Customer Reviews

The Kregel Pictorial Guide to Church History: Kregel Pictorial Guide to Church History, Volume 1 (Kregel Pictorial Guides) (The Kregel Pictorial Guide Series)

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When I first saw this book I thought, "Right - a church history covering 2000 years of history; it must have skipped alot of info." However, after reading it I found that it was informative and covered a good deal of history in its 21 pages of text. Major events and persons were covered. This work I feel is for the student who wants a good and quick overview of church history. It is well written and has a good flow and writing style. There is a chart in the middle of the book which opens up to 39 inches long and 10.5 inches wide. What the book does not include is on the chart. I plan to use this book for a class I am teaching in church history; this is a layman's course which I will be teaching at the church where I am a deacon. The only complaint that I have with the book is that there is no bibliography but it does have an index.

A nice 24 page booklet that sums up the history of the church. Unfortunately (or maybe not), it leaves you wanting much more.

For the price, this book was not really worth it. It's 24 pages including the copyright page and the index. And there comes a time when a survey can be so brief that it's really not helpful at all. When you're trying to say too much in too little time, it's probably best not to say anything. And I wish the author would've done that.

However, I will say I really enjoy having the 40" timeline. And the timeline itself is definitely worth having (although I wish they would sell it separately, even if it was the cost of the book). Oddly enough, the timeline seems to come from a different perspective from that of the author of the book. (For instance, it refers to the "American War for Independence" rather than the "American Revolution" referred to in the book. These two references are kind of at odds with each other in regards to their interpretation of the events that transpired at that time in American History).

When I first received this book and first used just the timeline, I was impressed and was thinking of purchasing the author's other works in this series. However, after reading the actual book, I'm hardly convinced the rest of the series will be worth pursuing. Even with what's written in the book, his historical interpretations seem to be at odds with more fuller works on church history.

In other words...from my perspective, if you can purchase just the timeline, do it. It's a great visual aid! If you can't, but want the timeline, I'm really tempted to say buy the book anyway because the timeline is really pretty good!

But if timeline's aren't your thing, then there are plenty of other surveys of church history that are much better and more practical in scope and content (100 Most Important Events in Christian History, The would be a starting place). And I would recommend to stay away from this series.