Is Revelation 18: 4-8 about us and our Land?

ARE WE NEAR THE END OF OUR WAY OF LIFE?

A hypochondriac complained constantly that he was sick enough to die. No one believed him. He purchased a cemetery plot, erected a headstone with the inscription, “Now You Believe Me.” The prophet Ezekiel wrote an epitaph against the King of Tyre, one of the enemies of Israel. The King and his people had become morally delinquent and were erased from history (Ezra 28:1-19). How is it that the brightest minds in our day cannot see the hand writing on the wall that spells the end of our way of life? It is not some foreign influence or threat, but a corroding morality. We keep on refusing to accept, the fact that bad morals have been behind the decline of the freedom we have and the prosperity we have enjoyed. It is not war that has destroyed humans and nations, but moral decay. It is a cancer that is killing the family and the fabric of the nation. It is affecting our politics and our religion. It is not the end of the world, but the end of what we hold dear.

I lived under three governments, where bad morality led to bad management and ultimately to economic and political disaster. It was distorted morality that created poverty that brought on despots like Hitler and Stalin, who removed the Czar and the Kaiser. Such leaders tell their followers, that they can have what they cannot afford and that they would make the rich pay for what we cannot have. Yet, we ourselves, acquire things we cannot pay for and blame others for our bad choices. It is the moral delinquency that leads to greed and manipulation of each other’s rights and substance. We see our own handwriting on the wall and still do not believe it. We are the problem because we lack fiscal discipline and that is a moral crime. Man does not live by bread alone, but by morality (Matthew 4:4). If he steals it, it is not his to eat. If he earns it or asks for it then it becomes his to eat.

When we no longer can handle our self-made problems, we have a tendency to become religious. Religion is supposed to give us direction. But, it too is being impacted by bad morality, and has also been led off the road it ought travel. The Bible tells us that we ought to test the spirits whether they are of God (I John 4:1). A spirit or a religion that uses human life to enhance itself, or its cause, is not the kind Jesus advocated. He gave His own life, rather than take someone else’s (Matthew 16:25). Life was worth more than substance (Matthew 6:25). The God, Jesus wants us to follow, gave us Laws to protect life and not life to protect the Laws (Mark 2:27). Like God, religion must save live and not hurt or destroy it. One cannot legislate faith or morality; one must live it. The dead cannot praise or serve God, only those who live can (Psalm 115:17). It is immoral to presume that only certain humans, nations, races, or religions have the right to exist. It would be a dull world if all men were like I am. Can we image if all flowers were one color?

The U.S.A. was modeled to all life, regardless of race or religion. That in essence was good morality. But when it began to protect certain interests, whether good or bad, it violated her morality. It gave bad morality the same right that good morality never needed. Good morality never asked for any rights. It was healthy and productive and the nation prospered. Bad morality feeds on what is good and perverts the natural order of things (Isaiah 5:20-23). Bad morality is fully aware of what it does and what the consequences will be (Romans 1:32). Bad morality blames its badness on the Creator. It is not responsible for what it is and does. Badness is inherent in the genes and for that reason unchangeable. Bad morality is a great champion of “grace.” Bad morality cannot free itself of badness; therefore, grace has to be unconditional or it has to abound (Romans 6:1). It also requires a God that accepts badness for what it is (Revelation 21:27).

This is not sarcasm, but reality. When we endorse, what the Bible regards as bad, we create our own demise. In fact, we have allowed badness grow out of control. We now hope that God would step in and reverse the trend badness has taken us. Jesus held that such a reversal, without human out and out efforts, was not likely (Revelation 22:10-11). He saw His own people go the way of Noah and Lot’s generations. At the end of time, the same things will happen to the world (Luke 17:26-37). With regard to the land of the Eagle, it will be handed over for a time to the nations that follow the Antichrist (Revelation 17:17). Jesus asked this question, “Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?” (Matthew 7:16). We shall harvest what we have planted (Galatians 6:1-10). Is Revelation 18:4-8, about us and our land?