How significant that the United States has inflicted itself with a financial wound so grotesque and debilitating that it will never fully recover. “This is embarrassing for the United States of America,” Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said on Tuesday.

It’s so much more than an embarrassment. It’s a trumpet-blast signal—to the U.S. and the rest of the world—that America’s reign as the global economic superpower is now over.

“The world will never be the same again,” Berlin’s finance minister told the German parliament yesterday. Given the financial muscle now being flexed in Europe and Asia, he said, “The U.S. will lose its status as the superpower of the global financial system.”

Germany’s Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said earlier in the week, “The sole remaining superpower has lost credibility.”

These are not doomsday prophecies predicting a future failure in the U.S. economy. It’s alreadyruined. The world knows it.

And how significant that European banks have been largely unaffected by the collapse of America’s economy. Spiegelattributes their stability to “more conservative banking practices” and applauds EU banks for having “steered clear of risky subprime-style mortgage lending.”

As Bundesbank President Axel Weber noted earlier this week, “The German financial system is stable and its resistance to adverse shocks has markedly improved in the past few years.”

U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has appealed to America’s “friends” in Europe for assistance in bailing out the U.S.-led global financial system. “We are talking very aggressively with other countries around the world,” Paulson said on Sunday, “and encouraging them to do similar things, and I believe a number of them will.”

In fact, they will not. And here again, how significant that European states, particularly Germany, have resoundingly balked at America’s plea for help. “The world shouldn’t have to bear the burden for America’s lapses,” said Carsten Meier of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.

Joachim Poss, deputy parliamentary head of Germany’s Social Democratic Party, said, “The Americans can’t make Germany accountable for their failure and their arrogance.”

“The U.S. is the origin and the clear focal point of the crisis,” Germany’s finance minister said in his parliamentary speech, adding that its sickening impact will spread “worldwide like a poisonous oil spill.”

Even German Chancellor Angela Merkel was uncharacteristically harsh in her criticism of America, saying Washington should have legislated tighter controls on the financial markets.

Similar sentiments were echoed in the European Parliament. “We should not forget that first and foremost this is an American crisis,” the head of the International Monetary Fund said this week. “Therefore the job of dealing with the crisis should be fulfilled first and foremost by the United States.”

It’s more than unwillingness on the part of EU members to help the ailing American economy to recover. In their disdainful rebuke of America’s reckless economic practices, some EU officials are practically gloating over America’s misfortune. “It’s a rare day,” the Los Angeles Times wrote last week,

when finance officials, leftist intellectuals and ordinary salespeople can agree on something. But the economic meltdown that wrought its wrath from Rome to Madrid to Berlin this week brought Europeans together in a harsh chorus of condemnation of the excess and disarray on Wall Street.

Yes, Europe is united in its self-righteous condemnation of the American economic model. And yet, how significant that among European Union states, the United Kingdom is the one nation being lumped together with the United States. That same Times article noted, “Among the European economies, it is Britain’s that most resembles America’s in its vulnerability.” As National Public Radio reported last week, “In Britain, many analysts expect the credit crunch to get worse. There are also fears that British companies unable to raise credit might be forced to close.”

But rather than sympathize with their fellow EU member, the Continent sees the UK not as an innocent victim of a global crisis but rather as part of the problem. In calling for strict regulations to be imposed on financial markets, Chancellor Merkel made a point of singling out Britain along with the United States in an interview with a Munich newspaper. Merkel blames Washington and London for stonewalling Germany’s attempt to bring greater transparency to the global financial system early in 2007.

The way Germany sees it, America is not the only problem—it’s the Anglo-Saxon economic system that needs to be scrapped.

The Alarming Pace of Prophetic Events

And why are these earthshaking events so incredibly significant? Because of what God prophesied long ago—and because of what we have been proclaiming now for more than half a century! As Herbert W. Armstrong wrote decades ago in The United States and Britain in Prophecy,

The most amazing fact of all history is this sudden skyrocketing from virtual obscurity of two nations to the most fabulous wealth and economic power ever possessed by any people. Britain became Great Britain—a gigantic, stupendously wealthy commonwealth of nations—the United States, the greatest nation of history.

And yet, even more amazing and unbelievably shocking than our breathtaking rise to economic powerhouses, he went on to write, are the “facts of the present—of how—and why—we are losing it faster than it came!”

God prophesied millennia ago that the United States and Britain—the modern-day recipients of the birthright blessings promised to ancient Israel’s descendants—would both fall together. This is why we have consistently said that Britain will soon be escorted out of the European Union.

Furthermore, using the Bible as our guide, we have often predicted that the collapse of the Anglo-Saxon monetary system would serve as a catalyst for the European superpower to quickly pull together economically, politically, religiously and militarily.

Notice what Mr. Armstrong wrote in October of 1985—before the Soviet Union collapsed, before the Iron Curtain was disassembled and before the two Germanys were united: “At the European Community’s headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, a very large staff is working for a single united European currency, one united military force and one economic structure. Do not discount the possibility that this resurrection of the medieval Holy Roman Empire may start by some arrangement to reunite East and West Germany first” (Plain Truth).

While there is some work yet to be done to unite the military force, for the most part, everything Mr. Armstrong said in 1985 (and much earlier than that) has happened! Now that prophesied union of European nations is ready to move ahead quickly, thanks to America’s financial collapse. As Mr. Armstrong also prophesied back in 1984, the failure of the U.S. banking industry “could suddenly result in triggering European nations to unite as a new world power.”

So when the German finance minister says America is losing its superpower status, that’s prophetically significant! And when the EU Economic and Monetary Affairs commissioner responds to the U.S. financial meltdown by calling for more supervision and strict control over the global economy and then insists, “We must move forward faster,” that is a momentous development!

Yet, even with these many jolting aftershocks from 9/15 triggering the EU’s rapid rise to superpower status, Europe still needs an over-arching religious influence to give it a unified sense of purpose and direction. Here again, as Mr. Armstrong wrote decades ago in The United States and Britain in Prophecy,so far, the European Union has been “unable to bring about full political union. This will be made possible by the ‘good offices’ of the Vatican, who alone can be the symbol of unity to which they can look.”

And so, isn’t it significant that even as the Western world was rocked by a devastating economic earthquake last week, Pope Benedict xvi called for more openness between religion and politics in Europe. As the New York Timesreported last week, the Vatican “doesn’t want European law to be at odds with church teaching.” Benedict, the Times wrote, clearly has his sights set on Europe. “This pope,” according to the report, “is looking to reconquer Europe, if not in numbers, then at the political table.”

Electrifying stuff, prophetically speaking.

Could the feverish pace of prophetic events be moving any faster than it is right now?