How to Make a Bible Time Line

A Bible Time Line is a valuable tool for Sunday School teachers of children of any age, as well as adults. The complexity of a Bible Time Line can range from hitting just the highlights from the Bible to detailing everything that happened in the Bible and the events in-between, which are not recorded. The instructions for making a Bible Time Line below are intended for elementary-aged students, and uses the Internet as the sole reference guide for including dates and events on it.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Things You’ll Need:

• Computer with Internet Connection
• Printer
• Paper
• Some Bible Knowledgeable is Helpful

How to Make a Bible Time Line

1. First, you will want to think of the important events in the Bible that children often know about. Examples are the story of Creation, story of Noah's Ark and the story of Joseph. Think of every event in the entire Bible and list them on a sheet of paper.
2. Next, you will want to check for dates and record the dates next to the events you listed. You may want to have access to three different websites that have Bible Time Line dates listed (see references listed below in the "Additional Resources" section). This will help you check for accuracy of the dates.
3. With this information, you are ready to put the time line together. There are many different methods for putting together a Bible time line. The easiest way is to make a table in MS Word (or similar word processing program) that has the number of rows to include each event, plus a title row and three columns.
4. The title row (top row) should label each column as follows: Event, Date, Information. You can, of course, name these columns any way that you like. These are just an example.
5. Next, start listing the events and filling in the table with the information you have found. Because this is for elementary-aged students, it might be good to add a picture or clip art image of the event in the "Event" column. You can find many clip art images on the Internet for these events.
6. Check over your time line to make sure it looks good. Print it out. Feel free to use different font styles and colors to dress up the time line as you work with it.

Tips & Warnings

• You may find as you are researching Bible events for dates that there are even more events you want to add to your original list.
• You may find that some dates are not the same from site to site, but you can average out what you find. Just say something like "approximately 280 AD" on your time line to show the average date.
• Some websites do not allow you to use their clip art under certain conditions. Most sites do allow people to use their clip art for non-commercial reasons. Read each website's policy on this.