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
from Penguin Putnam
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$16.00 $8.00 (1 in stock)
1861: The Civil War Awakening
by Adam Goodheart
from Vintage Books
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$5.00 (1 in stock)
Age of Religious Wars
by Richard S. Dunn
2nd edition from W. W. Norton and Co.
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$6.00 (1 in stock)
Alexander Hamilton
by Ron Chernow
from Penguin Random House
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$10.00 (2 in stock)
America's Longest War
by George C. Herring
2nd edition from McGraw-Hill
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American Passage
by Vincent J. Cannato
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Americanization of Benjamin Franklin
by Gordon S. Wood
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Bitter Woods: The Battle of the Bulge
by John S. D. Eisenhower
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Buffalo Bill and the Wild West
by Henry Blackman Sell and Victor Weybright
Reprint from International Cody Family Assoc.
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Carolingian Chronicles
by Bernhard Walter Scholz (translator) with Barbara Rogers
2000 Printing from University of Michigan Press
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Churchill: Walking with Destiny
by Andrew Roberts
from Penguin Books
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Civil War: A History
by Harry Hansen, Introduction by Richard S. Wheeler, Foreword by Gary Gallagher
from New American Library
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Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance
by John R. Hale
from HarperCollins
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$9.00 (1 in stock)
Colonial Period: 1607-1750
American History by Era Volume 2
by Brenda Stalcup (editor)
from Greenhaven Press
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Daily Life in Johnson's London
by Richard B. Schwartz
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Defining Moment
by Jonathan Alter
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Devil in Massachusetts
by Marion L. Starkey
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$5.00 (1 in stock)
Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men
by Jeffrey Rogers Hummel
1st edition from Open Court Publishing
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$6.00 (2 in stock)
Emergence of Latin America in the Nineteenth Century
by David Bushnell & Neill Macaulay
from Oxford University
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England's Glorious Revolution 1688-1689
by Steven C. A. Pincus
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FDR
by Jean Edward Smith
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Forever Free
by Eric Foner, illustrations edited with commentary by Joshua Brown
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From Distant Days
by Benjamin R. Foster
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Gettysburg: The Last Invasion
by Allen C. Guelzo
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Girl in the Picture
by Denise Chong
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Great Bridge
by David McCullough
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Heyday
by Ben Wilson
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History of Britain 2
History of Britain Trilogy #2
by Simon Schama
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History of Britain 3
History of Britain Trilogy #3
by Simon Schama
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Honor in the Dust
by Gregg Jones
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In Search of the Dark Ages
by Michael Wood
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Invention of Nature
by Andrea Wulf
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Island at the Center of the World
by Russell Shorto
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$6.00 (1 in stock)
Junior Officer's Reading Club
by Patrick Hennessey
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Labor's Untold Story
by Herbert M. Morais, Richard O. Boyer
3rd edition from United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of Amer
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Legacy of John Calvin
The Calvin 500 Series
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Biography for 9th-Adult
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Life in Medieval Times
by Marjorie Rowling
Reissue from Perigee Books
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Mayflower
by Nathaniel Philbrick
from Penguin Putnam
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Monuments Men
by Robert M. Edsel with Bret Witter
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Mountain Men and Fur Traders of the Far West
by LeRoy R. Hafen & Harvey L. Carter
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Mummy
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Omar Bradley: General at War
by Jim DeFelice
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On the Edge
by David D. Lee, David Horowitz, Peter N. Carroll
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Paris 1919
by Margaret Macmillan
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Pioneer Children on the Journey West
by Emmy E. Werner
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Protestant Reformation: Major Documents
by Lewis W. Spitz
from Concordia Publishing House
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Renaissance
by Paul Johnson
from Modern Library
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Revolution & Regeneration
by Peter Charles Hoffer
from University of Georgia Press
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Revolutionary Era: 1789-1850
by Charles Breunig & Matthew Levinger
3rd edition from W. W. Norton and Co.
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Revolutionary Period: 1750-1783
American History by Era Volume 3
by Bruce Thompson (Book Editor)
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$13.00 (1 in stock)
Rubicon
by Tom Holland
from Abacus Fiction
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$8.00 (1 in stock)
Runaway Slaves
by John Hope Franklin
from Oxford University
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$4.00 (1 in stock)
Saints and Strangers
by George F. Wilson
from Time Inc.
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$2.00 (1 in stock)
Soul of the Lion
by Willard M. Wallace
Reprint from Stan Clark Military Books
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$2.00 (1 in stock)
South in Modern America
by Dewey W. Grantham
from University of Arkansas Press
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$6.00 (1 in stock)
Such Troops as These
by Bevin Alexander
from Dutton Caliber
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$6.00 (1 in stock)
Sugar and Slaves
by Richard S. Dunn, foreword by Gary B. Nash
from University of North Carolina Press
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$6.00 (1 in stock)
Team of Rivals
by Doris Kearns Goodwin
from Simon and Schuster
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They Marched Into Sunlight
by David Maraniss
from Simon and Schuster
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$5.00 (1 in stock)
Truman
by David McCullough
from Simon and Schuster
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$10.00 (1 in stock)
Twentieth Maine
by John J. Pullen
from Morningside House, Inc.
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Undaunted Courage
by Stephen Ambrose
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Union War
by Gary W. Gallagher
from Harvard University Press
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$9.00 (1 in stock)
Victorian Internet
by Tom Standage
from Walker and Company
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$6.00 (1 in stock)
Vietnam and America
by Marvin E. Gettleman
2nd edition from Grove Publishing
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$4.00 (1 in stock)
Vietnam and America
by Marvin Gettleman, Jane Franklin, Marilyn B. Young, H. Bruce Franklin
2nd edition from Hickory Grove Press
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$6.00 (1 in stock)
Westmoreland: The General who Lost Vietman
by Lewis Sorley
from Mariner Books
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$5.00 (1 in stock)
What it is Like to Go to War
by Karl Marlantes
from Grove Press, Inc.
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$4.00 (1 in stock)
Winston's War
by Max Hastings
from Vintage Books
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$9.00 (1 in stock)
Witchcraft at Salem
by Chadwick Hansen
1985 Printing from George Braziller
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$5.00 (1 in stock)
With the Old Breed
by E.B. Sledge
from Ballantine Books
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$5.00 (1 in stock)
World of Philip and Alexander
by Elin C. Danien (Editor)
from University of Pennsylvania Press
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$3.50 (1 in stock)
Worst Hard Time
by Timothy Egan
from Houghton Mifflin
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$6.00 (2 in stock)
Yalta: The Price of Peace
by S.M. Plokhy
from Penguin Books
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$6.00 (1 in stock)