Epoch

Dictionary – epoch | ˈepək | – a period of time in history or a person’s life, typically one marked by notable events or particular characteristics: the Victorian epoch. 

• the beginning of a distinctive period in the history of someone or something: welfare reform was an epoch in the history of U.S. social policy. 
• Geology a division of time that is a subdivision of a period and is itself subdivided into ages

An Epoch is a major event that greatly alters and reshapes the following years, and even following centuries.  These seem to happen about every 500 years.  Consider:

4500 years ago – Noah and a worldwide flood

4000 years ago – Abraham (father of the Jews and Muslims)

3500 years ago – Moses (birth of the nation of Israel)

3000 years ago – David and Jerusalem as capital

2500 years ago – Daniel and Jeremiah (Jerusalem no longer capital)

2000 years ago – JESUS (The Epoch of epochs)

1500 years ago – end of the Roman Empire and the rise of Islam

1000 years ago – the great Catholic split (E. Orthodox), Catholicism as a worldwide force

500 years ago – Martin Luther and Protestantism 

2000???  And today?  Humm?  Might an Epoch be happening right in front of us?   

We are possibly entering into a new world order – with the United States (among others) not in the lead.  We are possibly entering into a social order with virtually no middle class but mostly those extremely rich and many poor – we being poor.  We are possibly entering into a new order with Christians generally muted and possibly even persecuted.  

Yet, God is sovereign, God is engaged, and God is moving.  Peoples around the world through all of time have lived in worse situations and seen the power of Jesus in their own lives and changing the lives of others.  Whatever is happening horizontally does not hinder the vertical Power that is!