Welcome to Break Point, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth.

For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.

Historian and philosopher Will Durant, author of the epic 11-volume series The Story of Civilization,

famously said this, from barbarism to civilization requires a century.

From civilization to barbarism needs but a day.

Civilizations, historically speaking, do rise and fall. Our museums and history books are full of legends and artifacts from once dominant civilizations that are now reduced to ruins.

These were all, at some point, detached from the ideals, the institutions, and the activities

that originally gave them life and led them to flourish.

But now, they are no more.

With all due respect to Durant, the turn to barbarism might be quick, but civilizations do not collapse overnight.

Rather, most reach a critical moment from which they do not recover. In the new documentary Truth Rising,

scheduled for release Friday, September 5th, author and social critic Oz Guinness describes how and why

the West has now reached this civilizational moment. Recently, I interviewed Os Guinness and asked him to

explain what this means, especially for Christians.

Here's Oz.

Well, back of the idea is the sort of biblical sense of time, generation, year, day, hour, moment.

And the challenge of reading the signs of the times are our Lord's weeping over Jerusalem

because, quote, they missed God's moment when they came.

You know, I've always had a sense we need to understand the times.

No, civilizational moments.

Some people are misusing it as a fancy word for the present moment.

No, it has a real definition. A civilizational moment

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