It's Fashionable, But Is It Correct?

As a high schooler I devoured the Club of Rome materials (like the book "Limits to Growth") about the eco-tastrophy that would destroy the world for humans by the late 1980s. And I happily sucked up all kinds of information in those Carter-malaise days about the coming implosion of the US.

It was sensational stuff, I thrilled to it.

I've noticed that we as a people just love scandals, dire predictions, and "The glass isn't half-empty, there's no glass!" warnings.

So I was delighted to see Alan Dowd's long article documenting three centuries of warnings about the decline of America. At every stage of our country's existence, there have been people passionately convinced of it's soon-coming demise.

One of the lessons of the history from the Bible is that when God is done with a nation, it collapses quickly, often shockingly. Consider Babylon and Assyria. (Yes, Egypt hung in there a long time.)

So we need to be sober about our need to stay before the Lord. The "declinists" do serve a useful purpose for our nation -- they tend to spur on people to make changes, make a difference.