To understand God's programme for the Church 2. To present Church history in a simple, easy to understand Scriptural way.
Church history makes both fascinating and formidable study.
It is fascinating, enriching, encouraging and edifying because we see the hand of the Lord Jesus Christ guiding His Church through 2000 years of spiritual and corporeal growth, doctrinal illumination, persecution and triumph, decline and restoration, discharge of duties and responsibilities to a lost world, towards its fulfilment - the Rapture. Yet it is formidable in its complexity, perplexity and multiplicity of dates , events, personalities, ecclesiastic systems and denominations, doctrines, governments, controversies, heresies, cults and sects, literature both apologetic and polemical, etc, so that many are discouraged when confronted with this massive accumulation of details. Formation of Church. So let us seek to know and understand Church history. Familiar approach to Church histo ry.