"But why, in spite of all our efforts and endeavors and great advances,
is the world still in trouble? Why is every advance followed by
regression, every rise by a decline and fall? Why do our attempts to
govern the world end in disaster? What is the matter? And there is only
one answer. It is due to the fact that men and women have sinful and
fallen natures; it is due to their estrangement from God; and, more, it
is due to God’s wrath upon humanity in its sinfulness and arrogance. But
the tragedy of the world is that it does not realize this.
I was
reading again, only the other day, and it struck me forcibly, the
explanation given by that great historian Edward Gibbon, who was not a
Christian, for the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. And if his
explanation is not also true of this country today, then I am completely
ignorant!
Here are the five reasons he gives:
1. The
rapid increase of divorce and “the undermining of the dignity and
sanctity of the home, which is the basis of human society.” Now that is
not being said by me, a little evangelical preacher—that is the great
Edward Gibbon, and, of course, he is right. The home is the fundamental
unit in society and once the home goes, everything will go, sooner or
later.
2. “Higher and higher taxes and the spending of public monies on bread and circuses.”
3. “The mad craze for pleasure and sport; sport becoming every year more and more exciting and brutal.”
4. “The building of gigantic armaments when the real enemy is within—in the decadence of the people themselves.”
5. “The decay of religious faith; faith fading into mere form which has lost all contact with reality.”
The
Roman Empire was a wonderful civilization. Those Romans were perhaps
the greatest experts the world has ever known on local government and on
legal systems. The Roman system—that was real civilization. Add to that
the Greek civilization that had gone just before, and you had human
endeavor almost at its highest point. But what happened to it? It was
conquered by the Barbarians, the Goths, and the Vandals—the ignoramuses.
How did they ever conquer this great civilization? Gibbon’s answer is
that internal rot in the civilization itself weakened and destroyed the
Roman Empire. And that, I repeat, is the story of human civilization.
All
human systems fail because the trouble is within the people themselves,
and external rules and laws and regulations cannot change them. It is
not that we need better laws, but that we need better natures; not
better instruction, but better spirits and better desires. And so all
this human history comes to nothing. And yet these earthly authorities
prohibit the preaching of the Gospel, the only thing that can save the
situation."
— Martyn Lloyd-Jones (2003). Vol. 3: Victorious
Christianity (1st U.S. ed.). Studies in the Book of Acts (102–103).
Wheaton, IL: Crossway Book
