“We are an international disgrace,” said one schoolteacher who’s been working in London for over a decade. Not that long ago, London was the financial hub of Europe, and the British Empire—upon which the sun never set—was the envy of the world. Today, Britain is an embarrassing spectacle for all the world to see—a graphic example of how fast a society descends into barbarism when it refuses to uphold the rule of law.

This week, the world watched as Britain’s biggest cities were smashed, burned and looted by lawless gangs of juvenile delinquents. It was the worst rioting the island nation had seen in more than a generation. It all began innocently enough as a small protest against a police shooting, but it quickly turned into an every-man-for-himself rampage through the streets of London—and then Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, and on it went.

The police were totally unprepared for the blowup and shamefully unwilling to confront the thuggery head on with a show of force. They were simply overwhelmed by the evil, and British cities were trashed as a result.

“What we are seeing,” Melanie Philips wrote on Monday, “in the sluggish and unprepared reaction of the police and political class to these events, compounded by their serial failure to grasp from previous such disturbances just what is going on here, is a catastrophic combination of professional inertia and incompetence, serial eyes off the ball, paralyzing political correctness, an apparent reluctance to identify, name and deal with subversive activity, a capital’s police force in systemic disarray, a criminal justice system that has become an insulting joke, a refusal from the top to draw clear lines in the sand and to exercise moral and political leadership, a pandering instead to mob rule ….”

Gone are the days of righteous leadership stepping forward to forcefully subdue such a spirit of rebellion and lawlessness. In these latter days, a national crisis like what Britain experienced this week only exposes how pathetically weak modern Israel’s leaders really are.

You know it’s bad when the most influential voices—instead of immediately condemning mob violence—rush to defend riotous looting as being a natural response to government cutbacks—as if it’s completely understandable for poor, unemployed youths to smash up shops in order to steal iPod accessories and tennis shoes.

As the schoolteacher quoted above wrote at the Telegraph blog, “[T]he main reason you are not attacked on the street, shops are not constantly looted and burnt down, and we all don’t take things that don’t belong to us is because someone, when we were little, taught us the difference between right and wrong.”

It all gets back to education. And this, of course, begins at home, with the traditional family. But when the family breaks down, as is prophesied in Isaiah 3, society unravels. As Herbert W. Armstrong wrote in The Missing Dimension in Sex, “Since it is a basic truism that a solid family structure is the foundational bulwark of any stable and permanent society, this fact means only one thing—civilization as we know it is on the way down—and out ….”

When we live in divisive, chaotic environments at home, it’s only natural for that chaos to spill into the streets.

Add the racial component to our family breakdown and it makes for a deadly mixture that’s just waiting to explode at a city near you, like it did in London.

“I am so angry, so ashamed, so utterly dismayed,” writes the London schoolteacher. “The vast majority of these criminals are black. No one will say it. I hang my head in shame, both as a black person and as a teacher.” At least this woman—a black woman—has the courage to say something. No one else will—certainly no one among the leading voices in the white community.

God definitely has something to say about it. In Isaiah 1:5, speaking primarily about the leaders of America, Britain and Judah, God says the “whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint.” Those responsible for leading our peoples—most of them white—simply do not have the heart or strength to confront evil, even when it threatens to destroy our cities.

Therefore, the whole body is sick—from head to toe (verse 6). And it’s leading to our cities being burned with fire by “strangers,” as it says in verse 7—meaning non-Israelites, or Gentiles.

Now we don’t take sides with one race over another—whether it’s with weak-kneed white leaders who are afraid to uphold the rule of law or rebellious black youths intent on bringing down the government.

God says our many problems and evils transcend race. The problem is with man’s rebellious nature (Jeremiah 17:9).

But God also says our major cities will soon explode with race riots and violence, just like what happened in London—only far worse—which is why we must warn you about what’s coming. In Ezekiel 5:1-2, God divides the destruction of our peoples into thirds—the first third being a siege of fire and violence to come upon our cities.

As my father wrote in 2002, “[A]s the U.S. and Britain become less and less competitive worldwide, unemployment will steadily increase. As that happens, domestic rioting and violence will become much more prevalent” (Ezekiel—The End-Time Prophet).

When times are good, of course, it’s easier for family division and racial strife to remain below the surface. But in serious crisis and distress, it doesn’t take much for this hatred and division to quickly break out into the open.

In verse 12, Ezekiel continues, “A third part of thee shall die with the pestilence, and with famine shall they be consumed in the midst of thee ….” This again is speaking of the first third. The Hebrew word for pestilence just means destruction or death. So, as we’ve said so many times over the past 20 years, this “pestilence” can refer to a plague of violence or burning—not necessarily physical disease.

“Terrorist attacks, rioting and burning are the main thrust of the pestilence mentioned in Ezekiel 5,” my father wrote in Ezekiel—The End-Time Prophet. “And this rioting will spread to other Israelite nations—unless people repent! God will get our attention one way or another. The worse the violence and burning becomes, the worse the famine will get. The worse the famine becomes, the more intensive the violence will get. It becomes a vicious cycle.”

Now consider this final statement, also made in that 2002 booklet, and see if it doesn’t perfectly describe what we have just witnessed in Britain’s major cities: “The seeds of this future calamity have already been sown. The government has lost control. There is a breakdown of law and order. … We are getting dangerously close to social anarchy and chaos!”

We are now in the early stages of this society-wide plague of violence and burning to strike our major cities. London is a chilling preview of what will soon spread to every major city in Britain—and America—so say the prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel.

And why is this happening? Because this is what it takes for our peoples to finally come to really know their God. “And they shall know that I am the Lord, and that I have not said in vain that I would do this evil unto them,” it says in Ezekiel 6:10. This is the big lesson God wants the latter-day Israelites and the rest of this world to ultimately learn—then “they shall know that I am the Lord.”