[Note: The following article is an excerpt from my newest book, The Coming Millennial Kingdom, published by Harvest House Publishers in June 2025.]
What do all of the nations and empires of both past and present have most in common?
Your answer might span the spectrum from raw political power, to vast military might, to long-standing cultural influences, to economic superiority, and even to longevity. And you would be right, though only to some degree.
The sole shared characteristic, once revealed, should appear blindingly apparent, much like a buoy light bobbing in a storm at sea. It’s a characteristic historically and repeatedly proven again and again. And it is this:
Every one of these mighty empires became an absolute, total failure, either consummately in the past or is currently in a state of decline now and so is heading toward an inevitable collapse.
Why is failure alone the most significant common trait?
Why have these and every other mighty empire or nation been stamped in red with Failure? The reason is because they have been unable to fulfill the primary reason for why human governments exist.
Because we all live out our days under some flavor of political ism, and so benefit from or suffer under them, let’s identify the primary reason why human governments exist. As the US is considered by many to be the pinnacle of all human governments in the freedoms it enjoys, the influence that it extends, and the wealth it generates, let’s look to the nation’s Founding Fathers for the answer to the reason why every empire or nation inevitably fails.
While laying the groundwork for the prenatal US, the Founding Fathers held fast to the biblical revelation that government under human control has been divinely purposed. The God of this logical and orderly universe is the very One who instituted government by revealing Himself and His will for its establishment in the Bible.
Case in point: In the Old Testament, the prophet Daniel wrote that God is the very One who “changes the times and the seasons; He removes kings and raises up kings” (Daniel 2:21). In speaking to Babylon’s potentate, Daniel exclaimed, “The God of heaven has given you a kingdom, power, strength, and glory…and has made you ruler over them all” (verses 37-38). God does so “in order that the living may know that the Most High rules in the kingdom of men, gives it to whomever He will, and sets over it the lowest of men” (Daniel 4:17).
In the New Testament, the Son of God revealed that the power of authority originates from heaven when He told Pilate, “You could have no power at all against Me unless it had been given you from above” (John 19:11). The apostle Paul echoed Christ’s revelation: “There is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God” (Romans 13:1). Even when it comes to the painful chore of paying taxes, Paul instructed us as to why we should pay up, noting (somewhat to our reluctance) that our leaders “are God’s ministers” who are “attending continually to this very thing” (verse 6). The apostle Peter echoed this divine calling, instructing every person to “submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake, whether to the king as supreme, or to governors, as to those who are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and for the praise of those who do good” (1 Peter 2:13-14).
What exactly was the Most High attempting to accomplish by placing and empowering certain people to govern over other people?
One of America’s Founding Fathers, Thomas Paine, believed the purpose as “security being the true design and end of government.”1 Another Founding Father, Thomas Jefferson, declared, “The most sacred of the duties of a government is to do equal and impartial justice to all its citizens.”2 And, when both security and justice reign, then as John Adams noted, “the form of government, which communicates ease, comfort, security, or in one word happiness to the greatest number of persons, and in the greatest degree, is the best.”3
In summary, security instead of enslavement, justice instead of corruption, virtue instead of vice, and the preservation of the happiness of its people rather than the cause of their suffering—these are the godly ideals upon which these men founded a nation. They understood that to these ends rest the primary reason for why God has instituted human government.
America’s Founding Fathers also learned from their burdens living in a vassal territory suffering under a control-freak British king that such an idealized form of government would be, with a Godfearing citizenship, tenuous to maintain at best, and without a Godfearing people, an inevitable failure. Why so? Because the Founding Fathers understood from the hard lessons they’d learned in life, as well as from the Bible’s warnings that human governments will always remain inherently evil because mankind is inherently evil, and in sore need of a redeemer (Romans 3:23).
In his essay on Alexander Hamilton, historian Forrest McDonald echoed the sentiment of the Founding Fathers when he wrote, “Men are inherently evil, governed by greed and lust and love of power and a host of even less endearing passions.”4 And, as America’s first president, George Washington, with no small amount of fear, spoke his fabled warning about the true nature of any government ruled over by fallen men: “Government is not reason. Government is not eloquence. It is force. And, like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”5 Paine went so far as to call government, even in its best state, a “necessary evil,” and in its worst state, an “intolerable one”!6
Even secularists have peered down the long corridor of history and come to the same conclusion. As author Cory Price remarked, “Given the nature of humankind, no organization seems capable of permanence; for better or worse.”7 Empires demonstrate time and time again that they will eventually become unsustainable because “the constant interplay of internal and external pressures inevitably introduces too many fractures, overwhelming these consolidations of power, and leading to their eventual collapse.”8 In other words, people do not get along very well with each other, making lasting national unity an impossibility.
In drafting the US Constitution, the authors alertly understood that as long as human governments exist as a necessary evil, their administrators will be prone to fall into villainy and corruption. The Founding Fathers knew that as long as a government is composed of people, and because people are inherently fallen and evil, the more corrupt a government will become, causing more and more of its people to suffer. Lawlessness and crime will run rampant, natural disasters will go unaided, poverty and hunger will be the norm, disease and misery will be their citizens’ inheritance, war and strife will define their existence, and human suffering will know no end.
So, to stem the inescapable tide of unscrupulous behavior expected from its elected leaders, the Founding Fathers wisely espoused that governmental power must be limited.9 They did this by dividing power into separate branches to create a balance of power among those branches. A government must constantly be checked and watched and questioned by the population so that it can extract only the least amount of taxes necessary to perform the most limited of functions, that of providing security for its people. A government not constantly monitored, they believed, would inevitably grow into a monster—one that, to feed its endless thirst for power, would consume its people’s money and trample on their God-given inalienable rights.
Can the failure of human government cause a crisis of faith?
People take notice when their government fails their expectations to protect them from lawlessness and crime, natural disasters, poverty and hunger, disease and misery, war and strife, and the deluge of human sufferings that ravage the world. Despite all the positive propaganda spewing from tech-censored mainstream media, we know for a fact that today’s governments are failing because they cannot keep the peace, but rather, often remain in a perpetual state of war. We can only lament when a government fails to put an end to our sufferings, which limits our pursuit of happiness. At some point in our lives, no matter how pro-big government some of us might be, we awaken to the realization that government has at some level failed to achieve its primary purpose—true security and justice for its people.
The abject failure of the God-ordained institution that is human government has led many to experience a crisis of faith in God Himself. Bob Wenz, formerly with the National Association of Evangelicals, identified this very problem. He noted that the failures of government have long resulted in a crisis of faith for many who believe in God, and for those who do not believe in God, creates a major obstacle to their coming to salvation.10
Hence the meteoric rise in our day of the “nones.” Individuals who could be properly labeled “practical atheists,” their disillusioned souls have forsaken the belief in a sovereign Creator and a theistic worldview. In the process of a society increasingly transitioning from theism to atheism, these nones have transferred onto the government—what they see as a most imposing institution seemingly bigger than life—the divine qualities of a great being who is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good. In doing so, these practical atheists expect that government will somehow be able to anticipate and prevent all evils from ever happening. Wenz called this a “false premise” because the practical atheist is wrongly expecting their government to possess all the divine qualities and abilities that no person, let alone any government, could ever possess.11 The unbeliever’s faith is misplaced when making a god out of government, and so that faith remains unfulfilled and perpetually in crisis.
And to those who do believe in God and have been raised with a Judeo-Christian upbringing, Sunday school taught us what America’s Founding Fathers long espoused—that bad things happen in our world because humanity is inherently sinful. While God necessarily chooses to not directly intervene in restraining all of humanity’s evil tendencies, He has ordained human government to function in His place, at least to a limited degree, in a restraining capacity and to punish evildoers.
Wenz pointed out that when those who believe in God likewise see a human government fail, their crisis of faith becomes twofold.12 When seriously evil leaders succeed in their corrupted pursuit of happiness, dismayed believers are left asking, “Why didn’t God exercise His divine power and prevent ‘this’ from happening?” They know that God has established human governments, and when they fail to live up to their unrealistic expectations, they join the practical atheists in crying out, “Why didn’t the government stop ‘this’?”
For centuries on end, believers in God have struggled with the inclination to blame the Almighty for not preventing every bad thing that’s ever happened, while at the same time also projecting that same blame onto their God-ordained human government. Wenz concluded that his experiences in ministry have proven to him that many of the once-faithful had abandoned their faith in God because they couldn’t find a “satisfactory answer” to this dilemma.13
Is humanity destined to forever suffer under the weight of corrupted governments?
Resource
To get the answer to this perplexing question, learn about what life will be like living in the Millennial Kingdom by pre-ordering Dr. Nathan Jones’ newest book, The Coming Millennial Kingdom, published by Harvest House Publishers in June 2025!
References
1. Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776.
2. Introductory note written by Thomas Jefferson, which appears in Destutt de Tracy, A Treatise on Political Economy (Georgetown: Joseph Milligan, 1817).
3. John Adams, Thoughts on Government, April 1776, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-04-02-0026-0004.
4. R.J. Behn, “America’s Founding Drama,” The Lehrman Institute, http://www.lehrmaninstitute.org/history/founders-optimism.html.
5. The John Birch Society, “The Constitution of the United States: Back to Basics,” https://jbs.org/constitution/basics/.
6. Paine, Common Sense.
7. Cory Price, “Greatest Empires In The History Of The World,” WorldAtlas, https://www.worldatlas.com/ancient-world/greatest-empires-in-the-history-of-the-world.html.
8. Ibid.
9. Bob Wenz, “Your Government Failed You: But Then, We Don’t Want an All-Powerful Government Any More than We Want an All-Powerful God,” Christianity Today 49, no. 2 (February 2005): 54, https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=rfh&AN=ATLA0001456894&site=ehost-live.
10. Wenz, “Your Government Failed You: But Then, We Don’t Want an All-Powerful Government Any More than We Want an All-Powerful God,” 52.
11. Ibid., 52.
12. Ibid., 54.
13. Ibid., 54.
