The Anglosphere’s Sobering Future

Prophetically significant winds of change are beginning to swirl ominously around the globe. Once-mighty Britain, which at one time controlled the greatest empire the world has ever seen, is exiting the European Union and now stands alone as a financially-strapped and increasingly insignificant island nation. America, still the only global superpower, is trillions of dollars in debt, torn by internal divisions, concerned about emerging threats from abroad, and seemingly intent on alienating its allies.

What has led to these dramatic reversals and what does the future hold for two nations that, along with their kindred countries, have dominated the world for two centuries? Are we approaching another critical turning point in world history? While scholars debate the meaning of these momentous changes, few today realize that Bible prophecies have long foretold these striking events would occur. The Bible also reveals why these notable shifts are happening and what lies ahead for the countries of what some call the Anglosphere—the English-speaking nations around the world.

Rising Chorus of Warnings

During the last several decades, a growing number of observers have focused on the troubling signs of decay spreading across the Western world—especially in the English-speaking nations. More than 20 years ago, Judge Robert Bork published Slouching Towards Gomorrah, a “book about American decline” that described America as a nation on a “downward trajectory” and “on the road to cultural disaster.” As a university professor in the 1960s, Judge Bork saw the ideas of political radicals permeate American society, spawning racial tensions, illegitimate births, widespread drug use, the uninhibited display of sexuality, and increasingly violent entertainment. His conclusion was “Gomorrah is our probable destination” (p. 343), referring to the ancient biblical city known as a center of debauchery, destroyed by God along with the city of Sodom (Genesis 19:24–25).

A few years later, English journalist Peter Hitchens published The Abolition of Britain, where he described the efforts of liberal politicians to overthrow accepted cultural traditions in Britain by undermining the foundations of marriage and family and normalizing pornography, prostitution and homosexuality. These would, he believed, put “a great civilization… on the edge of extinction” (p. xi). His concerns were echoed a decade later by Melanie Phillips, an award-winning columnist for London’s Daily Mail, in her book The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth, and Power. Ms. Phillips described how the spread of secular humanism, along with moral and cultural relativism, facilitated the rise of New Age cults and the return of paganism, witchcraft and astrology “in Britain’s multicultural nirvana,” and how the modern liberal attack on traditional Judeo-Christian values—which provided the foundation of Western civilization—is nothing more than a “Secular Inquisition” and “Cultural Totalitarianism” (pp. 97–98). Taken together, these sweeping changes have contributed to what her book describes as “Britain’s postwar cultural suicide” (p. xi).

In America, scholar, economist and social theorist Thomas Sowell published Dismantling America, in which he lamented the fact that many today are blind to the lessons of history and fail to see the parallels between the decline and fall of the Roman Empire and what is happening in America and the West. According to Sowell, we are watching “the degeneration of our culture” (p. viii). Patrick Buchanan, an advisor to three presidents, addressed the same subject in Suicide of a Superpower when he wrote, “America is coming apart…. Our nation is disintegrating ethnically, culturally, morally, politically…. What once united us is dissolving. And this is true of Western civilization” (pp. 2, 7). He cites the growing threat of runaway debt, the tragic death of a primarily Judeo-Christian culture in America, and the divisiveness spawned by the worship of diversity. Buchanan concludes, “America has taken on the aspect of a decadent society and a declining nation” (p. vii)—and as a result of the culture wars of the 1960s, America is “a house divided against herself” (p. 408) which will eventually fall (see Matthew 12:25).

The view of the road ahead for other Anglosphere nations is equally telling. BBC correspondent Nick Bryant notes that due to the “uncertainty in Westminster, and something nearing chaos in Washington… neither Britain nor America can boast strong and stable governments” (BBC.com, “The end of the Anglo-American order?,” June 9, 2017). He writes, “These English-speaking nations no longer speak with such a clarion voice [like Churchill’s], and the rest of the world no longer takes such heed.” In his book The Rise and Fall of Australia, Mr. Bryant notes that short-sighted leadership by self-promoting politicians has wasted many opportunities for the “land down under.” An article in The Brussels Journal entitled “The Decline of the English-Speaking World” states “the English-speaking world is leading the disintegration of the West, ideologically and demographically. The entire West is sick, but the Anglosphere is sicker than most.”

Cause and Effect—The Biblical Perspective

But what does the decline of the Anglosphere nations have to do with the Bible, and why is this happening now? Many today have forgotten that God guides the course of history (Daniel 4:17, 25, 32), and He alone can bring to pass what He has foretold (Isaiah 46:8–11). Moses recorded that the covenant God made with the ancient Israelites prophesied blessings for obedience and consequences for disobedience to His laws (see Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28). Just as the ancient Israelites turned away from God, so too have the modern descendants of Israel living in the nations of the Anglosphere. God prophesies of the Israelite nations that, as a result of turning away from God and His ways, “you will become utterly corrupt… and evil will befall you in the latter days” (Deuteronomy 31:27–29), which accurately describes what is happening today. Among the many outcomes that follow from disobeying God, we are told, “The alien who is among you shall rise higher and higher above you, and you shall come down lower… [and] he shall be the head, and you shall be the tail… until you are destroyed” (Deuteronomy 28:43–45).

Isaiah anciently prophesied that the sinful nation of Israel had forsaken God and was sick from head to toe (Isaiah 1:3–6). These words well describe the modern Anglosphere nations today. The prophet proclaimed, “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil” (Isaiah 5:20), and the prophet Jeremiah stated repeatedly that the ancient Israelites would be punished because they had forgotten God and forsaken and perverted their ways (e.g., Jeremiah 2:13; 3:21). The Russian novelist, historian and social critic Alexander Solzhenitsyn echoed these same words when he commented in his 1983 Templeton Address that the unprecedented evils of the twentieth century were due to a simple fact: “Men have forgotten God, and that is why all this has happened.” The prophet Hosea foresaw a time when the Israelite people would view the laws of God as a “strange” thing (Hosea 8:12). Today in the Anglosphere nations, the biblical concept of marriage and Bible-based prohibitions such as those against adultery, fornication, swearing, and homosexuality are viewed as old-fashioned and repressive laws that must be eliminated—and we are seeing the tragic results.

We are heading toward Gomorrah, and the future is not good. Bible prophecies indicate that the British-descended nations that ignore the lessons of history will reap what they have sown (Galatians 6:7). The demise of the Anglosphere will be a sobering turning point in history and a lesson to the world (Deuteronomy 28:37).