Best-Selling Classic "Understanding the Times" Is Revised & Updated

By Timothy Yap Sep 03, 2015 04:23 AM EDT

Understanding the Times, one of the best-selling worldview texts of all time with more than 600,000 copies in print, has been revised and expanded by Dr. Jeff Myers, Ph.D., president of Summit Ministries, to equip today's generation of believers to know and defend the Christian faith against competing worldviews.Understanding The Times: A Survey Of Competing Worldviews, releasing today from David C Cook, examines six worldviews that influence just about everyone today: Christianity, Secularism, Marxism, Islam, New Spirituality and Postmodernism.

A landmark guide to understanding the ideas and forces that are shaping our times, Understanding the Times, by David Noebel and Dr. Jeff Myers, provides Christians with a readable, fascinating and comprehensive treatment of the most significant religious worldviews operating in Western Civilization. Based on Summit Ministries' half century of teaching, this trusted reference set provides an invaluable resource for students of the Bible to understand today's most significant worldviews and defend their faith.

Focusing on ten basic disciplines, the seeds from which most things in academia grow: theology, philosophy, ethics, biology, psychology, sociology, economics, law, politics and history, Understanding the Times has been revised and expanded to keep up with the emergence of new ideas and the repackaging of old ones.

"Our worldview does not merely determine what we think the world is like; it determines what we think the world should be like," says Dr. Myers. "In other words, our worldview not only describes reality, it prescribes how we act and respond to every aspect of life. Because our ideas do determine how we behave, the bottom line is that our ideas do have consequences."

Understanding the Times shows how Christianity trumps competing worldviews in the battle for ideas and truth. "In every discipline, we think the Christian worldview shines brighter," suggests the book's authors. "It better explains our place in the universe and is more realistic, more scientific, more intellectually satisfying, and more defensible. Best of all, it is faithful to the one person with the greatest influence in heaven and on earth-Jesus Christ."

"Christianity isn't just a set of commands and inspirational sayings; it is a story that God is telling, a story that makes sense of all other stories," continues the authors.

The authors also offer a warning to readers, suggesting that "proponents of many worldviews don't like it when you start poking their nests. This is especially true of academics. Questioning professors and authorities can anger them and make them want to attack...If you live as we are suggesting in this book, you will probably come under attack as well. We're going to prepare you to respond, not with returned name-calling or sarcasm, but with reasonable arguments... By understanding these six worldviews we'll see how people come to grips with the rules of the world and form patterns they hope answer life's ultimate questions."

Understanding the Times has been endorsed by a veritable who's who of biblical scholars, authors, ministry leaders and professors, including John Stonestreet, Executive Director of the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview and co-author of Making Sense of Your World; David Naugle, Th.D, Ph.D., Distinguished University Professor, Chair and Professor of Philosophy, Dallas Baptist University, and author ofWorldview: The History of a Concept; Francis J. Beckwith, Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy and Church-State Studies, and Associate Director of the Graduate Program in Philosophy, Baylor University; Hunter Baker, J.D., Ph.D., Academic Dean and Associate Professor of Political Science, Union University, and author of The End of Secularism, Political Thought: A Student's Guide, and The System Has a Soul; Jim Daly, President, Focus on the Family; and too many others to list here.