Can a nation survive without strong families? You need to know the answer to this question, because strong marriages and families in Britain are devolving to unprecedented levels. If we reach back into antiquity, however, there is one powerful empire that does offer a precedent—a chilling one. But things in modern Britain are different, right?

The UK Office for National Statistics reported that the percentage of Britons getting married for a second time is falling, but not because marriages are lasting any longer. Marriages are still breaking up at record rates. It is just that now fewer people are choosing to remarry following a divorce.

Cohabitation is the new trend. And Britain is a world leader.

My mistake. Cohabitation is actually the old “new trend.” The new new trend is single mothers who have never lived with a man at all choosing to live alone on state benefits. According to new research by sociologist Geoff Dench, these premeditated single mothers believe they have no need for a spouse and that their children have no need for a father.

Of the one in four mothers who currently live without a man in their house, half have made the conscious determination to live alone.

How dangerously ignorant.

The increasingly rapid breakdown of the traditional family is an ominous indicator because it coincides with several other uncomfortable facts. Besides leading Europe in crazy “families,” Britain also leads in rates of obesity, public drunkenness, drug use, and sexually transmitted infections. It is also a leader in illiteracy, crime, teenage pregnancy and, well, brand awareness.

Is it any wonder that Britain is also the leader in family breakdown?

Yet when faced with this list of disturbing accomplishments, it is amazing how blind many people are to the looming social and national disaster facing the country.

History shows that once national family life breaks down, societies are on the downhill slide. “[T]he strength of any nation depends on the strength of its families,” Gerald Flurry wrote in the March 2009Trumpet. “Family is the rock-solid foundation on which a country’s superstructure is erected. That was the case for both America and Britain.” Note the past tense.

Strong families were also the concrete foundation of the Roman Empire during its heyday. “Back then, when people talked about Rome falling, they were scoffed at and scorned,” noted Mr. Flurry. “When Seneca, the famous Roman, warned that Rome would fall—even telling people why it would fall—the people ignored him. In the words of Seneca, one of the foundational reasons Rome would fall was the fact that ‘they divorce in order to remarry. They marry in order to divorce.’”

Seneca warned that family breakdown would destroy the Roman Empire—and it did! And it is destroying Britain (and America) today.

In his masterpiece History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbons identified five major causes that contributed to the fall of the Roman Empire. First on the list was breakdown of the family. The other factors included increased taxation, an insatiable craving for pleasure, an unsustainable buildup of armaments, and the decay of religion.

Doesn’t Rome before the fall sound like today’s United Kingdom? The looming disaster is hard to miss.

Some few in Britain acknowledge something is wrong. But there is a conspicuous—and ominous—lack of drive for action. Even those politicians who publicly endorse the idea of supporting traditional families have shown through decades of inaction that they don’t have the will to stop the downhill slide and make the controversial changes necessary to get families back on track.

Writer Melanie Phillips suggests things are to a state now that the government should give dowries to men who get married for the first time. This would “increase their worth to women” and “send a powerful signal that men are not worthless creeps but are essential to family life.”

Wow. How the British man has fallen since the feminist revolution—to think that state-funded dowries are needed to show that men are not worthless in family life, of all things!

A real man should have his own career and be able to provide for his own—before getting married. And he should be the solid core of that marriage and family for the rest of his life!

Yet according to some, British family life is not in crisis. “[T]his country has never been broken by anyone or anything,” said British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. “[F]or all the challenges, I don’t believe Britain is broken—I think it’s the best country in the world. I believe in Britain.”

Sounds just like something Seneca’s countrymen might have said.

All the while, nationwide collapse is thundering closer as the bulkheads snap under the pressure. The evidence is clear. A host of studies have shown that stable families result in children who are less prone to violent crime, better educated, less likely to take drugs, healthier physically, healthier mentally, and less likely to have teenage pregnancies.

Why do we have children today who publicly harass and denigrate their teachers, calling them fat and obese? Why does London have a higher crime rate than Istanbul? Why do government officials feel the need to hand out morning-after pills to 11-year-olds? Why are British girls having up to four abortions by their 18th birthday?

Because there has been a serious breakdown, of one kind or another, in those children’s families.

And because nothing is changing, Britain as a nation will—just like its families—fall apart. History provides no examples of societies that can remain viable without viable families. Even the mighty Roman Empire fell.

It is cause and effect.

God says that when you break His laws on marriage and family life, He will send curses as correction. Through the Prophet Jeremiah, God says, “For the land is full of adulterers; for because of swearing the land mourneth; the pleasant places of the wilderness are dried up, and their course is evil, and their force is not right” (Jeremiah 23:10).

In this verse, God says there is a direct connection between marriages and escalating national problems. The phrase “their course is evil” implies aggressively running after evil ways like runners in a race. As Melanie Phillips points out, British society is totally geared toward not only promoting single motherhood, but toward denigrating fathers. Britain is steaming full-speed ahead contrary to God’s laws.

Therefore curses are inevitable.

Jeremiah says the land will mourn and the pleasant places will be ruined. Britain is suffering intense natural disasters. Over the past few years it has suffered devastating crop failures and cattle diseases. Flooding has taken huge tolls. Severe snowstorms have blanketed the nation. Economically, its place as the world’s financial capital is gone, the pound is under attack, and the nation is on the brink of financial collapse.

The phrase “their force is not right” implies a failure in military action. The Hebrew word for “force” means valor,victory, mastery, might, mighty (act, power), power, strength. It’s a military word. God warns us that national sins destroy military might. Today, British troops are worn down and short on equipment. Troops are heading home from failures in Iraq and will probably come home from a failure in Afghanistan soon as well. Just a couple of weeks ago, the Daily Mail lamented that if Argentina were to take the Falklands, the bitter truth is that Britain doesn’t even have the resources to send a task force to retake the islands. That is a far cry from the nation that once boasted the world’s largest empire backed by its most powerful navy.

But that is the thing with curses; eventually they result in destruction. Family breakdown in Britain is breaking the nation. And worse is yet to come. If you don’t believe it, just ask Rome—or the now largely vanished British Empire.