
by Stephen R. Lawhead
from Thomas Nelson Publishers
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Sherwood Ring
by Elizabeth Marie Pope
from Sandpiper Books
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Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea
by Gary Kinder
from Vintage Classics
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Ship of the Line
Hornblower Series #7
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from Little, Brown & Company
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Shirley
Penguin Classics
by Charlotte Bronte
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Smiling Rebel
by Harnett T. Kane
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Snow Goose
by Paul Gallico
from Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
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$19.95 $14.00 (2 in stock)
Story of Liberty
by Charles Coffin
from Maranatha Publications
Historical Reference for 10th-Adult
in America's Christian Heritage (Location: HISA-CH)
$19.97 $10.00 (3 in stock)
Story of Yorktown as told by Conrad Shultz
by W. Walter Van Baman
from Privately printed
History in Verse for 10th-Adult
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$16.00 (1 in stock)
Tale of Two Cities
by Charles Dickens
from Parents Magazine Press
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$4.00 (1 in stock)
Tale of Two Cities (adapted)
by Charles Dickens, adapted by Grace A. Benscotter & Merrill Howe and illustrated by Bernice Oehler
1923 printing from Longmans, Green & Co.
Victorian Novel for 9th-Adult
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
$12.00 (1 in stock)
Tales from Shakespeare
by Richard Armour
from Penguin Classics
for 7th-12th grade
in Renaissance & Reformation Literature (Location: LIT3-REN)
$14.00 $8.00 (1 in stock)
Tales of Real Survival
Usborne Reader's Library
by Paul Dowswell
from Usborne
for 6th-12th grade
in Modern History (Location: HISW-MOD)
$5.40 (1 in stock)
The Martian
by Andy Weir
Reprint from Broadway Books
for 11th-Adult
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$17.00 $8.00 (1 in stock)
The Trees
Awakening Land #1
by Conrad Richter
from Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
for 9th-Adult
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$8.00 (1 in stock)
To Kill a Mockingbird
by Harper Lee
from Warner Books
Realistic Fiction for 9th-Adult
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$5.00 (1 in stock)
Trails Plowed Under
by Charles M. Russell
from Doubleday & Company
for 7th-12th grade
in Vintage History & Biographies (Location: VIN-HIS)
$6.50 (1 in stock)
Way of the Gladiator
by Dan Mannix
from ibooks
for 7th-12th grade
in Clearance: History & Geography (Location: ZCLE-HIS)
$4.00 (1 in stock)
Wild West
Book Club from Time-Life Books
for 6th-Adult
in Clearance: History & Geography (Location: ZCLE-HIS)
$6.00 (1 in stock)