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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10,000 Days of Thunder
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1621: A New Look at Thanksgiving
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1776
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1812: The War and the World
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2000 Years of Space Travel
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Abe Lincoln Gets His Chance
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Abe Lincoln Grows Up
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Air Forces of the World
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Air War Against Hitler's Germany
by Stephen W. Sears
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Album of Spaceflight
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Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr
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Alexander of Macedon
International Collectors Library
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Alexander The Great
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Alexander the Great
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Alexander the Great
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Alexander the Great
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Alexander the Great and the Greeks
by Nathaniel Harris
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Alexander the Great, Killer of Men
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All Aboard for Freedom
by Marie McSwigan, illustrated by E. Harper Johnson, with an introduction by Jan Papanek
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All About Aviation
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All About Satellites and Space Ships
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All About Satellites and Space Ships
All About Books #28
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All Quiet on the Western Front
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Pivotal Moments in American History
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All Thirteen
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All-of-a-Kind Family
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Amazing Mr. Doolittle
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Amber and Clay
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America 1933
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America Begins
by Alice Dalgliesh, illustrated by Lois Maloy
Revised Edition from Charles Scribner's Sons
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America During Four Wars
by Earl Schenck Miers & Felix Sutton
from Grosset & Dunlap
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America Grows Up
A History for Peter #2
by Gerald W. Johnson, illustrated by Leonard Everett Fisher
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America in the 1900s and 1910s
Decades of American History
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America in the 1930s
Decades of American History
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America in the 1970s
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America in the Air War
by Edward Jablonski
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America in the Time of George Washington
by Sally Senzell Isaacs
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America is Born
A History for Peter #1
by Gerald W. Johnson (iilustrations by Leonard Everett Fisher)
from William Morrow & Company
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$45.00 (1 in stock)
America Moves Forward
A History for Peter #3
by Gerald W. Johnson
from William Morrow & Company
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America the Beautiful/ A Man of Destiny
by the editors of Country Beautiful Magazine
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America's Ethan Allen
by Stewart H. Holbrook; illustrated by Lynd Ward
9th printing from Houghton Mifflin
Picture Book Biography for 4th-6th grade
1950 Caldecott Honor Book
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America's First World War
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America's Heroes
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America's Robert E. Lee
by Henry Steele Commager, illustrated by Lynd Ward
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American Caesar
by William Manchester
from Little, Brown & Company
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American Children Through Their Books
by Sister Monica Kiefer
1970 printing from University of Pennsylvania Press
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$9.00 (1 in stock)
American Fairy Tales
1st edition from Hyperion Books for Children
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American Heritage History of the American Revolution
by Bruce Lancaster
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American Heritage History of the Indian Wars
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