The Decline and Fall of the Western Empire - LewRockwell
Almost everyone sees it, and almost no one wants to discuss it: America and Western Europe are spiraling out of control. And the speed of the descent is crescendoing rapidly. It took a long time for the old Roman Empire to collapse. The seeds of its demise blossomed slowly, but the historically...
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“The Decline And Fall Of The Western Empire”
By Chuck Baldwin
Chuck Baldwin Live
August 12, 2022
Almost everyone sees it, and almost no one wants to discuss it: America and Western Europe are spiraling out of control. And the speed of the descent is crescendoing rapidly.
It took a long time for the old Roman Empire to collapse. The seeds of its demise blossomed slowly, but the historically astute among the Romans saw the destructive nation-eating plants growing when they first began to appear, but no one would believe them. And when the end came, it came quickly—almost overnight.
The Roman Empire was so rich and prosperous and so militarily mighty that no one within the empire could even imagine that a collapse was possible. I’m sure that what I’ve heard hundreds of Americans say, “It can’t happen here,” also echoed throughout the old Roman Empire for generations.
From The Saker:
Sometime in the future a learned academic will be writing a weighty tome with the title The Decline and Fall of the Western Empire. Perhaps the Contents Page will include, among others, twelve chapters with titles something like this: World War One. World War Two. Korea. Vietnam. Palestine. Iran. Nicaragua. Afghanistan. Iraq. Syria. Ukraine. Taiwan.
Indeed, Karin Kneissel, the former Austrian Foreign Minister, is at present writing a book with the working title A Requiem for Europe. In an interview with Asia Times on 31 July she declared that ‘European countries are growing ever weaker on the international stage and their places are being taken by Asian countries’. She said that the Europe ‘where she was born and grew up and to which she was devoted no longer exists’. ‘European leaders, through ignorance and arrogance, are neglecting the existing geopolitical realities and basic principles of diplomacy and this has created a dangerous situation’.
She added: ‘This is connected with Eurocentrism. We believe that we are so great that nobody can do without us…It seems to me that Europe needs Russia more than Russia needs Europe. If I am right, then is it really in the interests of the Old World to treat Moscow as an enemy, inclining Moscow to Beijing? Today Europeans are more and more disillusioned and desperate and this may cause mass disorder and anti-government violence’.
Kneissel, who is from Central Europe, makes it sound as if Europe is living in the past, before 1914, when it was politically central to the world, instead of being a more or less irrelevant political backwater as it is in 2022. What is certain is that the physical fall of an empire is always preceded by its spiritual fall.
Spiritual fall always precedes the fall of the State. In the Ukraine many have noticed the satanic tattoos and pentagrams on the bodies of the Neo-Nazi thugs who formed the elite of the Kiev regime armed forces and many have seen videos showing their satanic rituals.
The extraordinary thing is the self-justification of the Western world for its own suicide and its refusal to admit that anything is wrong with it. On the contrary, only its ‘values’ of ‘freedom, democracy and human rights’ are correct and must therefore be spread throughout the ‘free world’. All who do not accept its ‘values’, which in fact are anti-values because they are destructive, not constructive like real values, must be mocked, slandered and, if necessary, bombed into submission. Today’s Western world is visibly coming to resemble medieval frescoes showing the torments of hell, which are what spiritual death is. The Western world has been demonised, the demons have been called up from the bowels of hell to occupy it and visibly and mockingly inflict its ‘Western values’.
Did you catch what he said? “Spiritual fall always precedes the fall of the State.” I have been saying this for over three decades. How many times have you heard me say that America’s primary problems are spiritual, not political?
My critics often call me a “political” pastor. If those same people had really listened to me for any significant period of time they would know that I am one of the most apolitical preachers in the country. While the pastors who call me “too political” are neck-deep it partisan politics, defining America’s problems in mostly political terms by promoting the Republican Party and refusing to oppose GOP politicians when they engage in destructive and anti-Freedom activities and policies for fear that doing so would “help the Democrats,” I spare no party or politician. I am not interested in what is good for the party; I am only interested in what is good for the country and what is RIGHT.
Party partisanship, compromise, personal agendas, arrogance, willful ignorance of the Constitution and the total void of the fear of God have turned the vast majority of our political leaders in both parties into dangerous demagogues who are facilitating our nation’s destruction. Truly, they are “blind leaders of the blind.”
If America’s primary problems are spiritual (which they certainly are, as The Saker astutely observes), then the solutions are primarily spiritual. And this reality puts the responsibility of providing these spiritual solutions squarely on the shoulders of America’s spiritual shepherds: the pastors.
But as you very well know, on the whole, America’s pastors are totally unmoved and uninterested in providing the courageous spiritual leadership that America so desperately needs.
Very quickly, let me tell you the reasons why this is happening. Being a veteran pastor of over 47 years qualifies me to provide both an educated and experiential analysis. All pastors will not fall under each category below, but taken together, the following categories encompass the vast majority of evangelical pastors, regardless of denomination.
1. Pastors are hirelings.
They serve at the pleasure of a church board or committee. They are not their own men. They are bought and sold by the denomination or the church governing councils.
2. Pastors are success-driven.
Pastors covet “success.” They know they need people to fill their buildings and fund their programs. They also know that if they preach “hard” truth too much, they will lose a significant percentage of their congregations and thus lose a sizable percentage of their income.
In order to “succeed,” therefore, they use gimmicks, music, theatrics, entertainment, recreation and SOFT PREACHING to bring in—and keep—the masses. Accordingly, many pastors are not shepherds and watchmen; they are motivational speakers, comics and entertainers.
In short, they are people-pleasers and not God-pleasers.
At this point, I cannot resist the urge to quote the Apostle Paul:
Do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ. (Galatians 1:10)
3. Pastors fear the government more than God.
The fear of God is not their uppermost concern; the fear of government occupies that position.
The genesis of this transfer of allegiance began in 1954 when then-Senator Lyndon Johnson spearheaded the law that brought churches under the authority of the Internal Revenue Service as 501(c)(3) non-profit corporations.
The possibility of violating an IRS “guideline” for non-profit organizations and, therefore, losing the “church’s” precious tax-exempt status is uppermost in their minds every time a pastor stands behind his pulpit.
Over time, this subservient spirit—bolstered by the convenient misinterpretation of Romans 13—has turned pastors into sheepish servants of the state.
4. Pastors are cowards.
They know that in times such as we live in today, taking bold positions on controversial and inconvenient truths WILL cost something—and it might cost a lot. This they are unwilling to do.
My pastoral journey includes being in the inner circles of the so-called Religious Right in the late 1970s through the early 2000s. I knew many of the “big name” evangelical preachers of that era. I knew them in public; I knew them in private.
I saw the “marriage vow” they took to the GOP. I heard their private admissions to how being accepted by the political establishment, aka “having a seat at the table,” was directly linked to their personal fortunes. I saw the spirit of covetousness for power, position, notoriety and money. I saw the jealousies and raw ambitions.
To be sure, the above indictments do not apply to all of them—THANK GOD! But the above applies to far, far too many of them.
It’s easy to “courageously” attack Democrats when your bread is buttered by Republicans. In fact, if you could see the donor lists of the major Republican politicians and the major evangelical leaders, you would learn that those lists match almost perfectly. That pretty much says it all.
5. Pastors are servants and spokesmen for Zionist Israel.
Call me anything you want, but I am telling the truth when I say that Israeli interests and ideologies dominate the vast majority of evangelical pastors. The false prophecy doctrines of Zionist-bought Cyrus Scofield (aka Prophetic Dispensationalism, Prophetic Futurism, Christian Zionism, etc.) dominate the vast majority of major evangelical colleges and seminaries, the vast majority of television evangelists, the vast majority of evangelical radio broadcasts, the vast majority of evangelical publishing companies and the vast majority of evangelical churches.
Commitment to Zionism keeps pastors in bondage. One cannot separate the “global elite,” the “Davos crowd,” the “one-percenters,” the promoters of the “New World Order,” the modern-day cabal of international “moneychangers” and the promoters of all things anti-Christian, anti-America and anti-Liberty from Zionist Israel. They are inseparable.
As long as pastors are held in bondage to Zionism, they are incapable of discerning evil, much less resisting it.
Quoting The Saker again: “Spiritual fall always precedes the fall of the State.”
When The Decline And Fall Of The Western Empire is eventually written, it will not be kind to the evangelical pastors and Protestant leaders of this generation. And that’s putting it mildly.
Reprinted with permission from Chuck Baldwin.
