Bible Text: Daniel 6:26 | Speaker: Dr. Harold J. Sala | Series: Guidelines For Living |

For he is the living God and he endures forever; his kingdom will not be destroyed, his dominion will never end. Daniel 6:26

Does the fall of ancient Rome have parallels with the fall of the Soviet Union today? “The two greatest problems in history,” writes J. S. Reid in his book, Cambridge Medieval History, are “how to account for the rise of Rome, and how to account for her fall.” (J. S. Reid as quoted by Will Durant, Caesar and Christ, p. 702).

Will Durant, in his epic Caesar and Christ, says, “The fall of Rome, like her rise, had not one cause but many, and was not an event but a process spread over 300 years.” Durant explains, “A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within.” He continues, “The essential causes of Rome’s decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars” (Will Durant, Caesar and Christ, p. 665).

Durant also said that when Rome fell, Christians were blamed for it, something which China is replicating today. But Rome’s decay came from within, something which Edward Gibbons, who wrote the classic book on the Rise and Fall of The Roman Empire, would agree with.

Whereas it took 300 years for the glory of Rome to fade, the rise and fall of Communism within the Soviet Union took place within the span of our lives, or at least that of our parents and ours.

Among the less than complimentary things which Lenin had to say about Christianity was his charge that “All religion is utterly vile, utterly horrible.” “An opiate of the masses” was how he viewed it.

Russia, however, is not the only nation that has spurned God. An overview of 2,000 years of Biblical history shows a pattern. God blessed Israel but they soon forgot that the Almighty was the source of their strength. When they did, judgment was never spared. Time and time again God sent His prophets who proclaimed a message of impending judgment unless there was repentance and a return to the God who had blessed and prospered them.

When the temple was dedicated under Solomon, God promised: “If my people who are called by my name 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” (2 Chronicles 7:14). Within a few centuries, God had been pushed aside and Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians and His people were marched to Babylon in chains, where they stayed for 70 years.

In my generation the nation whose currency is stamped, “In God we trust!” has all but forgotten God. While a remnant of people still acknowledge Him, a radical cultural shift has all but shut Him out of public life and conversation! Altogether too often national leaders take positions of appeasement and concessions rather than biblical and moral positions,

The issue is not really whether a nation can survive without God, but whether anyone can survive without God. Nations are made up of individuals, and to deny His existence or to shut Him out of our lives does not negate the need which is in our hearts. I often think of the haunting words of another historian. It has been said that history repeats itself, and when we learn the lessons of history, we are doomed to repeat their mistakes. H. G. Wells once wrote, “Until a man finds God, he begins at no beginning and works to no end.” That was true of Israel, Rome and the Soviet Union. It is also true today.

Resource reading: Judges 2:16-19