The Most Important Events in Human History

             The most important and pivotal events in the universally accepted human history, arranged chronologically. Each of these events still have repercussions in today’s modern world. Events related to Christianity are highlighted in bold text. Everything is connected. Read up on each of these events to see why they are of such importance to the modern world.

These are just a few of the major events. I’m sure you could probably add many more.

The use of the BC/BCE and AD/CE temporal designations are just to keep everybody happy.

ca 10,000 BC/BCE: The invention of agriculture. Obviously.

ca 3200 BC/BCE: The invention of writing. Obviously.

6^th or 5^th Century BC/BCE: The life of Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha. The exact dates

of his life are disputed.

ca 4 BC/BCE – 30 AD/CE: The life of Jesus of Nazareth.

ca 49 AD/CE: At the Council of Jerusalem, the leaders of the young Church decided to

accept Gentiles into the Church without requiring them to undergo circumcision.

70 AD/CE: The Roman military destroys the Second Temple in Jerusalem.

217 AD/CE: The Jian’an Plague kills about 2,000,000 people in China.

313 Ad/CE: The Edict of Milan in which Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity.

325 AD/CE: The Council of Nicea is held in what is now Iznik, Turkiye. The council

condemned Arianism and clarified the church’s christology.

476 AD/CE: The fall of the Western Empire.

541 – 549 AD/CE: The Plague of Justinian kills up to 100,000,000 people in Europe and

West Asia.

            Ca 570 – 632 AD/CE: The Prophet Muhammad and the birth of Islam.

735 – 737 AD/CE: A smallpox epidemic kills about 2,000,000 people in Japan.

800 AD/CE: Charlemagne is crowned as Emperor, uniting church and state.

1054 AD/CE: The Great Schism between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox

Churches.

            1066 -1071 Ad/CE: The Norman Conquest of England. The strong central state

government which developed persists until this day. 

            1095 -1300 AD/CE: The Crusades. Cultural and religious resentments and hatreds caused 

by this series of wars persist until today.

1346 – 1353 AD/CE: The Black Plague (bubonic plague) kills about 25,000,000 to

30,000,000 in Eurasia and North Africa.

            1378 – 1417 AD/CE: During the Great Western Schism, the Roman Catholic Church split

into political factions over who legitimately held the office of the papacy, resulting in multiple

competing popes in Rome and Avignon, France.  

ca 1440 - 1456 AD/CE: Invention of the printing press. Printing of the Gutenberg Bible.

1492 AD/CE: Cristobal Colon (aka Christopher Columbus) discovers America.

1492 – 1614 AD/CE: The Reconquitsa, in which Muslim rulers were driven from Spain.

1517 AD/CE: The start of the Protestant Reformation.

1611 AD/CE: The production of the King James Version of the Bible.  This Bible, written in the English which was spoken at the time, made the Bible available to any English speaker who could read. 

ca 1760 – 1840 AD/CE: The industrial revolution.

1789 – 1799 AD/CE: The French Revolution.

1914 – 1918 AD/CE: World War I caused between 15,000,000 to 22,000,000 deaths.

1918 - 1920 AD/CE: The Spanish Flu pandemic kills between 17,000,000 to 50,000,000

people worldwide. Some extreme estimates say as many as 100,000,000.

1939 – 1945 AD/CE: World War II. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombs caused up

to 246,000 deaths. About 6,000,000 Jews were killed in the Holocaust. World War II caused

between 7,000,000 to 85,000,000 deaths.

            1960 to 1990 Ad/CE: The development of the internet.

2019 AD/CE: The COVID- 19 pandemic kill up to an estimated 36,000,000 people.

Science in Antiquity: Part 10

 

Many modern people have a very limited view of history. They can only see or think about five or ten years into the past. They see history as boring and they think of the ancients as ignorant and backward. This was actually not true. What the ancients lacked was the modern accumulation of facts. An ancient Israelite would have been very puzzled and culture-shocked to have been dumped into the modern world, but he or she could have eventually learned to drive a car or to cook on a stove or to use a cellphone.

The ancients were just as intelligent as we are but the accumulation of scientific facts had not yet reached a critical point. Human knowledge took centuries to double, fact by fact. As knowledge accumulated, the rate of accumulation began to speed up. Every answer exposes a new question. Buckminster Fuller spoke of the Knowledge Doubling Curve which was relatively flat for centuries, then began a slow climb, and then went into an explosive upward thrust.

By the end of the 19^th Century, knowledge was doubling once per century. By about 1945, the rate of doubling was about every 25 years. By 1982, the rate was about every 12-13 months. By 2020, the doubling was occurring about every 12 hours. With at least 50,000,000,000 devices now operating and with the rise of artificial intelligence, the rate may now be in minutes.

 

Ca 1500 BC/BCE: 1. Chinese mathematicians work on permutations and probability theory.

            2. Hindu writers mention ants being attracted to a patient’s urine as a symptom of diabetes.

Ca 1550 BC: 1. In Myanmar/Burma, copper is made into bronze.

            2. An Egyptian physician, Hesy-Ra, mentions frequent urination as a symptom of diabetes.

Ca 1750 BC/BCE:  Babylon: square and cube roots, linear and quadratic equations, Pythagorean Theorem.

Ca 1800 BC/BCE: 1. Bronze is in use in China.

            2. The Berlin Papyrus 6619, found in Egypt, describes algebra.

Ca 1890 BC/BCE: The Moscow Mathematical Papyrus, found in Egypt, speaks of applied mathematics: ship construction, beer concentrations, worker efficiency, Pythagorean triples, etc.

Chanting the Lotus Sutra

 

chanting the Lotus Sutra

only his lips

are busy

This is a poem written by Master Sheng Yen (1930 – 2009), a Chinese Zen Buddhist monk. His criticism is of mindless, repetitive chanting with the mind being somewhere else. This was his final poem. He seems to be saying that real Zen enlightenment cannot be achieved by merely repeating a string of words, by performing a certain prescribed action. Distracting busy work.

The Apostle Matthew spoke on this subject twenty centuries earlier. "And when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do, for they suppose that they will be heard for their many words". Matthew 6:7 in the NASB. Meaningless repetition is just what it seems to be to unbelievers, just a string of words. Busy work with no actual effect on the world.

Christians can easily become mindlessly trapped in the busy work tar baby (look it up) of doing churchy things, attending worship services, singing in the choir, volunteering, providing funds for worthy social activities, working in a child care program, watching Christian movies and reading Christian books, Christian political involvement, running a food and clothing bank for the poor, social justice activities, organizing and attending meetings and events, maintaining a church library, participating in disaster relief programs, yada yada yada.

None of these things are wrong or inappropriate for a Christian, but they must never be allowed to replace or crowd out the truth. The truth is this: Jesus died on the cross and overcame death for me, for you, and for every single individual on the Earth. This was his gift to us, it is the one spiritual gift which every Christian possesses, and it is the one gift which we are commanded to repeatedly give to others. The paradox is that, when we give it away to others, we still possess it.

Where is Sinim?

 

Isaiah 49:12 refers to a country named סִינִים (Sinim). It is never again mentioned but obviously was known at the time. Modern thought believes that this is possibly a reference to China, very far to the East.

The modern English word sino comes from the Late Latin word sinae which is a plural form which translates as “Chinese.” The Latin word may possibly be derived from the Old Chinese word 秦 (Qin). This word is often used in compound-word constructions such as Sino-Russian or Sino-Japanese. It is the root of the English language descriptive word sinitic, which means “relating to Chinese things.”

The Jews may have traded with the Chinese as early as the 3rd Century BC/BCE, with other possible contacts in the 7^th and 8^th Centuries. In the 11^th Century, a small Jewish trading settlement was established at Kaifeng. The Mandarin-speaking Jewish merchant’s modern descendants are now assimilated into the mainstream Chinese culture and, in 2016, numbered about 600-1000 in China and 20 in Israel.

In the 16th Century, the Ottoman Empire established a trading relationship with China in part because of a love of Chinese white porcelain. The Chinese are known to have had a merchant colony in Jerusalem during this period.

Chinese porcelain fragments have been found in the Middle East. In 2024, a broken piece of a Chinese porcelain bowl from the Ming Dynasty was found during a dig on Mt. Zion outside the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem. The Chinese inscription translates as “Forever we will guard the eternal spring.“

Christians

All of the persons listed in this post lived to be at least 100 years old.

Jose de Jesus Garcia Ayala: (1910, Mexico - 2014) Roman Catholic bishop.

John the Silent: (452, Armenia - 558) Greek Christian saint. John lived as a hermit for 76 years.

Nguyen Khac Ngu: (1906, Vietnam - 2009) Vietnamese Roman Catholic bishop who was ordained as a priest in 1934.

Herbert George Welch: (1862, New York State, USA - 1969) Methodist bishop and university president (Ohio Wesleyan University). Welch served as a Methodist pastor in Korea, China, and Pennsylvania.

Nicholas Kao Se Tseien: (1897, China - 2007) Chinese Roman Catholic priest known especially for his service in Hong Kong. Oldest known person to ever undergo surgery for cataracts. 

Christians

At some time during their lives, the following people have publicly identified themselves as Christian. Inclusion in this list does not indicate approval or disapproval of the person, of their orthodoxy or lack of it, or of their actions. Some of those listed may surprise or even shock you. Readers are encouraged to suggest persons who should be included on this list.  This is a recurring segment in this blog.

Dolores Hart: (b. 1938, Illinois, USA, aka: Dolores Hicks) Film actress, Benedictine prioress, author. As an actress, she worked with Elvis Presley, Stephen Boyd, Montgomery Clift, George Hamilton, and Robert Wagner. All proceeds from her books go to charity.

Mark Burnett: (b. 1960, England) Movie and television producer, husband of actress Roma Downey. His father was Roman Catholic and his mother was Presbyterian.

Roma Downey: (b. 1960, Northern Ireland) Actress, producer, author, singer. Wife of producer Mark Burnett. Roman Catholic.

Sun Yat-sen: (b.1866, China – d. 1925), Chinese revolutionary, physician, first president and founder of the Republic of China. Sun participated in the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty. Congregationalist.

James Naismith: (b.1861, Canada – d. 1938) Canadian sports coach; inventor of the sport of basketball; founder of the University of Kansas basketball program; Inducted into the Canadian Basketball Hall of Fame, the Canadian Olympic Hall of Fame, the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame, the Ontario Sports Legends Hall of Fame, the Ottawa Sports Hall of Fame, the McGill University Sports Hall of Fame, the Kansas State Sports Hall of Fame, and the FIBA Hall of Fame. The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame is named for him. Presbyterian.

Book Comment: An Encyclopedia of African American Christian Heritage

Many people would rather stick a pencil into their eye than to read a book of history.  That really is a shame, because history helps us to understand where we have been and how that affects where and who we are now.  Christians, especially, are a historically based people.  To really understand Christianity, it is necessary to learn about the mindset and history of a world almost totally alien to our modern world but on which our modern world is based.

All Christians worldwide are part of the same family.  All those who belong to Jesus, have the Mind of Christ.  Yet, often, we misunderstand one another.  How much does a Christian in Norway know about Christians in China?  How much does a Christian in Belarus know about Christians in Greece?  Do you know about the military saints or the Fools for Christ?  How much do we know about Christians in other religious traditions existing side by side with us in our own home areas?

In the United States, how much do white Christians know about black Christians and vice versa?  We have lived together for four hundred years but many whites have never been into a black church and many blacks have never been into a white church.  Study of books such as An Encyclopedia of African American Christian Heritage (Judson Press, 2002) can help us understand one another.

The book by Marvin A. McMickle is divided into chapters of short essays on the following subjects: Denominational Founders and Leaders, Preachers, Teachers and Scholars, Politicians, Prophets, Nationalists, Cult Leaders, Singers and Songwriters, and Movements, Terms, and Events.  Good historical studies do not turn away from discussing the unpleasant along with the positive and this book exposes the warts along with the beauty.   I heartily recommend this interesting and useful book.

___________________________________________________________________

A general caution: books may give you wonderful new insights and explanations of subjects, but you should never base your Christian beliefs on any one book or the teachings of one person, no matter who they are. All teachings must be consistent with scripture. Read as the Bereans did, with discernment. “… for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so.” Acts 17:11 NASB

Any doctrines must be consistent with the historical full body of Christian thought. Doctrines or teachings inconsistent with scripture in any way must be rejected. You would not eat cheese which had a fuzzy fungus growing on it.

At the Time When David Became King of israel

At the time when David became king of his unified Kingdom of Israel (ca 1000 BC/BCE), this is what was happening in other regions of the world.

The Chavin Culture established a trade network in Peru.

Japan was inhabited by a hunter-gatherer culture.

Agricultural farming began in Kenya.

The Phoenicians invented their alphabet.

Latins began to arrive in Italy.

The Hittite city of Troy (Troy Layer VII at Hisarlik, Turkiye) was destroyed.

The Tamil language appeared in India.

China prospered under King Kang (ruled 1020-999BC/BCE) of the Zhou Dynasty.

Christians

Chiang Ching-kuo (B. 1910, China –d. 1988)  President of the Republic of China 1978-1988.  Methodist.

Titus (fl. 1^st century) A Gentile Christian who was a convert and later a friend and emissary of Paul. Paul sent him on several specific missions.  Galatians 2:3, 1 Corinthians 1-6, 2 Corinthians 2:13, 7:5-16, chapter 8, the book of Titus, 2 Timothy 4:10.  He was accepted as Paul’s spokesman.

Horatio Gates Spafford:  (b. 1828, New York (USA) – d. 1888) Attorney, investor, philanthropist, hymnist.  After all four of his daughters died in a shipwreck he wrote the words to the hymn, “It Is Well With My Soul.”  He, his wife, and their subsequent children worked for years in Jerusalem providing soup kitchens, hospitals, and orphanages.  He died in Jerusalem.  “I am glad to trust the Lord when it will cost something.”

Tiana Anpo Win Spotted Thunder (b. Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota (USA), aka: Tasiyagmuka Ho Waste Win; Good Voice Meadowlark  Woman)  Singer in English and Lakota.

Melchior Grodziecki (b. ca 1582, Poland – d. 1619) Jesuit priest, military chaplain,  and martyr.  Beheaded by Transylvanian troops in Kosice.

Christians

At some time during their lives, the following people have publicly identified themselves as Christian.   Inclusion in this list does not indicate approval or disapproval of the person, of their orthodoxy or lack of it, or of their actions.  Readers are encouraged to suggest persons who should be included on this list.  This is a recurring segment in this blog.

Sun Yat-sen: b. 1866, China – d. 1925) Revolutionary, physician, President of the Republic of China, Congregationalist.

Cornel Ronald West: (b. 1953, Oklahoma) Civil rights activist, philosopher, author, actor, socialist.

Takeda Kiyoko: (b. 1917, Japan) Feminist intellectual.

John Glasgow Kerr: (b. 1824, Ohio – d. 1901) Surgeon, Presbyterian missionary to China.  One of his medical students was Sun Yat-sen.

Arthur Gostick Shorrock: (b. 1861, England – d. 1945) Surgeon, Baptist missionary to China.

A Chinese Christian Song Entitled "Mission"

使命, literally, “mission.”

Is Francis Chan a Sell-Out?

Wow! This blog post pulled in a swirling storm of 188 comments.  It must have hit a nerve!  The basic thrust of the post was to question whether Francis Chan , a Chinese-American man born in Hong Kong, was a sell-out because he is willing to speak at evangelical conferences which sometimes are 98% white.

Many people (not just Americans!) cannot get over RACE.  All they have to do is read their Bibles!  The question was settled almost 2000 years ago.

"Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond [nor] free: but Christ [is] all, and in all." Colossians 3:11

"There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus." Galatians 3:28

A Chinese Christian Song

This Chinese language Christian song is titled  這一生最美的祝福  (The Most Beautiful Blessings in This Life.)

Christians

At some time during their lives, the following people have publicly identified themselves as Christian.   Inclusion in this list does not indicate approval or disapproval of the person, of their orthodoxy or lack of it, or of their actions.  Readers are encouraged to suggest persons who should be included on this list.  This is a recurring segment in this blog.

Sung Shang-Chieh: (b. 1901, China – d. 1944; aka: Song Shang-Jie; John Sung; Little Pastor) Evangelist, revivalist in China, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia. Over 100,000 converts. He worked with Watchman Nee. Wesleyan Methodist.

Pachomius: (b. ca 292, Egypt – d. 348; aka. Pakhom, Pachome, Pakhomius) Pachomius’ name in Coptic means “the falcon.”  He is considered to be the founder of Christian cenobitic monasticism.  After being involuntarily conscripted into the Roman army, he became a Christian and follower of the hermit, Palaemon.  Before Pachomius, Christian asceticism was solitary; he organized the hermits into communities.

Mary of Egypt: (b. ca. 344, Egypt – d. ca. 421; aka. Maria Aegyptica) Mary was not a prostitute but appears to have been a sexually promiscuous nymphomaniac from the age of twelve.  At age twenty-six, she underwent a religious conversion and became an ascetic.  She lived the rest of her life as a hermit in the desert near the Jordan River.

Lech Aleksander Kaczynski: (b. 1949, Poland – d. 2010) Anti-Communist President of the Republic of Poland.  He and his wife, Maria Kaczynska, died in an airplane crash in 2010. (Ninty-six people died in the crash.)

Spencer Perceval: (b. 1762 – d. 1812)  Perceval was an ardent opponent of the slave trade and served, from 1809, as the British Prime Minister until his assassination in 1812.

Christian Heresies: Nestorianism

Nestorius (b. ca 386 - d. ca 451) was the Archbishop of Constantinople (Istanbul, Turkey) from 428 until 431, when he was condemned and removed from office for teaching that Christ exists as two persons, the human man Jesus and the Son of God, the Logos.  This was in opposition to the orthodox doctrine that Jesus is one person who is fully human and fully divine.  Nestorianism was condemned by the Council of Ephesus (Efes, Turkey) in 431.

The first known Christians in China (635) were converted by Alopen, a Persian.  Nestorian Christians are known to have been present in China until the 14th Century.

Queen in Ukraine

Recently (10-10-10), on the 101 Network on DirecTV, I watched a replay of a concert given by the rock group, Queen, in Kharkov, Ukraine which took place on 13 September 2008.  It was an outside concert and that was a good thing because 300,000 people showed up.  300,000!  That's 21% of the city's population of 1,461,300.

When I told a Chinese woman about the Gospel, she almost immediately lit up and said, "We did not have this in China."  She had found a treasure.  Now, she and her daughter regularly attend church and she smiles all the time.   And her parents, new converts because of her, took the faith back to China with them.

When I thought of her and the people in Ukraine, I thought of the hundreds of thousands, including many Christians, who were persecuted and killed in their countries' pasts in an attempt to create socialist atheist worker's paradises.  The Christian faith survived in Ukraine (where regular church attendance stands at 10%) and in China (regular church attendance at 9%).

At 10%, of the 300,000 at the concert in Kharkov, those who attend church would number 30,000.  Of the 1,461,300 people in Kharkov, 10% means that only 146,130 go to church with regularity.

Before we in America pat ourselves on the back, our percentage of regular church attendance is only 44%.  That means that 56 Americans out of every 100 do not attach any importance to church attendance.  Compare that with Nigeria at 89%.

Go to the link below to see a listing of the rates for 53 countries.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/rel_chu_att-religion-church-attendance

The Three-Self Patriotic Movement

The Three-Self Patriotic Movement is the "patriotic" (government sanctioned) Christian Protestant church in the People's Republic of China. The three "selves" are self-governance, self-support, and self-propagation. All the selves basically mean Chinese, not foreign. In other words, Chinese controlled. The church was formed in 1892 and took its modern form in 1951 under the leadership of Y.T. Yu (1893-1979). The government has, from 1954 onwards, held tight control of the movement, spawning the development of many illegal unregistered home churches during the period of 1966-1979 when all religious activity was banned. The TSPM was restored in 1979 by the government. Unregistered house churches remain illegal in China.

The TSPM promotes five basic doctrines: the Trinity, the Virgin Birth, Jesus' dual nature as both God and man, Jesus' Death and Resurrection, and the Second Coming.

News: Chinese Christian Pastors Given Prison Time

In Linfen City, Shanxi Province, China, on 25 November 2009, Yang Rongli and four other house church pastors were sentenced to multiple years of prison time for "illegally occupying farming land" and "disturbing transportation order by gathering masses." Thier real crime was refusing to register their churches and accept governmental control of their worship services and other activities.