“The American moment is ending not with a bang but a whimper,” wroteWashington Times columnist Jeffrey Kuhner on Thursday. The past decade will be remembered as the “era of American decline.” And instead of working to reverse the decline, America’s leadership has only made matters worse.

Consider the recent repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Kuhner called it “an act of national suicide.” He wrote that it is “one of the most revolutionary and damaging acts ever done to a core American institution. It will decimate the greatest fighting force on Earth, undermining unit cohesion, morale and discipline—the lifeblood of a successful military.”

Kuhner said the new policy only further weakens a military that has failed to win a major war since 1945.

Many will recognize that statement as being similar to what Herbert W. Armstrong prophesied more than a half century ago. He wrote in the October 1961 Plain Truth that “unless or until the United States as a whole repents and returns to what has become a hollow slogan on its dollars: ‘In God we trust,’ the United States of America has won its last war!”

There is a reason Mr. Armstrong correctly predicted that America would lose the will to use its power and never again win a war. He knew that when God threatened in Leviticus 26:19 to “break the pride of your power,” He was referring primarily to Britain and the United States in this end time.

Kuhner noted how soft and lazy America has become as a nation. Having been stripped of any and all traditional Christian values, he wrote, “Self-indulgence and self-expression have filled the vacuum. Life is no longer about sacrifice and duty; it’s about maximizing pleasure and self-fulfillment.”

Comparing America to ancient Rome, Kuhner concluded by saying, “All civilizations rise and fall.”

Mr. Armstrong made this same comparison in 1956. He wrote, “Like Rome, we’ve grown fat and prosperous and lazy. … We’re the wealthiest, as compared to any other nation, and we are fast growing lazy and soft, seeking luxury and pleasure, and excitement, idleness and ease, labor-saving, step-saving devices and gadgets” (Plain Truth, February 1956).

All this prosperity and ease—and yet a broken will that, as Kuhner pointed out, resulted in the Korean stalemate, the embarrassing defeat in Vietnam, an inconclusive outcome in the first Gulf War and now prolonged quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan.

America has long passed the zenith of its once-dominant power. And God has warned us through prophecy that the day of reckoning is now here.