You might have heard about the camels on the horizon. Lots of people are talking about it.

The story is; that a Sheik in Dubai in the Persian Gulf region gave his opinion, in an interview, and his words of wisdom have caught the attention of people around the world.

In summary:

1. Hard times make resilient people, and those people fix social problems and make a better society.
2. That easier life produces soft and whiny people, and they make things worse. It’s a cycle of repair and decay. Prosperity and good times, lead us to decay and destruction.

People who like this message generally think we are in the soft and whiny stage, and destruction is near. Apparently, many Christian preachers are interested in the message.

The Sheik of Dubai is like a wise prophet, to some people.

Social cycles are normal, and predictable. And if that is true, we may be at the end of a prosperity peak. We may be on the eve of destruction.

What do you think?

I’m a Christian, and I wondered if anything like this is in the Bible. The answer to my question is, yes. Something very similar is promised in the Bible.

I remember learning about this ancient prophecy, in church when I was a boy. This was before PowerPoint and video cameras, and our pastor made some huge diagrams on cloth sheets the size of curtains and hung them on a wire, at the front of the church.

He didn’t make the artwork. He recruited some helpers, including some of my uncles, I think. It was famous at the time.

That is how I learned about Daniel’s statue, with the head of gold. We have an old expression about “feet of clay.” It means something like; ‘you may be impressive, but your life is built on a foundation that could crumble. If the foundation fails, the whole life will fail.’

It all ends in destruction:

If we accept the ancient message, the new message from the Sheik is focused on one phase. He can see how societies rise and fall in cycles, like chapters in a book.

We have one other message; most people won’t believe either message. We know, from intelligent people, and from ancient prophets in the Bible, and from any newspaper, history comes in cycles. We know, and we agree with that observation. People everywhere might agree, but most of us won’t change the way we live.

The world will be at ease; banquets and parties and weddings; just as it was in Noah’s time before the sudden coming of the Flood; people wouldn’t believe what was going to happen until the Flood actually arrived and took them all away. So shall my coming be. (Matthew 24:37-39)

Do you know the story of the night the river froze? World history changed forever in a few hours. That was December 31, in the year 406. There is some debate about the details, but in the story, barbarians in the east were able to cross the Rhine river and invade the Roman Empire, when the river froze. They walked on the ice.

So many invaders crossed on the ice that they could defeat the Roman border soldiers, and the Empire came unzipped and collapsed, soon after. The internal decay had created an Empire that was only a shell, and there was no force to stop the invaders after they crossed on the ice.

France, Spain, and North Africa were conquered, and In 410, the Roman armies evacuated Britain. The Empire became only symbolic, and the last Emperor was deposed in 476.

• READ: Crossing of the Rhine

Apparently, citizens of the empire did not see this coming, and they were shocked. They didn’t believe what was going to happen until the flood took them all away.

So, what does this mean for us?

Internal decay always produces external collapse, and we live as if that is not true.

The Sheik in Dubai predicted one cycle, and we know he is correct. He knows the business of government in society.

The Romans experienced the last cycle, and collapse.

The final solution to our cycles of success and failure is God. That’s what Daniel promised. Daniel told us, how all the cycles would finally end.

I hope we can all learn this about ourselves. I need to see my own little empire of one. And I need to find the fix from our creator. I know that. Now I need to act.

This is why so many of us believe in God:

But forget all that, it is nothing compared to what I’m going to do! For I’m going to do a brand-new thing. See, I have already begun! Don’t you see it? I will make a road through the wilderness of the world for my people to go home, and create rivers for them in the desert! (Isaiah 43:18-19)