Fall of Civilization

They sit easily before their forms of entertainment, snug in their assurance that they are safe within their self controlled lives.  Their countries are powerful, their economies are thriving and nothing could possibly go against their desires.  They shake their heads when they hear the daily news, of the stupidity and misery others must suffer through – always someone else, somewhere else.  Why can’t others live as they do?  It is all so simple.  Nothing could ever happen here, “We are the blest people.” they say!  And yet, the news seems to be getting stupider and more miserable; and now the events are coming from closer and closer locations to their homes.  How can this be?  Is there a reason for this?  Is someone, somewhere trying to tell them something?  Are they not listening?  What is going on, in this confusing world?

Does this sound familiar?  Well, long ago, this interesting analysis on history was offered – which you might consider carefully:

“The following five attributes marked Rome at its end:  first, a mounting love of show and luxury; second, a widening gap between the very rich and the very poor; third, an obsession with sex; fourth, freakishness in the arts, masquerading as originality, and enthusiasms pretending to be creativity; fifth, an increased desire to live off the state.”

Edward Gibbon, wrote this line between 1776-1788 in his book, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.  What an interesting observation he made.  Was he correct?  Certainly, about the Roman Empire, without a question.  And you know as well as I, these five cultural conditions did not just ‘happen’ and then suddenly came the end of Rome.  Surprise!  No, it took time, it came gradually, across several generations.  But, none the less, the mightiest empire, the world had ever seen, fell to a group of Visigoth invaders from central Europe.  It wasn’t superiority of line commanders’ intellect, nor Visigoth weapons’ technology nor did the Visigoth’s field a larger army, but it had to do with internal corruption within the Roman Empire itself.  The rot ran from the lowest peasant to the highest officials.

If this was what destroyed Rome, as Gibbon’s observed, then can this be true of other empires?  In other words, can we learn something here by looking at history?  Certainly, these attributes were true of the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Israelites and all of the Persian empires.  The far flung British Empire, 20^th century Fascist and Communist states and even China sure were not exempt from these conditions.  And, they all fell due to their internal failures as well as the predominant culture at the time of their conquests.  Apparently, with wealth and security comes the degradation of the standards for culture, morality, value on human life and then comes the end. 

So, it is well for us to consider Mr. Gibbon’s words, from 250 years ago, as we read Daniel chapter 5 and see if what he has told us is documented in some form within Daniel’s telling of the last day of the Babylonian Empire.

Okay, time to go back now and think about the fall of Rome, the fall of Babylon and see if we can come up with any similarities.  Here is Gibbon’s list:

From Daniel chapter 5 and archaeology:

Gibbons Conditions Of Rome	Observations on Babylon
Show and luxury	Babylon was very big on show and luxury in the 6th century bc.
Large gap between rich and poor	Those in Babylon lived as kings, while the rest of kingdom was in many ways only peasants.
Obsession with sex	No details from Daniel, but from archaeology we know they weren’t as bad as some.
Weird art	Um, to the western eye, yes very weird and often sex related.
Masses desiring to live off of the state	Certainly we know from Daniel there were at least 1,000 if not 2,000 present for the final feast of Babylon.  The army was treated as a guarantee of livelihood with little requirement to endanger yourself – at least until the end.

So I would say that 1, 2, 4 are definitely met as conditions, while 3 is unknown and 5 is a strong possibility.

What I want you to see here is that Babylon had rotted from the top to the bottom.  The top of society no longer cared about anything, except themselves (save for Nabonidus, Belshazzar's father and King of the Empire, but then he was on tour when all of this happened, so he was sort of an “I don’t care kind of guy as well.”).

The vast population was in crushing poverty, having never really recovered from Nebuchadnezzar’s wars of conquest which had flatten whole regions so that there was nothing left standing and they were taxed beyond their limits.

Their culture, like so many, was a little weird on their view of sexuality and religious observances – same kind of stuff that Israel – the northern kingdom was destroyed for by God using Assyria as His hammer.  Too bad for Judah – the southern kingdom didn’t learn from other's mistakes!

Okay, I think you get the point.  Babylon’s culture and leadership were in decline and God, having had enough of them, used Cyrus of Persia to crush them.

Now look at your life, the culture in which you live, are Gibbon’s conditions for decline and fall being met even as you read this? 

Gibbons Conditions Of Rome	Observations on Western Culture
Show and luxury
Large gap between rich and poor
Obsession with sex
Weird art
Masses desiring to live off of the state

• Will you suffer if this culture is judged and destroyed? 

• What can you personally do, that can make even the tiniest difference in how God will view this culture? 

• What will make you different? 

• What will make you a Daniel and not one of the nameless masses that didn’t fair so well that distant night?

To quote Edmund Burke (1729-1797) and repeated by many others since:

"Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it."