Being a child of the ’40s, it was my lot, together with my contemporary Antipodeans, to grow up within a vibrantly young and developing nation of pioneering spirit at the time the one we still called “the mother country” was in accelerating decline.

My earliest geography lessons were centered on the “pink bits” on the world map during the time that, following World War ii, Great Britain still retained the governance of a quarter of the world’s population and 20 percent of its land surface, and controlled the bulk of its sea gates.

As geography was a favorite subject, the ensuing school years were spent watching the “pink bits” on the map steadily disappear, the names of so many of the former colonies of the British Empire change to strange appellations that certainly did not have an Anglicized ring to them.

In parallel with watching the changes take place in short order on the political maps of the globe, it was my generation’s lot to witness nations formerly blessed with abundance and wealth under British administration progressively become backwaters of rank poverty.

Too many nations that, under colonialism, were self-sufficient in the basics of a comfortable and secure life subject to the rule of law, steadily became ridden with disease, their land and their populations falling victim to rapine and pillage at the hands of many a petty dictator bent on filling his personal coffers with wealth at the expense of the common people that he ruled.

As we moved into the latter half of the 20th century, we witnessed the return of tribalism triumphing over the civilized forces that a stable and largely honest administration, under the Union Jack, had brought to many a far corner of the Earth for the first time in their history. With the decline of the British Empire, many people’s hope for true freedom and a comfortable life vanished.

But still, as the British Empire waned, fading into the shadows of history, there remained the “bright uplands” of the New World as our geography teachers still called the Anglo-Saxon dominions of the British Commonwealth—Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and their brother nation, that shining star on the horizon, the United States of America!

Had the Americans not rallied to the aid of an exhausted British nation, which had bravely held its own against the onslaught of tyranny, for the benefit of seeing good triumph over evil, during the Nazi/fascist onslaught?

Was this not where the hope of the world lay in terms of perpetuating the hard-won peace that came from Allied victory across the Atlantic and the Pacific after five long years of the most bloody war in mankind’s history?

Had this United States not produced men of real backbone and not only the courage to engage the enemy but the will to gain ultimate victory and vanquish the enemy? Men such as generals Patten and MacArthur?

Had not this victorious United States, this staunch ally of the British peoples, become the most powerful nation in the world?

Perhaps new hope for a regeneration of “pax-Britannica”—the 100-year peace imposed on the world by British dominance of the seas—in the form of “pax-Americana” could be revived, with the postwar generation that increasingly flourished in North America and Australasia, to take over the banner of freedom from a tired old British lion.

But no! The social engineers, born into the school of Germanic rationalism, who flourished following the war, soon put paid to that. The notion of the need for “self-fulfillment” was funneled into the minds of the young, rapidly displacing the notion of self-sacrifice for the common good that was bred into their grandparents.

Perhaps that hope for a revival of British and American strength of years gone by had its last hurrah with Margaret Thatcher’s leadership in the Falklands War, and the alliance between President Ronald Reagan, Thatcher and Pope John Paul ii that saw the end of Soviet tyranny in Europe as the world entered the final decade of the 20th century.

There has been precious little for the Anglo-Saxon nations to cheer about since then.

Steve Amoia and Andrew Durham, in an excellent challenge to thinking people at this time of impending change in U.S. leadership, reflect on the influence that the true movers and shakers, the “political advisers,” exert on whomever it is that ultimately gains the office of president of the United States: “To be sure, no matter which person ends up in the Oval Office, they will have handlers. These handlers have been around for decades, creating a generation of new handlers to make sure all future presidents do what they are told. So one really shouldn’t worry about experience. One should just worry” (emphasis mine).

Time was when such handlers knew their place as advisers to, rather than manipulators of, the commander in chief. Times have changed. This has particularly been the case since the end of World War ii with the combined effects of liberal socialism on politics, the consolidation of the secular society, and the social engineering of the post-Freud generation.

In an age of increasing “wars and rumors of wars” (Matthew 24), one would think that any potential president of the United States should at least reflect some ability, training or experience in the art of war. It was Sir Winston Churchill who declared “war is history”!

The reality of human nature dictates that decline within any nation will invite war from contending powers that vie for the spoils of any country whose economy is owned by foreigners, whose industry is owned largely by competing foreign powers, whose population has lost its will to fight for the right and even for its own security, whose ruling elite has become self-serving, whose education system has degenerated to a point where it produces milksops instead of potential statesmen, whose morals have sunk into the cesspool of depravity.

One would hope that within such a once great nation, there would remain at least sufficient realists to contend for the choice of a commander in chief who possesses the trained ability to resist the impending onslaught. Amoia and Durham observe, “Plato believed that hands-on experience from an early age, along with specific training, was the best teacher in the art of war. Should the commander in chief manage the military without actual experience? Would we expect him or her to make shoes or pottery without proper training? Is aptitude enough or do you need actual experience in military tactics?”

Yet to the student of Bible prophecy (which many a bygone British and American general was, up to mid-20th century—even deriving battle tactics from the ancient wars of the Israelites), it becomes self-evident that in this age the days of the “mighty man, and the man of war, the judge and the prophet, and the prudent, and the ancient, the captain of fifty, and the honourable man, and the counselor, and the cunning artificer, and the eloquent orator” have long since passed. We live in days when the handlers of prime ministers and presidents have the minds of children and the emotions of women (Isaiah 3:4).

Steve Amoia and Andrew Durham reflect on past leaders of stature in relation to the times we live in today:

How would men like Washington, Franklin, Jefferson or others be scrutinized in our modern times? Do you think they would survive? Do the qualifications (or lack thereof) need to change to accommodate (defend against) the circumstances and, indeed, the circus of modern times? Or should we just feel safe that men like these are gone, so that we can press their words between the pages of our lives, not having to actually live up to them? Is experience dependent upon a time period, or does it transcend all of that?Or maybe one really shouldn’t worry about experience. One should just worry.

Indeed, the outlook in the short term is worrisome to the average thinking realist.

But what about the long term? Just what effect is this rapid demise of the former dominant strength, power and influence for good of the British and American peoples going to have on this world?

I first heard Herbert Armstrong over radio in early 1962. While, being an Aussie, the American twang grated, the words made utter sense. Herbert Armstrong challenged his audience to blow the dust off their Bibles, crack open the pages, and prove that the events of the day had actually been prophesied by God thousands of years ago.

He was right!

Those who heeded Herbert Armstrong, becoming true students of history and current events in the context of Jesus Christ’s command to His disciples to “watch and pray” (Matthew 26:41), have been able to follow global geopolitical trends within the context of the revelation of inerrant Bible prophecy. They have found that when the revelation of Bible prophecy overlays and underpins the study of history and current world events, this largely eliminates the element of surprise in their outcome.

At the same time, they have found that the revelation of the cause, the prophesied effect and the final outcome of world events yields great and increasing hope for the future in a world where true hope, beyond the mere mouthing of the word by self-interested politicians, is an increasingly scant commodity.

It is that true, revelatory hope that is so distinctly missing from the platforms of both contenders for the crown of presidential office in America, the nation that has held itself and its system of governance out as the last great hope for mankind since its Founding Fathers laid out its Constitution based on a recognition of Almighty God and His immutable law!

The prophesied descent of the United States of America from the peak as the world’s lone superpower to the pits as a nation dependent on the largesse of foreign creditors, is going to be as dramatic as its 20th-century rise to great-power status. Your Bible says so, and it clearly declares that this utter destruction of U.S. power is a result of the national sins of a people who, even as Abraham Lincoln declared, have forgotten their God!

One overwhelming result of this forgetfulness is that there are simply no true leaders of the caliber of those who founded this once-great nation on the scene today.

There certainly are no Winston Churchills on the global scene to raise a clarion call to the Anglo-Saxons to arise against the threat of any potential tyrant, or tyrannical power! Yet, most especially at a time of rapidly developing world disorder such as we live through today, at a time when we see nuclear arms increasingly in the hands of less stable powers than Britain and the U.S., with the chief sponsor of Islamic terror on the brink of obtaining nuclear military might, with a resurgent nuclear-empowered Russia swaggering back onto the world stage, we ought to at least pause to remember Churchill’s words (The Gathering Storm):

Mankind has never been in this position before. Without having improved appreciably in virtue or enjoying wiser guidance, it has got into its hands for the first time the tools by which it can unfailingly accomplish its own extermination. That is the point in human destinies to which all the glories and toils of men have at last led them. They would do well to pause and ponder upon their new responsibilities. Death stands at attention, obedient, expectant, ready to serve, ready to shear away the peoples en masse; ready, if called on, to pulverize, without hope of repair, what is left of civilization. He awaits only the word of command. He awaits it from a frail, bewildered being, long his victim, now—for one occasion only—his master.

Written by Churchill 80 years ago, those words have far more application to the Anglo-Saxon nations—and indeed the whole world—today than in the years between the two great world wars.

In the words of our own editor in chief, Gerald Flurry,

Churchill said the people then were living in a “fool’s paradise.” Today our fantasy world is far more distorted.We are living in the time of the lion’s roar, but don’t realize it! “Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets. The lion hath roared, who will not fear? the Lord God hath spoken, who can but prophesy?” (Amos 3:7-8). Christ has warned us again about a coming nuclear holocaust (Matthew 24:21-22). But even if we don’t heed, Christ is going to intervene to prevent us from destroying every human being.We can heed this warning and avoid the worst suffering ever on planet Earth. Each one of us must choose. The consequences of that choice are truly monumental!

That quote is from a book that would be a very timely read as our “fool’s paradise” totters on the brink of massive collapse. For a reality check, read our booklet Winston S. Churchill—The Watchman.

The greatest of hopes for mankind is embraced in that statement, “But even if we don’t heed, Christ is going to intervene to prevent us from destroying every human being”!

God speed that day!