There are valuable lessons to be learned from history. With that fact in mind, exactly when did America stop learning from the mistakes of history in regard to maintaining a strong and healthy nation? The answer to this question can easily be traced back over the last five decades, back to 1963, when America first began the legal process of removing God from our public schools through U.S. Supreme Court rulings. At about the same time, over the last few decades, the true history of America has been purposely distorted in our public school textbooks by immoral and unpatriotic academia revisionists.
The old adage says, when in Rome do as the Romans do, but here in America we are not in Rome, so why do we insist on pursuing the same mistakes that led to the demise and downfall of the Roman Empire? Ignorance of world history is one problem of Americans.
Three and a half years ago, I wrote an article for Rapture Ready titled“America Is Traveling Down the Roman Road” in an attempt to warn Americans against traveling down the same perilous Roman road, which resulted in terminal problems for the Roman Empire. However, over the last three and a half years, America has not only continued traveling down that same road, but has actually picked up the pace into a full-blown sprint down that road toward a grim future. We should not take another step down that road!
Fifty plus years ago, America began to toss aside God’s road map— the Bible—with greater frequency, and we have ignored the warning detour signs of trouble ahead until we are now at the point of getting mired down on that same crumbled Roman road of long ago.
The downfall of the Roman Empire resulted from a gradual downturn of their political, economic, and military systems, not to mention the decline of their social institutions.
The final doom for the Romans was when barbarians (we would call barbarians of old, illegal immigrants today) overran and settled within the borders of the Roman Empire.
Let’s review the list of factors contributing to the downfall of the Roman Empire and see what has transpired in America over the last three and a half years, since the time my first article on this subject was posted on RaptureReady.com.
1. Incompetent political leadership. Recent public opinion polls have indicated that President Obama is considered to be the worst and/or weakest American president since World War II. His approval rating in many polling categories is currently, on average, at or below 40% in most national polls. The United States Congress approval rating in the polls is often much worse. The House, the Senate, and even the Supreme Court votes are often divided strictly along party lines by the very people we elect to govern our country with full functionality, competence and integrity. Whatever happened to the capacity for individual thinking by the representatives we elect and appoint to government positions?
2. Incompetent military leadership. As the commander-in-chief, President Obama has continued to weaken our American military, through selective manpower and arms reductions, resulting primarily from the implementation of wide ranging military budget cuts. Recently, the military has reduced the number of officers by 1,200 captains and 550 majors. Top generals have also been recently relieved of duty. In addition, the president has placed many restrictions on Christian activity by our active troops in the military. All of the above factors will definitely affect our overall military readiness at the very time it will be needed more than ever to deal with increasing end-time wars around the world.
3. The implementation of substantial political and economic reforms. Nationalized health care in America, commonly referred to as Obama care, has now been partially implemented, amidst all of its associated problems, creating quite a national fiasco for the citizens of America, as our government continues its attempt to take over one-sixth of the American economy associated with health care.
4. An almost non-existent budgetary system, resulting in wasted monetary resources. The current United States national debt stands at $17.7 trillion and continues to rise.
5. Diminished fortifications to protect cities from barbarians. Border security along the southern border of the United States is very minimal at best. Illegal immigrants from other countries are currently flooding across our border by the thousands. So far in 2014, illegal immigrants from 75 different countries have been identified crossing our American border. It’s been reported that 80% of the U.S. population growth today is due strictly to immigration.
The following are some of the major factors related to relaxed border security, which contributed to the downfall of the Roman Empire, and now apply to our current situation of illegal immigrants entering America. How many of these factors sound familiar today?
a. The influx of illegal immigrants results in cultural and political dilution, leading to differing opinions, paths and standards among a diverse population, creating societal problems and clashes between differing ethnic groups.
b. Roman society became more complex as it tried to solve problems, resulting in new layers of bureaucracy, infrastructure and social classes.
c. Reduced tax revenue when barbarians wanted to take part in the benefits of the Roman way of doing things, without paying back into the system, resulting in a crumbling infrastructure.
d. Increased economic inequality among its citizens. The Romans implemented a system of tax collection that drove many small-scale farmers and small business owners out of business, which resulted in more out-of-work people being dependent on the governments, which placed even more tax burden upon those who could not escape taxation.
e. The Roman Empire spent more money than it took in, due to the enormous budget it took to maintain its military, and infrastructure such as roads and the water supply. This forced the Romans to frequently raise taxes, which in turn caused major economic stress.
f. Additional economic stress was placed on the empire when a greater amount of money had to be spent on social services to keep a restless public happy. This included the promise of pension payments made to retired bureaucrats.
6. Intrusion of alien religious ideas. An influx of various religions from around the world will result in the dilution and gradual undoing of America’s original Christianity based foundation. Christianity in America is already under attack at unprecedented levels, and church denominations in America are being fed with all sorts of unbiblical doctrines.
7. Increased urbanization and overpopulation of cities. This will inevitably increase the possibility of disease epidemics, water and food shortages in America. Plagues will play a major role in the end-times. Drought is already a current problem in America affecting water and food shortages. If not Ebola or tuberculosis epidemics, other yet unknown and more deadly disease epidemics will eventually befall America and the world.
8. The Romans fought with most of the Middle East countries and other countries.
The trend towards globalization today tends to draw America into almost every worldwide problem and conflict in one way or another.
9. High inflation caused by years of Roman coinage devaluation. The American dollar continues to slide in value. Murmuring is already occurring about replacing the dollar as the world reserve currency.
10. Land was withdrawn from cultivation on a very large scale. The United States government allowed for up to 40 million acres of farm land to be withdrawn from cultivation by the year 1990, and it is still a popular program today, with 27 million acres enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program as of the start of 2013.
11. Moral decay. Sexual immorality and perversion became out-of-control in the Roman Empire, including rampant homosexuality, prostitution, pornography, orgies, sex slaves, increased lust for blood and violence in sporting events, and every other debauchery imaginable in those times.
All of the above symptoms of moral decay are becoming more prevalent by the year in America, and because of today’s advancement in all forms of technology, moral decay in America is progressing very rapidly, and is one of the main reasons the United States is now sprinting down the same dead-end road as the Romans did centuries ago.
We cannot just point a finger of blame at our government for all of our problems. As individual citizens of the United States we are all to blame for the moral decline in our nation over the past few decades. If not directly, then from our apathy and our silence. We are at a major crossroad in our nation’s history. It is perhaps the last opportunity for America to stop sprinting down the Roman road, and allow us to take some time to catch our collective national breath and thoughts, as we carefully consider which fork in the road to proceed down into the future. Election time is always a good potential time to select a new appropriate course for our nation, and it should be a course pleasing to God.
What we need to do as a country is choose a road pleasing to God, because if we don’t, and we continue on our current course down the old Roman road, then America is in for additional assorted big time national troubles very soon. And if that happens, we will then undoubtedly reach the end of the American road as we knew it—in the very near future.
So just in case the very worst eventually happens to America, and Americans and the American Dream at a future point, I have prepared an appropriate epitaph to use on the “American Dream” tombstone, which will be placed at the end of the American road.
Rather than feasting on the infallible, inspired Word of God,
We chose to feed on the foolishness of mere women and men.
We became gluttons in pursuit of our fleshly, human desires,
Until we finally choked to death on our rancid, manifold sins.
The mid-term national elections in the United States will be here very soon. We once again have the opportunity to select the best possible representatives to serve: “We the people” in our government, as we proceed down the road ahead.
We should all know by now what we ALL need to do at election time. That is to VOTE!
You see the distress that we are in…come, let us rebuild the walls that we may no longer be a reproach” (Nehemiah 2:17).
May God continue to bless America until the time of the Rapture!