On Tuesday I posted this, giving you my thoughts about whether or not we are going the way of the Roman Empire.

The comments got sidetracked into a political discussion that seems to prove one of the points made by the Comptroller General of the United States.

I am a person who has had a keen interest in Bible prophecy for over thirty years now, when I first read Hal Lindsey’s The Late, Great Planet Earth.

Things that hadn’t come to pass at that time I see coming to pass now, and I do believe we are living in the End Times, although I cannot and will not speculate on how long it will take for the End Times to play out.

The same article that disturbed me has also caught the attention of Jack Kinsella, editor of The Omega Letter, a subscription-only publication.

He tells you better than I can why the Comptroller General’s assessment is so disturbing to me.

Everybody remembers the children’s story about Henny Penny, the chicken who thought the sky was falling when something fell and hit her on the head. She went around alerting all her friends, and they banded together to “go and tell the king.”

Of course, where the Henny Penny story differs from real life is that, in the Henny Penny story, the sky wasn’t really falling. In real life, one can’t be so sure.

If Comptroller Walker had used any analogy except that of the fall of Rome, the story probably wouldn’t have grabbed my attention the way it did. But using Rome made it a bit too close for comfort.

Rome was the wealthiest and most militarily powerful empire the world has ever known. No world empire since has come close, until the United States.

In a recent book, “The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America”, author Cullen Murphy lists six parallels between modern America and the last days of the Roman Empire.

1) A military unsuited to imperial responsibilities;
2) Outsourcing government work to private agencies;
3) Immigration problems and problems with the existing immigrant population;
4) Prideful ignorance of the views of the outside world;
5) Accelerating decadence in the national character, and;
6) A disconnect between the nation’s capital and its citizens.

While Murphy’s book seeks to make George Bush the Emperor Nero, Murphy does make some valid points.

Like Rome, America is a vast, multicultural state, burdened with an expensive and overstretched military, uneasy about its porous borders, with a messianic sense of global mission.

Also much like Rome, America is willfully and joyfully ignorant of foreign cultures. Murphy also draws a comparison between the barbarian invaders at the gates of Rome and the foreign corporations buying up American assets; the Romans never saw the threat until it was too late.

The arrogant Romans couldn’t conceive that others didn’t see things as they did. They thought themselves an exceptional people divinely appointed to rule and civilize humanity, which naturally, they believed, wanted to be Roman.

And there’s the matter of migration across borders of the imperium. Rome had always assimilated barbarian tribes but toward the end lost the ability to control the rate of migration, as well as the facility for effectively Romanizing the immigrants.

Murphy writes that in Rome’s final days, “a republic sustained by flinty yeomen had become a precarious autocracy administered by grasping bureaucrats.”

The Roman masses came to depend too heavily on the government, and the governing elites ruled as if the common good coincided with their private interests.

In modern Washington, this sensibility is on full display in the carnival of pork-barrel spending (which the public never punishes), and the oily machinations of the lobbying industry.

So it goes today with American liberal democracy. Is America the Roman Empire of Bible prophecy?

No. The Bible speaks of the revival of a literal Roman Empire, not the fall of a metaphorical one. But history has a way of repeating itself — when one empire falls, another steps in to take its place.

America’s decline comes at the exact same point in history that Europe’s revived empire is rising to global ascendancy.

Back in 1969, Hal Lindsey wrote that, if this is the generation that would see the return of Christ, then the Soviet and American empires must decline, and Europe must rise to global ascendancy.

That was almost forty years ago, at the peak of American power, during the height of the Cold War, during a period when Europe was divided between the American and Soviet Empires.

Nobody saw it coming in 1969, but the Bible said that would be the case, so that’s what Hal wrote in the Late, Great Planet Earth. And Hal got it right, forty years in advance.

Because that is what the Bible said would happen in the last days.

“And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh. ” (Luke 21:28)

If what is happening in our country now is the Will of God, no one is going to be able to change it, no matter how much we all fight over partisan politics.

Revelation does not mention one time anyplace that could remotely be the United States of America, so what happened to it?

If you believe in God you know everything was put into place before the beginning of time and it has been recorded for us to understand—this generation, as previous generations had it closed to their understanding. Only the people who would recognize what was happening would be able to understand it and put the pieces together.

I pray for our country and all our leaders on both sides of the aisle daily. I pray our country will turn from its wicked ways and look to God for His blessing.

I just don’t know if God has lost His patience with us yet.

We need to get down on our knees as a nation and humble ourselves before God Almighty Himself, and ask for His blessing on our country. Never mind what your political beliefs are because the things of this world are just temporary anyway and Christ will be THE Government in the end.

14 if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land. 2nd Chronicles 7:14