It's like basically a model.
Once you see certain things happen,
then you know the decline is further than you realized.
Okay, so here's what this guy says about moral decay.
He says, and he's writing kind of a,
I don't know, maybe a commentary, a little bit
of that book, but he says this about moral decay.
Three important trends demonstrate moral decay.
They're the rise of immorality,
the decay of religious belief,
and the devaluing of human life.
Those three things.
The classic study of Roman civilization,
the decline and fall of the Roman Empire,
written by English historian Edward Gibbon,
was published in that famous year of 1776.
He observed that the leaders of the empire
gave in to the vices of strangers.
That sound familiar?
Morals collapsed, laws became oppressive,
and the abuse of power made the nation
vulnerable to the barbarian hordes.
British historian Catherine Edwards
demonstrated that our current examples of immorality
are not a modern phenomenon.
In her study of the politics of immorality in ancient Rome
she says that contraception, abortion, and exposure
were common ways to prevent childbirth in Rome.
Husbands refused to recognize any child
they did not believe to be their own.
Until accepted by its father,
a Roman baby did not legally speaking exist.
So there's nothing new under the sun.
So the same things that are starting our moral decay here
and have totally started our moral decay here
happened before in other countries.
Okay, and it says life became cheap
in the latter days of the Roman Empire.
Burdensome regulation and taxes
made manufacturing and trade unprofitable.
Families were locked into hereditary trades
and vocations allowing little if any vocational choice.
Eventually, children were seen as needless burden
and aborted and infanticide became commonplace.
In some cases, children were sold into slavery.
Manners in social life fell into debauchery
under Justinian entertainment grew bodier and more bizarre.
Homosexuality and bestiality
were openly practiced.
Under Nero, Christians were blamed for the great fire
in Rome and horribly persecuted.
Similar patterns can be found in other civilizations.
Greece, the music of the young people
became wild and coarse.
Popular entertainment was brutal and vulgar.
Promiscuity, homosexuality, and drunkenness
became a daily part of life.
And all moral and social restraints
were lost leading to greater decadence.
In Carthage, worship turned from Baal
to the earth goddess Tanit.
Sacrifices to the goddess of fertility
were supposed to ensure productivity, long life,
and even greater profits.
Ornately carved funeral monuments
depicting infant sacrifice can be seen today,
along with thousands of tiny stone coffins
to infants sacrificed to the pagan goddess.
Sound familiar?
Any of this sound familiar?
The parallels to our own nation are striking.
No, we don't sacrifice infants to pagan goddesses,
but we have aborted nearly 40 million babies
on the altar of convenience.
And the various sexual practices
are openly accepted as part of an alternative lifestyle.
It's no wonder that many believe our country
is a nation of decline.
And that's what I'm preaching about,
that our country is a nation in decline.
And God is going to judge this country.
America is like an aging, bloated rock star
that's become addicted to dozens of different drugs.
You see like Elvis when he was in his end of life.
He was kind of like that.
America is a shadow of its former self,
and it desperately needs to wake up
before it plunges into oblivion.
Now that was a quote from the article.