Thy kingdom come, O God.
The overthrow of the kingdom of Judah was a fairly simple result of disobedience.
Now it's easy to say that in hindsight. We have the Bible's summary to read; “and he did evil in the sight of God” or similar. But the Bible is there for us to learn by. A clever man learns from his mistakes, but a cleverer man learns from other's mistakes.
Simply put, the kings of Judah preferred to go their own way, to do their own things and put themselves first. If that sounds familiar then it could also be talking about today.
Not everyone was evil, selfish or failed to worship God, yet they suffered the same punishment (or at least they were taken into captivity away from their homes and families). Daniel and his friends fall into this category. Now we know that God looked after them to the extent that they probably had better lives in Babylon than they would have had if they stayed at home.
So how does this effect us?
We live in a world no better than the time of the fall of Jerusalem, in some ways it's probably worse. It's inevitable that God will want to put this right and to do this will require drastic measures. We may be caught up in them in the same way that Daniel was. But like Daniel, if we try to do what God wants, then God will look after us.
What can we do to stop it?
There's three things that sprung to mind. The first is that we could argue with God in the same way that Abram did about the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, the second was the story of Jonah. While he didn't want to save Nineveh, in the end he did by simply telling the people around him that they were in danger of God's judgement.
A third situation was the one Noah found himself in. He was warned that the evil in the world was to be destroyed and that he was presented with a way to save himself, his family and part of God's creation. We have been offered a similar 'lifebelt' through baptism. We can 'enter in' to Christ and be saved.
The city of Jerusalem was also to be saved, but like Christ, only through a period of death and destruction. As recorded in Revelation, we look forward to a New Jerusalem at the coming of Christ.