I
know that history is the last thing that comes to mind as something that’s
important to your life. You are running to and fro with vacations and trips to
distant lands and their cultures and lives. Some may find the places glorious
with history like Paris, France, Rome, Italy, Athens, Greece, or even
Jerusalem, Israel. History is everywhere; you can’t escape from it. But, is it
useful for life? What’s the purpose of diving into the pass for nuggets of the
human experience? What’s the point of learning about dead men and women or how
a cathedral like Notre Dame took 100 years to build in the 13th
century? Why learn about the great wars of the past and the effects of them
that led fathers and mothers to fight or flee with courage? Why learn about the
French and Indian War or the American Revolution or the War of 1812, the
Mexican-American war, or even the Civil War that changed American life until
the 1960s? Wars just one nugget of history: what about the peace?
Why
does the past matter? Isaiah 44:21 says this: “Let them
bring them forth and show us what shall happen; let them show the former
things, what they be, that we may consider them and know the latter end of
them; or declare us things to come.” Former things show us the cause of something:
the cause and effect of something from the past. How Ahab never truly returned
to God after he humbled himself before Elijah. He had prophets all around him that
told him to go out to Ramoth-Gilead, but only one of those prophets told him the
truth. Ahab didn’t believe the one prophet from God, and was killed in battle
because he didn’t learn from his own history of having prophets of Baal and Ashtoreth
all around him telling him what he wanted to hear. History tells us the cause
and effect of something. Like how a small assassination of the archduke of Ferdinand
could cause the war to end all wars, or the invasion of Poland in 1939 could
spark the start of World War II and the final solution against the Jews in Europe.
George Washington never thought that he going to fort necessity would spark a
seven year war in America and Europe, but it did.
History shows us the
character of men and women, and how they lived their lives. David was the
greatest king of Israel facing down Goliath and other Philistine warriors as
well as getting two hundred foreskins to get Saul’s daughter’s hand in
marriage. History showed us his bravery and his heart of God, and it also showed
his sins by sleeping with Beersheba and killing her husband. Alexander the Great
became the best military commander in the history of the world never losing a
battle and raised the Greeks to glory with a vast empire, but died in the prime
of his life leaving the land to his four generals as prophesied in Daniel. The
Roman Empire became a power to be reckoned with during the reign of Julius
Caesar, but he was betrayed by the senator Brutus which started a civil war to
make Octavian to be Emperor Augustus at about the born of Christ. In 325 A.D.
when Christianity was well known across the Roman world, the bishop of Rome and
Constantine the Emperor decided to make Christianity the state religion, and sponsored
the counsel of Nicaea to change the Sabbath to Sunday and the Passover to Easter
and made God out to be a trinity. These were only a few examples of people’s
characters over the years, and they’re written down for our admonition as Paul
said in I Corthinians 10.
These were some
reasons to learn about history, but the most important thing to learn about
history is the providence and character of God. Providence to the reader that
doesn’t know the writing of the Declaration of Independence is the divine
guidance and direction of God. Esther and Mordecai were guided and directed by
God behind the scenes to save the Jews from their enemies, and start the
celebration of Purim. God guided Alexander the Great to destroy the Medes and
Persians, and a High Priest told him about the prophesy in Daniel that he would
do this when the king went to Jerusalem. That was according to Josephus. When
Alexander died, it fulfilled the prophesy in Ezekiel when he laid on his side
for Israel for 365 days (a day for a year). That prophesy ended at the death of
Alexander the Great, and the children of Israel rose to power again in the form
of the Parthian Empire in what’s now called Iran. This same Parthian Empire
sent magi to Jerusalem to see the baby Jesus. This same empire fell by the Persians
after a mass war with Rome around the beginning of the 3rd century
A.D. Israelites traveled to Europe and eventually to the British Isles creating
the greatest empire in the world that had about 25 percent of the world’s land
mass at once time in its history, and I am talking about the British Empire.
All this by the fingerprint of God. Even the founding fathers of America believed
that the Constitution of America was a product of the finger of God.
