Description

New 3rd Edition Revised and Expanded

The rise of the Christian West was spectacular. The fall of the West was similarly spectacular, especially for those who witnessed it firsthand. But the rise was more spectacular than its fall. That's the conclusion drawn in this epochal story of the Western world. The fall of Western civilization constitutes the most significant seismic shift in world history since the fall of Rome. And, such eschatological developments call for an immediate response — an extended explanation based in a definitive Christian interpretive framework. What conclusions should Christians draw from this cataclysmic event?

The timing was never better for a 2,000 year survey of the rise and fall of the Christian West. We are living in a moment when we must understand the times in order to know what to do, and how to respond. The West has already fallen, although the news has yet to sink in with most Europeans and Americans in 2021. The East is on the rise. The Christian faith is fast moving east and south, and the glory has departed from the West.  

Epoch carefully chronicles the phenomenal impact of Jesus Christ and His people upon the culture, economy, religious character, charitable institutions, educational systems, science and technology, and worldview of the Western world—and the West's subsequent impact upon the whole earth. The book then traces the devastating decline and fall of a civilization, identifying the principal defectors and key provocateurs along the way. 

The story plays out at a good clip for maximized efficiency, impact, and clarity. Author Kevin Swanson zeroes in on the most defining events and persons that would eventually make or break a civilization and the faith that ungirded it. The battle for the soul of Western civilization continued for a thousand years. As the smoke clears on the field, the survivors should be aware of the chief breaking points that brought about the demise of the West, such as the fateful forgery devised in Rheims, the Fourth Lateran Council, the Dum Diversas bull of 1452, the publication of Darwin's Descent of Man and Keynes' Economic Consequences of Peace, and more. 

Yet, the war is not over yet. The world goes on. So Epoch concludes with an international vision for the Christian church, and a clarion call for Christians to press forward in the work of discipling the nations in the generations to come.

Includes pages of illustrations, graphs, tables, firsthand accounts, biographical information, and applied Scriptural principles. 

Foreword

Foreword for Epoch

Epoch is epic! This is a masterful and majestic history of the fall of western society. I have never read 700 pages faster. I could not put it down! Exceptionally clear, compelling, and moving. It has always been my nature and my calling to understand, to analyze, to comprehend, to unpack, to discern, to grasp the truth and the lies in the world around me—to see the trends, to hear the voices, to read the ideas—to understand the signs of the times, certainly to avoid the failure of the Jewish leaders who were indicted by our Lord for their ignorance of the realities that defined their times which left them incapable of bringing light in the darkness.

If the church is the pillar and ground of the truth, it is because its leaders have biblical wisdom and knowledge of Scripture so as to protect it from lies and deception and build strong doctrinal churches where the Word from heaven produces men and women who can be trusted and who are able to proclaim the truth that is not normally available.

Kevin Swanson has produced a master work of insight into the reality of the apostate world that has replaced the Christian worldview. He gets it, and with a scalpel-like precision before the corpse is buried, he does an autopsy on the remains of Christian culture, discerning the factors and causes of its demise. This book is a complete education and should be required reading in every Christian school, for every pastor and Christian leader.

If we are to be the people of the truth, we must know the story well—the how and why. We are obviously under divine judgment. This apostate world is anti-Christian as if Christ had never come. We are Rome before the incarnation, only more guilty because of what has been rejected.

I have gone back to Epoch many times. It is a resource with spiritual wisdom and historical understanding that I keep close by. Not to understand the comprehensive insights in this book is self-inflicted ignorance and unwilling devaluing of the treasure of discernment.

—John MacArthur

Pastor, Grace Community Church

Sun Valley, California

Chancellor, The Master’s University and Seminary

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