Where do you turn when you need encouragement? What keeps you going when you’ve had enough; when you’re discouraged about the state of your walk with Christ, about the state of society, about the church and its witness to the world? Some people just talk to a friend who agrees with them. Others turn off and forget it all for a while. I turn to church history.

History is a great personal encourage­ment; and has been ever since I was a young Christian and discovered the American Puritans through some univer­sity courses. Here were Christians who faced difficulty and trauma, who did their best to shine God’s truth into their world, and who were deeply in earnest about sin. They have shown me how church history can teach, correct and encourage us when we pay attention to its lessons. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard people say they didn’t like history at school, that it was boring, all about dates, and so on. Never have I found this true! History, being about people, has all the fascination of living with people. The study of human nature never dulls – so why should history? Here are seven reasons I love church history.

1. God has a Great Plan of Redemp­tion⤒🔗

Scripture teaches, from begin­ning to end, that God has a plan for the world, and for mankind. He redeems a people for himself through his Son, Jesus Christ, and all history is shaped toward that end. You can see it unfold from its beginning in the Garden of Eden to its culmination in the heavenly city. He promises that nothing will thwart it. It is breathtaking in its scope. It is being worked out by our great, infinite-per­sonal God who “neither slumbers nor sleeps”. Realising this takes the sting out of every moment of frustration or dis­couragement you and I might face in our brief lives on earth. God’s plan is so great – and yet we are a part of it. It is so very much bigger than me and my small moment in it. But at the same time, it is encouraging – and humbling – to know that he has made me part of that great plan.

2. God Preserves His Church←⤒🔗

This is a fact. God has promised it, and he has demonstrated it in action. When Jesus told Peter that the gates of hell would not overpower the church (Matt. 16:18), this was a promise that Christians were able to rely on in the many difficult times to come. No matter what the persecution of his followers; no matter what the unfaithfulness of the majority of the “visible church” at times, Christ has kept his people safe. The church will survive – it will never be extinguished. This promise must have steadied the feet of many a Christian during the persecutions of the early church. It must have kept believers true to his Word during the Reforma­tion, when Catholic authorities were burning men and women for refusing to give up their biblical convictions. It kept Christians like Bishop Ryle encouraged during the nineteenth century, when liberal theology, Darwinian speculation and the lure of Roman ritual were as­sailing believers on all sides. It will keep us going, too, in a day when the Christian faith is increasingly unpopular, when absolute truth seems so at odds with the relativistic spirit of the age, and when the evangelical church is increasingly marginalised. We shouldn’t be discouraged, we shouldn’t fear that the powers of evil will wipe the church out! Unfaithful churches may “lose their lampstand”, but true believers will be preserved. Jesus has promised that the church will never be snuffed out. When we study church history, we learn that time and time again it has been in peril – but never, ever destroyed.

3. God Revives His Church, and In­creases it←⤒🔗

During many times in the history of God’s people it has seemed as if the faithful were few in number, that the world around them was in a sorry state, and that they were generally despised. This much was true during the time of the prophets. Elijah quite understandably thought that he alone was left – that Jezebel had done away with anyone else prepared to serve God publicly. He wanted to die. During Jeremiah’s time there was widespread idolatry and disobedience – Judah was about to reap its reward of judgment. And yet God promised always to preserve a faithful remnant, and even turn it into a force for spirit­ual renewal. Didn’t he promise Daniel, through the interpretation of Nebu­chadnezzar’s dream, that the rock of Christ and his church would shatter the fourth (Roman) kingdom and that it would stand forever (Daniel 2:44)? This certainly came to pass when God began at Pentecost with a room full of frightened disciples in Jerusalem, and within three hundred years had planted churches all over the crum­bling Roman world.

He has revived his church from un­promising beginnings many times since. Just think: Europe was a spiritual mess at the beginning of the sixteenth century, full of superstition, lacking in knowledge of biblical truth, and oppressed by a greedy church hierarchy. God used a handful of faithful scholars and teachers to rediscover the Bible and transform much of western Europe by its light. Think again: England at the beginning of the eighteenth century had little whole­some gospel influence. There were few pulpits where the truth could be heard, while much of society was living immor­ally, drunkenness was widespread and poverty, hardship and despair were the result. God converted the Wesley broth­ers and George Whitefield, and through their preaching great numbers believed in the Saviour. By means of ongoing dis­cipleship the poor became hardwork­ing, honest and thrifty – and a nation was transformed. Think yet again, of the church of the nineteenth century, which sent missionaries all over the world and took the gospel to pagan peoples who had never heard it before. And today, there are churches from those regions sending missionaries back to the west, now lacking gospel light itself.

The point is – God can and does revive his people and extend his church whenever he wants. We should not despair because our witness is weak today. We should repent of our sloth and disbelief, of course – but we should pray, believing, that God would do a great work again – and be ready for him to use us as his agents.

4. His Word is True, and Will Stand Forever←⤒🔗

One of the great aims of Satan is to destroy the Word of God; and he has tried in numerous ways to obscure it, distort it, undermine it, even outlaw it over the centuries. These strategies have shaken God’s people at times; but more often, they have simply provided those who never truly believed with excuses for turning their backs on the church. Consider the efforts of the German Higher Critics – scholars who, in the nineteenth century, began to treat the Bible as any other document, sub­jecting it to critical literary and histori­cal analysis that encouraged their doubt of its authenticity and truthfulness. This led to a weakening of many church­goers’ respect for the Bible. Many view the Higher Critics as one of the main causes of church decline. But the Bible has endured; and the very analytical techniques which encouraged doubt have been used by believing scholars to understand and teach the Bible more effectively than before. The great Chris­tian scholars of our day are the better for the challenge levelled by the scep­tics of the nineteenth century.

Seven hundred years before Christ, Isaiah wrote that while the grass withers and the flower fades, the Word of our God will stand forever (Isaiah 40:8) I am encouraged as I look back and see how God has preserved his Word. Its truth is still living and active today. I have seen the wisdom of Solomon exercising the power to amaze someone encountering it for the first time, proving to them that the God who understood the human heart in 1000 BC understands it every bit as much now, 3000 years later. His Word changed hearts in Solomon’s time; and it convicts and converts today.

5. We should not be discouraged when the Church is Weak←⤒🔗

It is tempting, at times when there is little to get enthusiastic about on the church scene, to shrug your shoulders and hiber­nate like a squirrel. Perhaps you’ve just endured a church argument over some­ thing petty and silly – or even something more serious, that has left you wondering how God’s people could be so foolish, sinful and wrong. It’s times like that when church history can be its most encour­aging. It teaches us that the church has not always been weak, and motivates us to pray that God would stir his people up again. It helps us realise that similar things have happened in the past, and attracts us to the righteous response of Christians before us. Sometimes it simply heartens us by reminding us that these things pass: it is God’s church, and he can and will deal with them.

6. Godly Men and Women Spur me on←⤒🔗

We all need the motivation of personal example: that is the way God has made us. Scripture shows us – Jesus lived with his disciples and instructed them, Paul taught the churches and lived out the Christian life before them. We all need role models, of whom Jesus is the greatest. Hebrews 12 tells us that the “great cloud of witnesses” depicted in Hebrews 11 should inspire us “to run with endurance the race that is set before us” (v.1). The same is true of the many, many men and women who have lived faithful lives in the two thousand years since. They, too, are a cloud of witnesses who keep me running with more endurance than I might otherwise. My reasoning goes like this: if God can keep William Carey faithfully teaching the gospel for years in India without a single convert, then surely he will keep me sharing the gospel with the people who live in my household, in a far less hostile environment! If God can keep suffering Christians faithful in the Soviet Union for decades, then surely he will keep me true to him too should our gov­ernment persecute us in times to come?

7. Church History Teaches me Chron­ological Humility←⤒🔗

When we know nothing of the past we think too highly of the present. I’m always finding ways I could do better as a Christian when I read church history. I learn about more faithful habits of prayer, more selfless and persevering acts of service, stronger and bolder witnessing to the truth than I have seen in myself or my own day. I am rebuked, instructed and encouraged.

Church history – boring? No, it is the greatest inspiration for service to Christ.