The Apostasy That Wasn't: The Extraordinary Story of the Unbreakable Early Church

With the touch of a master storyteller, Rod Bennett narrates the drama of the early Church s fight to preserve Christian orthodoxy intact even as powerful forces try to smash it to pieces. The theory goes like this: Just a few centuries after Christ s death, around the time the Roman Empire converted to Christianity, the true Faith suffered a catastrophic falling-away. The simple truths of the gospel became so obscured by worldliness and pagan idolatry kicking off the Dark Ages of Catholicism that Christianity required a complete reboot. This idea of a Great Apostasy is one of the cornerstones of American Protestantism, along with Mormonism, the Jehovah s Witnesses, and even Islam. Countless millions today profess a faith built on the assumption that the early Church quickly became broken beyond repair, requiring some new prophet or reformer to restore the pure teaching of Jesus and the apostles. This theory is popular... but it s also fiction. In The Apostasy that Wasn t, Rod Bennett follows up his bestseller Four Witnesses with an account of the historical events that led him out of his own belief in apostasy theory and into the Catholic Church. With the touch of a master storyteller, he narrates the drama of the early Church s fight to preserve Christian orthodoxy intact even as powerful forces try to smash it to pieces. Amid imperial intrigue, military menace, and bitter theological debate, a hero arises in the form of a homely little monk named Athanasius, who stands against the world to prove that there could never be a Great Apostasy because Jesus promised his Church would never be broken.

• Four Witnesses: The Early Church in Her Own Words
• The Bad Shepherds: The Dark Years in Which the Faithful Thrived While Bishops Did the Devil's Work
• The Fathers Know Best: Your Essential Guide to the Teachings of the Early Church
• Christus Vincit: Christ's Triumph Over the Darkness of the Age
• Infiltration: The Plot to Destroy the Church from Within
• Jesus and the Jewish Roots of Mary: Unveiling the Mother of the Messiah
• The Day Is Now Far Spent
• When the Church Was Young
• The Case for Jesus: The Biblical and Historical Evidence for Christ
• The Real Story of Catholic History: Answering Twenty Centuries of Anti-Catholic Myths