The western system of freedom is an elusive thing. It is predicated on the notions of free and equal access to the institutions of government, free and equal access to capital and private property, and free and equal access to education and information. All three of these basic notions of a free society are currently under assault, and yet there seems to be no alarm over what is happening.

Every great society has collapsed. Daniel showed to Nebuchadnezzar the meaning of his vision in Daniel chapter 2, that civilizations would rise and fall, and no matter how much the great king tried to prevent it, Babylon did fall. Babylonian civilization collapsed from its own pride; the Medo-Persians fell from an overburdened centralized system of authority; the Greeks fell as their home peninsula reached maximum population entropy and could not sustain its own population; the Romans fell from internal corruption and decay. Our western free society is quickly following in their footsteps, seemingly having learned nothing.

The last great world empire, Rome, gives us a lesson on how this comes to be. In 1776 Edward Gibbon released the first part of his work, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. This detailed history has been the basic text for the study of societal decline and collapse. But did Rome ever truly collapse, or did it just transform from one system to another?

The small salt trading post along the Tiber River would eventually come to dominate a territory that stretched from the British Isles to Persia and encompassing the entire Mediterranean. Originally ruled by a series of kings, the Romans eventually threw out their last king, and formed a republic to govern their city state. While not a democracy in the sense we would understand today, the republic did provide for a government with rotating leadership that allowed participation of the citizenry in combined decision-making. Consuls were elected to serve for one year, and restrictions were placed on how many years needed to pass before they could be elected again, to ensure no kingly power would arise. For the majority of the time of the republic there was no standing army, and when a military campaign was launched it was composed of land-owning men who provided their own armor and weapons.

The republic survived by bringing in resources from surrounding territories and nations. The conquest of new lands brought wealth, but also an ever-expanding territory to defend. New conquests meant new enemies and the expenditure of more and more resources to defend the frontiers. Once the republic grew beyond the Italian Peninsula, soldiers needed to spend more and more time away from the families and their farms. A consul elected to serve their year in office might spend that whole year or more away from Rome on a military campaign, be it offensive or defensive. To take care of matters at home, and to administer the growing territory, a bureaucratic system of administration began to take hold. Standing armies were needed. More stability of executive leadership was needed to oversee a national expansion project that was clearly more than a year long.

As Roman society became more dependent on the importation of food from other lands, it became increasingly important to conquer new territories and control the flow of goods, especially of essential commodities like grain. Centralized control allowed for what was perceived to be more efficiency—but the people had to give up some of their liberties, rights and freedoms for the greater good. Complex taxation systems were introduced to both fund these massive projects as well as to control whowhat could produce and consume and they could produce and consume.

Charismatic leaders saw that they could sway the masses into letting go of some of their personal freedoms in exchange for free grain (the Gracci brothers being a prime example). Others saw that controlling a standing army would be to their personal benefit (Marius, Sulla, Pompey and Julius Caesar among the most prominent). There was resistance to these men of influence taking power for themselves, and a period of civil strife ensued. The ultimate result of these internal conflicts finally ended with the establishment of the empire. There would now be a highly centralized power structure—but to keep the others happy they would still pretend to be a republic. To the very end of the Roman Empire the symbolic senate remained, a vestige of its original self.

Eventually the resources needed to maintain the empire could not keep up with the actual needs. The enemies became too numerous and the loyal Romans too few. Invading cultures brought with them new ideas, new ideals, and new ideologies. The empire splintered and a series of nation states arose in its place. And yet, Rome lived on.

No longer a kingdom, a republic, or an empire, the central power remained, and Rome became a church. It still held power and great sway, and a religious authority held the very souls of men in its grasp. A religious empire emerged and the world was swept into the dark ages.

We find ourselves today at just such a moment of transformation. You would be forgiven if you thought the description of Rome was actually a description of the United States. A people throws out their king, sets up a republic, and now proceeds to be led astray by charismatic leaders who use the very instruments of the state to subjugate them and slowly but surely take their freedoms. All that remains for the United States to follow fully in the footsteps of Rome is the establishment of a religious order to fully control the people and take away the last vestiges of liberty.

Comparing the history of Rome to that of the newly emerging United States in 1891 Alonzo T. Jones published his book The Two Republics. As long as 130 years ago, already those who studied the prophetic record could see what was being prepared. The oppression recorded in the 13th chapter of Revelation was already being fulfilled. Jones’ parallel history of these two great nations shows how similar their trajectory was, and continues to be.

In our days, the study of societal collapse has been led to a great degree by the work of Joseph Tainter. A secular archaeologist, Tainer studied the collapse of pre-European indigenous populations in the Americas to see how civilizations fell. For the secular world, Tainter’s The Collapse of Complex Societies, published in 1988, became the seminal text in the study of societal collapse. “Civilizations are fragile, impermanent things,” Tainter wrote.

All the world seems poised for a cataclysmic event that will end society as we know it. Apocalyptic dystopias dominate the viewing screens as people prepare for zombies to take over the world, not realizing that they have become the zombies. In recent years societal collapse including the concepts of environmental sustainability, have become the objects of extensive scholarly research. Not willing to accept what Scripture has outlined, scholars seek to keep this present world in place. Princeton University now has a research program in Global Systemic Risk, Cambridge University has a Center for the Study of Existential Risk.

Anthropologists are now joined by historians, social scientists, complexity scholars and physical scientists who have turned their attention to the dynamics shaping the broadest scope of human history. All seem to echo what Tainter already established. Society is getting more and more complex, and in every past civilization when the society reached the point of unsustainable complexity, it collapsed.

Complex societies create complex institutions. The more complex these institutions are, the smaller the number of people who can access them. There are too many attempting to access the same institutional norm, and control mechanisms outside of those peoples control are implemented.

A simple example of complexity overtaking a society dominates our current debate on free speech and social media. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc., have amassed greater and greater user numbers. Everyone was speaking “freely” until there were too many competing ideas. Now these corporations, which are not democratic entities but beholden to their shareholders, were pressured to limit what could be said on their platforms. The corporations then took it upon themselves to become the arbiters of what would be “free” speech and what would be controlled, limited, or banned speech. The complexity of the system overburdened the simple ideal of free speech.

As the angel’s holding back the winds continue to pull back, we will see and more and more that the complex institutions of our Western civilization will not be able to stand. The resulting degradation of the family, the society, and even the natural world around us will be massive. Fewer and fewer resources will be available and the competition for these resources will lead many to give up their personal liberties in exchange for security. Whether it be manmade devastation like war and poverty or natural disaster such as pestilence and environmental degradation, a strain is being placed on Western civilization as never before.

Using this case study as an example, and remembering that the loss of freedoms recorded in Revelation 13 are economic (no buying and selling) we can see that the U.S. is almost at the point of all loss of personal freedoms. Step 1 was passed August 15, 1971 when President Nixon declared that the US currency could no longer be converted to gold, depriving it of any real value. Step 2 of having people lose the means of producing their own wealth was passed by the end of 2012 when the U.S. government, federal, state and local, sent money to 53.4% of the population. Since 2012 there have been more people dependent on the government than actually contributing to the economic production of the country. Step number 3 is fulfilling before our eyes. American household debt hit a record $14.6 trillion in the spring of 2021, according to the Federal Reserve. Individuals are giving away their actual value for things that have no value. How long till the citizenry are willing to do whatever the authorities want, only if they will feed them? If the Covid-19 pandemic has taught us anything, it is that people are almost ready for that. We are but one major crisis away from losing our last liberties. They may even pretend to keep the institutions of liberty in place, but the substance will be gone.

There can be no true freedom without a personal relationship with the Creator of freedom. The further this world goes from the operational structure set down by the Creator, the less freedom it will have. The law of God was given not for His benefit but for ours. A society that would honor the moral law of God would have liberty and freedom. The society that casts aside the Creator will profess a sense of freedom, but it will not be real. “But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed” (James 1:25).