How Long Do We Have?

Bear with me in this blog, please and read it all. I was sent this forward from several people and I thought it was worthwhile writing, but not completely for the reasons it was sent.

"About the time our originial thirteen states adopted their new constitutioni in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, has this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2000 years eariler: 'A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates wh promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 year, those nations always progressed through the following sequence:

From bondage to spiritual faith
From spiritual faith to great courage
From courage to liberty
From liberty to abundance
From abundance to complacency
From complacency to apathy
From apathy to dependence
From dependence back into bondage'

Professor Joseph Olson of Hemline University School of Law in St. Paul Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the 2000 Persidential election:

Number of states won by: Gore: 19 Bush: 29
Square miles of land won by: Gore: 580,000 Bush: 2,427,000
Population of counties won: Gore: 127 million Bush: 143 million
Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by: Gore: 13.2 Bush: 2.1

Professor Olson adds: "In aggregate, the map of the territory Bush won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of this great country. Gore's territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living off various forms of government welfare. " Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the "complancency and apathy" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy, with some forty percent of the nation's population already have reached the "government dependency" phase. If Congress grants amnesty and citizenship to twenty million criminal invaders called illegal immigrants, and they vote, then we can say goodbye to the USA in fewer than five years."

As I reflect on the above written, this is not only true of nations, but true of OT Israel. Read your Bible and you will see some of these very facts happen among the people of God. Not only this, but you see the very things happening in the church today. Israel was doomed because of their apathy and dependence, but not on God. Our nation is doomed because of our apathy and dependence upon the government. The church today is falling into the same mind set of apathy and dependence by following everyone but the Lord. We have lost the saving message for the world and our own lives. We have turned to the entertainment mode to move us. For many, they have become dependent on some man orchestrated experience (they call it spiritual) to motivate them in the assemblies. The gospel has lost it's power and flavor in many of my brethren's lives. Many want to capture the zeal they once knew, or create a zeal but are turning to the wrong sources and ideas to find it. They are not even aware of what is happening to them. The only question left is: how long do we have?