The Scriptures explicitly declare that all nations which forget God will be turned into hell (Cp. Psa. 9:17). The disruption and fall of any people has had its beginning within the confines of the home. It is here that God is first forgotten and His immutable commands ignored. Someone has well observed, "As the home goes, so goes the nation." If in the home, the husband ceases to be head and the woman is no longer content to lead a subjective life, then destruction is near. Chaos and confusion knock at the door and generations are reared without a sense of order, respect or moral perspective. The fell of any society is always felt first in the home, the foundation of all human stability and progress.

Rome, the powerful and invincible, the Conqueror of the World, crumbled and fell because of domestic disorder. It was the eminent Roman statesman, Cato, who foresaw the fall of his nation and cried aloud, "All other men rule over women, but we Romans, who rule all men, are ruled by our women." He urged his fellow Romans in a magnificent and powerful speech before the Senate:

"If we had, each of us, upheld the rights and authority of the husband in our own households, we should not today have this trouble with our women. As things are now, our liberty of action, which has been annulled by female despotism at home, is crushed and trampled on here in the Forum ... Call to mind all the regulations respecting women by which our ancestors curbed their license and made them obedient to their husbands; and yet with all those restrictions you can scarcely hold them in. 1f now you permit them to remove these restraints . . . and to put themselves on an equality with their husbands, do you imagine that you will be able to bear them? From the moment that they become your equals they will be your masters" (Will Durant, Caesar And Christ, P. 89)

The historian Will Durant says that the women laughed him down, and stood their ground. The rest is mere ancient history. Cato's fears became the source of the disruption of the mightiest empire the World has ever known.

Paul taught nearly two-thousand years ago, "Wives submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church . . ." (Eph. 5:22, 23). The headship of man and the willing subjection of woman is an ancient lesson; it is a lesson which every great civilization has known and forgotten. It is the epitaph of all nations who have been turned into bell because God is first forgotten in the home.

TRUTH MAGAZINE, XVI: 5, pp. 8-9
December 2, 1971