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Audiobook edition · 36 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · 26 pagesHardcover · 6 × 9 in · 26 pagesAbout this book
What if the end of the world is not one event, but the closing of three great ages?
The Concept of Our Great Power is an anonymous Gnostic apocalypse that divides history into three aeons: flesh, soul, and a realm beyond both. A voice urges the reader to understand this vast pattern of time. According to the text, each age faces its own ending, and knowledge of the Great Power offers a way beyond worldly fear.
A saving figure enters a world whose ruling powers do not understand who he is. Around this encounter, the revelation explores ignorance, moral struggle, and the fate of the soul. Readers have long connected its first great ending, through water, with the flood story in Genesis. Its vision asks what can endure when the present order passes away.
What you’ll discover
- Three ages of existence Follow a vision that gives flesh, soul, and the world to come distinct places in history.
- Water and judgment Explore how the text connects the close of each age with its own reckoning.
- The unrecognized saving figure Encounter powers of the lower realms who fail to understand the figure among them.
- Knowledge against worldly fear Consider the text's claim that understanding the Great Power changes what the soul can face.
- A vision of fire Enter an ancient account of destruction, judgment, and what may lie beyond the present world.
Who will love it
For readers drawn to ancient visions of the end of the world, the Nag Hammadi library, and the questions of knowledge, fire and liberation that stirred early seekers in Roman Egypt.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Knowing the Power promises protection
- The past reveals what you become
- The soul carries a divine likeness
- Noah warns an age of flesh
- The sleeping soul must wake
- A revealer confronts the ruling powers
- The imitator claims the world's allegiance
- Each age tests what can endure
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The Concept of Our Great Power
by Anonymous · 350
A voice promises that those who know the Great Power remain untouched by fire.
Easy readUnder 2 hours to read2 languages
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“Why do you not ask what kind you yourself will become, rather than asking how you came to be?”
In short
What would it mean to pass through fire and come out unharmed? That is the promise that opens The Concept of Our Great Power, a short visionary text from ancient Egypt.
The Concept of Our Great Power at a glance
- Reading time
- About 10 min8 min fast, 10 min slow
- Length
- 2,350 words6 chapters
- Pages
- 36 pages36 in large print
- Library level
- Easy short sentences, plain words
- First published
- about AD 350by Anonymous
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
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Listen freeOr hold it in print: paperback, hardcover or large print, at costFrom the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A voice promises that knowing the Power saves
The text opens with a promise rather than a story. A speaker says that anyone who comes to know the great Power will become invisible, and fire will not consume that person. The speaker talks in the first person, and the listener is addressed directly as you.
The promise has a strange edge. Fire does not simply pass the knower by. It purges and destroys all that you possess, while the person who knows the Power cannot be consumed. Those in whom the speaker's form appears are saved, whether they are seven days old or one hundred and twenty years old. The number comes back later, tied to the days of Noah.
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A voice promises that those who know the Great Power remain untouched by fire.
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Details
- First published
- 350
- Language
- English
- Listening time
- 36 min
- Level
- Easy read
- Paperback
- 26 pages · 6 × 9 in
- Hardcover
- 26 pages · 6 × 9 in
- Large print paperback
- 36 pages · 6 × 9 in
- Large print hardcover
- 36 pages · 6 × 9 in
- Delivery and returns
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For Christmas, order by Thu 12 Nov
Cite this edition
The Concept of Our Great Power. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/loa-the-concept-of-our-great-power.
The concept of our Great Power. (2026). Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/loa-the-concept-of-our-great-power (Original work published ca. 350)
The Concept of Our Great Power. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/loa-the-concept-of-our-great-power.
@book{anonymous2026concept,
title = {The Concept of Our Great Power},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/loa-the-concept-of-our-great-power},
note = {First published ca. 350}
}
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What is The Concept of Our Great Power about?
It is a visionary text that surveys cosmic history in ages: the flesh, ended by Noah's flood, then the soul, then a final burning. It teaches that knowing the great Power frees a person from fire and from the rulers of this world.
Where was The Concept of Our Great Power found?
It is in the sixth codex of the Nag Hammadi library, a set of Coptic papyrus books found near Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt in 1945. The surviving manuscript is written in Coptic and shows signs of scribal error and textual corruption.
What does aeon mean in this text?
An aeon is an age or a world, a stretch of cosmic time with its own character. The text speaks of an aeon of the flesh, an aeon of the soul, and an unchangeable aeon of light to come.
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