Living in Captivity: God's People in a Time of Crisis (2010 Florida College Annual Lectures)

From the foreword:

There is a tendency for those of us who are no longer in the days
of our youth, for whom “the almond tree blossoms, and the grasshopper
is a burden,” as the writer of Ecclesiastes describes it (Eccl.
12:5), to see our present age as so much worse than when we were
in our youth. The same writer urges us not to say, “Why were the
former days better than these? For you do not enquire wisely concerning
this” (Eccl. 7:10). The older generation must recognize
that often our judgment about such things is flawed.

Many of us will see the relevance of the theme for this year’s
lectures because we have observed the moral decline in the United
States of America over the last fifty years. It is our prayer that
the lessons presented in this book, based firmly on things written
before regarding the period of the Babylonian exile, will lead to our learning, “that we through the patience and comfort of the
Scriptures might have hope” (Rom. 15:4).