Man's way leads to a hopeless end; God's way leads to an endless hope.

The elections are finally over.

 We now know who will serve as the President of the United States for the next four years. Many people are hoping that he will restore the prosperous way of life enjoyed for decades during the last century. However, we do well to ponder the five reasons that Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) offered in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire as to why the Roman Empire crumbled:

• Family life disintegrated.
• All ethical systems were discarded.
• The world of entertainment became immoral and corrupt.
• The cost of maintaining the empire’s military system became enormous.
• The empire’s economy collapsed.

About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new constitution in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a history professor at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, had this to say about the fall of the Greek Republic some 2,000 years earlier:

• A democracy is always temporary in nature; it cannot exist as a permanent form of government.
• A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.
• From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.
• The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, those nations always progressed through the following sequence:

 

1.         From bondage to spiritual faith;
2.         From spiritual faith to great courage;
3.         From courage to liberty;
4.         From liberty to abundance;
5.         From abundance to complacency;
6.         From complacency to apathy;
7.         From apathy to dependence;
8.         From dependence back into bondage.

 

During the early decades of the twentieth century, Winston Churchill stated: “The British Empire will rule the world for the next one thousand years.” During his time in office, President George H. W. Bush Sr stated that “The American way of life is non-negotiable.” Any thoughts?

We as God’s people would do well to remember that our focus in life must be on morals, not money. The model for our morality must be God’s will, not our whims. Jesus, our forgiving Savior and Servant Lord, demonstrated that will. If a nation does not conform to that will, it will crumble.

 

The mission of the church is not to invite people to sit, stand, say, sing, and scatter. It is to inspire them to search, stoop, serve, sanctify, and sweat—and seek the good of all on earth. 

 Harry Wendt