Friedrich Merz will become Germany’s next chancellor on Tuesday. For years, Europe has suffered a leadership vacuum. Growing threats in the world demand stronger leadership, especially from Germany. Many people hope Merz will help fill that vacuum. For example, Britain’s Telegraph published an article titled “Friedrich Merz: The Man Europe Has Been Waiting For.”

However, based on Bible prophecy, the late Herbert W. Armstrong believed it would take an office greater than that of a German chancellor to provide the leadership Europe is yearning for. End-time prophecy speaks of one overarching strongman who rules over 10 kings governing a European superstate.

Throughout his life, Mr. Armstrong watched for the coalescing of that European empire. It made some strides toward coming together even before he died in 1986. But what he prophesied has advanced far more dramatically since that time.

However, the European strongman is still not in power. Several Bible prophecies foretell of this man. Many signs show that he will appear on the scene soon, perhaps this year or next year—maybe even next week, things are moving that fast!

Mr. Armstrong believed the strongman of Europe would be Franz Josef Strauss. Strauss ran for chancellor of West Germany in 1980 and narrowly lost. He died on Oct. 3, 1988, before he could achieve his dream of German and European unification.

Still, Mr. Armstrong had a connection to this man that we need to understand. It points to the future fulfillment of Bible prophecies that were delayed in Mr. Armstrong’s day.

Strauss led the prominent German state of Bavaria, which is known for its high-tech manufacturing, as well as its strength and leadership. He was chairman of the Christian Social Union and one of the world’s most well-known politicians. He had ambitions for international leadership.

One of his friends was Otto von Habsburg, a descendant of a dynasty that ruled over the Holy Roman Empire. Habsburg got into European Parliament with the ambition to help make Germany, and eventually all of Europe, into a superstate.

Both of these men got to know Mr. Armstrong, who also founded Ambassador College. Mr. Armstrong invited them to visit his college in Pasadena, California.

“Incidentally,” Mr. Armstrong wrote July 24, 1983, “Drs. Habsburg and Strauss are close friends and for some reason I do not understand—but may be of God’s designing—both are very friendly to me and to Ambassador College.” He didn’t understand, yet he said it “may be of God’s designing.”

Now is the time to understand what Mr. Armstrong could not.

In that same letter, Mr. Armstrong wrote:

We have been seeing these end-time world events coming for several years now. God has delayed—held up world events. Yet He will suddenly cut His work short, and end things, as unexpectedly and suddenly as when the trap springs on a rat before he can move.

When Europe suddenly unites, our work, which Christ is doing with and through us, will quickly be over, and Christ’s coming very soon thereafter.

Revelation 17:10 speaks about this coming strongman—and there is a connection to Mr. Armstrong. Read it closely: “And there are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space.”

God revealed to Mr. Armstrong that this verse was the key to understanding European history.

This speaks of the time of the sixth head of the Holy Roman Empire: “and one is.” This sixth head was Adolf Hitler. (We prove this in our booklet Germany and the Holy Roman Empire.) Of course, Hitler was not on the scene when the Apostle John wrote this prophecy. However, he was on the scene when God revealed this prophecy to Mr. Armstrong! Notice, it speaks of the sixth resurrection and says the seventh “is not yet come.” Mr. Armstrong exposed that sixth resurrection while it was in power, and he warned people about the seventh that is coming!

However, Mr. Armstrong did not see the seventh head fully emerge, neither did he meet the man who would lead this empire. Still, the fact is that God put Mr. Armstrong in the middle of this prophecy! It is dated to the time that man was proclaiming this prophetic warning. That tells you we need to go back and study what he taught about this coming European strongman.

In a sermon in 1981, Mr. Armstrong talked about the meeting he had with Franz Josef Strauss a decade earlier. He said:

[Strauss] has wanted to be the chancellor of West Germany and has never made it. He was a guest in my home here 10 years ago. … I believe he had spoken to our students during the day and he was all over the campus, and had dinner in my home that evening with his wife and his bodyguard, who was along with him—he carried an armed bodyguard everywhere he went. And I talked with him in the library of my home. I knew that he wanted so much to be chancellor.

I said, “Dr. Strauss, you, in my judgment, are not going to be chancellor of West Germany, but a greater office is waiting for you.”

And then I made a comment about it, “When it happens.”

You’ll find the greater office described in the 17th chapter of Revelation, as the man at the head of the government called the beast, and the beast will be a union of the nations of Europe. And I believe it will probably be five nations in Western Europe and five satellite nations that are going to break loose from Russia in Eastern Europe.

And the best candidate to head that group of 10 nations is Franz Josef Strauss, in my judgment.

It was 1970 when Strauss visited Mr. Armstrong at his home. I was a student at Ambassador College at the time. And I haven’t thought much about this before, but when Strauss visited the college, he attended only one class that day. That class happened to be my Comparative Religion class.

You can imagine what it would have been like when Strauss was there. After all, most everybody thought he was going to lead that European superstate! After he left, Frank Brown, who was teaching the class, said, Well, it was kind of unnerving to speak to the beast. It was an interesting day. Everyone around campus was buzzing, and it was exciting. Everybody, including Mr. Armstrong, thought he may well be the strongman of Europe and would rule the Holy Roman Empire. But that didn’t happen.

Yet I believe there is more to it. Though Mr. Armstrong didn’t understand what it was all about, he did say, “It may be of God’s designing.”

If that truly was of God’s designing—and I believe it was—what does it mean?

The fact that Strauss visited my class that day didn’t mean very much to me at the time, when I was a student. However, today it moves me more because of the office I hold today. I try to see things as much as I can according to God’s perspective.

Consider: If Mr. Armstrong never really understood the significance of this visit and what God’s designing was, who will? Looking at it now, there was a connection between Strauss and me, insignificant as it was at the time. But it may have some meaning. Zechariah 4:10 tells us not to despise “the day of small things,” or small beginnings. If God is in that small beginning, it really is momentous.

In this case, I think this “small thing” may help us understand why Mr. Armstrong said, This may be of God, yet I don’t understand it.

That small connection to Strauss may point us to look more seriously into the strongman system he founded.

Strauss did something I find fascinating. I know of no other politician who has done this.

As the leader and strongman of Bavaria, Strauss had one primary disciple: Edmund Stoiber. He kept this young man with him and sought to teach him everything he needed to know about being a strongman in Europe. Stoiber enjoyed considerable success in building a political career under Strauss’s mentorship.

Shortly after Strauss’s death in 1988, Stoiber took up that strongman ambition. He became premier of the German state of Bavaria in 1993. He led the Christian Social Union (csu) and was extraordinarily successful. In 2002 he ran for chancellor of Germany, but narrowly lost.

Now he needed to do as Strauss had done before him: He needed a disciple to work with who would take his place.

The next most prominent leader that rose from the Christian Social Union was Baron Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg. He became a parliamentarian in Berlin when Stoiber ran for chancellor, then became general secretary of the csu after Stoiber left politics. He quickly rose to become Germany’s youngest economics minister and defense minister. The latter was a job he really wanted; it had also been the favorite ministry of Franz Josef Strauss.

Given Guttenberg’s astronomical rise, his royal lineage that goes back to the Habsburgs, his connection to Strauss and Stoiber, and various other reasons, we started to watch this man closely.

In 2011, Guttenberg resigned because of a plagiarism scandal. He has been out of politics ever since. But we continue to watch his career. And seeing these connections makes me think it important we continue to do so.

Strauss was a strong leader, and he had this system of making strong leaders. Guttenberg is still around, and he is again becoming more prominent. In the event of an emergency, such as a financial crisis, I believe Europe will call on him. We shall see.

We need to know that strongman system better. Doing so could help prepare us for some shocks we are about to see coming out of Europe.

Germany is about to get a new chancellor. He may well be a strong leader who will strengthen his nation’s power. But we continue to believe that “the man Europe has been waiting for” is going to fill an even greater office—one that has not yet been fully realized—and that this could well be filled by Guttenberg. You can read more about this in my article “‘May Be of God’s Designing.’”