betshaneNations that do not honor God lose their power and fade from existence. Ever met a Philistine? A Canaanite? A Moabite, Perrizite, or Jebusite? Me either.

Beit She’an is one of the oldest cities in the world, once a bustling hub of activity. It was a Canaanite city not conquered by Joshua and Philistine city during Saul’s day (This is where Saul’s body and head were displayed after his death). When I visited there over 10 years ago it was nothing but ruins (Picture). The amphitheater, homes, and business were destroyed by an earthquake in 749. Such is what happens when a people forget God.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn once evaluated why Russia had fallen in the late 20th Century in his “Templeton Address” from 1983. What he said applies to The United States in 2013.

Over a half century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of old 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 50 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 60 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.”

According to Solzhenitsyn, history, and Scripture — not honoring God has consequences. This Nobel Laureate, imprisoned under Joseph Stalin, should be afforded some credibility in evaluating when nations forget God. For Solzhenitsyn, the error of a godless society was a tragedy.

Could this happen to the United States? I suggest it is happening. Our nation is in the process of becoming another Beit She’an. It will happen… if America doesn’t repent… and our cities will look like Beit She’an does today.