Timeline Tuesday: Picking Up Where We Left Off

When last we spoke about the Bible timeline we were reading Isaiah and Revelation.

Just let me interject right here that I love reading Revelation at the same time that I'm reading Isaiah. It ranks right up there with pairing the gospel of John alongside the book of Genesis. Yes, it's that awe-inspiring.

But now we've finished the complete New Testament, which means that Revelation is no longer being read on the same days as Isaiah, and we've also interrupted our reading of Isaiah in order to read a few minor prophets from the same time period, which is really interesting if you've been paying attention because we interrupted our reading of II Kings in order to read portions of Isaiah!

These are all books that have been read in recent weeks. (Sorry about that! Feel free to review.)  :)

Psalms
These ancient songs compiled by at least seven individuals are often used as devotional material today. Most people in the English-speaking world are probably familiar with at least one psalm, perhaps Psalm 23 or Psalm 100, if they know no others.

I like to also use them as prayers. For examples see Psalms 4, 5, 6, and 7.

I find that some psalms fit nicely with Isaiah, too, as many mention the King and allude to future events. Actually, the Psalms will parallel many of the books we've yet to read. That's good to know since the 150 individual portions will take us almost through the end of the year.

The psalms were written from the time of Moses (circa 1400 BC) to post-Exilic time (circa 500 BC).

Our study of the book written by the prophet, Isaiah, is interrupted so that we can read the accounts of three minor prophets: three men sent to three groups of people. All of these men were contemporary to Isaiah.

Amos
It was a time of great prosperity which ushered in a period of moral decline. No, not in America but in the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Amos, a herdsman from Tekoa, is sent to deliver a message of warning as well as a promise.


Micah
Like Amos, Micah's hometown of Moresheth was a rural setting where the residents were typically farmers and herdsmen instead of prophets and priests. Yet God sent Micah to Judah to deliver a similar message to the one He sent with Amos to Israel.

At the time of this prophecy Assyria was the world power as their recent conquests had proven. But Micah prophesied that Babylon would conquer Judah.


Nahum
My husband, Pastor Dad, likes to call the three chapters of this small book Jonah chapters 5, 6, and 7 because this is exactly the type of prophecy that the prophet, Jonah, wanted God to pronounce through him just a few generations earlier. It would seem that Assyria repented just long enough to receive the blessings of God that allowed them to conquer the Northern Kingdom of Israel before being conquered themselves by the Babylonians just as Nahum predicted.