The course of Empire destruction / cole thomas

7 Stages of Empire

A Cautionary Pattern in History

My undergraduate degree is in History. I’m a management consultant by training. And my God is a God of order. All of these incline me to view things in terms of structures, systems, patterns, cycles and processes. They are observable to those who would see bigger pictures.

One such observer was Sir John Bagot Glubb (AKA Glubb Pasha). Army General and historian, he studied eleven empires starting with the Assyrians in 859 B.C. and ending with the British in 1950 A.D. Sir John determined that each followed a remarkably similar pattern from birth to demise. Spanning a period of about ten generations, each went through 7 Stages of Empire:

1. The Age of Pioneers (Outburst)
2. The Age of Conquests
3. The Age of Commerce
4. The Age of Affluence
5. The Age of Intellect
6. The Age of Decadence
7. The Age of Decline & Collapse

And what marked the penultimate age? Defensiveness, pessimism, materialism, frivolity, an influx of foreigners, the Welfare State, and a weakening of religion. To what did he attribute this decadence? Too long a period of wealth and power, selfishness, love of money, and the loss of a sense of duty.

Now this is merely an introduction of the pattern intended to whet your intellectual appetites, not an assessment of our nation’s condition vis-à-vis that pattern. Still, our 237 years make us long in the tooth comparatively speaking and our national behaviors do appear to mirror the Age of Decadence.

While what is past often is prologue, the future is yet to be written. The world has only glimpsed instances of what one nation truly under God can be. We have opportunity to be more than a recent glimpse. Such is the offer of a God predisposed to our redemption.