Nahum 3:5-7 — Behold, I am against thee, saith the Lord of hosts; and I will discover thy skirts upon thy face, and I will shew the nations thy nakedness, and the kingdoms thy shame. And I will cast abominable filth upon thee, and make thee vile, and will set thee as a gazingstock. And it shall come to pass, that all they that look upon thee shall flee from thee, and say, Nineveh is laid waste: who will bemoan her? whence shall I seek comforters for thee?

Sometimes threads of thought twine themselves together when I’m thinking about these pieces. It was like that today.
Here’s the first thread. For some reason I’ve been more aware of talk of D-Day this year — that 6th of June, seventy-one years ago when the Allied landing on the beaches of Normandy marked the start of the end of the war in Europe. 326,547 Allied troops were involved by the end of the Battle for Normandy. That’s a lot of people committed to letting right prevail.

Here’s the second thread. My lovely Myra has been reading the book of Nahum this week. It’s not, perhaps, the most often read. Nahum is one of those prophets described as “minor” but, as is often said, the only thing minor about them is that their books tend to be short. Nahum might write of God in language as fine as can be found in the Bible, and of the wrath of God in the most graphic language. First Nahum describes God’s protection of those who loved Him and his fury against those who provoked Him. The second chapter describes the fall of Nineveh, and the final third chapter continues that theme, expands on the reasons for it’s punishment and describes the fall of the Assyrian Empire.

Myra has been unable to shake from her mind a conviction that the state of modem Western countries is very like the state of Assyria. I find myself agreeing as I contemplate the present headlong dash into moral degeneracy. How did we fall so rapidly from the heights of moral and physical courage of the D-Day generation?

One thing is for sure — history provides no example of an empire whose fall into moral degeneracy was not followed by ultimate collapse. If we cannot stop the slide, we’d better watch out.

Be very sure, too, that moral collapse is not a cause of disaster — it’s a symptom, even a punishment. It is the punishment Paul writes of in Romans:

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: (Romans 1:22-24)
Do we live in a nation that has provoked God … even rejected Him … Nahum warns us of what’s coming, and we’d better watch out!