For many years, men of good intentions have been predicting the decline and fall of America. Many of the short-term predictions have proven to be inaccurate, even though there is some truth to the prevailing belief that this nation will fall, like every great nation before it. Apart from revival and reformation, this nation is destined to self-destruct. The problem with many of these predictions is that, though their prognosis is right, their diagnosis is wrong. Yes, the future is bleak, but our problem is not ultimately political, economic, or social, as they would have us believe. History teaches us that the decline of this nation is due to spiritual factors. The political, economic, and social problems we are experiencing are the symptoms of spiritual deterioration.

Our problem is that we don't really learn from history, as has been the case of the other cultures before us. George Santayana said, "Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it." The philosopher Hegel said, "What experience and history teach us is this, that people and government never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it." As Winston Churchill said, "The one thing we have learned from history is that we don't learn from history."

The refrains that are often heard are, "It can't happen here," or "Our country is different." History has shown that the average age of the great civilizations is around two hundred years. Countries like Great Britain exceed the average while other countries, like the United States, are just now reaching the average age. Each of the great civilizations in the world passed through a series of stages, from their birth, to their decline, and ultimately to their death. Historians have listed these in ten stages:

1. From Bondage to Spiritual Faith
2. From Spiritual Faith to Great Courage
3. From Great Courage to Liberty
4. From Liberty to Abundance
5. From Abundance to Excess and Selfishness
6. From Selfishness to Complacency
7. From Complacency to Apathy
8. From Apathy to (Sexual) Moral Decay
9. From (Sexual) Moral Decay to Dependence
10. Finally, from Dependence to Bondage

Notice the progression from bondage to liberty, back to bondage. The first generation throws off the shackles of bondage only to have a later generation, through apathy and indifference, allow itself to once again be enslaved. This is the direction this and every other country is headed. The book of Judges shows that the nation of Israel passed through these same stages. This country will do the same, unless revival and reformation break out and reverse the inexorable decline of this nation.

Malcolm Muggeridge made this powerful observation:

"I conclude that civilizations, like every other human creation, wax and wane. By the nature of the case, there can never be a lasting civilization any more than there can be a lasting spring or lasting happiness in an individual life, or a lasting stability in a society. It's in the nature of man, and of all that he constructs, to perish, and it must ever be so. The world is full of the debris of past civilizations, and others that are known to have existed, which have not left any debris behind them, but have just disappeared."

He went on to say:

"...whatever their ideology may be, from the Garden of Eden onwards, such dreams of lasting felicity have cropped up and, no doubt, always will. But the realization is impossible for the simple reason that a fallen creature like man, though capable of conceiving perfection and aspiring after it, is in himself and in his works forever imperfect. Thus he is fated to exist in the no-man's land between the perfection he can conceive and the imperfection that characterizes his own nature and everything he does."

Nations rise and nations fall. Every nation has followed this progression from bondage to bondage. The nations of this century will be no different. Let us not accept the Marxist notion that these are fixed and intractable laws of history. Christians can point to unusual times when revival has redirected the inexorable decline of a civilization. In the Old Testament, Jonah saw revival postpone God's judgment of Nineveh. In the sixteenth century, Martin Luther and John Calvin saw a Protestant Reformation transform Europe. In the history of the United States, the First and Second Great Awakenings changed individuals and our society. Apart from God's intervention, nations will decline and eventually pass off the scene. Much of the Old Testament records the history of the nation of Israel. It passed through these same stages, and so will every country in the world.

Nations most often fall from within, and this fall is usually due to a decline in the moral and spiritual values in the family. As families go, so goes a nation. This has been the main premise of thinkers from British anthropologist J. D. Unwin to Russian sociologist Pitirim Sorokin, who have studied civilizations that have collapsed. Unwin died in 1936. His research was published in 1940 under the title “Hopousia: The Sexual and Economic Foundations of a New Society.” He was likely influenced by Sigmund Freud to some degree, scrutinized the sexual behaviors of 86 cultures through 5,000 years of history. His observations were, and are, sobering.

Freud maintained that sexual repression was the root cause of a society's ills. However, Unwin found the opposite to be true. His findings showed cultures that observed a strict sexual ethic – especially valuing pre-nuptial chastity and post-nuptial monogamy – thrived and flourished. However, those societies that rejected sexual restraint withered and died. “Expansive energy,” was the term Unwin used to describe a culture that was growing and healthy. What Unwin discovered is that once a society ceased to value marriage and sexual restraint, it began to decline. “In human records,” Unwin wrote, “There is no instance of a society retaining its energy after a complete new generation has inherited a tradition which does not insist on pre-nuptial and post-nuptial continence.” In other words, once a generation abandons a sexual ethic that values sexual restraint and monogamy, the following generation begins to wane culturally. It is then only a matter of time before the society shrivels and dies.

Concerning his study, Unwin made a chilling observation. He wrote, “The evidence is that in the past, a class has risen to a position of political dominance because of its great energy, and that, at the period of its rising, its sexual regulations have always been strict. It has retained its energy and dominated the society so long as its sexual regulations have demanded both pre-nuptial and post-nuptial continence… I know of no exceptions to these rules.” Once a society utterly rejects a sexual ethic that values restraint, its days are numbered.

In the Netherlands, where gay marriage is already legal, the average "committed" gay relationship is lasting just 1.5 years. Dr. Timothy Dailey, Center for Marriage and Family Studies, said, "These so-called committed homosexual couples had an average of eight extra-sexual partners per year." An even more startling statistic that one study found is that 43 percent of white homosexuals slept with 500 or more men, and 28 percent had sex with a thousand or more men. Dailey said, "It's really something radically different and do we really want to subject children to this kind of environment?"

One popular activist wrote that homosexuals should seek to "...redefine the institution of marriage completely...The most subversive action lesbian and gay men can undertake...is to transform the notion of 'family' entirely." Why would they want to do that? Talk show host Tammy Bruce is herself a lesbian, but she doesn't support homosexual marriage. She warns that some gays are what she calls "malignant narcissists," striking out at whatever they think threatens them, or does not measure up to their idea of an acceptable lifestyle. Bruce says, "In the gay community, you are looking at a contingent that wants to literally destroy the nature of tradition in this nation, because they feel, in their very narcissistic way, that it's not good for them." So, many homosexuals insist on having it both ways. They want marriage, but without monogamy; or all the benefits of marriage, but without the permanent commitment. That will surely have ripple effects in the heterosexual world.

In Scandinavia, the first place where gay marriage was formally legalized, it appears it is actually helping to kill off the traditional form of marriage; a man and a woman committing for life, and having children. Secular social scientist Stanely Kurtz said, "What we see in Scandinavia is marriage, quite literally, is dying." He points out gay couples can't make babies. So their Scandinavian marriages are erasing the idea that making babies and being married are all wrapped up together and inseparable. "The result," says Kurtz, "is that 60 percent of first-born children in Denmark are born out of wedlock, and there are some parts of Scandinavia, believe it or not, where as many as 80 percent of first-born children are born out of wedlock. These are the most liberal districts where the acceptance of gay marriage is the highest." Already, many Scandinavians weren't marrying until after their first child. Now, since gay marriage, there is the progression of the idea children and marriage are separate subjects. More couples are waiting to wed until after their second child. Soon, they may just skip wedlock altogether. Kurtz remarked, "In Scandinavia, same-sex marriage is part of a collection of factors, which first break marriage apart from the idea of parenthood and second, lead to the elimination eventually of marriage itself."

Social historian Allan Carlson, author of "The American Way," said, "Homosexuality, by definition, cannot create children, so it's a trivialization of the institution." The U.S. is ripe to have the same thing happen here. Already the marriage rate is down almost half from a high in the 1950s. Five-and-a-half million American couples are deciding to just shack up rather than wed. American women are having more than 1.3 million babies out of wedlock in the average year.

In his 1979 book, Our Dance Has Turned To Death, sociologist Carl W. Wilson outlined the dangers facing traditional marriage and the family in America's increasingly sexualized culture. Wilson could clearly see what was going to happen to the American family if our society continued to be sex saturated. He noted that history reveals that nations decline and eventually die when sexual immorality becomes rampant and the traditional family is discarded in favor of group sex, homosexuality, infidelity, and unrestrained sexual hedonism. "When 30 to 70 percent of all children born in the United States this year will grow up with a single parent, you realize this is not a trivial matter." "No human society has ever made homosexual marriage its norm."

Once that begins, it could snowball into legalization of just about any relationship someone wants to claim is marriage, like bigamy and polygamy. If it is no longer fair to restrict marriage to one man, one woman, then how can you set any limits on it whatsoever? For instance, Kurtz warns that advocates of polyandry, which is group marriage, have begun to use the same arguments that gay marriage advocates use. Kurtz said, "They have all sorts of arrangements, you know, two women and three men, any kind of a combination, a kind of group marriage. And polyamorists (individuals who support multi-partner relationships and families) have already had a law case arguing that their marriages should be recognized."

Carlson says history shows the pairing up of men and women to form families is the very cornerstone of civilization, and it is fatal for a society to weaken that bedrock of marriage by encouraging alternatives. "It's a way of committing societal suicide," said Carlson, "because it winds up taking the one institution that is vital to the community's future, and reducing it to simply another relationship."

Wilson said, "Every human society has depended crucially on the bonding of males and females."

Historians say it is not surprising that societies fall at such times. As citizens fail to re-populate, as they concentrate on their own pleasures, their society weakens. The aged are left with few to defend them.

Carlson said, "When all these things happen, societies begin to shrivel and die. And it's happened many, many times. This is how civilizations disappear."

In his book Our Dance Has Turned to Death, Carl Wilson identifies the common pattern of family decline in ancient Greece and the Roman Empire. Notice how these seven stages parallel what is happening in our nation today:

1. Men ceased to lead their families in worship. Spiritual and moral development became secondary. Their view of God became naturalistic, mathematical, and mechanical.
2. Men selfishly neglected care of their wives and children to pursue material wealth, political and military power, and cultural development. Material values began to dominate thought, and the man began to exalt his own role as an individual.
3. This stage involved a change in men's sexual values. Men who were preoccupied with business or war either neglected their wives sexually or became involved with lower-class women or with homosexuality. Ultimately, a double standard of morality developed.
4. This stage affected women. The role of women at home and with children lost value and status. Women were neglected and their roles devalued. Soon they revolted to gain access to material wealth and also freedom for sex outside marriage. Women also began to minimize having sex relations to conceive children, and the emphasis became sex for pleasure. Marriage laws were changed to make divorce easy.
5. Husbands and wives competed against each other for money, home leadership, and the affection of their children. This resulted in hostility and frustration and possible homosexuality in the children. Many marriages ended in separation and divorce. Many children were unwanted, aborted, abandoned, molested, and undisciplined. The more undisciplined children became, the more social pressure there was not to have children. The breakdown of the home produced anarchy.
6. Selfish individualism grew and carried over into society, fragmenting it into smaller and smaller group loyalties. The nation was thus weakened by internal conflict. The decrease in the birthrate produced an older population that had less ability to defend itself and less will to do so, making the nation more vulnerable to its enemies.
7. Finally, unbelief in God became more complete, parental authority diminished, and ethical and moral principles disappeared, affecting the economy and government. Thus, by internal weakness and fragmentation the societies came apart. There was no way to save them except by a dictator who arose from within or by barbarians who invaded from without.

There are many factors in the decline of a nation. Certainly a major one is the breakdown of the family. But another potent, but less perceptible force, is the power of ideas. False ideas are bringing about the decline of western culture. Carl F. H. Henry, in his book Twilight of a Great Civilization, says:

There is a new barbarism. This barbarism has embraced a new pagan mentality... not simply rejecting the legacy of the West, but embracing a new pagan mentality where there is no fixed truth.

Today, we live in a world where biblical absolutes are ignored, and unless we return to these biblical truths, our nation will continue to decline. To understand how we have arrived at this appalling situation, we need to go back a century and look at the influence of five intellectual leaders who still profoundly affect the modern world. The first person is Charles Darwin (1809-1882). In 1859, he published The Origin of Species, and later published The Descent of Man. His writings blurred the distinction between humans and animals since he taught that we are merely part of an evolutionary progression from lower forms of life.

Darwinism, as it came to be called, not only affected the field of biology, but became the foundation for the fields of anthropology, sociology, and psychology.
The second person is Karl Marx (1818-1883). He and Friedrich Engels published the Communist Manifesto around 1850, and Marx devoted his life to writing about the demise of capitalism and coming of communism. He understood the importance of ideas. Marx once wrote: "Give me twenty-six lead soldiers and I will conquer the world." The twenty-six lead soldiers are the keys on a typewriter. The pervasive influence of communism in the world today is testimony to the truthfulness of his statement.

The third person is Julius Wellhausen (1844-1918). Although he may not be as well known as the other two men mentioned, his influence was just as profound. He was a German Bible scholar whose theory on the dating of the Pentateuch completely transformed Old Testament studies.

Wellhausen argued that the early books of the Bible were not put together by Moses, but were gathered together many centuries later by several different men called redactors, who wove various strands together. He and his disciples established an anti-supernatural approach to the scriptures, which is influential in most denominational seminaries today.

The fourth person is Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). He merely took the logical implications of what Darwin was doing in biology and applied them to what today is known as psychology and psychiatry. Freud argued that humans are basically autonomous, and therefore do not need to know God. Instead, we need to know and understand ourselves since our problems stem from those secret things that have evolved in our lives from our past.

A fifth person is John Dewey (1859-1952). He is the founder of modern education and published his first work, The School and Society, in 1899. John Dewey was also one of the co-signers of the Humanist Manifesto in 1933. Dewey, like Darwin and Freud, believed that humans are autonomous. They don't need to have an authority above them, but can evolve their our own system of education. Thus the very foundation of modern education is anti-supernatural. Ideas have consequences, and false ideas can bring down a nation. The theories of these five men are having devastating consequences in our nation and world. Unless we return to biblical absolutes, our nation will continue its decline.

The decline and fall of nations is usually due to internal factors rather than external threats. Even though some may have fallen to barbarians, their demise ultimately came because of moral and spiritual weakness, which manifested itself as military weakness. Historians have listed the stages in the decline of a nation. These should not be too surprising to any student of the Old Testament. The stages of decline parallel the stages through which the nation of Israel passed. Neither should they surprise a student of the New Testament. In the opening chapter of Paul's letter to the church in Rome, he traces a similar progression. In fact, Romans 1 shows the decline of a civilization from a societal perspective. Looking at the Hellenistic world of his time, he reflects on the progression of sin in a nation.

1. The first stage is when people turn from God to idolatry. Although God has revealed Himself in nature to all men so that they are without excuse, they nevertheless worship the creation instead of the Creator. This is idolatry. In the past, this took the form of actual idol worship. In our day, it takes the form of the worship of money or the worship of self. In either case, it is idolatry. A further example of this is a general lack of thankfulness. Although they have been prospered by God, they are ungrateful. And when they are no longer looking to God for wisdom and guidance, they become vain and futile and empty in their imaginations. They no longer honor God, so their foolish hearts become darkened. In professing to be wise, they have become fools.

2. Men and women then exchange their natural use of sex for unnatural uses. Here the Apostle Paul says those four sobering words, "God gave them over." In a society where lust- driven sensuality and sexual perversion dominate, God gives them over to their degrading passions and unnatural desires.

3. Anarchy. Once a society has rejected God's revelation, it is on its own. Moral and social anarchy is the natural result. At this point God has given the sinners over to a depraved mind and so they do things which are not proper. This results in a society which is without understanding,untrustworthy, unloving, and unmerciful.

4. Judgment. God's judgment rightly falls upon those who practice idolatry and immorality. Certainly an eternal judgment awaits those who are guilty, but a social judgment occurs when God gives a nation over to its sinful practices.

Notice that this progression is not unique to the Hellenistic world Paul was living in. The progression from idolatry, to sexual perversion, to anarchy, then to judgment is found throughout history. In the times of Noah and Lot, there was the idolatry of greed, there was sexual perversion and promiscuity, there was anarchy and violence, and finally there was judgment. Throughout the history of the nation of Israel, there was idolatry, sexual perversion, anarchy (in which each person did what was right in his own eyes), and finally, judgment. This progression happened throughout the Bible, and to Greece, to Persia, to Babylon, and to Rome. If it happened to these nations, then it can happen today. Unless we return to God's principles, decline and destruction are inevitable.

As Christians, we must recognize that nations will rise and fall just as individuals will be born and die. Our civilization will not last indefinitely, but will eventually pass off the scene. Only God's Word endures forever. We should not put our trust in the things of this world, for they are destined for destruction. Instead, we should put our faith in God and His word.

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