History keeps exposing the same mistake. Nations do not fall because they lack resources or intelligence. They fall because they lose their priorities. Again and again, a nation pours its strength into what fades and neglects what lasts.
Scripture names the problem plainly: “What is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:18). When a nation lives for what can be measured, consumed, and displayed, it slowly loses its center. Comfort becomes the goal. Power becomes the measure. What is eternal is pushed aside for what feels urgent.
America is not drifting quietly. It is coming apart in plain sight. Wealth grows while debt crushes the future. Technology surges while attention breaks down. Freedom grows louder as self-control grows weaker. Laws are written in moments of anger, fear, or outrage, then rewritten when emotions change. Court rulings are weighed by how they feel, not by whether they are right. Policy follows crowds instead of principles. Rights are demanded, responsibility is avoided. Truth bends to the moment. Morality is traded for approval. The foundations that once held the nation steady are now rejected because they require restraint in an age that worships expression.
This raises a sobering question. If our forefathers could see America today, what would they think? Would they recognize the nation they helped build, or would they see a country drifting from the principles that once restrained it? Would they believe that laws are now shaped more by emotion than by reason, more by outrage than by wisdom?
They wrote laws to restrain impulse, not to be driven by it. They understood that emotions change, but truth must not. They feared what would happen when feeling replaced reason and desire outweighed discipline. Looking at today’s headlines, would they say their warnings were ignored?
History has seen this before. Powerful nations always believe they are the exception. Rome believed it. Greece believed it. Every empire that traded virtue for pleasure, discipline for indulgence, and truth for convenience believed it would endure. They did not collapse overnight. They decayed slowly, from the inside out. By the time the danger was obvious, the foundation was already gone.
This is the lesson history never changes. Wealth cannot replace character. Power cannot replace purpose. Comfort cannot replace truth. A nation that invests everything in what is temporary while neglecting what is eternal will weaken, no matter how advanced it becomes.
As George Bernard Shaw observed, “We learn from history that people never learn from history.” Each generation believes it will be different. Each generation assumes the warnings do not apply to them.
That leads to a hard conclusion history refuses to soften: insanity is living for what is dying while neglecting what must endure. America is not immune to this truth. No nation ever has been.
Yet this can be corrected—but not by human strength alone. What is broken cannot be healed by the same hands that broke it. Renewal requires the help of the One who created all things, and it requires submission to His rule. Scripture is clear: “Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain” (Psalm 127:1). History confirms it. When a nation aligns itself under God’s truth, decay is restrained and clarity returns. When His rule is rejected, disorder follows. The real question is not whether God will rule, but whether we will align ourselves with Him before the cost becomes irreversible.
History does not argue. It records outcomes.