Quotes about Empires

The point about truth, and about Jesus and his followers bearing witness to it, is that truth is what happens when humans use words to reflect God's wise ordering of the world and so shine light into its dark corners, bringing judgment and mercy where it is badly needed. Empires can't cope with this. They make their own 'truth,' creating 'facts on the ground' in the depressingly normal way of violence and injustice.

The church is never more at risk than when it sees itself merely as the solution bearer and forgets that every day it must say, "Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner," and allow that confession to work its way into genuine humility even as it stands boldly before the world and its crazy empires.

Most ancient Jewish apocalypses [127] were decidedly political, offering symbolic narratives about the divine plan which gave coded encouragement to the oppressed, enabling them to see apparently chaotic and horrifying events within a different framework, and predicting the downfall not just of 'cosmic' powers (in the sense of 'suprahuman' entities), but of the actual pagan empires and their rulers.

But after you, there will arise another kingdom, inferior to yours. Next, a third kingdom, one of bronze, will rule the whole earth.

Fate of empires depends on the education of youth

Virtuous theologians work as God's stewards building God's home (1 Cor. 3:9), not masters building their own little empires.

Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future, too.

Many of us have learned history by studying wars and violence; we organize it by the reigns of kings and presidents. But in Jesus, we reorder history. We date it from his visit to earth and examine it through a new lens — identifying with the tortured, the displaced, the refugee, and remembering the nonviolent revolutions on the margins of empires.

The great military leaders of the past have gone, their empires have crumbled and burned to ashes. But the empire of Jesus, built solidly and majestically on the foundation of love, is still growing.

Nations rise, they flourish for a time, and then they decline. Eventually every empire comes to an end; not even the greatest can last forever.

What does the doctrine of American exceptionalism empower the United States to do? Nothing more than to act better than traditional empires - committed to looting and conquest - have done. So that's American exceptionalism: an exceptionalism based on noble ideas, ideas that it holds itself to even when it falls short of them.

Can you see air you breathe? Can you see the force that moves the tides or changes the seasons or sends the birds to a winter haven?" Her eyes welled. "Can Rome with all its knowledge be so foolish? Oh Marcus, you can't carve God in stone. You can't limit him to a temple. You can't imprison him on a mountaintop. Heaven is his throne; earth, his footstool. Everything you see is his. Empires will rise and empires will fall. Only God prevails.