When the original thirteen states adopted their new Constitution in 1787, this is what Alexander Tyler, professor at the University of Edinburgh, said about the fall of the Athenian Republic 2000 years earlier:
“A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.
From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to lose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.
The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years.
During those 200 years, those nations always progressed through the following sequence: 1. From bondage to spiritual faith; 2. From spiritual faith to great courage; 3. From courage to liberty; 4. From liberty to abundance; 5. From abundance to complacency; 6 . From complacency to apathy; 7. From apathy to dependence; 8. From dependence back into bondage
When we look at the Western world today we need to ask ourselves: Where do we stand at the moment? I personally believe that in the USA, we are some place between the complacency and apathy stage. What happens in the next few years might move us into the apathy to dependence stage. Western Europe is in the apathy to dependence stage.
In October of 1798 John Adams wrote the following: “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice (greed, covetousness, materialism), ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
We will either move towards radical egalitarianism or radical individualism. The first leads to tyranny or dictatorship and the latter leads to anarchy (where everybody does what he thinks is right in his own mind).
Morality comes from a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. This is why our founding fathers were adamant about Judeo-Christian worldview being evident in all that we do in politics, business, education, media, entertainment and our judicial system.
Listen to what some of our founding fathers said: “We Recognize no Sovereign but God, and no King but Jesus!” [April 18, 1775]
“The general principles upon which the Fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity… I will avow that I believed and now believe that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God.”
“July 4th ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty.” (Quote from John Adams)
Samuel Adams in a speech at the State house in 1776 of August said this: “He who made all men hath made the truths necessary to human happiness obvious to all…Our forefathers opened the Bible to all.”
US Senator Jim Demint made the statement that the architects, when building the Capitol Visitor Center in Washington DC, had left out “In God We Trust,” which Congress in 1956 established as the national motto. Instead, they put “E plurisbus unum” (out of many – one) as the motto. Senator Demint said: “There seems to be a trend of whitewashing God out of our history.” Praise God for this senator who put a hold on the bill and not letting the Center open until they had installed the correct motto.
But we see that the battle lines are being drawn that we are going to be faced with in seeing the expansion of the Kingdom of God in the 21st century and how, we, the church should be involved.