Zone1 A Nation Cursed (Isaiah)

[Meriweather]

Has the US been cursed? I have taken some passages from Isaiah and substituted our own cities and country in their places. Are we able to learn from the past, or are we doomed to repeat it?

The curses: (These are the curses taken from Isaiah, for the most part Chapters 2 & 3)

• Justice once ruled the cities, but now murders
• Young people behave insolently towards the aged and are disrespectful of those who are/were honorable.
• You will be governed by weak and fickle leaders and by the young who will be guided by wild impulses and then rule in violence.
• Among the people will be a general air of cynicism that there will be a general air of cynicism and disdain for their leaders.
• The people will scorn and fight each other; there will be no mutual respect.
• Their personas will betray their sin and their mouths openly declare it.
• Sexual conduct holds dominion over them.
• They will be in the hands of their creditors.

Jerusalem was once given the same warning that follows...

Washington DC is crumbling, the US is falling for their speech and their deeds are before the Lord, a mockery of His majesty. Their sins they vaunt, dealing out evil to themselves.

What say you? Are we now facing the same danger that faced the nations and people in Biblical times? And are the causes the same? If so, what can we do to steer the nation away from it?

 

[Votto]

Na, just a coincidence is all I'm sure.

 

[Cougarbear]

Has the US been cursed? I have taken some passages from Isaiah and substituted our own cities and country in their places. Are we able to learn from the past, or are we doomed to repeat it?

The curses: (These are the curses taken from Isaiah, for the most part Chapters 2 & 3)

• Justice once ruled the cities, but now murders
• Young people behave insolently towards the aged and are disrespectful of those who are/were honorable.
• You will be governed by weak and fickle leaders and by the young who will be guided by wild impulses and then rule in violence.
• Among the people will be a general air of cynicism that there will be a general air of cynicism and disdain for their leaders.
• The people will scorn and fight each other; there will be no mutual respect.
• Their personas will betray their sin and their mouths openly declare it.
• Sexual conduct holds dominion over them.
• They will be in the hands of their creditors.

Jerusalem was once given the same warning that follows...

Washington DC is crumbling, the US is falling for their speech and their deeds are before the Lord, a mockery of His majesty. Their sins they vaunt, dealing out evil to themselves.

What say you? Are we now facing the same danger that faced the nations and people in Biblical times? And are the causes the same? If so, what can we do to steer the nation away from it?

The "Pride" cycle often repeats itself and civilization eventually fall down the insane rabbit hole. Our civilizations around the world are different because today's insanity will lead to the 2nd Coming of Christ.

 

[ding]

“More than half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: ‘Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened.’”

“Since then I have spent well-nigh fifty years working on the history of our Revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval...But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that swallowed up some sixty million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: "Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened.’”

Alexander Solzhenitsyn
“Templeton Lecture, May 10, 1983,” in The Solzhenitsyn Reader: New and Essential Writings, 1947-2005, eds. Edward E. Ericson, Jr. and Daniel J. Mahoney (Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2006), 577

 

[ding]

“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports...In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens...”

“…And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion...reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

George Washington, Farewell Address, Sept 17, 1796,
The Will of the People: Readings in American Democracy (Chicago: Great Books Foundation, 2001), 38.

 

[Meriweather]

The "Pride" cycle often repeats itself and civilization eventually fall down the insane rabbit hole. Our civilizations around the world are different because today's insanity will lead to the 2nd Coming of Christ.

I do agree that the cycle has repeated itself throughout history. I stop before saying it is going to lead to the second coming of Christ. I have two reasons for this. The first is that even before Christ, people were saying the only way a nation/world can survive is if God were to come down and rule us Himself. This was known as The Day of the Lord. All that was first said about The Day of the Lord was transferred to the Second Coming of Christ. We cannot seem to successfully rule ourselves. We lack the discipline.

Jesus noted that no one knows the day or the hour. If we could see ourselves as in a circular cycle instead of approaching the end, just maybe we can figure out how to kick mankind out of this endless cycle of self-destruction.

 

[Meriweather]

“More than half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: ‘Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened.’”

“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports...In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens...”

“…And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion...reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

George Washington, Farewell Address, Sept 17, 1796,
The Will of the People: Readings in American Democracy (Chicago: Great Books Foundation, 2001), 38.

These struck me long ago and have stayed with me. It is sad so many may never have known about either, or have forgotten them.

 

[skye]

Not cursed....

My personal opinion is that the US has been Blessed ....

Blessed with the Constitution's Second Amendment.....that is a true blessing!

 

[Cougarbear]

I do agree that the cycle has repeated itself throughout history. I stop before saying it is going to lead to the second coming of Christ. I have two reasons for this. The first is that even before Christ, people were saying the only way a nation/world can survive is if God were to come down and rule us Himself. This was known as The Day of the Lord. All that was first said about The Day of the Lord was transferred to the Second Coming of Christ. We cannot seem to successfully rule ourselves. We lack the discipline.

Jesus noted that no one knows the day or the hour. If we could see ourselves as in a circular cycle instead of approaching the end, just maybe we can figure out how to kick mankind out of this endless cycle of self-destruction.

The Israelites, the Jews at the time of Jesus, were looking for a Savior to overthrow the tyrants like the Romans. But, that isn't what he was coming for the 1st time. Our Father was giving us a second chance. A long second chance. It's been about 6,000 years since Adam and Eve. There is a millennium that will happen if mankind doesn't stop the direction we are currently in. Many of the good people of the earth are accepting the evil more and more without speaking out about it. It's looking more and more like a straight line to the end.

 

[ding]

"There are meaningful warnings which history gives a threatened or perishing society. Such are, for instance, the decadence of art, or a lack of great statesmen." Solzhenitsyn

 

[ding]

"The turn introduced by the Renaissance evidently was inevitable historically. The Middle Ages had come to a natural end by exhaustion, becoming an intolerable despotic repression of man's physical nature in favor of the spiritual one. Then, however, we turned our backs upon the Spirit and embraced all that is material with excessive and unwarranted zeal. This new way of thinking, which had imposed on us its guidance, did not admit the existence of intrinsic evil in man nor did it see any higher task than the attainment of happiness on earth. It based modern Western civilization on the dangerous trend to worship man and his material needs. Everything beyond physical well-being and accumulation of material goods, all other human requirements and characteristics of a subtler and higher nature, were left outside the area of attention of state and social systems, as if human life did not have any superior sense. That provided access for evil, of which in our days there is a free and constant flow. Merely freedom does not in the least solve all the problems of human life and it even adds a number of new ones." Solzhenitsyn

 

[ding]

"As humanism in its development became more and more materialistic, it made itself increasingly accessible to speculation and manipulation by socialism and then by communism. So that Karl Marx was able to say that "communism is naturalized humanism."

This statement turned out not to be entirely senseless. One does see the same stones in the foundations of a despiritualized humanism and of any type of socialism: endless materialism; freedom from religion and religious responsibility, which under communist regimes reach the stage of anti-religious dictatorships; concentration on social structures with a seemingly scientific approach. This is typical of the Enlightenment in the 18th Century and of Marxism. Not by coincidence all of communism's meaningless pledges and oaths are about Man, with a capital M, and his earthly happiness. At first glance it seems an ugly parallel: common traits in the thinking and way of life of today's West and today's East? But such is the logic of materialistic development.

The interrelationship is such, too, that the current of materialism which is most to the left always ends up by being stronger, more attractive, and victorious, because it is more consistent. Humanism without its Christian heritage cannot resist such competition. We watch this process in the past centuries and especially in the past decades, on a world scale as the situation becomes increasingly dramatic. Liberalism was inevitably displaced by radicalism; radicalism had to surrender to socialism; and socialism could never resist communism.1 The communist regime in the East could stand and grow due to the enthusiastic support from an enormous number of Western intellectuals who felt a kinship and refused to see communism's crimes. And when they no longer could do so, they tried to justify them. In our Eastern countries, communism has suffered a complete ideological defeat; it is zero and less than zero. But Western intellectuals still look at it with interest and with empathy, and this is precisely what makes it so immensely difficult for the West to withstand the East.

I am not examining here the case of a world war disaster and the changes which it would produce in society. As long as we wake up every morning under a peaceful sun, we have to lead an everyday life. There is a disaster, however, which has already been under way for quite some time. I am referring to the calamity of a despiritualized and irreligious humanistic consciousness.

To such consciousness, man is the touchstone in judging everything on earth -- imperfect man, who is never free of pride, self-interest, envy, vanity, and dozens of other defects. We are now experiencing the consequences of mistakes which had not been noticed at the beginning of the journey. On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility. We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life. In the East, it is destroyed by the dealings and machinations of the ruling party. In the West, commercial interests suffocate it. This is the real crisis. The split in the world is less terrible -- The split in the world is less terrible than the similarity of the disease plaguing its main sections.

If humanism were right in declaring that man is born only to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot be unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it. It is imperative to review the table of widespread human values. Its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the President's performance be reduced to the question how much money one makes or of unlimited availability of gasoline. Only voluntary, inspired self-restraint can raise man above the world stream of materialism.

It would be retrogression to attach oneself today to the ossified formulas of the Enlightenment. Social dogmatism leaves us completely helpless in front of the trials of our times. Even if we are spared destruction by war, our lives will have to change if we want to save life from self-destruction. We cannot avoid revising the fundamental definitions of human life and human society. Is it true that man is above everything? Is there no Superior Spirit above him? Is it right that man's life and society's activities have to be determined by material expansion in the first place? Is it permissible to promote such expansion to the detriment of our spiritual integrity?

If the world has not come to its end, it has approached a major turn in history, equal in importance to the turn from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It will exact from us a spiritual upsurge: We shall have to rise to a new height of vision, to a new level of life where our physical nature will not be cursed as in the Middle Ages, but, even more importantly, our spiritual being will not be trampled upon as in the Modern era.

This ascension will be similar to climbing onto the next anthropologic stage. No one on earth has any other way left but -- upward." Solzhenitsyn

 

[Meriweather]

"There are meaningful warnings which history gives a threatened or perishing society. Such are, for instance, the decadence of art, or a lack of great statesmen."

To this, I'll add that as far back as Genesis our ancestors warned us a sign of a failing society is the lack of sexual discipline.

 

[NotfooledbyW]

What say you? Are we now facing the same danger that faced the nations and people in Biblical times?

Absolutely not. Not even close thanks to the rational theism that fortunately overpowered Christian superstition in the minds of our first five of six presidents who led this great multicultural nation into being with freedom of conscience for all.

 

[ding]

To this, I'll add that as far back as Genesis our ancestors warned us a sign of a failing society is the lack of sexual discipline.

I might have used the word decorum instead of discipline.