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MODERN ROMANS: A WARNING FOR AMERICA, BRITAIN AND ISRAEL
PART 2
Chapter 10
America and Britain Ignoring Lessons of Roman History
Have America and Britain learnt from ancient history, or are they ignoring its lessons?
Ancient Rome was the greatest empire of its day. But Rome fell? Fortunately, the history of the ancient Roman Empire is very well documented so that we can easily compare what led to its rise, decline and ultimate downfall with what led to America and Britain’s rise, then decline and how similar conditions that exist today will lead to their downfall.
Edward Gibbon, the famous historian of the eighteenth century in his work “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” identified the following six primary reasons for the collapse of the Roman Empire:
1) The breakdown of the family and the rapid increase of divorce.
2) Failure of education to teach Roman values.
3) The mad craze for pleasure with sports becoming every year more exciting and more brutal.
4) Higher and higher taxes; and extravagant spending of public money on bread and circuses, and effect on the economy.
5) The building of huge armies to fight external enemies, when the real enemy was the decay of society from within.
6) The decay of religion; faith fading into mere form, losing touch with life, and becoming impotent to guide it.
Besides these primary reasons, other problems can be traced to Rome having become a melting-pot of races and ethnicities. Some of these problems included:
7) Over-reliance on slave labor; acquiring, adopting or being influenced by the vices, cultures and traditions of other races and ethnic groups, resulting in loss of traditional values such as the Roman work ethic (known in America and Britain as the Protestant work ethic).
8) Political instability and violence resulting from worsening race and ethnic relations.
The Worldwide Church of God’s (WCG) Ambassador College published a book in 1975 titled “The Modern Romans: The Decline of Western Civilization” (MR, available free on the Internet) which traced the parallels between the Roman Empire and conditions in America and British Commonwealth nations today (around 1975). Here is a link to the free 1975 edition: https://www.hwalibrary.com/cgi-bin/get/hwa.cgi?action=getbklet&InfoID=1329253623
Many of the authors quoted in this part of the book have been taken from the WCG MR booklet.
Here are some parallels between the two civilizations from that book.
“Massive public works...striking architecture...cosmopolitan cities...masters of advanced warfare...bureaucratic institutions...a melting pot...and more!
“These descriptions are as valid of Rome’s past achievements as they are of ours in our dizzyingly sophisticated modern Western world. In its time in history, the Roman Empire occupied a position of power and influence very similar to that held by the United States or Western civilization in our time. We know more about the Romans than any other great civilization of antiquity. And, interestingly enough, the Roman Empire covered an area approximately the size of the United States. The United States and the Rome of past glory both started out as struggling, insignificant colonies of people ruled over by a monarchy. Injustices led to revolution and establishment of a republic. Still later, after extensive expansions, they both were torn apart by civil war. But then each settled down and rose to heights of undisputed world power and leadership.
“The Roman superpower could boast, just like American or Western counterparts, of their possession of a highly developed system of law and justice, government and order, and, without doubt, production of goods and services.
“But Rome crumbled.”
“Proud Romans became lulled by the belief in the seeming “eternity” and superiority of their system, in their long chain of rarely broken military and economic successes, as if fate had determined they should always come out on top despite repeated challenges to their existence. They extolled their fabulous material-technological achievements and standard of living. They prided themselves on their liberal and generous (to their thinking) largesse to nations conquered in war.
“But the unthinkable happened! When Seneca, the Roman statesman, warned that Rome would fall, the people snickered. “Rome fall?” It could lose a few battles, but not the Empire. “Rome,” mused the average citizen basking in the height of world power, “is impregnable.” Rome was the world – and the world was Rome.”
The Affluence of Rome
The MR booklet describes the affluence of Rome:
“Fortunately, Roman history is fairly well documented. The Romans built a highly advanced society for their time. To them it was even a “Great Society…
“They were the Americans and Britons (and Canadians, Australians, South Africans and Western Europeans) of their day. They were the ones who had wealth, a high level of culture, fantastic buildings, bureaucratic institutions, and sprawling cities. “Prodigious engineers...high-rise apartment houses...the cosmetic arts...spectator sports... sightseers and tourists.” These also are words used to describe Roman activity in the second century A.D. – the time when Rome was at the height of its power. They constructed roads all over their vast empire – roads surpassed only in recent times. Some are still in use today. Roman engineers built a road network equal to ten times the circumference of the earth at the equator! And they didn’t hesitate to cut through hills, tunnel through mountains, build sturdy bridges over rivers and valleys. Their “freeways” ran as straight and flat as possible. They used concrete hardly inferior to ours and just as durable. They even developed a cement that would harden under water. The Romans mastered the art of plumbing and built water-supply and sewer systems perhaps only slightly inferior to ours. Some of them still function. Sewer systems like the Cloaca Maxima in Rome were large enough to drive a wagon through. Some of the rich had furnaces under their houses with warm air circulating through pipes or ducts in the walls. Water was everywhere, supplied by fantastic aqueducts over long distances. Hot-and-cold-water public baths were a must to the Romans. There were over 800 public baths in the city of Rome itself…”
“The well-to-do were travelers, inveterate sightseers and tourists. Nothing was quite so dear to the Roman heart as languid vacationing, health resorts, mountain spas, or seashore villas. One of the most obvious marks of affluence was the possession of one’s own personal vacation retreat.
“But the cities became increasingly crowded, requiring the development of high-rise apartment complexes. Records show many of these became much like modern slums. Some buildings were so poorly constructed that, despite stringent Roman building codes, they menaced the health and safety of infuriated tenants. Rome, too, had its ghettos.
“Street noises were unbearable, day or night, in Rome’s big cities. The rich fled to the countryside whenever possible. Yes, long before us [America and Britain], the Romans managed to run into that giant headache called the “urban problem” – complete with the unbearable traffic congestion, drab city appearance, crowded and noisy living conditions, rundown tenements and slums, high rents, unemployment, racial tension, spiraling crime, a soaring cost of living and polluted air!”
The important question for Americans and Britons to ask is: “Why did this civilization decline?”
Researcher of Roman history H. J. Haskell writes as a warning to America and Britain: “It required a century or more for the destructive forces in Rome to work out their effects. The modern tempo is faster. The history of the later Roman Empire carries a warning to present-day Caesars” (The New Deal in Old Rome, p. 232).
Let us now analyze the eight reasons for the decline and fall of the Roman Empire and the parallels in conditions in America and Britain.
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