The world has seen many powerful nations whose
wealth, influence, and reach would understandably
cause any who dwelt within them to believe they would
last forever--yet the path of history is strewn
with their ruins.
Today, two of the past century's greatest powers,
the United States and Great Britain, are on the
verge of joining the failed states of the past--
but the true reason why goes generally unacknowledged.
Join us today on Tomorrow's World
as we explain How Great Nations Die.
♪
Greetings to all of our viewers around the world
and welcome to Tomorrow's World.
We're glad you're here.
Before we jump into our topic today,
let me mention first that we'll be offering
a special, free booklet on today's program that
you will want to request.
It's titled The United States and Great Britain in Prophecy.
Be sure to note the information we put up on
the screen throughout the program so you can get
your own free copy.
While many would, perhaps, rather not admit it, much
of the modern world has been crafted over the past
century by the economic, military, and cultural
success the United States, Britain, and British-descended
nations of the world have experienced.
As U.S. foreign-policy expert Walter Russell Mead said
in his insightful 2007 book God and Gold:
Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World,
It is unpardonably vulgar to say so, but in three
hundred years of warfare, the English-speaking
powers keep winning.
To put this another way, either the British or the
Americans or both have been on the winning side
of every major war in which they have
participated since the late seventeenth century.
That history of victory shapes the world we live in....
The Anglo-Saxon powers did not just win wars.
They changed the way the world lives, thinks,
and organizes itself as much as any of the
great civilizations of the past....
It's true.
The United States, Great Britain, and the other
English-speaking nations of the world have had an
incredible impact on world culture and way of life,
completely out of proportion to their size.
The United States, in particular, has been the
sole remaining "superpower" of the Cold War era--
a financial juggernaut and a military power the
likes of which the world has rarely seen before, if ever.
But things change.
The higher the climb, the farther the fall.
Let's briefly take a look at only one indicator of
the current strength of these Great Nations:
their economic status.
The wealth of the United Kingdom was
once considered the envy of the entire world.
And today, the United States is still considered
by many to be the chief financial engine powering
the world's economies.
But just how trustworthy is that engine?
Looking under the hood to examine more closely--
or, under the bonnet, for our friends in the UK--
doesn't give cause for hope.
It's hard to report on American national debt
because it is growing so quickly that numbers
quickly become outdated.
But as of right now, as I am recording this program,
that debt is more than 30 trillion dollars--
that's more than 97 thousand dollars for every single
living, breathing citizen of the U.S.--from the
newborn to the elderly.
That means that the U.S. public debt is currently
about 120 percent of its gross domestic product--
the financial output of the nation.
And as noted by the non-partisan Peter G Peterson foundation,
"[w]ithin 10 years, net interest costs will exceed
federal spending on crucial programs like Medicaid and
[national] defense."
Across the Atlantic, the UK is hardly doing better.
As reported by The Guardian in June 2023,
The UK's total government debt pile in May reached
more than 100% of annual national income for the
first time since 1961 as state borrowing more than
doubled, according to official figures.
In a blow to [Prime Minister] Rishi Sunak's
plans to cut taxes before the general election,
which is expected next year, the Office for
National Statistics said net debt reached
£2.6tn as of the end of May, estimated at 100.1%
of gross domestic product.
And the citizens, personally, are hardly
doing any better than their overspending governments.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York's Center
for Microeconomic Data recently reported,
Total household debt [in the U.S.] rose by $148
billion, or 0.9 percent, to $17.05 trillion in the
first quarter of 2023.... Mortgage balances climbed by
$121 billion and stood at $12.04 trillion at the end of March.
Auto loan and student loan balances also increased to
$1.56 trillion and $1.60 trillion, respectively,
but credit card balances were flat at $986 billion.
Of course, economic troubles are only
one sign of a nation's declining health and power.
We could spend the rest of our program today looking at others.
For instance, the U.S. military continues facing humiliation
after humiliation after the scarring images of the
nation's withdrawal from Afghanistan and
recruitment programs that seem more devoted to
recruiting social justice warriors and drag queens
than maintaining the top fighting force in the world.
As for the UK, The Times reported in May 2023 that
Germany was preparing to spend more on national
defense than Britain for the first time in modern
history--the same Germany whose Gross Domestic Product
is around 30 percent larger than the UK's.
Where the Anglo powers once seemed to govern
the course of the world, when the U.S. was seeking Saudi
support for its actions intended to punish Russia for its
invasion of Ukraine, news agencies around the world
reported that the Saudi leaders would not even
take U.S. President Joe Biden's phone call.
History is clear: No great nation--no great
empire--lasts forever.
Yet the real reason they die tends to be ignored.
We'll reveal that cause in the next segment of our program.
First, I want to offer you one of the most fascinating
free booklets on prophecy in our entire library:
The United States and Great Britain in Prophecy.
God's word does outline--in detail on page after page--
what is to come of the U.S. and Great Britain in the years
just ahead of us.
The prophecies of the Bible for these nations
is coming true today, and no matter where you live on
this earth, they will affect you and your family.
You need this free information.
Take a moment to order this free resource,
and I'll be right back to reveal the true killer
of great nations.
♪
For today's free offer call...
Or go to...
This clear and straight-forward resource
will help you understand this vital truth--
straight from the pages of the Bible.
If you're calling for the first time, you will also
receive a free annual subscription to Tomorrow's
World magazine.
Six inspiring issues discussing news, science,
and modern culture will help you make sense of
your world from a biblical perspective.
Call today and join millions around the world
who are turning to Tomorrow's World for
truth, prophecy, and hope in these confusing times.
Call now!
Or go to...
♪
Welcome back.
Admittedly, smaller nations can be brought down by singular
natural disasters, invasions, and other factors.
But for truly great, globe-girdling nations,
one source of downfall and demise rises above them all:
moral decay.
In this area, we can learn a lot from ancient Rome.
The Republic of Rome and the Empire that grew out of
it ruled a large portion of the world for a millennium.
Its might was unparalleled in its day.
But what is left of it today?
Ruins, ruins, and more ruins.
And while many point to overexpansion, economic
policy, military spending and other causes of Rome's
fall, the truth of the matter is that before the
borders of Rome could be breached by the forces
that would destroy it, it was already rotting within
due to decadence and moral degradation.
Many historians testify to the problem,
including Roman historians, themselves.
Writing only a handful of years before the birth of
Jesus Christ, the ancient Roman historian Livy was
well aware even then that Rome had fallen from its
greatest heights, and expresses in Book I,
chapter 1, of his History of Rome, his hope that
each reader will consider gravely
what he has recorded of his own people:
I would have every man apply his mind seriously to
consider these points...
what their life and what their manners were...
as discipline gradually declined, let him follow
in his thoughts their morals, at first as
slightly giving way, anon how they sunk more and more,
then began to fall headlong, until he reaches the
present times, when we can neither endure our vices,
nor their remedies.
The renowned Roman historian Tacitus pulled few punches
in addressing the moral state of his people.
Writing around 115 AD, in his famous passage mentioning
the crucifixion of Christ,
Tacitus was no fan of Christianity, calling it
a "deadly superstition," but his description of
his nation's capital city is noteworthy.
Observing how Christianity was only temporarily
slowed down when Christ was crucified, but then
mysteriously sprang back to life, more dynamic than
before, he writes that it "erupt[ed] again not only
in Judaea, the home of this evil, but even in
Rome, to which all that is dreadful or shameful
in the world flows and here is celebrated."
Of course, one day Tacitus will learn it wasn't just
the faith of Christians that sprung to life again
suddenly, but their Savior, as well.
Finally, consider Seneca, one of the most celebrated
Roman philosophers and writers in Roman history,
born in 4 BC and living as a contemporary of the
first Christian disciples.
His criticisms of Roman morals and culture in his
day were stinging, noting that simple honesty and
integrity were vanishing, such that mere agreements
between men were no longer sufficient, requiring
lawyers and legal papers to be drawn up to require
individuals to live up to their ends of the deal.
"O, what a shameful admission of the dishonesty and
wickedness of the human race!" he writes,
"More trust is placed in our sealrings than
in our consciences."
As for the state of marriage and family
in Rome at the time, Seneca writes,
"Is there any woman that blushes at divorce now
that certain illustrious and noble ladies reckon their
years, not by the number of consuls, but by the
number of their husbands, and leave home in
order to marry, and marry in order to be divorced?
Is there any shame at all for adultery now that
matters have come to such a pass that no woman has any
use for a husband except to inflame her paramour?"
Seneca noted that marital fidelity had become
extinct, and the lack of shame in adultery and
fornication only meant that the rot
of promiscuity spread further and faster.
His observations match those of a near
contemporary, the Roman poet Martial, who implied marriage
in Rome had essentially become legalized adultery.
Such ancient accounts fit well with the observation
of famed English historian Edward Gibbon, whose
classic work, The History of the Decline and Fall of
the Roman Empire paints a picture of a nation whose
leaders became degenerate in character, and whose
military legions brought back corrupting vices and
immoral practices from the lands they conquered.
Before Rome became a ruin on the outside, it had
become a ruin within.
And the death of that great nation became assured.
So, how do America and Britain stand in comparison?
We'll look at that in a moment.
But first, let me remind you again of the free booklet
we're offering today,
The United States and Great Britain in Prophecy.
Exactly how did these peoples rise to become
two of the greatest in history?
Was it due to their ingenuity?
Their politics?
Their military power, or their innovative economics?
Or was it something quite different entirely--
a cause known to God but unknown to historians?
This completely free booklet answers these questions,
explaining--using the pages of your own Bible--
the rise of these nations and their prophesied
destruction in the years just ahead of us.
The prophecies of the Bible spring to life when
you can identify modern nations existing today
within its pages.
Request your free copy right now,
no strings attached or obligations whatsoever,
and I'll be right back to turn our attention from the Rome
of the past toward the US and UK of the present.
♪
This clear and straight-forward resource
will help you understand this vital truth--
straight from the pages of the Bible.
Call now!
Or go to...
♪
Welcome back.
We've just surveyed some of the moral rot growing
at the heart of Rome that weakened the great empire
from within long before it fell to enemies without.
A morally corrupt nation cannot suppose that it will last.
And moral corruption causes great nations to die.
And my friends, this is vital to understand
because America and Britain, and those nations which
have descended from her, are in a moral freefall.
As explained in detail in today's free resource,
The United States and Great Britain in Prophecy,
they have turned their backs on the God who blessed
them and are actively-- even aggressively--
turning their backs on His laws.
Let's examine just a handful of biblical
guidelines and compare them to current American
and British culture to see how we measure up.
God stresses in His word the importance of family
and the marriage bond between husband and wife.
In Exodus 20, the fifth commandment reads,
"Honor your father and mother, that your days may be
long upon the land which the LORD your God is giving you."
Elsewhere in Leviticus 19:32, we read
"You shall rise before the gray headed and honor the
presence of an old man, and fear your God: I am the LORD."
The seventh of the Ten Commandments teaches the
same principle expounded by the Apostle Paul in Hebrews 13:4,
"Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed undefiled;
but fornicators and adulterers God will judge."
And in passages such as Matthew 19:4-6, Jesus Christ reaffirms
the definition of marriage as designed in Genesis 2:
A union between one man and one woman for life.
God cares passionately about respectful
relationships between generations, and between
children and parents, and about the sacred union of
man and woman in marriage.
Yet in the U.S. and Britain, younger generations are
casting aside the guidance and wisdom of previous
generations, and the nations' supposedly
enlightened academics, leaders, and social
engineers are destroying any traditional or
biblical notions of sex, gender, or family
structure and replacing them with novel designations
and configurations of their own design.
One effect of neglecting God's design of and laws
regarding the family is, believe it or not, is economic.
In a 2008 study, the Institute for American Values concluded,
"[W]e estimate that family fragmentation costs U.S.
taxpayers at least $112 billion each and every
year, or more than $1 trillion each decade."
And that was their conservative estimate.
To put this in perspective, by some estimates that amount
is the same as the total cost of the United States' war
in Afghanistan.
In the UK, the cost of family breakdown is
estimated at more than 50 billion pounds per year,
or more than 60 billion U.S. dollars.
But, of course, the real cost of broken families is not
measured in dollars, but in the damage
it wreaks on the people of a nation.
At the end of 2021, researcher and author
Melanie Phillips wrote of this in a commentary for
The Times in the UK.
What she insightfully calls "the willed
disintegration of the traditional nuclear family"
has been devastating:
"It is the greatest cause of social
inequalities, through educational underachievement,
crime and juvenile psychological disorders.
At its most extreme, it leads to neglected,
abused and dead children.
Yet this has become unsayable in the upper
reaches of government and cultural life.
So what we have instead are unspeakable acts of
cruelty and degradation--and nauseating crocodile tears."
Let's look another: the 10th commandment,
"You shall not covet." What would be the state of our
national and private debt if so many of our citizens
were not consumed with desire for the newest
cars, technology, entertainment--all
beyond our means but within our credit limits...
Jesus Christ teaches us in Luke 12:15,
"Take heed and beware of covetousness, for one's life
does not consist in the abundance of the
things he possesses."
Yet our consumer-based national economies are virtually
founded on the hope that people will ignore this advice,
resulting in the Culture of Permanent Debt that
we now enjoy.
Ultimately, our debt is enslaving our nations.
In fact, Bible prophecy says that the U.S. and
British-descended nations will eventually be crushed
by debt, as explained in today's free offer.
We read in Deuteronomy 28, verses 43 and 44...
"The alien who is among you shall rise higher and higher
above you, and you shall come down lower and lower.
He shall lend to you, but you shall not lend to him;
he shall be the head, and you shall be the tail."
Yet the solution isn't more creative economic
policy or more government handouts.
The solution is to stop sinning,
turn to Jesus Christ, and start obeying God.
There are too many examples like this for
us to cover all of them in one program, but in
summary let me refer to a statement by educator
Vincent Ruggiero, he made it in his book
Warning: Nonsense is Destroying America:
"If we are ever to solve this country's social
problems, we must acknowledge the moral
bankruptcy of our time and the culpability, not only of
the parents and teachers, but most of all the media.
We must take responsibility for creating an environment
that nurtures morality in children and adults....
To pretend the Ten Commandments are somehow irrelevant to
moral living is a violation of common sense...."
My friends, Bible prophecy is plain that the failure of
Britain and America to act on such advice is
catching up with them.
In today's free offer, The United States and Great
Britain in Prophecy, you will learn how to identify
these nations in the pages of your Bible, the real
reasons no one will acknowledge concerning
how they rose to the heights of power, and
the tragedies that will befall them in the years
before Jesus Christ returns.
Like everything we offer on Tomorrow's World,
it is already paid for and absolutely free.
Order your own free copy now, and I'll be right
back to talk about what we can do with the
information we've discussed today.
Don't go away.
♪
For today's free offer call...
Or go to...
This clear and straight-forward resource
will help you understand this vital truth--
straight from the pages of the Bible.
If you're calling for the first time, you will also
receive a free annual subscription to Tomorrow's
World magazine.
Six inspiring issues discussing news, science,
and modern culture will help you make sense of
your world from a biblical perspective.
Call today and join millions around the world
who are turning to Tomorrow's World for
truth, prophecy, and hope in these confusing times.
Call now!
Or go to...
♪
Welcome back.
We've been discussing the role that morality plays
in the death of great nations, and looking at
some examples of the sad state of morality in the
United States and Great Britain.
What is really at the heart of the problem?
There's a verse in the Psalms that haunts me on this matter.
Psalm 11:3,
"If the foundations are destroyed, what can the
righteous do?"
While our politicians discuss what color to
paint the nation's walls, they seem to ignore the
fact that the foundation, itself, is destroyed--and,
unless repaired, the house is doomed to collapse.
Concerning the Constitution of the United States,
established shortly after the birth of the nation,
Founding Father John Adams once said,
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and
religious people.
It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
Indeed, the freedoms inherent in any great
nation rely on the moral self-restraint of its citizens.
The leaders of the U.S. and Britain should be seeking to
turn their peoples to the God who created and blessed
their nations--as discussed in today's free booklet.
Instead, they encourage and enable the people's sin.
Of them, God declares in Isaiah 9:16,
"For the leaders of this people cause them to err,
and those who are led by them are destroyed."
But you, personally, don't have to wait for
a senator, congressman, prime minister, or
president to tell you to turn to the laws of God.
You don't have to wait to begin experiencing the
blessings that come from living life the way it was
designed to be lived.
If you're practicing sexual sin, indulging in
lust in your body or mind, you can repent.
You can ask God to forgive you, and to help you begin
obeying His law.
If you're letting yourself be carried away with covetousness
and greed, in a real sense worshiping things and
centering your life on your next purchase on Amazon,
you can repent and turn away from that.
You can begin obeying the 10th, 1st, and 2nd commandments.
If you want a family that is strong and stable--
a source of joy and comfort-- God has given us laws that
we can act on to help craft the sort of
family we have always wanted to have.
And you can choose to follow those laws and
build that family.
The only way to prevent great nations from dying
is for the people of great nations to seek their God
and Jesus Christ and turn from sin.
It isn't too late.
In 2 Chronicles 7:14, God says to King Solomon
words that are just as true today:
"[I]f My people who are called by My name will
humble themselves, and pray and seek My face,
and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from
heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land."
If we want to make a difference, turning in a
heartfelt manner to the God of heaven and seeking
His way with passion, zeal, and humility,
that will accomplish more than 1,000 phone calls
to your senator or congressman ever will.
I hope you will get today's free resource
on the U.S. and Great Britain in prophecy.
And, I hope you'll come back again next week.
When you do, you'll find Gerald Weston, Richard Ames,
Rod McNair, and I right here waiting to share with you
the teachings of Jesus Christ, the meaning of
the end-time prophecies of the Bible, and the good news
of Tomorrow's World.
Until then, take care.
♪
For today's free offer call...
Or go to...
Call today and join millions around the world
who are turning to Tomorrow's World for
truth, prophecy, and hope in these confusing times.
♪
The preceding program is produced by the
Living Church of God.
♪