The End Of The World As We Know It

Okay. Okay! So a few days ago, Billy Graham sounded the alarm that the second coming of Christ was near. See: http://www.wnd.com/2013/10/billy-graham-sounds-alarm-for-2nd-coming/#comment-1091172115

So he has a few years on me. Meh. More than a few years. But, it has been my experience that people always think the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. My question is, why do people come to think God is going to come to bail them out of their own man-made-problems similar to the “Deus ex Machina” of the Roman farces?

Many have preached the “end of times” during the last two millennia, using Bible passages to justify their predictions. Yet, the human race, as a whole, continues. Was it the end of times for certain civilizations and societies? You bet! But it wasn’t the “end of times” for all mankind. Will Western Civilization disappear sometime in the future? It could very well. Others have and nothing was left of their ever having lived on planet earth but their artifacts. Some were overthrown externally, but for the most part they were already internally corrupt and rotten. All they needed was a little push. Poof! Gone, along with their gods, laws, culture, mores and whatever it took to define them as a peculiar society.

Is America well on its way to dissolution? All the signs point to it, unless the American people can reinvent themselves by seizing the government and destroying every law, regulation, agency, department that is strangling the “engine of invention,” or as Carroll Quigley called it, “the instrument of expansion.”

Carroll Quigley in The Evolution of Civilizations, writes:

“As soon as the rate of expansion of a society begins to decline, it enters Stage 4, the age of conflict. This Age is marked by four chief characteristics: a) a declining rate of expansion (read loss of employment opportunities); b) growing tension and increasing class conflicts; c) increasingly frequent and violent imperialist wars; d) growing irrationality, pessimism, superstitions, and otherworldliness. The rate of expansion declines because of the institutionalization of the instrument of expansion.”

(Read, the engine of progress. In other words, too many laws, loss of personal and societal discipline, too little valued education, greed, too little monetary credit, failure of generational transmission of useful knowledge and skill sets, inordinate taxes, excessive government interference, lack of public supervision of its government, all hamper the expansion of societies..)

Quigley continues:

“Unable to get ahead by other means (creativity, imagination, risk taking, investment, skill) the masses, seek to get ahead by political action, and above all by confiscating wealth from their neighbors by either legal means, (redistribution of wealth through taxation) or illegal means, robbery, fraud, etc. At the same time, people turn to irrationality to compensate for the growing insecurity of life, for the chronic economic depression, for the growing bitterness and dangers of class struggles, for the growing social disruption and insecurity caused by imperialist wars. This is generally a period of gambling, use of narcotics, intoxicants, prescription drugs, obsession with sex (especially perverted sex), increasing crime, growing numbers of neurotics and psychotics, growing obsession with death and the Hereafter.”

If what historians tell us about the decay of societies is correct, we can look forward to more of these sociopathic behaviors as our society continues to decline. But, hope springs eternal. Remember, God helps them, who help themselves.