The November 2015 issue of National Geographic Traveler magazine, contains an article about Bulgaria that features a powerful photograph of the ruins of the Budludzha Monument.  The monument was once a tribute to the birth of Bulgaria’s socialist movement. 

Bulgaria fell under the power of the Soviet Union after World War II, and the Russians turned it into one of their slave states behind the Iron Curtain.  The Monument appears once to have been a vast auditorium.  The center of the huge, sweeping, domed roof bears a red and green image of the hammer and sickle symbol of Communist power.  Now the sunlight pours through the slats of the decaying roof revealing gaping holes which admit rain and snow.  Below on the rounded walls, faded gigantic portraits of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin stare out unseeing, and the faded colors and forms of what once were painted murals of the workers paradise slowly peel from view.

The concrete floor lies empty of furniture, just a big, void space littered with trash and a few piles of unmelted snow.  A lone poster, once plastered on the face of the broad stage declares, “Workers of the World Unite!”  A laughable memory for the chanting crowds that once gathered here to cheer on the heroes of the revolution.  It is an awesome place, an eerie relic of bygone conflict and fruitless promises.

A current Stephen Spielberg movie, Bridge of Spies, starring Tom Hanks, evokes the feel of those days.  I recall them well.  Elementary schools held “retention drills” on Monday mornings.  Across the city eerie air raid sirens wailed and we children were marched into the hallways, pulling our coats over our heads,  and told to lie down against the walls.  While we didn’t fully understand what an atomic bomb might do, we were suitably frightened.  A neighbor dug a bomb shelter.  The Russians were a dreaded enemy, a seemingly invincible force that threatened our lives.

But then came the fall of the Berlin wall, and the Budludza Monument began to rot.  Was the Communist threat real?  Were we right to be alarmed?  Oh yes, believe it.  But the present state of the once powerful empire is closer to the truth.  And here is the truth.  From God: “Woe to you, Oh destroyer, while you were not destroyed; and he who is treacherous, while others did not deal treacherously with him.  As soon as you shall finish destroying, you shall be destroyed; As soon as you shall cease to deal treacherously, others shall deal treacherously with you.”   Those are the prophet Isaiah’s words (Isaiah 33:1).  He was speaking of the Assyrian Empire which rolled unstoppable over the civilized world in the eighth century BC.  The Assyrians were cruel, paralleled ISIS in their atrocities, and every nation fell before them like so many dominoes.  They terrified everyone. 

But God was stating the reality.  He had allowed the Assyrians to be his tool to punish the wicked, but in the end he would destroy them.  And that was exactly what happened when their time ran out.  Their fall when it came was sudden. 

The wicked, those who oppose God and his truth, ultimately fade from view.  Every time.  And who is it that lasts and continues to stand through the ages?  Isaiah had prayed, “O Lord, be gracious to us; we have waited for You.  Be our strength every morning.” (v 2)  Historically, Jerusalem was the only city in the world that the Assyrians failed to capture.  The Annals of Sennacherib record after a list of his conquests, “I shut up [King] Hezekiah like a bird in a cage.”  But he could not prevail and withdrew from Palestine after suffering the loss of 185,000 of his troops.  To this day it is not the Assyrians who still stand, or the Soviet Empire of our time, but the people of God, and the truth that God is God.  Those who trust in him will endure.  It is they who remain from age to age.

There is a lesson for us.  The world is full of wicked people, those who defy God and flaunt his commandments.  Often they appear almost invincible.  Today it is Muslim terrorists and ISIS who slaughter Christians in the Middle East, Iran with nuclear weapons almost in hand, the renewed Russian Bear which has emerged from hibernation.  It is lawless rioters and treacherous gangs that rule our city streets by night, enemies of humanity who traffic in the body parts of aborted infants, and political leaders who despise the authority of God.  At times they can cause us to despair.

But the truth remains.  One day they will run their course and they and their evil deeds will be forgotten.  It is the people of God who will remain, and the truth of God which will endure.  There are many, especially among the Millennial Generation, who look askance at the world and repeat what many citizens of Jerusalem were saying in 701 BC, “Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die!” (Isaiah 22:13)  

But the wise choose to trust in God.  He declares to the wicked: “Because of your raging against Me, and because your arrogance has come up to My ears, Therefore I will put My hook in your nose, and My bridle in your lips, and I will turn you back by the way which you came.” (Isaiah 36:29)  Let us take courage!

Dr. Rick Perrin is a minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and Chairman of the Board of World Reformed Fellowship..  He writes a weekly blog called ReTHINK which may be accessed at www.rethinkingnews.wordpress.com. He may be contacted directly at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..