So the first and most obvious question is "Good Lord, why is this guy suggesting a book that doesn't even remotely relate to polygyny and barely brushes against Patriarchal family structure, especially when it focuses on something as controversial and divisive as Endtime prophecy?"
Valid question. Now allow me to answer it.
It seems to be rather a basic tenet of this site that much of what Mainstream Christendom teaches is not what is actually in the Bible. I don't think I'm out of line by going a step further and saying much of the false doctrine foisted upon Christendom with no Biblical basis (especially the enforced monogamy ideal) stems from the Greco-Roman design and heavy Pagan influence of the very early Roman Catholic Church, which sought to mold the Gospel into a shape pleasing to the Socratic and often Goddess-worshipping cosmopolites of the Roman Empire (a topic which seems to have come up in A LOT of threads recently). Here is where the book's subject matter finally intersects with anything relevant to this community.
The book's first main section is a parallel history of two separate religions which were founded around the same time, religions which grew in size and eventually found themselves in open conflict with one another. One was founded upon the belief that the God of Israel had redeemed Humanity for Himself through the Sacrifice of Calvary, making eternal life possible even though all Humanity had been doomed to death since Adam.
The other, which first took the name of "Christianity," was Roman Catholicism.
The book does a decent job (though I could have dealt with more citations and page numbers and less "such-and-such historian says such-and-such; trust me bro") of outlining this parallel (or perhaps I should say perpendicular) growth of the Body of Christ alongside (and opposed by) a twisted and corrupted doctrine "having the form of Godliness but lacking the power thereof" as 2 Timothy 3:5 would say, including the latter's eventual emergence (thanks to its willingness to infuse itself with pagan elements) as the dominant faith of Rome and its subsequent persecution of all who tried to preach the Gospel the way it was originally written without the Greco-Roman injections (such as, say, enforced monogamy). The author even provides eyebrow-raising evidence (I will not say ironclad proof, but enough evidence to bear further investigation) that the founder of the Latter (and thus the founder of the Roman Catholic Church and, by continuation, all of Mainstream Christendom) was not actually Peter but was in fact Simon Magus, the heretic mentioned in Acts 4.
Now admittedly, the book goes afield from there. Having apparently decided "it wasn't enough to call into question the very foundations of Western Christendom; let me throw a few more curveballs at you," it then delves into the history of the Holy Roman Empire (and claiming that the three short-lived Barbarian regimes in Rome, totalling less than a century combined, were three separate reiterations of it is a major stretch). From there it makes the somewhat trite claim that a reinvigorated European Union (led by Germany) will emerge as the Endtime regime of the Antichrist (a quaintly eurocentric view which American evangelicals seem obsessed with, much to my amusement), at which point I can safely say it becomes roughly as accurate an interpretation of prophecy as those Left Behind penny dreadfuls. For the sake of full disclosure I should point out that it was written by a protege of the late and highly controversial Herbert W. Armstrong, so take it with a grain of salt.
However, for one who wants to understand how "The Word of Our Father in Heaven" came to be superseded by "The Word of Our Father in Rome," and to understand how we who follow the Bible's actual teaching came to be such a minority while the majority of Christendom came to accept teachings that are not Biblically-based (such as complimentarianism and enforced monogamy), the "History of the Roman Catholic Church" section of the book is a good crash course.
Valid question. Now allow me to answer it.
It seems to be rather a basic tenet of this site that much of what Mainstream Christendom teaches is not what is actually in the Bible. I don't think I'm out of line by going a step further and saying much of the false doctrine foisted upon Christendom with no Biblical basis (especially the enforced monogamy ideal) stems from the Greco-Roman design and heavy Pagan influence of the very early Roman Catholic Church, which sought to mold the Gospel into a shape pleasing to the Socratic and often Goddess-worshipping cosmopolites of the Roman Empire (a topic which seems to have come up in A LOT of threads recently). Here is where the book's subject matter finally intersects with anything relevant to this community.
The book's first main section is a parallel history of two separate religions which were founded around the same time, religions which grew in size and eventually found themselves in open conflict with one another. One was founded upon the belief that the God of Israel had redeemed Humanity for Himself through the Sacrifice of Calvary, making eternal life possible even though all Humanity had been doomed to death since Adam.
The other, which first took the name of "Christianity," was Roman Catholicism.
The book does a decent job (though I could have dealt with more citations and page numbers and less "such-and-such historian says such-and-such; trust me bro") of outlining this parallel (or perhaps I should say perpendicular) growth of the Body of Christ alongside (and opposed by) a twisted and corrupted doctrine "having the form of Godliness but lacking the power thereof" as 2 Timothy 3:5 would say, including the latter's eventual emergence (thanks to its willingness to infuse itself with pagan elements) as the dominant faith of Rome and its subsequent persecution of all who tried to preach the Gospel the way it was originally written without the Greco-Roman injections (such as, say, enforced monogamy). The author even provides eyebrow-raising evidence (I will not say ironclad proof, but enough evidence to bear further investigation) that the founder of the Latter (and thus the founder of the Roman Catholic Church and, by continuation, all of Mainstream Christendom) was not actually Peter but was in fact Simon Magus, the heretic mentioned in Acts 4.
Now admittedly, the book goes afield from there. Having apparently decided "it wasn't enough to call into question the very foundations of Western Christendom; let me throw a few more curveballs at you," it then delves into the history of the Holy Roman Empire (and claiming that the three short-lived Barbarian regimes in Rome, totalling less than a century combined, were three separate reiterations of it is a major stretch). From there it makes the somewhat trite claim that a reinvigorated European Union (led by Germany) will emerge as the Endtime regime of the Antichrist (a quaintly eurocentric view which American evangelicals seem obsessed with, much to my amusement), at which point I can safely say it becomes roughly as accurate an interpretation of prophecy as those Left Behind penny dreadfuls. For the sake of full disclosure I should point out that it was written by a protege of the late and highly controversial Herbert W. Armstrong, so take it with a grain of salt.
However, for one who wants to understand how "The Word of Our Father in Heaven" came to be superseded by "The Word of Our Father in Rome," and to understand how we who follow the Bible's actual teaching came to be such a minority while the majority of Christendom came to accept teachings that are not Biblically-based (such as complimentarianism and enforced monogamy), the "History of the Roman Catholic Church" section of the book is a good crash course.
