In 1994, Jim Nelson Black authored a book “When Nations Die.” He said in the past 2000 years every empire – even those that seemed invincible at the height of their glory – collapsed into ruin. Every one of these empires had three factors in common before they fell: civil society devalued human life, forsook religious belief, and celebrated sexual immorality.

Is Abortion, Religious Apathy, Sexual Perversion Beginning of End for America?
May 2004. Calvary Contender
May 17, 2004. Christian News. Vol. 42, No. 20, pg. 2

Comment: Just as God desires to stop since at its source, the heart, so that it doesn't spill over into hurtful words and destructive actions, God also desires to stop sin at the individual level, so that it doesn't poor over to the family and then the whole society. We each must start with ourselves. Then we pray for and help the others... starting with family and then our community.

As recently as the dawn of the twentieth century, most people figured that the universe had been around forever, and always would be. We were just a piece of cosmic flotsam, adrift in an endless river. Then, only a single lifetime ago, Edwin Hubble showed that the universe is expanding - thinning out at a rate that adds 20 billion miles to the distance between your driveway and the nearby Virgo Cluster of galaxies every year. Indeed, as most learned readers will know, recent astronomical measurements show that this cosmic stretching is speeding up.

…In about 100 billion years, the once-brightly spangled arms of the Galaxy will be riddled with Sun-sized carbon clinkers, black holes, and quiescent neutron stars - a hundred billion mute, stellar hulks.

The fun will be over, but the decay will go on. Chaotic encounters will eventually strip planets from the corpses of their erstwhile suns, and galaxies will slowly evaporate - spewing their dark and lifeless contents into the ever-expanding void. Even massive black holes will someday melt away, adding their mass to the inert and keenly cold fog that the universe will become.

The cosmos will be a deathly silent graveyard, cloaked in perpetual night.

As best we can deduce from measurement, this somber scenario
will play out endlessly. There will be no reversal, no Big Crunch to start the cycle anew. The cosmos - dark, uninteresting and inactive - will simply continue to expand and thin.

So here’s the big picture: the universe begins with a 100 billion-year blip of activity, and then flatlines to endless paralysis. All our works - all the poetry, the science, the tenderness, and the rock-and-roll - all will be stilled and lost. The death of the universe is not just long - it’s eternal. The short, bright spurt at the beginning where we now find ourselves is not only insignificantly short in the cosmos’ history, it’s infinitely short.

hostak, Seth. Life, the Universe and Everything: How Astronomy Addresses the Big Questions
October 21, 2004. Space.com - Science

Comment: Is this the growing of all creation - the result of mankind's sin? Not only are we dying, but the whole universe lost it's eternal grip on life. Of course, the universe isn't going to get that far, before God comes and makes everything new again.

(Houston) Jose Luis Betancourt, 52, was arrested after making a cocaine delivery shortly after accepting $5.5 million for having the winning ticket in the December 11, 2002, [Texas] lottery drawing.

A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the trial court judge’s ruling that Betancourt bought his share of the ticket with drug proceeds because that was his only apparent source of income.

The court also upheld his punishment of more than 24 years in prison without parole.

“Mr. Betancourt’s luck ran out, and appropriately so,” said U.S. Attorney Chuck Rosenberg.

Drug dealer must forfeit lottery winnings
August 18, 2005. Reuters – Oddly Enough

The newspapers carry stories of concern and sacrifice by people of many different religious orientations in many different circumstances. Christians do not have a corner on the market of good works — good, from a human perspective. When we place our emphasis on our good deeds we only make ourselves like so many others. Yes, we should perform good works, but our works are never purely good except through Christ. His forgiveness purges my good works — the good works of every Christian — of all the sin that still clings to them because of my sinful nature. A Christian's good words are not good because of their intention to help others or their results but because they are done in connection with Christ… What separates me as a Christian from all others is what I believe about Jesus, not necessarily the form of my good works.

Braun, John A. The Gospel Is the Power God Gives Us to Do His Work, pp. 102,103
Spring 2006. Wisconsin Lutheran Quarterly, Vol. 103, No. 2

The French philosopher Jean Rousseau (1712-1778) claimed that at the head of every political society there stands a god… “It is of consequence to the State that each of its citizens should have a religion which will dispose him to love his duties.”

…For Rousseau the purpose of civil religion was to foster good citizenship through promise of future rewards and threat of future punishment from a powerful being.

Brenner, John M. Are the Lost Gospels Really Lost, pp. 300,301
Fall 2004. Wisconsin Lutheran Quarterly – News & Comments, Vol. 101, No. 4