The 100 Most Important Events in Christian History

I have been reading this book:

It's from our school library - checked out last spring and never made it back in at the end of the school year, which now I'm glad about, because it's been a good read.

Of course, any such list is somewhat arbitrary, but this does have a lot of events that I recognize as well as some that I've never heard of.  It also has many from early church history with which I'm not very familiar.

Some of the things a person is reminded of from reading such a book:

--Our generation is just a part of all that has ever existed.  A thousand, two thousand, years ago people were keeping the faith, serving God, living out the Christian life - many undergoing persecutions that we have never dreamed of.

--There is nothing new under the sun.  Hundreds of years ago people were arguing about music and other such issues.  There has been good, bad, and ugly in the church from the beginning of the church.  Sin is still in the world - in all of us - and will continue to be until Christ returns.

--Our small, neatly defined Christian worlds are merely small packets of the overall Christian world that has existed down through the centuries.

A few of the hundred events discussed, each in small sections of two or three pages:

• The fire in Rome - AD 64
• Athanasius's Letter Recognizes the New Testament Canon - AD 367
• Patrick goes to Ireland as a Missionary - AD 432 
• Martin Luther Posts His Ninety-Five Theses - 1517
• Anabaptist Movement Begins - 1525
• Publication of the King James Bible - 1611
• John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress Published - 1678
• Publication of Isaac Watt's Hymns and Spiritual Songs - 1707
• Hudson Taylor Arrives in China - 1854
• Dwight L. Moody's Conversion - 1855
• First Christian Radio Broadcast - 1921
• Dietrich Bonhoeffer Executed by the Nazis - 1945
• Chinese Church Grows Despite Cultural Revolution - 1966-76

Of course, there are events in the book that some may disagree with, but whether one thinks that the events are good or negative, they are still pivotal events in church history.

My good friend, a student of church history, taught me some time ago that if more people studied the events of the early church, and really realized what all has gone on in the past two thousand years, there would be much less disagreement on minor issues today.