This is what happens repeatedly through the history of the world. Zion represents the church of all ages. It is true that Zion wasn't in a good state in those days because the Jews were a mixed people, and only a minority of them were ever faithful to the Lord or ever truly believed. Nevertheless, she is Zion and her enemies are even used of God to bring her down and to humble her. Yes, but those enemies will be judged for their antagonism to Zion, to God's people, and this is what happens repeatedly. Assyria reigns supreme for so long and then she is brought down. The Chaldeans will take over and they will be oppressors and Nebuchadnezzar will take the people away and there will be the seventy years of captivity in Babylon, and then they in turn will be brought down. One after another the enemies of the church in olden times and in the present gospel age are brought down.
Their oppression may last a long time. The Church of Rome effectively fell, though she remains a very dangerous enemy of the truth, and in many countries she still holds the people in spiritual darkness. But mainly and particularly in the West she is very much a broken enemy. She has nothing like the dominion that she used to have. Why? Because of the Reformation, and at the Reformation God himself brought down Rome.
Then you can think of another enemy that we have and that is theological liberalism. Theological liberalism is religion that really doesn't believe the word of God as God's revealed truth and doesn't believe the doctrines. It came into this country particularly powerfully in the second and third and fourth quarters of the 19th century. Gradually it took over the great historic denominations of Christendom. First it got into Congregationalism, then it got into the Baptist Union. It was always to some extent in the Anglican Church and it brought them down, then it got into Methodism and all the great denominations, so that by the middle of the 1800s all the Bible believing churches were affected down by theological liberalism, unbelief, and false believers in the churches. But it too has been broken. It has been broken by atheism. Now the majority of people in this country and in the United States, certainly in the western world, have very little respect for theological liberalism. It took over all the Bible believing seminaries, and still has many of them, but who goes to them? Who cares? Who's worried? It is not greatly respected. Theological liberalism is very largely broken, brought down by atheism.
Atheism is coming in. Humanism, scientific humanism is taking over everything. The schools, the universities, the broadcasting media, just about everything. But in its turn it will be defeated. It has brought down another enemy of the church. It will be brought down itself. It may be that we are in the very last days, and scientific humanism, atheism, will be the very last enemy of the church to be brought down. But there are many who think that Islam will bring down scientific humanism or scientific humanism will bring down Islam, because they are both enemies of the church and they are both heading for a tremendous clash without doubt. How can they ever agree? And they are both powerful and both totalitarian in outlook, and they both want to rule the world, and they both want to wipe out the church of Jesus Christ. So who will be used to bring down who?
But in these great prophets you see the principle of one enemy of the church that rises up, and it is swept away either by God directly or by another enemy that rises up. So God is demonstrating throughout history that there will be a final day of judgment. No enemy of the church lasts that long before receiving a shattering defeat and losing her power and her self-respect, even if she goes on in weaker condition for a while. So we have nothing to fear. We say, is it possible that atheism with its gathering power will ever fall and the church be triumphant? Well of course it is. This is the history of the church, that her enemies die one after the other. Yes, there's always another one, but it's a great encouragement to us because we see that God, who superintends all things, only allows each one for a certain time and then breaks them and their power. We are always battling against another one, it’s true, but there's a different battle in almost every age.
Communism: not so very long ago there were people – and they were right to do so – who would be always praying against communism. Yes it's still around, but it's been very largely broken and where it continues to exist, its days seem to be numbered. Who would have thought that Soviet communism would be shattered and broken. But enemies of the church have their day, and then God sweeps them away to show us there's a day, a final day of reckoning and judgment coming.