KNOW THE CHURCH HISTORY

Knowledge of our history is absolutely essential for us to make sense of the present, and to help us prepare properly for the future. Such a reasoning is clearly the most sensible approach to life and all its challenges.
– “Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.” – Edmund Burke

We all need to know Church history. The Church of the Living God, which is standing in the world today, is the result of the sweat and the blood of Christians who walked faithfully and obediently despite struggles, storms, trials, tribulations, persecution and even death itself.
– “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” – Tertullian

As a Christian we ought to have a basic level of understanding about the history of the Church. We all have some knowledge or the other of the  gospels, and to some degree, about the early Church through the epistles in the Bible. It is good for us to know how God stood with the Church, down through the centuries, even as the powers of this world stood against it. We also see how the Church itself was corrupted and behaved un-Christ-like on more than once occasion.

When we read the Church history we get to gain insights and lessons as to how the LORD God Almighty stood with His people and helped them through the thick and the thin. Such lessons helps us to trust God even in the present, and into the future.

When the struggles and the storms the Church and the Christians are facing today, leave us perplexed and powerless, the historical knowledge of how our LORD stood with His people would encourage us, and strengthen us to continue our walk with the LORD.
– “11 I will remember the works of the LORD: surely I will remember thy wonders of old. 12 I will meditate also of all thy work, and talk of thy doings.” – Psalm 77:11-12

When errors creep into the Church of God, and we as God’s Chosen People are walking in error, *the Church history helps us to know that, the LORD does indeed takes interest in the affairs of His children, will intervene and rectify all such errors, and puts His people back on the right track. The great reformation of the sixteenth century is a very fine example.

May we like good disciples of the LORD Jesus, and the good children of God, take interest in knowing the history of the world-wide Church. Let us invest time and effort in knowing Church history. For in knowing the history of the Church, we are actually knowing the way God worked in the past, in and through the lives of His people. Even so the LORD Jesus help us.