Today is Veterans Day in America, Remembrance Day in the commonwealth countries. In 1918, November 11 was the day the massive horror that was the First World War finally ended. Every November, British Commonwealth citizens honor their fallen dead from all wars, men who sacrificed their lives to serve, to save and to build their nation.

Today, in 2025, what has the commonwealth become?

This has been on the mind of Alec Penstone recently. He began selling Remembrance Day poppies to commemorate the fallen of the Great War when he was 14 years old. That was in 1939. He was working in a factory when World War ii erupted. He volunteered as an air raid messenger boy as German bombers blasted London night after night.

“The moments at 15 years of age,” he said, “pulling bodies out of bombed buildings: You grow up very quickly.”

His father had witnessed the trenches of the First World War and made him promise not to join the Army. Alec joined the Royal Navy and risked his life serving aboard submarines and a small aircraft carrier that was at D-Day.

“What does Remembrance Sunday mean for you?” he was asked on Friday by a Good Morning Britain host. “What is your message?”

Penstone’s message is honest, blunt, heart-wrenching—and true.

“My message is: I can see it in my mind’s eye, those rows and rows of white stones, of all the hundreds of my friends and everybody else that gave their lives—for what? The country of today. No, I’m sorry,” he said. “The sacrifice wasn’t worth the result that is now.” (Watch the video here.)

Penstone was trying to save his nation from being destroyed, and Britain survived and won World War ii. But he is telling us, Britain has been destroyed.

Britain 1939, Britain 1945, even Britain 1995 and Britain 2005 are gone.

What is Britain in 2025? It’s the place where formerly foreign ideologies are now so strong that you have Sharia courts in place. It’s the place where police are arresting people for expressing opinions online in case they offend immigrants—and letting immigrant rape gangs operate for decades. It’s the place where local governments ban fans of Israeli soccer teams and relegate pro-Israel protesters to fenced-off areas, while hate-filled, anti-Israel Islamists and their supporters reign in the streets.

Men fought and died for the future of Britain. They fought and died for freedoms, fairness, protection, the rule of law and the hope that Britain could stand against horrid ideologies and ultimately make the world better for people everywhere.

They gave their lives—for what?

Did you notice Penstone in that interview? There is no anger in his voice; he is heartbroken. They sacrificed, suffered, fought and died for something that no longer exists, something that was destroyed and remade from within.

The video is reminiscent of comments captured a few years ago from 100-year-old United States Marine Sgt. Carl Dekle. Pardon the language, but he recognized in America the same thing Penstone sees in Britain.

Britain and America were never perfect nations, but they were given principles and blessings that no other nations have been given and the responsibility to spread them to the world. A century ago, British and American men—and teenage boys—still recognized that. They gave up peace, education, marriage, family, and they risked the unknowns—drowning, dehydration, freezing, starving, wounds, torture, and dying painful and horrific deaths.

The price to defeat the powerful forces and the odious ideologies of the 20th century was hundreds of thousands of white stones: row upon row upon row. Those young men believed the result, the Britain of a better tomorrow, would be worth it.

In the 21st century, on Remembrance Day 2025, we are living “the result that is now.”

The British and the Americans, “with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us,” as Winston Churchill put it, knew how to fight Germany and the Axis. But they didn’t understand how to fight the at-first ideological and now-physical invasion that has blitzed their families, schools, churches, universities and halls of power.

How clearly this is illustrated in Britain’s tolerance for and protection of anti-Semitism. Britain and America, with the favorable interference of “some Guiding Hand,” survived and won World War ii but failed to prevent the Jewish Holocaust. When the truth came out and the full evil was exposed to the world, Britain, America and other nations promised, “Never again.”

After the “pro-Palestinian,” anti-Semitic show of power that was the Tel Aviv-Birmingham soccer game on November 6, Arab-Israeli journalist Yoseph Haddad angrily said, “You promised us—the government of the [United Kingdom] promised—‘Never again.’ They promised that. I’m really sending a message to everybody, ‘You’re failing us.’”

The British government is so infected by self-sabotaging ideologies that it is bending over backward to allow the same anti-Semitism that plagued Germany in the 1930s.

Mr. Penstone’s and Mr. Dekle’s brothers-in-arms gave their lives to protect British freedoms and end that Holocaust. Allowing anti-Semitic violence to surge in Britain is a horrible atrocity in and of itself.

We are not who or what we used to be.

Regarding America and Britain, the Prophet Isaiah wrote in Isaiah 1:5-6, “[T]he whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment.”

This is another way of describing the same thing Alec Penstone and Carl Dekle see.

As the current generations reject everything good about Britain’s history, everything worth fighting and dying for, so too do their brothers in America. The Americans retain a little more pride in their history, yet they too are failing to defend their brothers in Israel and are doing things like electing an open Muslim socialist who hates Israel as mayor of New York City.

The great Britons and the great Americans of the past would not recognize us.

Take a moment today to remember our fallen dead. Remember what they fought for. Remember the ideals they suffered for and died for. Many of them knew it, some did not, but the good things Britain and America had to offer the world came from God and the principles of the Bible.

There are vital truths that even the most clear-thinking and best-hearted patriots of the world wars did not know and failed to remember on Remembrance Day. The reason our nations are self-destructing connects directly to what is truly worth fighting for!

You need to understand: What, specifically, was good about Britain and America? Why were they different? Why were they better? Was it because our people were better? If the good came from somewhere else, where did it come from? What happened to the good these nations did for their citizens and for the world? Why has it rotted from within?

Conservatives and patriots see this happening, but they can’t explain it. It’s because our generations don’t remember the origin of the virtues we think of as “British traditions” or “the American way,” or “Western civilization” and their connection to the Bible. Many Britons and Americans know that their nations had something good, something worth giving to the world, something worth fighting for and dying for. They know that it has slipped away. But they don’t remember where it came from. We will always be at a loss until our nations remember our true history!

The prophets weren’t just writing for the kingdom of Judah or the kingdom of Israel. They were writing for their descendants.

Request your free copy of The United States and Britain in Prophecy, by Herbert W. Armstrong—right now!

It is not enough to wear a poppy and be grateful that the Nazis lost World War ii. It is not enough to try to sympathize for a few moments with how these men must feel. You urgently need to know our countries’ history, what we had that truly was worth fighting for, and what you need to do now.

Winston S. Churchill: The Watchman, written by my father, Gerald Flurry, explains another powerful prophecy written for the descendants of ancient Israel. Ezekiel 33 contains an amazing prophecy describing God saving Britain and America from destruction in World War ii by using a vigilant watchman. This same prophecy also explains that God will send another such watchman just before World War iii. Yet the American and British people will have to repent much more deeply if they want to be saved from destruction this time.