Welcome back to another episode of five minutes in church history. On this episode we're going to go back and spend some time with our good friend, Augustine.

We've talked about his confessions, we've talked about some other issues that come out of his life, but on this episode we're going to talk

about his great classic work, The City of God.

Augustine actually got that phrase from scripture.

The phrase occurs in Psalm 87. Here's how the Psalm reads. On

the Holy Mount stands the city he founded. The Lord loves the gates of Zion more than the dwelling places of Jacob.

Glorious things of you are spoken, O City of God.

The song continues to name some earthly cities, names the city of Babylon, names some other cities.

These were great cities in the ancient world.

These were cities that had great power and had folks who made great accomplishments and were well known and had

reputations but towering over them was the city of God.

Well, Augusta not only used that phrase, but he used the entire

Psalm as some inspiration for his book.

And this was not just a simple book that Augustine sat down to write.

In fact, Augustine wrote this book from 413 to 427. Now I've had some editors in the past sort of give me a hard time

for a book that may be a couple months late but here's Augustine taking 14 years

to write this book but I'm glad he spent the 14 years on it

because he gave us such a great classic.

The book is actually composed of 22 smaller books

through we would probably call them chapters and they divide into two

parts. Books one to ten are primarily a negative critique of the pagan worldview, of pagan ideas, both philosophies that were sort of more

naturalistic or sort of focused on this world, and also the philosophies or the

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