Eighty years ago today, my Great-uncle Jack White stepped from his landing craft into the bone-chilling waters of Normandy. Landing with the North Shore Regiment at the St. Aubin-sur Mer sector of Juno Beach, he was immediately launched into a sea of chaos. Saltwater surf and concussive waves from German mortars punished them as they struggled toward the beach. Bullets rained down. Jack was a medic from the 22nd Field Ambulance Unit and immediately began tending to the fallen.

Crawling behind sea barriers across the barren beach, the Canadians moved forward through the wall of German fire. All across the five landing beaches of Normandy, young men from Canada, America, France, Great Britain and other nations overcame all obstacles with courage and determination. After much blood and sweat was poured onto the coasts of northern France, the Allies gained a foothold in the Third Reich. It took another 11 months of bitter struggle until the world was liberated. Democracy had overcome the tyrants.

Many men like my Great-uncle Jack fought their way through Europe, liberating France, the Netherlands and Belgium. Jack also helped liberate concentration camps, witnessing the depravity and barbarity of Adolf Hitler’s empire. He never told anyone what he saw in the camps or of his suffering comrades from the war.

Even though victory in Europe was finally won on May 8, 1945, the war never ended in the minds of men like my great-uncle. For the rest of their lives, they wrestled with post traumatic stress. Many gave the ultimate sacrifice of their lives; many of the survivors sacrificed the well-being of the time they had left.

The cost for victory was high, but it was necessary. Today we think about and honor that generation who gave so much to us. They were a generation more courageous, more willing to sacrifice, tougher and more resilient than us today.

Yet the civilization they saved disappeared in their lifetimes. After two generations of broken families from the meat grinders of World Wars i and ii, society began to unravel. The values and traditions they died for were overthrown—not with force but through cultural revolutions.

The “New Morality” swept through Western civilization almost as swiftly as Hitler’s Panzer divisions. It was a rebellion against repressive prudery, traditional morality and values—the very order men like my great-uncle had just saved.

“The so-called ‘New Morality,’ first unleashed by World War i, intensified by World War ii, completely KO’d Western civilization during the decades of the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s,” wrote Herbert W. Armstrong in The Missing Dimension in Sex. “The world began throwing off the restraints. The revolt was on, against prudery, repression and ignorance. The new sensual knowledge—with its most-needed dimension missing—quickly began to be gulped in by curiosity-hungry minds. World War ii shot morals into the gutter. And now they have plunged all the way into the cesspool.”

This revolutionized society. Promiscuity, drugs and alcohol abuse became normal. The invention of mass media, especially television, broadcast this “New Morality” directly into the minds of up-and-coming generations. A spirit and lifestyle of rebellion became entrenched in our culture. This rebellion was first manifested against the family unit, the single greatest victim of this cultural revolution.

But soon this revolutionary spirit spread to other parts of society.

The “New Morality” laid the foundation for the age of protest. The protests against the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights movement, feminism and the labor movement all sprouted from this way of thinking. While many grievances and misgivings against authority in our nations were entirely legitimate, they were exploited.

In many instances, these movements were a part of another revolution that swept through our Western nations. Mr. Armstrong prophesied of a Communist infiltration that threatened to undermine the foundation of our nations. “It’s a kind of warfare we don’t understand or know how to cope with,” he wrote in 1956. “It uses every diabolical means to weaken us from within, sapping our strength, perverting our morals, sabotaging our educational system, wrecking our social structure, destroying our spiritual and religious life, weakening our industrial and economic power, demoralizing our armed forces, and finally, after such infiltration, overthrowing our government by force and violence! All this cleverly disguised as a harmless political party! Communism is worldwide psychological warfare!”

Marxist tactics and philosophy became intertwined with the “New Morality.” The weakened family units, rebellious attitudes against government, and rejection of traditions like religion all made Western minds ripe for Communist subversion.

The success of the Communist infiltration exceeds even the dreams of the madman we stopped in 1945. Every stage of education, every facet of society, every level of government has been successfully captured by Communist thinking. This is illustrated in Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry’s book America Under Attack, which explains how a fundamental transformation of America into a Communist dictatorship was executed through the highest office of democracy, the president of the United States. Donald Trump’s conviction in New York is a shameful indication of how far our foundational institutions have fallen since June 6, 1944.

Yet there is another 80-year anniversary that illustrates how dangerous these cultural revolutions were. Only three months after my great-uncle landed at Juno Beach, top German business leaders were conducting a clandestine meeting.

Mr. Flurry wrote in the March 2022 Trumpet:

Toward the end of World War ii, in August 1944, representatives of massive German companies like Krupp, Messerschmitt, Volkswagenwerk and Rheinmetall met with senior Nazis at the so-called Red House meeting. A U.S. intelligence document, declassified in 1996, says that these business leaders were told they must “prepare themselves to finance the Nazi Party, which would be forced to go underground ….”

By 1944, these leaders knew they would lose World War ii. So they were already planning for the next round! This document says, “Existing financial reserves in foreign countries must be placed at the disposal of the party so that a strong German empire can be created after the defeat.”

In the face of the new Allied advance from Normandy, the Nazis knew defeat was on the horizon so they went underground! Documents from the American government attest to this historical reality. Mr. Flurry continues: “In 1944, German Gen. Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel said the German war machine would rise again and that America was its top target.” The Nazi machinery has been preparing for the next round against America, an America that is weakened from two cultural revolutions.

It is a hard reality to accept that in the past 80 years the Nazi war machine has survived, while the civilization that D-Day saved has faded away.

What is the grand lesson on this anniversary? The courage and valor of the men who landed on Normandy should be remembered and honored. Yet human sacrifice, no matter how noble, cannot solve our problems. The only way to overcome our degraded morality, combat the Communist infiltration, and face the Nazi underground is to have the courage to repent toward God. Now is the time for spiritual sacrifice and valor to change our lives and allow God to fight our battles.

We all have to storm the beaches of Normandy in our own minds and confront ourselves. D-Day was a magnificent victory, but the most magnificent victory you can achieve is over your own human nature. That is why so much has gone wrong over the past 80 years: to teach us we cannot rely on the power, strength or ingenuity of men. We need to finally start relying on God.

Many young men like my Great-uncle Jack answered the call of history. Will you answer yours?

To learn more about what has happened to our nations over the past 80 years, read our free book The United States and Britain in Prophecy.