Robert, Restless and Always Reforming

More than 200 years ago in 1787, Edward Gibbon wrote a book called Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Gibbon for 20 years he research and studied the Roman Empire in an attempt to find out how a nation or an empire could be so grand yet suddenly collapse into ruin. How could such a thing happen? While reading this monumental masterpiece of roman history, Gibbon offers five reasons for the fall of great civilizations in history. When reading them I could not help but make a mental connection with the condition of our own country. As I read this weeks headlines in the news I read Zachary Quinto is coming out gay, 15 yr old boy commits sucide due to being gay and bullied, and a christian minister gets arrested in prostitution ring bust. The five reasons are listed below:

First: Rapid increase of divorce, with the undermining of the sanctity of the home, which is the basis of society.

Second: The spiraling rise of taxes and extravagant spending.

Third: The mounting craze for pleasure and the brutalization of sports.

Fourth: The building of gigantic armaments and the failure to realize that the real enemy lay within the gates of the empire, in the moral decay of its people.

Fifth: The decay of religion and the fading of faith into mere form, leaving the people without a guide.

“Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.” (Proverbs 14:34)
“Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord…” (Psalm 33:12)
“Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap.” (Galatians 6:7)

A great sermon that runs along the same theme which is titled “A Nation Abandoned by God” by John MacArthur is a great theological and biblically based exposition of how God can give a nation over to its depravity.