Hi, I’m the Storyteller!

I was born to appreciate the past — and born in the right place for it

Hi, I’m Nathan Birx. I’ve been captivated by history for longer than I can remember. Best I can tell, it’s something I caught from my dad. That’s us back in 1975. I look like the Liberty Bell is ready to fall on my head. He’s making sure I don’t crawl away before Mom snaps the picture.

As a child, I thought going to Civil War battlefields and museums was how everyone spent free time. For me, growing up in the Mid-Atlantic meant growing up surrounded by history.

School field trips to America’s historic centers

Life near the Chesapeake Bay resulted in school field trips to places like Annapolis, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and D.C. It never crossed my mind that a kid growing up in some other place might have to take field trips to places less monumental.

I’ll never forget my trip to the Antietam battlefield as part of Mr. Hartung’s sixth grade class. He’d been in Vietnam, and now he led us as we charged down a grassy hill toward Burnside’s Bridge. We didn’t comprehend what we were doing in that downhill scramble, but at that moment, history was anything but dead and boring.

Bombs over Baltimore

Skip to 1992. The Baltimore Orioles have just opened a new stadium near the Inner Harbor, and I’m sitting on the third base side of the upper deck as the National Anthem fills Camden Yards. Goosebumps grow as we reach “the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air.” They come because I’m looking at the sky in which those bombs had burst. I have front row seats to history. I’m just a couple hundred years too late.

Dr. Mook teaches me church history

College came, then seminary. Seminary exposed me to a whole new branch of history. I was a Christian, but I’d never heard about church history. Under Dr. James Mook’s excited teaching, I learned the story of God’s people since New Testament times.

One of my favorite discoveries was that the Puritans weren’t dead guys with drab clothes. They were men and women who loved God and who knew Him and His word better than I probably ever would. They laughed, they loved, and they worshiped. They also knew how to suffer.

Lock me in the archives and I’ll be happy

In the years since then, I’ve kept digging for the treasures of the past. I’ve cranked through rolls of microfilm, scrolled computer screens, and strained my eyes at hieroglyphic penmanship.

I’ve missed skipped lunches while researching at the Library of Congress and climbed the National Archives’ foot-worn marble stairs. I’ve held letters in my hands from hundreds of years ago, and as I read the mail, the writers came to life again.

More than just dead guys (and girls)

If we could only see that every generation consists of men and women “with a nature like ours” (James 5:17), we wouldn’t ignore those who’ve gone before us, or rush so ignorantly into the same mistakes that have been made before.

I hope that the stories you find here will deepen your trust in God and encourage you to work hard at the Christian life. We live in a soft age and need to learn toughness from our Christian ancestors.

We live in the world that others helped to build. We suffer from their sins and mistakes. But we are also overwhelmingly blessed by their wisdom and sacrifice. Learn from their mistakes while you look to their examples.

“These things happened to them to serve as an example, and they were written down as a warning for us in whom the culmination of the ages has been attained. Therefore, whoever thinks he is standing securely should watch out so he doesn’t fall.”

— 1 COR. 10:11-12 (ISV)