A Chiasm of Time
a timeline of God's people
Behold! My latest project analyzing Israel in the Old Testament and church History after Christ. Christ’s life is in the center. Events before and after Christ seem to mirror one another in an opposite sort of fashion. By the way, I don’t expect you to be able to see the minuscule writing on the picture above. Below, I will zoom in and explain each section.
Disclaimers: Some of the dates on this timeline are debated. Feel free to let me know if you see mistakes. I gathered this information from my limited knowledge of church History primarily in Europe. My research included reading all major church fathers, Church History in Plain Language by Bruce L. Shelley (which was not in plain language), History of Christianity by Paul Johnson, and The Wall Chart of World History From Earliest Times To The Present by Professor Edward Hull, M.A., L.L.D., F.R.S published in 1988. (Despite having so many letters after his name, Hull’s O.T. dates greatly differ than what the internet says, so I primarily used him for later History).
Note: I did not read all the above recently for the purpose of creating this Chiasm. Thus, I may not have gotten everything exactly right in my recollection of history. Again, feel free to let me know if you see mistakes.
Lastly, in case you think I’m a genius, I’m pretty sure I’m not the originator of this concept. If you thought of this before me, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to steal your idea.
Christ in the Center
This Chiasm of time features the formation and fall of the Kingdom of Israel on the left-hand side of the cross and the fall and reformation of the Christian Church on the right-hand side. During Israel and the church’s formation, God used secular nations to humble His stubborn and stiff-necked people.
Here are some pretty cool parallels mirrored on either side of the cross:
Before Christ, Israel experienced 400 years of silence when no prophets prophesied. After Christ, the word of God dispersed through all the known nations in about the first 400 years. This is also when the early Church Fathers contributed many foundational writings about Christ and the trinity.
In 597 BCE the Kingdom of Israel fell to Babylon. Opposite that, in 380 CE, Christianity was made the official religion of the Roman Empire, and in 800 CE the Holy Roman Empire began.
In 930 BCE Israel split into two nations. In 1054 CE, the Great Schism split the established church into Orthodoxy and Catholicism.
Israel experienced the height of its prosperity when King Solomon came to reign between 1022-922 BCE. We might say that the Holy Roman Empire experienced its low during the terrible Pope John XII who ruled from 955-964 CE. Maybe the Black Plague and the Crusades were an all-time low too.
Before Christ, God gave the prophets to Israel to communicate to His people how they were not taking His words to heart. After Christ, God provided His Kingdom with the early church fathers who dispelled many heresies and explained how Christ was 100% God and 100% man. The early church fathers also helped our understanding of the Trinity.
One final cool parallel, which isn’t pictured above is when God gave the law to Moses sometime between 1391-1271 BCE. The Bible was translated into English by Wycliffe in about 1382 CE. Pretty cool, isn’t it?
The slopes on either side of the cross signify God giving various gifts to Israel and the Christian church. The declines on either side of the cross signify the loss of those gifts. Israel seems to have lost its gifts during the Divided Kingdom and its captivity. The Christian church seemed to have lost many of its gifts during that rather embarrassing time period known as the Dark Ages. The teal circles beneath the timeline are Abby’s interpretations of how people used God’s gifts as idols or stumbling blocks. Let’s get into these in more detail.
The Formation and Fall of Israel
On the timeline above, I note various periods of Israel’s history, what gifts God gives, and how Israel turned those gifts into idols.
2000-1700 BCE The Patriarchs: God chooses the people.
The chosen-ness of the Jews is the very thing that prevented them from loving their neighbors as themselves. Eventually, the Jews exclude, mistreat, and enslave other nations.
1700-1200 BCE Slavery: God multiplies the people.
God uses Joseph and Egypt to save the people from starvation, but then Egypt ends up enslaving the people.
The Israelites also pick up bad habits of worship in Egypt too.
1391-1271 BCE Moses: God frees his people, provides for them, and gives them the law.
The law ends up enslaving the people instead of giving them Eternal Life.
The bronze serpent, which God used to save the people from snake bites, ends up being worshiped by the people.
The Ark of the Covenant ends up being treated like a talisman in battle.
1271-1240 BCE Israel's conquest: God gives Israel the land.
The physical land ends up becoming a stumbling block preventing the Jews from understanding that the Kingdom of Heaven wouldn’t come to earth as a physical land for the Jews to live in.
1240-1000 BCE Israel's Judges: God gives Israel judges, prophets, and priests.
Read Judges: these prophets, priests, and judges lead Israel into all sorts of wickedness and idolatry.
1020-922 BCE Israel's United Kingdom: God gives Israel wisdom, wealth, the temple, and His presence.
Israel’s kings eventually lead its people into idolatry. The temple becomes a sort of idol as well.
During the Divided kingdom and Israel’s fall, they lose their babies through child sacrifice. They lose their strong men in war, the ark of the covenant, temple, rulers, wealth, land, and wisdom.
After reviewing all that the Jews lost, it makes sense why the Jews were so desperately clinging to their Jewishness, their temple, and their law when Jesus steps onto the scene. No wonder they crucified Him. Jesus hinted that the Kingdom of Heaven would be taken away from the Jews and given to the Gentiles. Jesus said He was the temple. And Jesus seemed to break all their laws. To the cross with that sort of thing!
The Fall and Reformation of Christianity
The second half of the timeline portrays Christian history after Christ. In the Dark Ages, from 476-1000 CE, the Kingdom of Heaven is reduced to a one-man operation. The Pope alone represents God’s Word to the people. I believe the casualties of reducing God’s kingdom to one representative in this way led to the disintegration of God’s Word in people’s lives. Only a select few had access to scripture. The church lost its beauty, understanding of science, value of women, and value of the poor. Not only this, but the Kingdom of Heaven became something the wealthy could buy into while the poor were shut out. Some of the effects of this travesty were put into poetry in Dante’s Inferno in 1308-1320 CE. However, through this, God was still working. I think God used and is still using secular culture to shape and reform His people.
So here are the events on the timeline pictured above and how we silly humans turn God’s gifts into idols.
1054 CE The Great Schism: Orthodoxy and Catholicism Split. God doubles the church’s representatives.
The popes become king-priests to their congregations, preventing the people from seeing everyone as God’s representatives able to receive and become words of God like Christ.
1097-1291 CE The Crusades: God preserves His kingdom. The military strength of the Church is used in an attempt to reclaim lost land, retake Jerusalem, and protect Christianity.
The land and military strength become a stumbling block for the church to see that God will protect and spread His kingdom, and He won’t do it by military strength.
1100-1500’s CE The Great Cathedrals are built: I didn’t put this event on the timeline, but it’s worth noting. An increase in population and wealth led to the building of these remarkable places of worship. Perhaps this parallels the temple and Tabernacle.
Collecting money for building projects became a great focus and stumbling block in seeing how Christ’s Church is the people, not the buildings.
1347-1351 CE The Black Plague: God preserves His Kingdom.
I’m not entirely certain how the Black Plague led to idols. Maybe when people used icons and objects for healing, they failed to see how God might bring about healing through His people and our understanding of God’s world.
I believe the church taught that the Black Plague was a punishment for the wicked, but then people from all walks of life succumbed to it. Oddly enough, this plague parallels the time of Egypt’s plagues in the Old Testament.
1382 CE Wycliffe Translation: God begins the process of giving His written word to the people themselves. In 1440, the Printing Press was invented. Shortly after that, the Gutenberg Bible was printed. Again, this mirrors the time Moses received the Law from God.
Eventually, the written word becomes a stumbling block for God’s people who reduce and limit God to only what is found in the Bible. The very things that God meant as blessings become our idols and stumbling blocks for growth.
The idolization of God’s written word also becomes a stumbling block for people accepting scientific advancements and seeing each other as God’s words in the flesh.
1450-1650 CE The Renaissance: God gifts the arts to the church. Literacy rates, classical thought, and exploration increase. Martin Luther nails his 95 Theses to the door, and the Reformation asserts scripture as God’s authority.
Again, the increased literacy rates caused many to misunderstand and reject science during the scientific revolution because people thought science contradicted the Bible.
The age of exploration brought about all sorts of atrocities against native people groups in the name of Christianity. This way of “spreading God’s kingdom” through colonization becomes a stumbling block for Christians accepting people of different ethnicities as equal representatives of God’s kingdom.
Many use God’s gift of medical knowledge to replace their idea of God as Healer. The very gifts become the idols.
1600-1700 CE Scientific Revolution: God gives inventions, discoveries, and scientific advancements to the church.
Many use science as a religion to replace God.
Many Christians rejected science as a gift from God because they felt like it threatened their traditional view of Christianity.
People use inventions and ingenuity as idols replacing God as the ultimate creator and inventor of all good gifts.
1760-1840 CE Industrial Revolution: God gives great wealth and higher education to create successful industries, which made more products available to the masses.
Inventions and industries create an economy of self-sufficiency and independence apart from God. Owning stuff becomes the idol to pursue in place of God.
The wealthy families who own these industries and empires create a social class structure where church leadership excludes lower-class, uneducated people. (You see this sad reality prevalent in Jane Austin’s novels.) This creation of classes is a stumbling block for the church accepting the poor as equal representatives in the church.
People who made a god of industry then used and abused God’s earth to satisfy their whims, tastes, and cravings.
1600-1960’s CE National Civil Wars, Wars for Independence, WWI & WWII: God gives power to the people to rule themselves. God gives independence to colonized nations. God gives people of different skin color freedom. Within these dates are England’s Civil War, the American and French Revolution, the Boxer Rebellion, the American, Spanish, Greek, Chinese, Indonesian, and Russian Civil Wars. The Civil Wars in third world countries still continue.
After the U.S. won independence from England, the U.S. continued to have its own colonies and to enslave people of African descent.
Maybe another stumbling block from this time period would be God’s gift of men’s strength to win freedom for the people. The church then idolizes men’s strength, creating a stumbling block for the church to see women as God’s equal representatives.
1960-2020 CE Gender Revolution: God gives women to the church as His representatives alongside men. The Gender Revolution in the U.S. includes the Vietnam War, Civil Rights Act of 1964, the invention of birth control, feminism, gender confusion, sex changes, the gay and lesbian movements, and COVID. In here, I’d also lump the church’s reaction against some of these movements including Bill Gothard’s Institute of Basic Life Principles.
Again, just like the chosen-ness of the Jews prevented the Jews from seeing Gentiles as possible representatives of God, I wonder if men’s chosen-ness to do battle, to be Israel’s kings and priests might also be a stumbling block for the church allowing women to serve as primary leaders and representatives of Christ to their congregations. Again, God meant Jews and men to be a blessing. It’s we who turn God’s gifts into idols and stumbling blocks to our growth.
Just like some generations used inventions, industry, or science to take the place of God, some have used God’s gift of re-valuing women in society to turn women into idols, insisting men be like women.
While many churches have already adopted women as representatives in shepherding and caring for the church, I recognize that this hasn’t happened everywhere for various reasons. During the world’s revolutions and reforms, there have always been religious groups who fail to see how God might be working outside their own traditions. Sometimes, the Lord changes them later through spiritual awakenings and reforms. Sometimes, they refuse to grow. (See Catholic History, the Amish, and Christian Fundamentalists as examples.)
2020-? Education Revolution: God gives the poor and uneducated back to the church as His representatives. In the Education Revolution, I’d put COVID, the homeschooling Exodus, A.I., people rewriting History, and some sort of college crisis that I think will happen as more and more people realize college isn’t cost-effective anymore. FYI: this is just Abby making up stuff here.
More Abby guesses: the higher education that brought women into the church may become a stumbling block to the church allowing uneducated and lower-class people to serve as primary leaders and representatives of Christ to others.
Let’s end with some good news. While tracing history like this is somewhat depressing because it reveals how people use and abuse God’s gifts, this is nothing new. Doesn’t the Old Testament demonstrate the same pattern among the Israelites?
However, through all this, we have this hope: that God has not given up on us. That God is seeing us through to the end. When one generation is too stubborn to change, another generation is on the way. As the world plunges into more lawlessness and wickedness, God is using that to transform His beloved people into His representatives, inviting and equipping more and more people to speak and become God’s words to the world.
It reminds me of the parable of the day laborers in Matthew 20 where the landowner hires more and more workers throughout the day. Some work all day; some join at the end, but they are all paid the same. Are we not the day laborers? Aren’t those hired first the lost sheep of Israel? And aren’t those hired thereafter the Gentiles: Jew & Greek, slave & free, male & female? And don’t even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master’s table? (Matthew 15:27 NIV). A Canaanite woman asked Jesus that in Matthew 15. Jesus’ healing and food is for all with plenty left over (Matthew 15:21-39). And Jesus’ gifts empower us to follow His example of humbly giving ourselves for others (See Matthew 16-20).
God is increasing His workforce every day, transforming more and more people into His representatives, and filling His people with all the fullness of Himself, so that we become his words spoken forth in a dark world.
Hope you enjoyed this chiasm of time as much as I enjoyed making it.
Wow..Wow...Wow!!! I can't wait to be able to take time to dig into this as you have!! I can't imagine the time it took to put this together and yet, I am sure it has bolstered your faith in the process!! THANK YOU for sharing your thoughtful work with us :)