Decline and Fall

This from Pastor Andrew Isker:

Terminal Decline of Civilization and Hope for the Future
The United States is well within a period of terminal decline. This is a cause of great discouragement and even despair for many. For many years the decline was noticeable but easy to deny. Slowly, imperceptibly you notice that things are not as good as you once remembered. "Oh it is just a recession. Things will return to normal soon.” Services that you always took for granted, whether it be courteous help or functioning roads and bridges disappear.
"Oh it’s just Covid. Things will get back to the way they were eventually.” But they never do. Things continue to get worse. The most perverse sexual degeneracy is paraded before us constantly. You are ruled by a head of state who is demonstrably a petty criminal and know nothing will be done about it. What used to cost ten dollars a few years ago is now twenty. Nothing seems to be able to arrest the decline.
You might be tempted to despair. You might think "it’s over.” "All is lost.” Human civilizations decline and even collapse. Rome was thought to be the eternal city, even after it had become Christian. When it, like America, was in its death throes, many despaired just as so many are tempted to do today. But in the midst of this collapse, one of the titanic figures of Christian history, Augustine of Hippo wrote The City of God. In it he argued that human cities are not eternal, only the city of God is. Far from supporting a gnostic attitude of "‘this world is not my home’ so just give up caring about this world,” this book was instrumental in shaping the thinking of those who would build Christian civilization over the next 1500 years.
We are in a very similar position as the original readers of The City of God. Rather than despairing, we should look beyond the decline to what will come next. Rather than hoping for a return to a mythical golden age of 1776 or the 1950s, we should look to the future. Recognizing that things are falling apart and never going back together, we should ponder what kind of world will we build for our great, great-grandchil

dren. What things must be done? What things must be secured? What can we do to prepare to rebuild a world for our people and our posterity after much of what now exists is in ruins?
When the Saxons arrived in Britain and saw the Roman ruins, the remains of great villas and fortresses, they were amazed at the greatness of the long dead civilization that preceded them, as if these buildings had been built by the gods. It is not hard to imagine 200 years into the future people looking with similar amazement at the lost technological achievements of this place called "America.” "No, it’s not a legend, they really were able to light and heat their homes by splitting the atom.”
The only way to avoid such a fate is for those who are aware of the decline and alarmed by it to begin constructing parallel society as the world that exists continues to crumble. That is how classical civilization was carried forward into medieval Christendom. Peoples began to decentralize and localize. Their economic activity no longer could be international like it had been when Rome keep the sea lanes and trade routes open. New economic and political organization was an absolute necessity to adapt to the rapid change in circumstances.
God has given us means that were unavailable so many centuries ago. We can begin the process of creating a parallel economy, parallel systems of communication and information, and parallel social and political organization right now. We don’t have to hope in a political system that will not allow itself to voted out of power. We don’t have to rely on an economic system that is run by those who hate us and want us dead. We have the tools right at our disposal to begin rekindling the vital spirit of Christian civilization for a new era.
We don’t have to wait for things to happen to us. We can begin to rebuild even before it all comes crashing down. That is what Gab is for. The nation that we love, that our ancestors built and died for does not have to disappear like so many great empires before it. We can preserve this place and rebuild it anew if we consciously adopt this mission of civilizational rebirth and set to work using tools like Gab.
It’s not over. We are going to win.

Tim adds:

I agree. I often say America is fallen and that annoys many Conservatives who think it defeatist. Not at all; it 's realistic. As I always say, we can't stop the fall (it's actually already happened, only the hollowed out form is left) but we can shape the future by our actions now.

The disease of socialism and Progressivism will die with the crumbling civilization, but our efforts now can make a big difference in promoting a new nation, and we may be able to shorten the interregnum.

Part of why the Dark Ages lasted so long was because of multiple disasters on multiple fronts. There were endless invasions - the Huns, the Goths, the Vandals, later the Vikings and Muslims and Mongols. And there were multiple environmental disasters; the year 536, for example, was totally catastrophic, with the sun being blotted out over parts of Europe (it was dark, DARK, not just overcast, in Ireland for over two years, leading to a total crop failure and the fall of Irish civilization). There was a cooling period during that time (followed later by the Medieval Warming Period, which gave rise to the explosion of European civilization on the world stage.) The collapse of Rome was horrific to those who lived through it. But it did make way for what we now call Western Civilization.

We have surpassed the Romans in many areas.

I do want to remind everyone though that there was massive suffering as a result of all this. We won't come away scot-free. But it's unavoidable now. America is in worse shape than the terminal-stage Rome. All the same metrics that accompanied the fall of Rome now haunt us.

Think of John 12:24 "Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains by itself. But if it dies, it produces a large crop" America and the whole Western World is a grain that is falling and dying. It can produce a crop, but only if it is tended by the farmer aka us.

At any rate we can't save this civilzation; people are asleep and even if they awaken in time they won't fully understand or have the means to turn the dead hand of history. But the fall will change all that; so many of the things that trap us now will die, and new things will arise. We will return to a more local and more limited system of things.

We've overbuilt, made life too comfortable and too complex. Nature abhors overcomplexity as much as it does a vaccuum. So does God, which is why He destroyed the Tower of Babel. He abhorred the pride of Nimrod then and no doubt our pride today.

The sun is setting on the West. But a candle can be lit to burn through the long dark night.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 10:35 AM | Comments (14) | Add Comment
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