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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1066: The Year of the Conquest
by David Howarth
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1776
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Abraham Lincoln: The Man & His Faith
by G. Frederick Owen
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Admiral Hornblower in the West Indies
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Adventures of Theodore Roosevelt
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Aeneid
by Virgil, translated by Robert Fitzgerald
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Aeneid
by Virgil, translated by Robert Fagles
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Aeschylus I: The Oresteia (old)
The Complete Greek Tragedies
by Aeschylus (translation by Richmond Lattimore)
from University of Chicago
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The Complete Greek Tragedies
by Aeschylus (translation by Richmond Lattimore)
3rd edition from University of Chicago
Ancient Greek Tragedy for 10th-Adult
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Penguin Classics
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Aeschylus' Oresteia
by Aeschylus, translated by Peter Meineck
from Hackett Publishing Company
Ancient Greek Tragedy for 10th-Adult
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Penguin Classics
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by Agatha Christie
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Age of Fighting Sail
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by Richard S. Dunn
2nd edition from W. W. Norton and Co.
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America: From Gridlock to Deadlock
A Basic History of the United States Volume 6
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And There Was Light
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Oxford World's Classics
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Autobiography of George Muller
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Band of Brothers
by Stephen Ambrose, Foreword by Tom Hanks
25th anniversary from Simon and Schuster
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$18.99
Basic Works of Aristotle
by Aristotle
from Modern Library
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Battle Cry of Freedom
Oxford History of the United States
by James M. McPherson
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Beckoning Road
by Caroline Dale Snedeker
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Beginner Book: Warfare by Duct Tape
by Steven Erickson
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Beginning of the Republic
A Basic History of the United States Volume 2
by Clarence B. Carson
from American Textbook Committee
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Beowulf
by Anonymous (translation by Frederick Rebsamen)
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Medieval Poetic Epic for 8th-Adult
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Beowulf
by Anonymous (translation by Seamus Heaney)
from W. W. Norton and Co.
Medieval Poetic Epic for 8th-Adult
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Beowulf
by Anonymous, translated by Seamus Heaney
from W. W. Norton and Co.
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Beowulf
by Anonymous, translated by Douglas Wilson
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Betrayal
by Douglas Bond
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Betrothed: I Promessi Sposi
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Betty Before X
by Ilyasah Shabazz with Renee Watson
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Beyond the Sacred Page
Book of Books #2
by Jack Cavanaugh
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Birth of the Modern
by Paul Johnson
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Bitter Woods: The Battle of the Bulge
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Black Odyssey
by Mary Cable
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Black Potatoes
by Susan Campbell Bartoletti
from HMH Books for Young Readers
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2002 NCTE Orbis Pictus Award
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Bondage of the Will
by Martin Luther
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by Martin Luther, translated by J. I. Packer and O. R. Robinson
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Bondage of the Will
by Martin Luther, translated by Henry Cole
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Bonhoeffer
by Eric Metaxas, foreword by Timothy J. Keller
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Book Thief
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Born to Run
by Christopher McDougall
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Boys in the Boat
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Boys of '76
by Charles Coffin
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Breath of Peace
Hawk and the Dove Series #7
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Brendan Voyage
Modern Library Exploration
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Bridge to the Sun
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Bridge Too Far
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Brightest Heaven of Invention
by Peter Leithart
from Canon Press
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$21.00
Brit. Lit. Volume 9
by P. G. Wodehouse
from Logos School
for 10th-12th grade
in Logos Brit. Lit. (Location: LITCUR-LOG)
$12.00
British Museum Visitor's Guide
by John Reeve
from British Museum Press
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$3.00 (1 in stock)
Bruchko
by Bruce Olson
from Charisma House
Biography for 10th-Adult
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Bruchko
by Bruce Olson
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Brunelleschi's Dome
from Penguin Books
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Bulletproof George Washington
by David Barton
2nd edition from WallBuilder Press
Biography for 9th-adult
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Bulletproof George Washington
by David Barton
3rd edition from WallBuilder Press
Biography for 9th-adult
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Burial at Thebes
by Sophocles, translated by Seamus Heaney
from Farrar, Straus and Giroux
for 10th-Adult
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$6.00 (1 in stock)
By Far Euphrates
by Deborah Alcock
from Inheritance Publications
Historical Fiction for 9th-12th grade
in Inheritance Fiction (Location: FIC-WH03)
$14.95
Caine Mutiny
by Herman Wouk
from Back Bay Books
for 10th-Adult
1952 Pulitzer Prize Winner
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$18.99
Call to Conscience
by Martin Luther King, Jr., Edited by Clayborne Carson and Kris Shepard
from Grand Central Publishing
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in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$16.00
Canterbury Tales
Penguin Classics
by Geoffrey Chaucer (edited by Nevill Coghill)
from Penguin Classics
Medieval Poetry for 8th-12th grade
in Medieval Literature (Location: LIT2-MED)
$11.00
Canterbury Tales
by Geoffrey Chaucer, translated by David Wright
from Oxford University
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$8.95
Captain Dreyfus
by Nicholas Halasz
from Grove Press, Inc.
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$1.00 (1 in stock)
Castle with Many Rooms
by Lorene Lambert
from Simply Charlotte Mason
for 1st-12th grade
in History Spines & Surveys (Location: HISRF-SPINE)
Catch-22
by Joseph Heller
50th Anniversary Edition from Simon and Schuster
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$18.99
Chance to Die
by Elisabeth Elliot
from Revell Publishing
Biography for 8th-12th grade
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$22.99
Charis in the World of Wonders
by Marly Youmans
from Ignatius Press
for 10th-Adult
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$17.95
Chronological and Background Charts of the New Testament
by H. Wayne House
from Zondervan
Biblical Reference for 9th-Adult
in Bible Geography and Surveys (Location: XBI-GEO)
$6.00 (1 in stock)
Churchill
by Paul Johnson
Reprint from Penguin Putnam
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$17.00
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