Timeline of Hope

In my travels around the world, I am always refreshed by how history is chronicled. The great divide in the timeline no matter where you go is BC and AD. BC stands for “before Christ” while AD stands for the Latin, Anno Domini or “In the year of our Lord”, more commonly referred to as “after the death of Christ”.

No matter what you call BC and AD, it is the one event in time in which time itself is divided. The first time that I traveled with my husband to a foreign land, he found it remarkable that all over the globe, every event in history hung on Christ. Even those who do not call themselves Christians, cannot overlook that Jesus was physically here on this earth and the day of his crucifixion marked time forever.

The significance of this accepted timeline has me thinking a lot about which side of the timeline I live on. We give little thought each day to our AD life and what BC must have meant for believers in Christ. Even before his birth, there were many who believed in the coming of Christ and yearned for AD living. Charles Spurgeon said it like this, “The prophets foretold what the apostles reported. The seers looked forward, and the evangelists look backward: their eyes meet at one place; they see eye to eye, and both behold the cross.”

The central meeting place for all time is at the cross. That is where hope was found among BC prophets like Isaiah and that is where hope is found today among AD pastors like Jentezen Franklin. For those who view Christianity as one giant history lesson, let me remind you of where you fit into the timeline of hope. Today’s believers have the luxury of looking back and seeing what the seers looked ahead to.

We can learn of the events that brought salvation to a lost and dying world and we can look ahead to the second coming of Christ. We need no prophets to prophesy that he will return, Jesus himself tells us about those events in Revelation. However, knowing these events and scripture in the same way we read a history book only makes us an observer of the timeline.

Having a heart knowledge of the cross makes you a part of the timeline. Being in an intimate relationship with the One who died on the cross for you imprints AD upon your soul as no history lesson or travels around the world can impress. Your ministry can mark upon the timeline in a unique way that only you were designed for.

You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the Living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. 2 Corinthians 3:3. You will not see your name among the pages of the Bible, but you are being recorded even today along with many Christ followers who are the result of his ministry.

It is at the cross. It has always been the cross. It will always be the cross. I urge you to find your hope there. No matter how much time passes, what headlines appear tomorrow, or what your future may hold, the day that separates BC from AD is where you can make sense of it all. It’s not just a timeline in a history lesson, it’s a timeline of hope.