“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.” – Abraham Lincoln

A free society has a shelf-life of a few hundred years before it crumbles into a bloody mess. It all depends on the situations that bring about the downfall of the society, but regardless, there is a finite amount of time a free society has before it’s over. I think America’s experiment is coming to a close.

Now, I don’t believe this will happen in the next several years, but I do believe that in the next thirty to fifty years, we will fall. At the epicenter of this destruction will be religion versus secularism.

During an interview with CBN, Marco Rubio put it perfectly:

“If you think about it, we are at the water’s edge of the argument that mainstream Christian teaching is hate speech. Because today we’ve reached the point in our society where if you do not support same-sex marriage, you are labeled a homophobe and a hater… 

After they are done going after individuals, the next step is to argue that the teachings of mainstream Christianity, the catechism of the Catholic Church is hate speech, and there’s a real and present danger.”

Rubio hits the nail on the head. At the moment, it’s not religions themselves that are under attack, but their practitioners. Faith is background noise. But at a certain point, the secularists will continue to walk upstream, locating the source of all the “hate.” First, churches will lose their 501(c)(3) tax exempt status, because the government must not be in the business of promoting hate speech. Then the secularists will demand that the government get involved in churches themselves, examining what’s going on inside.

Hillary Clinton has already said, during a recent speech:

“Laws have to be backed up with resources and political will…And deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed…”

Clinton was referring to “women’s reproductive health,” which is the buzzphrase for tearing little arms off and draining tiny heads. That’s how it will go down. In the interest of “the greater good,” the government will first pressure religions to change their “deep-seated” beliefs to accommodate women’s reproductive health, and same-sex marriage, and whatever comes next, and eventually, churches will be forced to accommodate or be punished. It’ll begin with fines, and go from there. Probation, prison, torture, death.

You may laugh, but look at what has happened in just the last ten years. Churches have been under attack in Texas, when preachers were asked for the content of their sermons by the Mayor of Houston, and participatory businesses in the wedding industry have been forced to accommodate something they believe is immoral or get sued out of existence.

At the current point, we have the power and resources to fight back. Religious freedom laws, like the one passed in Indiana, and the ability of Christians across the country to contribute to a crowd-funding effort to keep a threatened business afloat give us the slight edge—but that will change.

Politics is downstream of culture, and at the moment, we are downstream of a cultural revolution–one which labels faith values as hate speech. It’s only a matter of time before that cultural revolution flows downstream to the political realms, and Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, etc, will be forced to choose a side: their faith, or their government. The choosing will tear this county apart.

People of faith will become pariahs, bibles will be banished, and we will no longer be allowed to practice our faith. Freedom of religion and freedom of speech will be litigated away, bit by bit. This will all happen under the guise of good, otherwise, it wouldn’t occur.

As Huxley said: “Hell isn’t merely paved with good intentions; it’s walled and roofed with them. Yes, and furnished too.” One cannot achieve success in any endeavor like the crushing of faith without doing so under the guise of good intentions. One cannot destroy good with simple evil, it must be dressed as further good.

The worst part is that it will happen so slowly that American idiots won’t notice. We humans are so distracted by ourselves; we’re like Narcissus looking in the water, unable to take his eyes off his own beauty. We can’t take our eyes off ourselves. As we continue to gaze into our own beautiful reflection, the world around us will crumble. When we finally look up, everything around us will have changed, and we will no longer be considered beautiful, but absolutely hideous. That’s how this will happen.

In the end, we will either be secularists, and thus protected, or we will be faithful, and thus persecuted. The choice is coming. Ask the owners of “Sweet Cakes by Melissa,” or Google Tony Miano, who was arrested in London for his “hate speech.”

Christians need to wake up. If we don’t, we will be complicit in our own downfall. The clock is ticking, and the stream is moving.