“Nothing brings greater happiness in life than to serve a cause greater than yourself.”

This was the stirring lesson John McCain shared during his speech at the Republican convention last Thursday. I imagine that every American whose ears weren’t clogged with cynicism was moved by his recounting of how that lesson was etched in his mind during his ordeal as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

Though he was in bad shape, McCain refused his captors’ offer of release so as not to give them a propaganda tool. “I’d been mistreated before, but not as badly as others. I always liked to strut a little after I’d been roughed up to show the other guys I was tough enough to take it,” he said. “But after I turned down their offer, they worked me over harder than they ever had before. For a long time. And they broke me. When they brought me back to my cell, I was hurt and ashamed, and I didn’t know how I could face my fellow prisoners.”

It was within the crucible of that trial—being reduced to a broken shell of a man—that something extraordinary happened. This man came to see the poverty of his own cockiness and, as he put it, “selfish independence.” As his pow buddies encouraged him and helped him endure, he could recognize his place in the bigger picture.

“I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else’s,” he said. “I loved it not just for the many comforts of life here. I loved it for its decency; for its faith in the wisdom, justice and goodness of its people. I loved it because it was not just a place, but an idea—a cause worth fighting for. I was never the same again. I wasn’t my own man anymore. I was my country’s.”

In an age saturated by that “selfish independence,” such words are deeply refreshing. They echo the sacrifice, the commitment to duty, the loyalty, the unsoiled patriotism, that we admire and want earnestly to share in.

And they stir us especially because of the contrast they strike with what we generally see in politics today.

Change

The American public is deeply dissatisfied with politics as it is. Unsurprisingly, both major presidential candidates are now campaigning on promises to change Washington.

“Let me offer an advance warning to the old, big-spending, do-nothing, me-first-country-second Washington crowd: Change is coming!” McCain promised in the same speech. He used the word 10 times. “We need to change the way government does almost everything,” he said. “We’re going to … make this government start working for you again, and get this country back on the road to prosperity and peace.” It’s remarkable to hear this from the candidate of the party currently inhabiting the White House.

His opponent, of course, has been promising change from the beginning of his campaign. “It’s time for [Republicans] to own their failure. It’s time for us to change America,” he said—one of his 16 mentions of the word during his own convention speech. “And that’s why I’m running for president of the United States.”

It is the perennial promise of politics. Something’s wrong with the way things are. We’re going to get in there and shake things up. Get this country moving again. It is the most oft-repeated theme of the candidate asking for votes. As soon as I’m in power, we’ll set things right. It is, in fact, the motivation behind most every putsch and coup and revolution in history, even the bloodiest. We will sweep out the corruption and bring a new era of prosperity and peace.

Think beyond America’s borders for a moment. That was the promise Pervez Musharraf once offered Pakistan. That was the promise that inspired Palestinians to vote Hamas into power in 2006. That was the promise of the 1979 Iranian Revolution. That was the promise of Castro’s Cuban revolution, and of similar events throughout South America. That was the promise of most of the big men presiding over their bits of the African continent. Even Adolf Hitler campaigned to a disgruntled electorate on a promise to solve his nation’s economic woes. He undertook his most demonic plans chasing a goal to strengthen the human race and create a thousand-year Utopia. No leader ever sets out to create a legacy of failure.

Dissatisfaction with the present order seems endemic to humanity. And no great surprise either, because not one of the primary forms of government in human history—monarchy, democracy, republic, oligarchy, despotism, tyranny—nor system of political economy, from capitalism to communism—has brought about and sustained any real semblance of peace, prosperity and happiness for the masses. Not one has truly made good on its promise. All have been plagued by failure and corruption.

Among the innumerable company of history’s experiments in governance, the republic of the United States stands as the greatest. And still we see an election whose overarching theme is aimed at addressing broad discontent and anxiety among the electorate with the promise of change.

With thousands of years of such failure to look upon, why is it then that we hold so firmly to our conviction that a solution is in sight? Virtually the world over, it seems people are ever optimistic that we are just one election, just one change of government, away from the dawn of a better age.

The grim reality remains as the Prophet Isaiah described it nearly three millennia ago: “[W]e wait for light, but behold obscurity; for brightness, but we walk in darkness.”

In a very real sense, this unfounded optimism is closely akin to the cockiness and “selfish independence” of that naval aviator in the early days of his imprisonment at Hanoi.

The Way of Peace

America today is taking a beating—and largely because of problems of our own making: crushing debt, economic instability, unbridled immorality, family breakdown, immigrant and racial tension, an overstretched military—all amid rabid anti-Americanism and the looming existential threats of terrorism and wmd proliferation.

Still, the candidates in this election claim they can turn things around. One has done so to such an overblown degree that he’s been mockingly called a messiah. But even the other, in that same convention speech, made plenty of promises: “Today, the prospect of a better world remains within our reach. … We face many threats in this dangerous world, but I’m not afraid of them. I’m prepared for them. I know how the military works, what it can do, what it can do better, and what it should not do. I know how the world works. I know the good and the evil in it. … I know how to secure the peace.”

No he does not. That is the lamentable truth.

As Isaiah also wrote, in the same passage, “The way of peace they know not.”

A clear-headed appraisal of the reality that America finds itself in today should be enough to show that the victor in this election, whoever he is, will face harder trials than those faced by his predecessor.

Match the trends with biblical prophecy—which explicitly foretells of the crushing downfall of this most beautiful, blessed and bountiful nation—and one weeps to imagine what is about to occur. You can read our article “The End of the Free World,” or request a free copy of Herbert W. Armstrong’s masterful prophetic work The United States and Britain in Prophecy, to prove this hard truth from your own Bible. These prophecies, like a cresting tidal wave, are already beginning to crash down upon us. They are going to intensify—no matter who takes up residence at the White House in January. All the promises we are hearing today, much as we may want to believe them, will prove empty.

But thankfully, that is not the end of the story.

Remember that beating—the one which broke that prisoner as a man. It was that trial that unshackled him from the prison of his own arrogance. It was that pain and shame that ultimately exposed him to the free, refreshing air of a greater perspective. It was then that he could at last recognize the nobility of something far greater than self—in this case, the idea of a nation with a government that offered dignity to its citizens, a civilized government, one that stood for freedom, one that served its people rather than subjugating them. The pain of the trial inspired a love for the greater cause. The loss of self meant the gain of purpose.

This is exactly the sort of crucible that America is about to experience. “Great tribulation,” Jesus called it, “such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.” And it will break this nation.

But then, in that broken state, will come a moral awakening. “In those days, and in that time, saith the Lord, the children of Israel shall come, they and the children of Judah together, going and weeping: they shall go, and seek the Lord their God” (Jeremiah 50:4). Like Job in trial, America and the other nations descended from ancient Israel will at last come to see God. They will, in fact, come to love Him.

And then, at last, will be fulfilled that perennial promise—when God establishes His perfect government on this Earth. Biblical prophecy contains the advance warning to all the old, big-spending, do-nothing, me-first-country-second governments of this weary Earth: Change is coming.

“The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever” (Revelation 11:15).

This is truly change you can believe in. At that time, all men and women will serve the great God—and in so doing, come to know their greatest happiness.

For nothing brings greater happiness in life than to serve a cause greater than yourself.