In June, two men stepped into a giant octagon erected on the South Lawn of the White House. One would leave the cage with extreme swelling around both eyes, blood pouring from his face, and a title lost in a technical knockout.

This was ufc Freedom 250: seven fights staged just steps away from the Oval Office as a centerpiece of the nation’s semiquincentennial, Flag Day and President Donald Trump’s 80th birthday celebration.

A crowd of 4,300 people roared in approval when the ringside doctor ruled that battered mixed martial artist Ilia Topuria was unable to continue the fight. Tens of thousands more watched on giant screens at the nearby Ellipse, while millions tuned in worldwide to stream the spectacle.

The scene looked like something straight out of the pages of a history book about the last days of the Roman Empire.

“The ufc at the White House last night was incredible,” President Trump posted on Truth Social. “The White House has never looked more beautiful. The setting was unsurpassed! … Congratulations to Dana White and his unbelievable ufc. One of the most exciting days in the history of our fabled White House!”

Think about that statement: Men beat each other half-blind on the White House lawn, and President Trump called it one of the most exciting days in White House history. Not many years ago, the idea of holding an Ultimate Fighting Championship event at the White House would have been unthinkable. In 1996, Sen. John McCain famously called such events “human cockfighting.” He sent letters to all 50 state governors urging them to ban the sport. His national campaign helped ban or restrict mixed martial arts in 36 states. Now such “human cockfights” are promoted in the greatest way imaginable.

The American Character

ufc Freedom 250 illustrates how far American character has fallen from the days of our founding.

In 1956, Herbert W. Armstrong wrote about five major vices that threatened to collapse the country: 1) the rapid increase in divorce, 2) the rapid increase in taxation, 3) the mad craze for pleasure, 4) the rapid buildup in armaments, and 5) the decay of true religion. He did not come up with these vices on his own; he drew them from Edward Gibbon’s classic work The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

“Sports became yearly more exciting, and more brutal,” Mr. Armstrong wrote. “We need to have this brought home to us so we really see it, really realize it, and really understand where it’s leading America today. Today, instead of participating in healthy games ourselves, we like to take our sports sitting down, while we pay others to amuse us and to excite us by playing the game for us. … Millions of Americans love to watch prizefights, to see men slug, pummel and injure one another. The victor is the one who inflicts the greatest damage, who is the most destructive—not the one who helps the most, who serves the best ….”

What would Mr. Armstrong say today? In his time, boxing matches were rising in popularity, yet a presidentially promoted, mixed-martial-arts match at the White House would have been unthinkable.

And the mad craze for violent delights in America doesn’t end at the White House lawn. The New York Knicks won their first nba championship in 53 years in June, and Knicks fans watching in New York City poured into the streets to celebrate. Before that night was over, 63 people had been arrested, one person suffered a gunshot wound, four people were stabbed, five school buses were set on fire, and 10 police officers were injured.

Americans are binging on sports and entertainment, especially this summer. Some journalists have called people’s four-figure and five-figure expenditures on the World Cup, concerts and other entertainment events “funflation.” As the Wall Street Journal noted on June 27, some people have withdrawn thousands from retirement accounts and many are using online “buy now, pay later” services to afford extremely expensive seats, food, accommodations, transport and other associated costs for attending events in other states, countries and continents.

The comparison between the popular entertainment of ancient Rome and that of modern America is more apt than we may want to admit.

The Roman Character

When Rome ruled the world, it was flush with prosperity. Pax Romana “made possible the greatest luxury, the most active commercial life the world ever saw,” wrote historian William Stearns Davis. This stoked growing public appetite for amusement. The scale of the entertainments of ancient Rome exceeded that of any prior empire and was likely unsurpassed until modern times.

Roman society transformed from a culture of ambition, industry, virtue, discipline and duty to one of pleasure, idleness, diversion, escapism and ease. As people enjoyed their wealth and the poets and politicians praised Rome as Urbs Aeterna, “the eternal city,” they sowed the seeds of their empire’s decline and fall.

The parallels with pleasure-mad, distracted America today are telling—and ominous.

“Only those with an eye on the lessons of history understand the subtle dangers of careless, excessive self-indulgence, self-seeking and hedonism, while the nation faces the greatest problems in its history, demanding the greatest effort and sacrifice,” says The Modern Romans, published by Ambassador College Press in 1971. “However, millions would rather play, escape and indulge themselves in temporary, selfish goals.”

Ponder the decadent and doomed Romans, and take heed.

At the height of Rome’s affluence, entertainment was “plentiful and cheap,” wrote historian Will Durant. “Recitations, lectures, concerts, mimes, plays, athletic contests, prize fights, horse races, chariot races, mortal combats of men with men or beasts, not-quite-sham naval battles on artificial lakes—never was a city more bountifully amused” (The Story of Civilization, Vol. 3, Caesar and Christ).

In the Roman Empire, there were an astounding 76 public holidays each year, on which various plays or games were held. Edward Gibbon described the scene: “From the morning to the evening, careless of the sun or of the rain, the spectators, who sometimes amounted to the number of 400,000 [the capacity of Rome’s Circus Maximus], remained in eager attention; their eyes fixed on the horses and charioteers, their minds agitated with hope and fear for the success of the colors which they espoused; and the happiness of Rome appeared to hang on the event of a race.”

America, like Rome, is crazy for sports and entertainment. People over age 65 spend about a third of their waking day watching broadcast tv while tens of millions of people watch Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Peacock, Hulu, hbo Max and Paramount+. Over a quarter of Americans watch movies several times a week. Nearly 1 in 5 adults watches movies daily. More than half of the entire American population plays video games at least monthly, spending tens of billions. In fact, tens of millions of people actually go online to watch other people play video games. People simply can’t get enough entertainment: They are even spending hours watching other people entertain themselves.

The mania for spectacle imprinted deeply on Roman life. It brought celebrity and fortune to those who succeeded in the arena, and sometimes freedom. “The charioteers knew glory too—and more,” wrote French historian Jérôme Carcopino. “Though they were of low-born origin, mainly slaves emancipated only after recurrent success, they were lifted out of their humble estates by the fame they acquired and the fortunes they rapidly amassed from the gifts of magistrates and emperors, and the exorbitant salaries they exacted …. At the end of the first century and in the first half of the second, Rome prided herself on the presence of her star charioteers …” (Daily Life in Ancient Rome). This vividly foreshadowed today’s celebrity culture and garish multimillion-dollar sports contracts.

More broadly, these entertainments reflected and influenced public morals. “The games of the circus and the amphitheater absorbed the interest and coarsened the taste of the public,” Durant wrote. The easy luxury, escapism and self-indulgence fed into the spread of immorality, perversion and a lust for sex and violence.

“Almost from the beginning the Roman stage was gross and immoral,” wrote historian Philip Van Ness Myers in 1900. “It was one of the main agencies to which must be attributed the undermining of the originally sound moral life of Roman society” (Rome: Its Rise and Fall).

Dying for Entertainment

Chariot races were perilous, but the Roman public had a growing appetite for even deadlier fare. Many public entertainments “involved wild animals killing men and women who had been sentenced to death for various offenses, including for being Christians,” Rodney Stark explained. “Besides being fed to wild animals, people were executed in the arenas in a variety of sadistic ways—flogging, burning, skinning, impaling, dismemberment and even crucifixion” (How the West Won). Fights to the death among gladiators—most of whom were slaves, often taken as prisoners of war, a great many of whom likely died in their first match—were especially popular.

Besides the 50,000-seat Colosseum in Rome, 251 more amphitheaters dotted the Roman Empire, many of which seated 20,000 or more; the smallest could hold 7,000. “It is credibly estimated that at least 200,000 people died in the Colosseum,” Stark wrote. “It seems quite conservative to estimate that an average of at least 10,000 would have died in each of the other 251 amphitheaters, or another 2.5 million. All of this for amusement!”

These bloody exhibitions had a coarsening, benumbing effect on the public. To be entertained by such brutality is a mark of moral sickness and satanic influence.

Yet these bygone bloodthirsty spectators would find plenty to keep them sated today. Violence is conspicuous in modern entertainment. It is literally the point of live contests like boxing and mixed martial arts, and it features heavily in sports like football and ice hockey that fill today’s coliseums and arenas. Television and movies routinely showcase simulated brutality, and with unprecedented detail and realism. Studies show that more than 9 in 10 movies on television contain violence, including extreme violence. Every hour of prime-time tv depicts an average of nine weapons. Horror and slasher films draw huge crowds to see gore far more graphic and up close than anything a spectator in the Roman arena would have witnessed.

Some may minimize the comparison of ufc and other American entertainment to live gladiatorial slaughter. But fake though most of it is, its intensity is magnified not only by its hyper-realism but also by its ubiquity. Rather than an occasional visit to the Colosseum, the violence comes to them.

The average American household has five connected devices—ultra-high-definition televisions, smartphones, tablets, laptops, gaming devices and more. Teenagers average more than seven hours a day with entertainment screen media, the American Academy of Family Physicians reports. Before age 18, the average American youth will witness 200,000 violent acts on tv. Close to 100 percent of teenagers play video games, and about two thirds of these are action games that tend to include violence.

Many video games are ultraviolent and have the player committing grisly acts of mayhem and murder. The most-played, most-watched games in the world are “battle royale” style—where dozens of players thrown into a virtual environment replete with weapons kill each other to the last man standing. The concept comes straight from Rome’s gladiators.

What are the effects of people’s minds being glutted on such savagery? “[V]iolence can have a demonic, pornographic appeal,” Dr. Ted Baehr, publisher of Movie Guide, wrote. “The Roman Empire featured spectacles of live violence. Gladiators fought to the death, Christians were fed to lions, and all manner [of] horrible killing was offered as entertainment to a stadium full of spectators. This same demonic taste can be fed with movies, video games and online content. It is, in fact, a stage into which many people addicted to pornography sink. What may start out as simple sexual attraction devolves into darker and darker pits of hell.”

Like the Romans watching the gory spectacles in the arenas, our people are, as Carcopino wrote, “learning nothing but contempt for human life and dignity” (op cit).

This doesn’t even address the sexuality, immorality and perversion that are also pervasive today, particularly online. Studies show around 80 percent of men and 45 percent of women watch pornography weekly. The sexualization of society is evident in countless lamentable ways: In many respects, it is turning our world upside-down.

“These violent delights have violent ends.” Shakespeare’s maxim applied to Rome, and it applies to America.

Draining Public Funds

The ravaging effects of this trend on public morality were matched by the effects on the Roman Empire’s resources. Government officials were under growing pressure to provide lavish entertainments to gain public acclaim or to pacify unruly mobs. “Elaborate circuses and gladiator duels were staged to keep the people happy,” Lawrence W. Reed wrote. “One modern historian estimates that Rome poured the equivalent of $100 million per year into the games” (Are We Rome?).

Interestingly, that is only about one third of what the U.S. government spends on tax benefits for nfl stadiums.

The epic scale of these ancient spectacles was staggering. To take one example: “In a.d. 108–109, Emperor Trajan employed 10,000 gladiators and 11,000 wild animals in an entertainment lasting 123 days. Such entertainments continued until banned by Christian emperors in the fourth century,” Stark wrote (op cit).

All these attractions diverted the attention of the Roman people away from weightier issues, such as the governance and defense of the empire. “So absorbed did the people become in the indecent representations of the stage that they lost all thought and care of the affairs of real life,” Myers wrote (op cit).

“With the economic and military position of the empire too hopelessly complicated for the crowd to comprehend, they turned more and more toward the only thing that they could understand—the arena,” wrote Daniel P. Mannix. “The name of a great general or of a brilliant statesman meant no more to the Roman mob than the name of a great scientist does to us today. But the average Roman could tell you every detail of the last games, just as today the average man can tell you all about the latest football or baseball standings, but has only the foggiest idea what nato is doing or what steps are being taken to fight inflation” (Those About to Die).

“Life simply became too complex for the average Roman,” Mannix continued. “But the continuous staging of games and spectacles—cleverly promoted by the caesars to keep the people’s minds occupied—was something to which he could relate. The caesars, said one historian, ‘exhausted their ingenuity to provide the public with more festivals than any people, in any country, at any time, has ever seen’”—that is, one could easily argue, until this people, in this country, in our time.

The stupefying effects of such pervasive recreation on the public have manifested repeatedly in history. When people grow affluent and glutted on luxury and diversion, their character suffers and societal decline sets in.

Ignoring Real Issues

America is following Rome’s example, not just in its addiction to entertainment but also in the fact that this craze is distracting us from nation-threatening problems. The world today is bristling with dangers. The enemies of America are working actively and successfully to upend the current U.S.-led world order.

Yet none of this is rousing Americans to real action. If America could get even a fraction of the people who are absorbed in a fantasy football league to devote their attention to supporting America’s indispensable role in international affairs, the course of the nation could well turn in a different direction.

How long can America remain a global power when our priorities are so misguided and self-indulgent?

The Bible is full of warnings against such individual- and nation-destroying excesses. In Amos 6, for example, God condemns those who are “at ease” during a time of great peril. These people “put far away the evil day,” assuming destruction is not on the horizon. “How terrible for you who sprawl on ivory beds and lounge on your couches, eating the meat of tender lambs from the flock and of choice calves fattened in the stall. … You drink wine by the bowlful and perfume yourselves with fragrant lotions. You care nothing about the ruin of your nation” (verses 4, 6; New Living Translation). People should be grieving over what is happening to America and Britain today. But we truly are the modern Romans, enchanted with pleasures and amusements.

Such richness, such ease, such excess dulls its possessors to reality and erodes vigilance against danger and willingness to sacrifice for a larger cause. Forty-eight percent of Americans cannot name the three branches of government; 19 percent can’t name any First Amendment rights. More than 3 in 4 17-to-24-year-old Americans are unfit for military service.

Anciently, the actual physical defenses of Italy and of “the eternal city” itself fell into disrepair, but people inside believed their power, wealth and entertainments would last forever. When Alaric prepared to sack Rome, its defensive walls were easy to breach, and the Romans couldn’t raise a real army from among the Italians to defend the empire or even themselves. They had been dulled to the danger of collapse. To those engrossed in selfish pursuits, the fall was sudden and calamitous.

‘You Have Destroyed Yourself’

The Modern Romans makes an important point: It’s not that there is anything inherently wrong with entertainment when used properly. “But when an entire nation seems to have nothing but the pursuit of money, gadgetry, pleasure, escape and thrills as its national goals—that nation is in serious trouble! Today, millions have no higher ideal or purpose than to get out and indulge themselves in a particular personal pleasure. So wrapped up and involved are millions in these short-range pleasures that few are willing to endure any discomfort or privation to solve national problems or threats.”

“Why has such crass materialism and pleasure become the overriding concern of millions?” it asks. “Because the nation has lost a sense of national purpose or higher ideals other than personal selfish ones.”

This booklet was first published more than 50 years ago. The trends it discussed regarding sports and entertainment are far more intense today.

The spirit motivating those Knicks fans to burn, stab and riot was the same spirit that moved the White House crowd to cheer in delight as Ilia Topuria was beaten to a pulp. It is the spirit the Apostle Paul described in 2 Timothy 3:1-5: “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers”—and several other characteristics that would mark these “last days.” People love themselves—more than family, community, nation! They are “without self-control,” Paul prophesied (New King James Version)—and “lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God.” Read that list and see if it doesn’t describe our violent, pleasure-seeking society. That is fulfilled prophecy in America: We love pleasures more than we love freedom, justice or anything honorable.

Americans are among the modern descendants of ancient Israel. God loves Israel and has used it through the millenniums in a special way to eventually benefit all nations. But we have turned from that purpose, turned away from God, and are rapidly accelerating toward the fulfillment of our prophesied collapse—following the same course toward our own destruction that Rome and so many other great powers have followed throughout history.

God laments in Hosea 13:9: “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself ….” We are doing this to ourselves.

You can call it Freedom 250, put it on the White House lawn, and dress it in patriotism and pageantry, but God’s verdict does not change. America is the Roman Empire of today—drowning in violent escapism even as the barbarians are at the gates.

The Roman Empire did not fall in a day; it rotted from within. The parallels with America today are telling—and ominous.

We need to realize the same thing God implored our ancestors to realize: “[B]ut in me is thine help. I will be thy king: where is any other that may save thee in all thy cities? …” (verses 9-10). Surely we should be able to recognize by this point that no one but God can save us.

God is reaching out to us! He would help us, He would solve our problems—He would be our King—if only we would repent, embrace His law, and submit to His rule!

God loves America. He wants to prevent our destruction. But He can and will do so only if we allow Him to.