The author of Hebrews asks us if we have forgotten warnings in the book of Proverbs, given to us as sons. He tells us we should not irritated with God’s discipline.

“5 …My son, don’t take lightly the chastening of the Lord,
Nor faint when you are reproved by him;
6 For whom the Lord loves, he chastens,
And scourges every son whom he receives.”
Heb 12:5-6 WEB

If God loves us, He tries to straighten us out
when we are wrong.

“It is for discipline that you endure. God deals with you as with children, for what son is there whom his father doesn’t discipline?”
Heb 12:7 WEB

And if we do not receive any discipline from God? The King James Version is the plainest here.

“But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.”
Heb 12:8 KJV

It is only when we have gone so far that we will
NEVER turn back, that destruction
comes upon us.

That is true for both individuals and nations. Satan of course desires such, and tries to get us to harden our hearts and minds. Satan is not about building, only about destroying as many as he can. You can hear this in the Satanic media of today as they promote the vilest of perversions, and declare they will “never again go back into the closet.” These ups and downs in morality throughout the ages are at best temporary. If a society tolerates the very worst for very long, it risks its own destruction. Normally the built-in shamefulness breeds its own backlash, and the worms and insects crawl away to their holes on their own, no longer daring the glare of close examination.

Jewish history is instructive here. Without kings, they went through cycles of debauchery, then under pressure from their enemies, repented and turned back to God. The cycles seem to have been very short in the times of the Judges. Then organized punishment of wickedness came through the kings of Israel and Judah, and cycles were still there, but they were lengthened. Still, when they got to the point that they would not change, no matter what, as in the times of Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, then Israel and Judah were removed, their lands were given to other people and the remnant that remained was deported to other countries.

Such is typical for the entire Christian age, so much so that Revelation chapter 6 it describes the world as being turned over to violence, and a pale horse of Death and Hades had authority over one fourth of the earth, to kill with the sword, and famine, Rev 6:3-8.

That is an apt picture not only ancient and medieval history, but also of modern history, until we get to the point where,

“and they blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores. They didn’t repent of their works.”
Rev 16:11 WEB

A picture of the entire Christian Age.

KJV is the King James Version, 1611.

WEB is the World English Bible, a copyright free revision
of the original ASV American Standard Version 1901