James Russell, Elder
Dear Scattered Brethren and Co-workers,
I recently reread the “The MODERN ROMANS -- The decline of Western Civilization. By the Ambassador College Editorial Deportment.
It is so up to date when comparing it to what we read in the news and see on TV. I want to share and paraphrase much of it with you here in the “Elders Letter.”
“Mistakes that toppled the once mighty Roman Empire are now being repeated in America. If our politicians don’t WAKE UP and immediately alter America course, we will suffer the consequences like the Roman Empire did.
Revisiting the history of mankind has been a horrible chronicle of war, suffering, heartache, fear and death! The history of Rome was only another chapter continuing the same story. History repeats itself again and again with slightly varying forms, modified by national temperament and technological developments.
The Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks and the Romans each had their chance at world dominion. Each, in turn, left a bloody trail of suffering and depravity as they tried to make the world over in their own image. The story continues today! It fills the internet, newspapers, radio and television! Only today, mankind is threatening himself with genocide, and the weapons of his Armageddon are spreading to many nations.
God says He is man's Creator. And that He has permitted man to make, his own choice - to follow a course of action that seems best to him, in order to prove that man's way ends in suffering, war and death. Man has been allowed to prove; individually and nationally, that he cannot, apart from God, discover the way to true peace, enduring prosperity, radiant happiness, a full and meaningful life.
The choice set before mankind contained a promise of fantastic blessings to be heaped upon those that obeyed Him. It was also a warning: "See; I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil; In that I command thee this day to love the Lord thy God; and walk in His ways, and to keep His commandments and His statutes and His judgments, that thou mayest live and multiply: and the Lord thy God shall bless thee in the land whither thou goest to possess it...."I call heaven and earth to record this day against you; that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live" (Deut. 30:15-16, 19). History is but the record of mankind making the Wrong choice!
God announces in Isaiah; that the rise and fall of empires is not by accident. God proclaims only He can guarantee what will be performed: "Behold, the former things are come to pass, and new things do I declare: before they spring forth I tell you of them" (Isa. 42:9).
This Supreme Power also charges man with foolishness and ignorance of a basic fact: "Have ye not known? have ye not heard? hath it not been told you from the beginning? have ye not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is He that sitteth upon [above] the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof- are as grasshoppers.... That bringeth the princes to nothing; He maketh the judges of the earth as vanity" (Isa. 40;21-23).
We cannot let our guard down by napping, slumbering or sleeping, because God’s Word is full of advance news, some of which has been fulfilled. But other events are scheduled to be fulfilled in our time. Great cities and nations have had decrees passed on them that no one has been able to alter, critics not with-standing. Example: Each nation has been allotted enough time to prove how destructive and corrupted its methods were, time to see the end results of its own ways. In a sense, God has given each nation or empire "enough rope to hang itself." And there comes a time of correction and punishment to each one.
God also foretold the rise to unprecedented greatness, wealth and power for Britain and the United States. But the same God also tells what will eventually happen if those nations reject His rule and disobey His commandments! (Lev. 26; Deut. 28). These prophecies are a frightening appraisal of our modern nations.
We find the right way being rejected! You have to ask, is most so blind that they cannot see the growing evil, sickness and violence in our societies today? Or the wickedness, corruption, and depravity that we are wallowing in? National character continues to disintegrate and degenerate. Our own leaders and men of historical vision have decried the way we are going. Some draw the same parallels to the Rome Empire.
America has rejected true values and self restraint; rejected the revelation of God, rejecting God’s Laws as revealed in the spirit of the Ten Commandments! This is the law upon which all true goals and values must be based!
Our nations desperately need true goals, values and national purpose. God reveals what they are but we have to want them, God's way! The nation that turns to God in obedience will be a nation blessed by God, a nation whose God will protect it, personally; directly from its God-rejecting enemies. This is the lesson of ancient Israel, whose great victories were wrought by the hand of God.
Both the United States and Britain were blessed by God with the most bountiful heritage the world has ever known. We didn't accomplish it by our great power alone. We think we have. That is part of the problem. It's been given to us in ways we little recognize.
Abraham Lincoln recognized this fact and expressed it in a presidential proclamation of 1863. He said:"We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown; but we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us:
"It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness:
"Now, therefore, in compliance with the request, and fully concurring in the views, of the Senate, I do by this my proclamation designate and set apart Thursday, the 30th day of April, 1863, as a day of national humiliation, fasting, and prayer.. . . All this being done in sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in the hope authorized by the divine teachings, that the united cry of the nation will be heard on high, and answered with blessings no less, than the pardon of our national sins, and the restoration of our now divided and suffering country to its former happy condition of unity and peace.
Those words, from a President of the United States, would undoubtedly be ridiculed by this generation. But we would do well to heed the warning. There are promises of national well being if we do. The question is, will we rise to meet the challenge? Our peoples today stand on the brink of a disaster greater than Rome's. We need a national change of spirit Now, before it's too late! Before history repeats its agonizing sequence of events on our nations, the Modem Romans.”
James Russell, Elder Church of God, in Truth Pete Fleming, Elder
Tel: 417-338-0033 P.O. Box: 1120 Tel: 830-885-5502
Tel: 417-338-0033
Fax: 417-338-0031
Spanish Philippines
Martinez, Martinez Deacon Romeo Samudio
Tel: 787-786-5856 Tel: 090-8536-4415
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