Timelines

How do you distinguish, in the mind of, say, a primary-level Sunday School student, the past that is very long ago from the past that is merely long ago.

Of course, you can always use the words, e.g.:  long ago [New Testament], long, long ago [the Exile in Babylon, maybe?], long, long ago [time of King David?], long, long, long ago [time of Abraham], and on it goes.  Each of these terms, however, sound about the same, and do not stay in memory except as a kind of mish-mash in which "long ago" means everything before one's father or grandfather, eh?

A timeline can help quite a bit, I believe.   At one point, we were talking about a story from the time in Babylon, as I recall.  A visiting student asked, "Would Elijah have been alive at that time?"   That was a good and interested question.

While a timeline for Primary students may not be one geared to technicalities -- just kind of knowing where the major stories fit as to century seems quite sufficient --  just being able to separate events easily as to before and after takes hardly any effort at all.

And, if you are talking about prophecy, it becomes fairly obvious that words spoken to Abraham about the One who would be a blessing to every family on earth were spoken at a HUGE distance in time.  It becomes obvious, also, that hints/clues/prophecies about the Messiah were given throughout the centuries and millenia, from the time of the Serpent in the Garden of Eden.  It is difficult to put this into words when children's abstract reasoning abilities and quantification skills are still developing, but the graphic timeline can facilitate this.

THAT'S A LOT OF WORK, right?  To a degree, but, really, I just took a look at the timeline in the front pages of my husband's NIV Study Bible -- any other such source would do nicely, I'm sure -- a took SS stories that are mentioned there, and sought free coloring book pictures on the Web that would bring such stories to mind.

So, yes, over on the left there is the Tower of Babel, very far removed from, say, Samson under the pillars, and still farther removed from Jeremiah in the well.  Pretty easy to note that all of these events did not occur on the same day!  I'm sure the students don't think they did, but, having said that, they wouldn't have an easy way to separate them beyond that.  It would all be "olden days," right?

On another post, I would like to put links to Web sources for Bible coloring pages, which give graphics for such a chart.

On this post, I just want to suggest the TimeLine as a valuable tool.