2,000 Years of Christ's Power Series

Every generation has an uncanny tendency to view themselves as more enlightened than those that preceded it. The church certainly has made mistakes all through history - and yet we would not possess the insights we have today without the effort, and even some of the mistakes, of our predecessors.

The first volume of 2,000 Years of Christ's Power covers the period from the 1st Century AD to the start of the Middle Ages. From the works of Saint Augustine of Hippo to the first apologetic ever penned, the foundations of what we take for granted today were establised during this time in history.

About the Series

2,000 Years of Christ's Power is a multiple voluem series on the history of the church. Academically reliable, but written with an easy, even humorous style which makes it accessible to anybody with an interest, this work falls into a category all of its own.

Dubbed the 'Dark Ages' almost before they had begun to draw to a close, the Middle Ages have continued to be seen as a time of hardship and oppression, full of popes and crusades.

This second volume of 2,000 Years of Christ's Power unveils another side of the Middle Ages: the continual workings of Christ as He built His kingdom through figures such as Thomas a Kempis and John Wycliffe, who lived and struggled during these centuries. This was far from a period of stagnation; rather it was the fire from which the Reformation was kindled.

A reaction against the attitude of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance of the 14th to 17th centuries is often regarded as the cultural bridge between the Middle Ages and modern history. And the Reformation was the passionate, divisive argument that grew out of it. Bread and wine, or body and blood...infants or adults...faith alone or partial works? Catholics, Calvinists, Lutherans, Anabaptists—our present-day divisions were the front-page headlines of the Reformation.

In this third volume from the four-volume series, 2,000 Years of Christ's Power, church historian Nick Needham tells the story of one of the most exciting times within Christian history—the story of Renaissance and Reformation. He makes no attempt to somehow patch up or gloss over the division of the church today. Rather, in weaving a narrative that reveals the progression of the Reformation era, and the daring bravery of its figures, he presents an opportunity for all religious descendants of that amazing 16th century eruption to meet and interact with the authentic voices of their epoch-making ancestors in the faith. With accessible language and solid scholarship, Needham illuminates a period of history from which we have much to learn—one of the most important of these lessons being the vibrancy of people's lives and the courage with which they faced death.

Perhaps no other time period has been so profoundly marked by sheer intensity of conflict—between traditions and within traditions—as that spanning from the 16th to the 18th century. The exciting times of learning and discover that stretched the boundaries of accepted thought amidst the Renaissance and Reformation had left in their wake a period of universal uncertainty that turned the centuries-old status quo on its head.

Nick Needham's 2,000 Years of Christ's Power: The Age of Religious Conflict, the fourth of a multiple volume series on the history of the church, covers roughly the period between 1560 to 1740. It presents a time from which English Protestantism, Scottish Presbyterianism, and French Catholicism, to name a few, were birthed and refined. Academically reliable, but written with an easy, even humorous style which makes it accessible to anybody with an interest, this work falls in a category all of its own, detailing an era within church history that has profoundly and directly impacted the characteristics of our own period of history.