WorldWatch
Europe
Elections in Germany are officially set for February 23. The Free Democrats quit Olaf Scholz’s unwieldy three-year-old coalition on Nov. 6, 2024, then President Frank-Walter Steinmeier announced the dissolution of the legislature on December 27. Now the race for new German leadership is officially underway.
Migration and terrorism are key themes in this election. An immigrant from Saudi Arabia deliberately drove a car into a crowd at a German Christmas market in Magdeburg on Dec. 20, 2024, killing six and injuring almost 300. The attacker, Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, was a 50-year-old doctor who campaigned against Saudi Arabia and was described as anti-Islam. He had been reported to authorities several times, but they did nothing. The attack has increased Germans’ anger toward the political establishment and intensified their desire for change.
The Christian Democratic Union holds a strong lead in the polls, but is projected to win only 30 percent of the vote. To have a governing majority, it will have to form a coalition. The far-right party Alternative für Deutschland is likely to win second place, but the cdu and most political parties say it is too extreme to bring into a coalition. Yet polls reveal no other easy coalitions, so Germany could find itself still in political paralysis after the election.
We already have a hint of what this could look like. Austria’s far-right Freedom Party won national elections on Sept. 29, 2024, but lacked a majority. Other parties did not want to give any power to a party founded by ex-SS Nazis. They spent months trying to form a coalition government that could exclude the fpö. By January 1, they had failed, and Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer resigned to pave the way for the Freedom Party to form Austria’s ruling coalition.
The Trumpet has long watched for a strong German leader to appear. Editor in chief Gerald Flurry has warned for years that this man could “take advantage of a weak coalition.” The weeks ahead will see plenty of opportunities for that. Read our Trends article about a European strongman.
The European Union and the Latin American trade bloc mercosur signed a free-trade deal on Dec. 6, 2024, after 25 years of negotiations. It has taken so long that many gave up on it ever getting across the finish line. Mr. Flurry wrote, “This trade agreement will impact the whole world! It is going to affect your life dramatically” (Trumpet, March 2019). The deal creates a free-trade area of nearly 800 million people and gives the German industrial machine access to cheap raw materials. In time, it will bring Latin America and Europe much closer politically and will give Europe another reason to unite behind a strong leader and coalesce as a superstate.
mercosur includes Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, with Venezuela currently suspended, plus several associate members. The EU does more trade ($115 billion annually) with this bloc than the United States does, second only to China. Before the agreement can go into effect, it must be ratified by EU member states. “Before Europe can be closely tied to Latin America, something will have to change,” wrote Mr. Flurry. “The current politically and religiously disunified EU will have to become a politically, militarily and religiously unified Holy Roman Empire. Latin America is already quite united in its religion; the Holy Roman Empire will have to become united in its religion as well. And the only way to remove the division is by reducing that union to 10 nations” (ibid). He also wrote, “If this massive trade deal is finalized this year, then I believe we will see the current 28-nation European Union pared down to the prophesied 10-nation superpower this year as well” (ibid). They failed to finalize the deal in 2019, but it is finalized now and awaiting ratification. Could we see the 10-nation superpower emerge in 2025?
Herbert W. Armstrong and his Plain Truth magazine also forecast that Latin America would work with a revived European Holy Roman Empire. The October 1957 issue stated: “Latin American nations will join in with the European revival of the old Roman Empire.” In 1962, it warned, “The United States is going to be left out in the cold as two gigantic trade blocs, Europe and Latin America, mesh together and begin calling the shots in world commerce.”
The mercosur deal paves the way for that to happen.
Middle East
China has been secretly supplying Yemen’s Houthi rebels with weapons, i24news reported on January 2. China supplies components for constructing ballistic and cruise missiles, and the Houthis refrain from attacking ships in the Red Sea that are flying the Chinese flag. This quid pro quo has been going on for some time. According to a diplomatic source, “Houthi officials have visited China several times last summer and fall, probably for meetings with high-ranking officials of the regime.”
A prophecy in Isaiah 23 describes “a mart of nations” that will gain control of world trade. Verse 1 introduces Chittim, the ancestral name of modern China, as a major participant.
As we wrote in our Trends article “Why the Trumpet Watches the Development of a Massive Anti-American Trade Bloc,” China’s increasing control of the world’s most important shipping lanes positions China “to play a lead role alongside a German-led Europe in this colossal mart of nations.” Other prophecies show that this alliance will control maritime trade routes like the Red Sea to shut English-speaking peoples out of world trade. This makes China’s influence with gatekeepers like the Houthis—to the point of even supplying them with weapons—all the more concerning.
On January 19, Israel and Hamas entered a ceasefire. Brokered by then United States President Joe Biden and President-elect Donald Trump, the ceasefire is divided into three stages. The first stage mandated that Hamas would release 33 hostages, including the bodies of some who have been murdered, in exchange for Israel releasing hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, including notorious terrorists. Mahmud Abu Varda, for example, was sentenced to 48 lifetimes in jail for the murders he planned, including a 1996 bus bombing that killed 45 people. The second stage involves a full Israeli withdrawal in exchange for the release of all remaining hostages. The third stage involves the reconstruction of Gaza as supervised by the United Nations, Egypt and Qatar. This effectively means an Israeli surrender rather than a Hamas surrender.
“Israel is at a crucial decision point right now,” Mr. Flurry wrote in February 2024, “and for many reasons, it is extremely vulnerable. It is actually walking into a deadly trap! … The Jews are desperate for peace, but the way of peace they know not. Who knows the way? Only God! Peace cannot be obtained by negotiation and surrender, nor by ignoring warning signs and trusting your historic enemies.” Read more about the danger in this hostage deal in Mr. Flurry’s article on page 9.
Asia
No one can stop China’s “reunification” with Taiwan, Chinese General Secretary Xi Jinping asserted in his New Year’s address. He made clear that the Chinese Communist Party will stop at nothing to take control of Taiwan. China’s military buildup means it can force its small island-nation neighbor into submission, one way or the other. The United States has long been the main defender of democratic Taiwan and the only force that has kept China from conquering it. But America’s commitments to the island nation are increasingly in doubt, and Bible prophecy warns us that America has lost its will to stand up to aggressors like China. In his 1998 article “Taiwan Betrayal,” Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote, “How could anyone fail to see that Taiwan is destined to become a part of mainland China? These 21 million people [now 23 million] are going to be forced into the Chinese mold; and it is going to happen for one reason: because of a pitifully weak-willed America.”
Indonesia was officially welcomed on January 6 as a full member of brics, the anti-Western organization named after its first five members: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Last year, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates joined the coalition, making Indonesia, the world’s fourth-most populous nation with an annual gross domestic product of $1 trillion, the bloc’s 10th full member. brics struggles with unity and lacks an effective mechanism for fostering economic or military cooperation among its members, but it has the potential to transition into a more meaningful and powerful group in the years ahead. Thus it could play a considerable role in an economic alliance that Bible prophecy calls the “mart of nations,” which will block the United States out of world trade. Read “China Is Steering the World Toward War.”
A January 8 investigation by the Insider and Der Spiegel confirmed that Vladimir Putin’s Russian military intelligence agency paid Taliban forces and other terrorist groups in Afghanistan tens of millions of dollars to attack U.S. and coalition forces. E-mails between Russian agents and Taliban terrorists show that Russia paid up to $200,000 per U.S. soldier killed and provided some terrorists with documentation for asylum in Russia. Retired cia officer Douglas London said, “Russia’s intent with the Taliban evolved from minimal assistance and cooperation to proactively bleeding the United States.” Mr. Flurry was right when he wrote that Putin is “a vengeful, monstrous friend of the devil with all sorts of anti-God policies.”
Anglo-America
The level and extent to which American media are manipulated was further revealed in a Dec. 19, 2024, Wall Street Journal report, “How the White House Functioned With a Diminished Biden in Charge.” After four years of officials and journalists claiming the contrary, the report acknowledges that Joe Biden was indeed physically and mentally weak while in the White House, and he was not in control.
The report stated that there “were limits over who Biden spoke with, limits on what they said to him, and limits around the sources of information he consumed.” Senior leaders surrounding Biden, including many loyal to Barack Obama, made presidential-level decisions. Toward the end, this included National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, senior counselor Steve Ricchetti, and National Economic Council head Lael Brainard. Biden was president in name only, his senior officials were carrying out Obama’s agenda, and the media hid these facts from the American people.
Now that Donald Trump has returned to the presidency, the corporate media are reevaluating their collusion with radical leftists. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg contributed $419 million to Biden’s 2020 campaign and victory and used Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp to interfere in U.S. elections by censoring information critical of the Biden crime family and the covid-19 vaccine. Yet after Elon Musk took over the Twitter platform (now called X) and restored free speech, Zuckerberg announced on January 7 that Facebook is replacing its censorship system. Gerald Flurry has written about Bible prophecy that an end-time afflicter of Israel would be silenced. It appears Zuckerberg and other key media figures are no longer listening to Obama (article, page 34).
As free speech becomes more common, however, many people are waking up to the obvious fact that pornography, which is often advertised as a form of “free speech,” is destroying people’s lives. State representatives in Florida passed a new law that requires online pornography viewers to verify that they are adults by uploading government ID, such as a driver’s license. Rather than comply with this new rule, the largest pornography site in the world, Pornhub, disabled its website completely in that state. This makes Florida the 17th state that Pornhub has boycotted in protest of laws designed to protect those too young to protect themselves.
Terrorism also continues to be a problem in America. On January 1, an Islamic State terrorist accelerated a pickup truck into a crowd of pedestrians in New Orleans, Louisiana, exited the vehicle, and began shooting at police, murdering 14, and injuring 35 before being killed. Later that day, an active-duty U.S. soldier blew up a truck in front of the Trump International Hotel in Paradise, Nevada. The explosion injured seven bystanders. Leviticus 26:16 lists “terror” as one of the curses God will send against His people if they turn away from His law. Attacks like the New Orleans massacre show that this curse has come to America.