Empires, kingdoms, and even nations, have an inherent idea that they are permanent. Their military and economic might deceive them into thinking they are stable and immutable. However, history has shown this to be untrue. Historians tell us the average age of an empire is 250 years. This reality was strikingly reflected in Rudyard Kipling’s poem, “Recessional.” It was written at the height of the British Empire’s power when Queen Victoria was celebrating her 60th year on the throne. The poem was a warning that previous empires had come and gone and Britain’s time in the sun would disappear also. The poem was not well received, and Kipling received a lot of criticism for it. But it was prescient nevertheless:

Far-called, our navies melt away;

On dune and headland sinks the fire:

Lo, all our pomp of yesterday

Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!

Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,

Lest we forget—lest we forget!

In the prophetic books of the Bible, kingdoms and nations are often depicted as mountains (Hab. 3:6; Rev. 17:9–10). Mountains have an appearance of permanence to man’s perspective, but they are not, and neither are empires. The empires of Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Great Britain have all dissolved. The millennial kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ is described by Daniel as a great mountain that will fill the whole earth (Dan. 2:35, 44–45; Isa. 2:2). That kingdom will last 1,000 years and will not be replaced by any other. It will then be delivered up to God and subsumed into the eternal state. How good that we can put our hope in Christ’s kingdom and not in the passing empires of this “present evil age.”