My wife called me from the supermarket today and asked, “You remember how I found it so difficult to find natural cleaning compounds that were not petroleum based?” I answered in the affirmative. “Well,” she said, “there is a whole shelf of natural cleansers on the shelf this week!”

Now, that’s enough to make a greeny salivate—that is until you really think about why such products are now appearing increasingly on the supermarket shelves. It’s really nothing to do with the supermarket chains becoming suddenly environmentally friendly. It simply has to do with the unheard-of hike in oil prices. Any petroleum-based product, which includes many a household cleansing compound, is subject to a dramatic price increase in tandem with the escalation of the price of crude oil. Thus, all of a sudden, many natural organic compounds are becoming cost-competitive with their petroleum-based alternatives.

Supermarkets are driven by profit inducement, not by the heart, as too are the financiers of this world’s economy. Napoleon Bonaparte is credited with saying, “Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain.” That’s why it’s the merchants that weep and wail over the destruction of the whole Babylonish economic and financial system when it finally comes crashing down around their ears (Revelation 18:11, 15). The signs of that coming crash are all around us.

The trouble is that few of those who shape public opinion on such matters as the domestic economy are locked into reality. Thus, the possibility of the failure of our whole economic structure is not even contemplated. When it is, by a few of the saner voices among the commentariat, the conclusion is generally that “we’ve always managed to get out of our economic scrapes in the past, so we’ll all pull together to do it again.”

Fat chance.

The very best of minds geared to the reality of the functioning of the global financial system know that this world is in deep trouble, and the largest single national economy of all is in the deepest of trouble. But even these clever thinkers fail to see the missing dimension that is the driving force behind world conditions, including—and very much so—the global economy.

The fact is, there has never been a time in the history of man where climate, geography, political and economic conditions have so favored a group of nations as has been the case with the English-speaking peoples over the past 400 years.

The beginning of the rise of the English-speaking peoples to national greatness can be traced to the time of Elizabeth i (1533–1603). Considered by many as a formidable type of the Deborah of ancient Israel, Elizabeth’s greatest hour came with the defeat of the mighty Spanish Amada in 1588, Sir Francis Drake leading the English navy into victorious battle.

That the queen and her subjects saw victory over the Spanish fleet as due to godly intervention on their behalf is a fact of history. Elizabeth immortalized acknowledgment of the intervention by Almighty God to deliver England from Catholic Spanish tyranny by striking a medal inscribed with the words “God blew and they were scattered” on its face. The inscription referred to the hand of God evident in a timely eastern gale that dashed many of the Spanish galleons on the shores of Scotland and Ireland as they fled before the onslaught of the English fireships.

From that date forward, the English-speaking peoples continued to triumph over their enemy. Following overwhelming victory at Trafalgar in 1805 and Waterloo in 1815, the British became the world’s undisputed naval and military power. For a whole century the globe enjoyed the beneficence of British domination under “Pax Britannica,” a period of peace unprecedented since Roman times, yet without the cruelty of the old Roman Empire.

British global domination ended with World War i, which saw the rise of the United States as a world power. America’s power as a global political, economic and military force was consolidated subsequent to the Allied victory of World War ii. That victory guaranteed a half-century continuance of political, economic and military dominance of the world by the Anglo-Americans, consummating in the defeat of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics via victory in what became known in the latter half of the 20th century as the Cold War.

Then came 9/11.

That challenge to America’s superpower status by a handful of Muslim extremists broke both the pride and the prestige of American power (Leviticus 26:19). The U.S. has been on an accelerating decline as a world power ever since.

When the president of the single greatest nation on Earth goes twice within the first half of this year to lobby, cap in hand, the most influential voice in opec, Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, to open wider the Middle East oil tap, that is a massive sign as to the tremendous loss of national prestige the U.S. has suffered since it strode the world as a singular superpower colossus following the ussr’s demise 16 years ago.

For the second time in less than four decades, opec now holds the world to ransom, awash with its ill-gotten gains from the world’s main energy resource as oil continues its bull run on the world market.

The result is felt in the pocketbook of every Anglo-Saxon, be he British, Canadian, Australian, New Zealander or American. All are feeling the effects.

Last week the official unemployment rate reached 5.5 percent of the population in America. It is destined to go much higher over the coming months as state governments and corporations continue to cut labor costs.

It was recently reported that “The oecd’s early warning signal is flashing clear signs of economic weakness across the world, with mounting evidence that China, India and Brazil may soon succumb to the downturn” (Telegraph,May 18).

Already, signs of looming economic problems are emerging from the dominant eurozone economies. “The closely watched gauge—known as the Composite Leading Indicators (cli)—has picked up a sharp deterioration in the eurozone in March, notably in Italy and France where the advance signals are falling even faster than in Britain. The measure tends to anticipate the industrial cycle by about six months” (ibid.). This does not bode well for the coming European winter. The report indicated that “Russia is the only country still in full boom among the so-called bric quartet of rising powers, but the country’s inflation rate reached 14.3 percent in April as oil and gas wealth … flooded the economy.”

As the effects of the massive oil price hike ripple over the globe, the signs are that four centuries of ascendancy of the English-speaking peoples are well and truly being written into history as a phenomenon of their past.

The Anglo-Saxons are being hit increasingly hard in their pocketbook. The question is, how long will it take these stiff-necked peoples to wake up and acknowledge the real reason why they are rapidly losing hold of the greatest physical blessings ever given to any group of kindred nations in the whole of the documented history of this world?

Believe it or not, it is not due to the present price of oil and gas! The real reason runs much deeper than that. It involves a whole dimension of knowledge of which the English-speaking nations have become most willingly ignorant!

There was a time when Deborah, that grand and heroic prophetess of ancient Israel, acknowledged this missing dimension. It was at a point in Israel’s history where the nation needed deliverance from its enemy. God intervened and delivered Israel.

Once, in the history of the English nation, a Deborah-like heroine queen sought the intervention of God to deliver her nation from foreign invasion, and God answered. Queen Elizabeth promptly acknowledged that godly intervention.

Once, Lord Nelson prayed to God for the delivery of Great Britain from its enemy at the commencement of a decisive naval battle, and he got it, giving his life in the process.

Twice the combined forces of the English-speaking peoples were delivered from tyranny in great world wars. Their king, their prime minister and military leaders sought the intervention of Almighty God to carry them to victory, and He did. Then they acknowledged His deliverance.

Since that last great victory gained against the forces of tyranny in 1945, no longer has God backed the English-speaking nations in gaining outright victory in war.

Why is this so?

For the same reason that God is not backing the economies of the English-speaking nations at this moment in their history.

In the words of Abraham Lincoln, “It is the duty of nations, as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions, in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord.”

It’s been an awful long time since the leader of any English-speaking nation called that nation to a day of prayer and fasting for its national sins. Abraham Lincoln is memorialized as an icon in American history. Yet his message to the nation has been long forgotten.

If only we would heed Lincoln’s words today. For we English-speaking peoples have, over four long centuries, despite the occasional ravages of war, “been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven,” as Lincoln acknowledged. “We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us. … [W]e have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!”

Our failure to acknowledge the Source of all of our national blessings is simply resulting in their collective withdrawal by their giver, the Almighty, Eternal, Creator God!

We are feeling it, increasingly, in the pocketbook.

How long will it be before we feel it in our heart?

For more on this subject, request a free copy of our book The United States and Britain in Prophecy.