Lux Lucet

From the sole of the foot even to the head, there is no soundness in it.

– Isaiah 1:6

If people think at all about civilizational collapse, they tend to think of the fall of the Roman Empire. Famously chronicled by English historian Edward Gibbon, the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 B.C. is considered a red letter date in history. Those who have not read Gibbon may reasonably suppose he stopped his account at that point. But such is not the case. Gibbon was just getting warmed up. From the fall of Rome, he want on the chronicle the rise of Islam in the 6th century and its conflict with, and eventual conquest of, the Eastern Roman Empire. He ended his history with the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in A.D. 1453.

But as impressive as it is, Gibbon’s The
History of the
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is not the first or the best account of civilizational collapse. That honor would have to fall to Old Testament, much of which chronicles of The Decline and Fall of the Hebrew Republic. Established in Canaan under Joshua, the Hebrew Republic devolved into a monarchy under

Portrait of Edward Gibbon (1737-94) c.1779 (oil on canvas) by Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-92)

Saul in 1050 B.C., reached the height of its wealth and power under Solomon between the years 970 and 930 B.C., then split into a Northern and a Southern Kingdom under Solomon’s son Rehoboam. From there, the fortunes of the two kingdoms trended downward over the course of several centuries until the fall of the Northern Kingdom to Assyria in 722 B.C. and the final conquest of the Southern Kingdom by Babylon in 586 B.C.

The history of the Decline and Fall of the Hebrew Republic is exceptionally well documented, for it is given to us in the form of God’s inspired, infallible, inerrant Word. As such, we have a perfect record, not only of what took place, but God’s own interpretation of why it took place. One of the problems of secular history is getting the facts straight. But even if a historian were to be given perfect documentation of the period they were studying, there still would remain the issue of interpreting the events. Events do not interpret themselves. Events must themselves be explained. Those problems do not exist with the Old Testament. God has graciously provided to us both the facts and their correct interpretation.

Though many people do not seem to recognize it, we who are alive at the beginning of the 21th century are living through a civilizational collapse, one that has much in common with that experienced by the ancient Israelites and recorded in I and II Kings, I and II Chronicles, and in the prophets. Many of the same ills that beset us in the 21st century are the same as those experienced by the Hebrews in the centuries leading up to the collapse of that nation. But not only are the symptoms the same – moral decline, economic decline, disastrous foreign policy, internal strife – the cause is the same as well. In both cases, the people turned their backs on God and his Word. And just as the Israelites learned that a godly heritage without actual godliness is no protection against disaster, so too are we in the West being taught that that same hard lesson

Judah and Israel

Isaiah the son of Amoz prophesied in Jerusalem in the second half of the 8th century B.C., his ministry extending from about 740 B.C. to around the end of the century. At this point in history, Jerusalem was the capital of the Southern Kingdom of Judah, the split with the Northern Kingdom of Israel having taken place about two centuries earlier. As Isaiah makes clear, these were hardly the halcyon days of King Solomon’s reign.

Isaiah by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

In the first chapter of his book, Isaiah describes the condition of Judah in these words,

Why should you be stricken again? You will revolt more and more. The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faints. From the sole of the foot even to the head, there is no soundness in it, but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores; they have not been closed or bound up, or soothed with ointment

Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire; strangers devour your land in your presence; and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers. So the daughter of Zion is left as a booth in a vineyard, as a hut in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city. Unless the LORD of hosts had left to us a very small remnant, we would have become like Sodom, we would have been made like Gomorrah (Isaiah 1:5, 6).

And what is the reason for the sorry state of affairs in Judah? Isaiah leaves no doubt as to the cause. For Isaiah had previously described the nation in these words,

Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth! For the LORD has spoken: “I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against Me; the ox knows its owner and the donkey its master’s crib; but Israel does not know, My people do not consider.”

Alas, sinful nation. A people laden with iniquity, a brood of evildoers, children who are corrupters! They have forsaken the LORD, they have provoked to anger the Holy One of Israel, they have turned away backward (Isaiah 1:2-4).

The cause of the nation’s woes was that the people lacked knowledge, “they do not consider.” More specifically, the people lack the knowledge of the Lord. Instead of seeking his counsel, they turned their back on him. As a result a once godly people became a sinful nation, and destruction quickly followed.

Writing at the same time as Isaiah, Hosea was a prophet of God in the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Israel was in an even more advanced state of decay than was Judah. And just as Isaiah did in Judah, Hosea brought a devastating message of judgment against the people of the Israel.

Hear the words of the LORD, you children of Israel, for the LORD brings a charge against the inhabitants of the land:

“There is no truth or mercy or knowledge of God in the land. By swearing and lying, killing and stealing and committing adultery, they break all restraint, with bloodshed upon bloodshed…

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you from being priest for Me; because you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children (Hosea 4:1, 2, 6).

Swearing, lying, stealing, killing, and committing adultery, the people of Israel were out of control and quickly coming to the end of their rope. As with Judah, the root cause of the problem was the people’s lack of knowledge of God. That was what destroyed them.

The Contemporary West

Commenting about the state of the nation under Ahaz, one of the kings who reigned in Judah during Isaiah’s ministry, the author of II Chronicles wrote, “For the LORD brought Judah low because of Ahaz king of Israel, for he had encouraged moral decline in Judah and had been continually unfaithful to the LORD” (II Chronicles 28:19).

Moral Decline

The contemporary western world is suffering from an advanced state of moral decline. Like Judah in Isaiah’s time, there is no soundness in it., and it will be brought low as a result. Built upon the foundation of the Reformation, the West began the process of casting off its godly heritage in the 19th century. Now, at the start of the 21st century, the process is all but complete.

Public morality is low and sinking lower all the time. The most recent outrage being the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States to make legal what God calls an abomination, declaring gay marriage legal in all 50 states. Isaiah thanked God for the remnant that prevented Judah from turning into another Sodom or Gomorrah. If today’s Christians do not rise to the challenge, that is exactly where we are headed.

Financial Collapse

Our debt-based financial system, run as it is by central banking, fiat money printing, Keynesian con artists, is a Ponzi scheme ripe for a collapse at any moment. What will happen when the system does finally break down? There is a good chance the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will take over and replace the US dollar with a world currency. As demonstrated by Richard Bennet and Ronald Cooper in their paper The Financial Crisis and the Papal Economic Offensive, the Roman Catholic Church-State has significant ties to the IMF and other global financial institutions such as the World Bank. This is not a small thing. For the book of Revelation predicts a time when,

He [the beast] causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man: His number is 666. (Revelation 13:16-18).

In the Historicist, that is the say, in the Protestant school of prophetic interpretation, 666 has always been understood as code for the Papal Antichrist. Because the situation described in Revelation 13: 16-18 apparently has not yet occurred, it is reasonable to look for fulfillment of this prophecy in the future. It may be that when the US dollar has collapsed and with it the dollar based world financial system, we will witness a new, worldwide financial system using a currency issued by an IMF under the control of the great Papal of Antichrist. If that indeed is what occurs, the Vatican would be in the position to fulfill the prophecy of Revelation 13 by strangling any economic activity by those who do not accept its dictates. It already did this on a regional scale in Europe during the middle ages. But Rome has its sights set on bigger things.

The Rule of Law

Writing about the Jerusalem of his day, Isaiah commented, “How the faithful city has become a harlot! It was full of justice; righteousness lodged in it, but now murders” (Isaiah 1:21). The West once cared about justice and the rule of law, but more and more the idea of equality before the law is becoming a thing of the past. The wealthy and well-connected get away with almost anything, while ordinary people are punished to the fullest extent possible. Hillary Clinton conducts official business on special servers in her residence and no consequences follow. The emails of Lois Lerner, an IRS official charged with using the agency’s powers to target conservative groups are erased, and no one is prosecuted. It would seem that being a master of the universe means never having to say you’re sorry.

Feminism

Feminism is running rampant, and there appears to be no end in sight. If the powers-that-be get their way, the USA will soon have its first female president in the form of Hillary Clinton. It is a disgrace to any nation to have a woman in charge. Isaiah made this point when he wrote, “As for My people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them” (Isaiah 3:12). In 1558, John Knox published his First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women
in which he admonished the feminists of his day, writing,

Wonder it is, that amongst so many pregnant wits as the isle of Great Britain has produced, so many godly and zealous preachers as England did sometime nourish, and amongst so many learned, and man of grave judgment, as this day by Jezebel are exiled, none is found so stout of courage, so faithful to God, nor loving to their native country, that they dare admonish the inhabitants of that isle, how abominable before God is the empire or rule of wicked woman…

I am assured that God has revealed to some in this our age, that it is more than a monster in nature that a woman shall reign and have empire above man.

And this problem is not limited to the affairs of state. Churches, businesses, schools etc., none of them think twice about putting women in authority over men. Indeed, the ironically named 1964 Civil Right Act, which is actually a toxic destroyer of real civil rights, has created an environment in which private businesses are forbidden to take into account the God-given differences between men and women, forcing millions of men to be subject to the monstrous regiment of women in the course of earning their daily bread.

Conclusion

One could go on with further examples chronicling the decline of the West and highlighting how similar it is to what Judah and Israel went through in the time of the Old Testament, but by now the reader should see the point.

But as depressing as current trends are, there is another lesson that Christians can take from the Old Testament, one that should bring them encouragement. The record of Judah and Israel, you see, did not end with the fall of Samaria and Jerusalem. Yes, the destruction wrought on those nations was terrible, but it was not final. God was faithful to his covenant people. He did not leave them to perish utterly. Following chapter after chapter of decline and the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians, the book of II Kings ends on a hopeful note. The text reads,

Now it came to pass in the thirty-seventh year of the captivity of Jehoiachin king of Judah, in the twelfth month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, that Evil-Merodach king of Babylon, in the year that he began to reign, released Jehoiachin king of Judah from prison. He spoke kindly to him, and gave him a more prominent seat than those of the kings who were with him in Babylon. So Jehoiachin changed from his prison garments, and he ate bread regularly before the king all the days of his life. And as for his provisions, there was a regular ration given him by the king, a portion for each day, all the days of his life (II Kings 25:27-30).

The lesson we can take from this is that God is faithful to his word. He did not utterly cast off his people, but preserved a remnant that would one day return to home and take root downward and bear fruit upward. He faithfully preserved the Davidic line of kings, from which would later come our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

God is faithful. And for this reason, Christians have cause for hope. This world is dying, and we may experience many tribulations that we would rather not face. But no matter how bad things get in this world, ultimately we can have faith that our citizenship is in heaven. And this reward, no one can take away.