Visigoths in Rome (better known as the 1st trumpet Rev 8:7 .Note the Goths came from cold,pillage and burn Rome hence in Rev 8:7 Hail and Fire)
Ecclesiastes 1:9 The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.
Rome - Senators and senate
US- Senators and senate
Rome - State and provinces
US - State and provinces
Rome- all power was given to one man
Us -All power is given to one man.
Rome- Emperor worship as savior.
US-president worship as savior.
Rome - enact laws to keep the people under iron rule
Us -implementing laws to keep the people on iron rule.
Rome- Conquer the world at the expense of the republic
Us -forging ahead to conquer the world at the expense of the republic
Rome - a police state to control the descent among the populace
Us - a police state to control the descent among the populace.
Rome -Heavy influence of the roman church to control policy
Us - Heavy influence of the roman church to control policy in the making
Rome - Stretch thin due to its military complex abroad
Us - Stretch thin due to its military complex abroad
Royalblood
Excerpt from the Decline and fall of Rome
The Greco-Roman tradition was secular: it proposed no one God and formal religion as we know it today, did not exist. While the Greeks would pay homage to their many deities, as would the Romans, there is no doubt that they placed their true faith in the hands of man. In other words, humanism: man the thinker, man the doer, man the maker. For the Greeks, man was endowed with Reason, the capacity to think and use his intellect. This initially took the form of glorifying the city state: the city state was the world. Anything outside the city state was somehow inferior, barbarian. In an important respect such an attitude was narrow in focus and provided the Greeks with a tunnel vision that prevented them from further growth during the Hellenistic Age.
The Greeks were also obsessed with the personal cultivation of the individual. "Know thyself," repeated Socrates. The good man ought to seek the good life and so become a good citizen, a virtuous citizen. And a collection of virtuous citizens would constitute the virtuous city state. The only way that the good life was at all possible was through personal examination. Or, as Socrates again argued, "the unexamined life is not worth living."
Above all, the Greeks asked questions. What is knowledge? What is the state? What is beauty? What is virtue? What is justice? Was the best form of government? The Greeks, in the last analysis, were thinkers rather than doers. In time, the Greek world view came or to be based on the intellect more than it was on action. The best illustration of this world view -- a view of thought rather than of action-- was the Stoic and Epicurean therapies of the Hellenistic Age. These therapies taught resignation in the face of chaos and disorder -- they taught men to resign themselves in private reflection and thought.
The Romans, on the other hand, were doers, they were men of action. They succeeded in translating into action what the Greeks had only thought possible. The Romans also asked questions about the world, about nature, and about man. To be sure, they inhabited the same world as the Hellenistic Greeks. They understood and accepted the chaos and disorder of the world. However, they were clearly more prepared to develop their thought of the world in relation to what kind of world in which they wanted to live. The Romans also had the example of the Greeks and their history. In other words, the Romans were cognizant of what the Greeks had accomplished and not accomplished. The Greeks had no such history to which they could refer.
The end result for the Romans was that they managed to create their own world and they called it the Roman Empire. And their world view became embodied in a pagan cult. This cult was nothing less than the patriotic worship of Rome itself. And throughout the Empire we find the expression Genius Populi Romani celebrated by all Romans. If anything sustained the Empire, it was the conception of the "Genius of the Roman People." The Romans were taught to believe that the destiny of Rome was the destiny of the world and this became embodied in a civil religion which embraced the genius of the Roman people. This civil religion was a secular, pagan religion, in which all men devoted their energies toward public service to state. It was their duty to serve the state. It was virtuous. These duties consisted of service and responsibility because only through responsible service would one come to know virtue.Despite the obvious fact that the majority of Roman emperors were scheming, devious, opportunistic, or plainly insane, the world view dominated the social life of the Roman citizen of the Empire. The history of the Empire is dotted with political assassinations, strangulations, emperors playing fiddles while Rome burned, court intrigue and rivalry not to mention a widespread incidence of downright insanity or paranoid schizophrenia. In the end, it is extraordinary that the Roman Empire existed for as long as it did. For Edward Gibbon, author of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (3 vols, 1770s), the decline of Rome was natural and required little explanation: "The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the cause of the destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and, as soon as time or accident and removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight. The story of the ruin is simple and obvious: and instead of inquiring why the Roman Empire was destroyed we should rather be surprised that it has subsisted for so long." [Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 2nd ed., vol. 4, ed. by J. B. Bury (London, 1909), pp. 173-174.]
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