The Rubicon

World Magazine, March 30, 2019, had an article called “Silent Crossing” by Andree Seu Peterson.   She wrote about events that have no large impact at the time and in fact may not even make the evening news but eventually bring about huge, often devastating, results.

We have often heard of “crossing the Rubicon” which is what happened on January 10, 49 B.C. and proved to be the beginning of the end of the Roman Republic which was replaced by Imperial Roman.  It was the advance of Julius Caesar from Gaul into Roman Italy that was in itself an act of war but those in Rome had no idea what had happened.   After the crossing, Julius reportedly sat down to a lavish meal as the act of crossing the river did not cause any immediate consequence yet it was the beginning of an end.  The term – Crossing the Rubicon – has come to mean passing the point of no return.

About 450 years later another similar event occurred.  It was December 31, A.D. 406, and a band of barbarians crossed the frozen Rhine into the Roman Empire.  The next day no one knew that the Empire was doomed.  In fact, it would be 410 A.D. before Rome was sacked by that group that quietly crossed the Rhine 3 years earlier.

Peterson says, “Sometimes people living through history, do not know they are living through history.”  Their lives are not immediately affected but seem normal, maybe for years, until that unknown event takes affect and greatly alters life.

In March 31, 1492, the Alhambre Decree was signed which demanded that all practicing Jews were to leave the country taking only what they could carry on their backs or face the Spanish Inquisition (they also had the option to convert to Christianity).  Many Jews left leaving behind great wealth so that when a Italian explorer came to the royal court seeking funding to find a western passage to the spices of the east, the court just happened to have monies available.

Peterson writes:  On January 20, 1942, 15 men convened in a villa in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee at the summons of Reinhard Heydrich, their purpose to discuss a final solution to the so-called Jewish “storage” problem… The aproned servants at the mansion, busily trimming flowers and setting out the best china, afterward cleaned tables, bid one another goodnight, and went home for supper.

The meeting decided on emptying the ghettos used to hold Jews and move them to extermination camps.  We know the results of that Rubicon-like event.

Andrea says we crossed a Rubicon on February 25 of last year when the U.S. Senate “voted to block consideration of a Republican infanticide ban bill that would impose criminal penalties on healthcare practitioners who do not provide life-saving care to children born alive during an aborted abortion… The day after Feb. 25, 2019, there were no marches in the street.  No conversation I overheard departed from the normal banter.  No sermon series I know of was suspended.  No business as usual was interrupted.  No indication was there in the town that any Rubicon was crossed, or filling up of measures had been reached.  But children’s blood cried out to God from the ground (Genesis 4:10).”

May she be wrong – the beginning of our end – but yet she is right.  We stepped into a brave new world completely contrary to our past, contrary to any sound thinking, and greatly offensive to our God.  May God help us!