Month 8:25, Week 4:3 (Shleshi/Bikkurim), Year 5935:225 AM
Gregorian Calendar: Sunday 20 November 2011
The Sack of Rome
Parallel Events to Descend Upon Us
"Be strong and of good courage" (Deut.31:7, NKJV).
You can't not look at what is happening in the world today without drawing parallels with the fall of the Roman Empire. Corruption is endemic and there are nearly no values anymore. If the United States, which has the most radical socialist government ever seen in that country, allows millionnaires to write off gambling losses, vaccation homes, and luxury yachts from their taxes, and allows them to get tax-payer-funded subsidies for ranches and estates; and if multi-millionaires can get government handouts for not working, then you know the system is completely rotten. And even more insane is the fact that the Occupy Wall Street Movement, which, though it has genuine people disgusted with the corruption, is well and truly infiltrated by communists, is attacking the socialistic Obama régime for is fascism. Indeed the question needs to be asked: Where are the political lines now? Are there any real differences between so-called 'left' and 'right'? The answer is: there almost aren't any, even though lip-service is paid to the classical tennets of both ideologies. What we have is near complete and total moral, social, economic, judicial and political anarchy.
Yes, the United States and Europe in particular - the 'West' - is exactly where the Roman Empire was when it collapsed. And if you've never read it, now is the time to get a copy of Gibbon's classic, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. When the Babylonian system reveals itself for what it really is, then there are really only two choices available: Babylon or the Kingdom of Heaven, because everything within Babylon is essentially the same.
When Rome was, after its third siege, finally conquered and sacked by Alaric the Hun, what he found was "a wealthy and effeminate people" [1]. Corruption and decadence erodes gender differences and whenever you see attempts to either diminish the gap between them, or to reverse them, then you know that the end is swiftly approaching.
The gender rôles ascribed by Yahweh to the human family are fast disappearing in our own day. Our own 'Rome' is even now being ravished by corruption from within as well as economic invaders from the East, sent by Yahweh as a just punishment for the sins of our once Christian or pseudo-Christian nations. It is not the first time this happened and it will not be the last. The reconstituted 'Holy Roman Empire', with its political and economic capital in Germany (once Frankfurt, now Berlin), its temporary economic capital in London (being systematically dismantled by the 'EU'), and its spiritual capital in the Vatican, exists today as the European Union, and is itself now global with its military capital in Washington, DC. Rome rules the world, more or less, and will survive in one form or another whatever destructions are unleashed upon it. It will finally be destroyed forever but only when Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ) returns.
One of the contributing factors to the fall of Rome at the hands of Alaric's army was the secret conspiracy of Rome's slaves and domestics, who either from birth or interest were attached to the cause of the enemy. Today's élite, in creating a Slave Class not unlike that of Imperial Rome's, have unwittingly created a huge Fifth Column within their own system - the masses of the economically and socially oppressed.
Whatever is coming around the corner - and it is coming - is going to overwhelm the élite whose detailed planning over the decades cannot include every factor into the complex equation which is the people themselves. The Puppet-Masters have too many strings to manipulate, and too many puppets to control. Not only that, there are rival 'Empires' such as Russia and China, the former of which even now is challenging NATO's ambitions in Syria following the collapse of Libya.
The West, like ancient Rome, will be plundered by today's 'Alaric's' even as the West's own Master's are plundering their own people. The plunderers will themselves be plundered by new plunderers. Poetic justice awaits the wicked who think they are on top of things. The wicked, in any case, have never shown any mercy to one another, and what temporary alliances they may form for expediency, last only as long as they serve the interests of those with the edge of power over their allies. Like the Midianites who turned on themselves in confusion in the days of Gideon, so the élite, who possess no moral scruples, whose standard is, was, and always will be, self-interest, will not be slow to turn on themselves to save their lives or secure a momentary advantage.
What, then, should the attitude be of believers in this mielée? To not get too cocky, to remember that our strength and advantage is to be found in Yahweh alone, and to stand back as the enemies of Elohim (God) slaughter one another. The enemy will neither be quelled by any adversity believers may offer nor will they be satiated by any successes they may have. It is not our fight anyway, but Yahweh's.
After the sack of Rome, the Roman Empire was split into two, with the Western Capital in Rome and the Eastern in Constantinople, later to be called Byzantium and finally Istanbul with its Üsküdar suburb. Whether this will be paralleled by a split of the EU into two states or not when the €uro collapses remains to be seen. At any rate, we should expect a major upheaval in Europe in the months ahead.
Believers have only to cling onto Yahweh in the upheavals ahead, walk in the mitzvot (commandments) and divine tavnith if they are not going to swept away in the conflagration. Life is never going to be the same again, but it can be turned to our advantage if we are willing to forsake the world and adhere only to Emet (Truth). Then mighty things can be done and believers can leave behind the poverty of compromise for the sure strength of total faithfulness.
Endnotes
[1] Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, abridged by D.M.Low (Book Clubs Associates, London: 1979), p.452.
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