The younger brother of King Charles iii of Great Britain was arrested and questioned on Thursday, February 19, on suspicion of misconduct in public office. The arrest, the first of a member of the British royal family in the modern era, came in response to revelations from the United States Department of Justice’s release of files relating to the late pedophile and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, who was Prince Andrew before he was stripped of his royal title due to his relationship with Epstein, was detained for approximately 11 hours, questioned by British authorities, and released. No official charges have been filed, but the investigation, apparently into whether he shared sensitive government trade information with Epstein, remains ongoing.

Legal experts believe the process of determining whether to file formal charges against Mountbatten-Windsor could take weeks or months as investigators comb through the evidence. Regardless of what happens going forward, the fact that the King’s brother was arrested on suspicion of providing secrets to a child-sex trafficker is one of the most disgraceful moments in centuries of royal history.

No senior British royal has been arrested in nearly 400 years. The last senior royal to be arrested was King Charles i, who was captured by Scottish forces in 1646, placed under house arrest in 1647, tried for treason in 1648, and beheaded in 1649. Public opinion had turned so hard against King Charles i that Britain replaced its monarchy with a republic for 11 years thereafter.

Some people would like to see this history repeat itself under the current King Charles.

Richard Burgon, a member of Britain’s Labour Party, wants to begin with an “independent inquiry” into what the royal family knew about Andrew’s Epstein links and end with a “serious national debate about abolishing the monarchy.” That is how serious this sordid scandal has become.

Polling data from last year indicated that approximately 15 percent of the British public explicitly supported abolishing the monarchy, but this percentage is likely to grow as further details about the royal family’s dealings with Andrew and Epstein emerge.

British commentator Piers Morgan said this scandal could indeed end Britain’s royal family. In an interview with Fox and Friends, he said, “This is the King’s brother, who remains eighth in line to the throne. … This might just be the tipping point of a gigantic scandal which represents, I would argue, an existential threat to the monarchy itself. It is that serious. These are huge seismic moments in the royal family’s history.”

The British royal family is the oldest continuous hereditary monarchy in the world, with a lineage that has occupied the throne for millenniums. The idea that the British may abolish this institution is shocking.

Turning England and Britain into a republic seems even less likely when you know, as some monarchs and other Britons of the past knew, that this royal line actually goes all the way back to David, king of Israel. The Bible emphasizes God’s history with Israel before and during its time as a monarchy. It records that the kingdom split into the kingdom of Israel and the kingdom of Judah. It records that each of these kingdoms was destroyed and the sitting king deposed. Yet it also records a promise from God to David that “thine house and thy kingdom shall be established for ever before thee: thy throne shall be established forever” (2 Samuel 7:12-16). God repeated this same promise to the Prophet Jeremiah, who saw the second of those two kingdoms fall to invaders and almost all of the royal line get executed—and who was himself imprisoned at the time: “For thus saith the Lord; David shall never want a man to sit upon the throne of the house of Israel.”

There are only 26 active sovereign dynasties in the world today, and only two of them have histories that stretch back to the time of King Zedekiah: the throne of Great Britain and the throne of Imperial Japan. The Bible further specifies that David’s throne would be overturned three times before the Messiah returns (Ezekiel 21:27). Only the throne of Britain has a 3,000-year history with three overturns. The first overturn occurred in 569 b.c. when the Prophet Jeremiah transplanted the throne of David to Ireland. The second occurred in a.d. 513 when Fergus the Great transplanted the throne to Scotland. The third occurred in 1296 when Edward i transplanted the throne to England.

The English almost abolished this throne in 1649, when they executed King Charles i, but God intervened to restore King Charles i’s son to the throne because He had promised that David would never lack a man to rule over Israel. A descendant of David, up to and including Jesus Christ at His Second Coming, will always rule the descendants of the patriarch Israel (Jacob).

The incredible history of how that throne was preserved is recorded in biblical and nonbiblical history and explained in The United States and Britain in Prophecy, by Herbert W. Armstrong. Nothing will make your Bible and history come alive quite like that book!

We fought in court for six years for the right to print and give away millions of copies of that book free. (Request your free copy.) Now is the perfect time to understand the truth about David’s throne and Britain’s throne.

In his 2018 book The New Throne of David, my father, Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry, wrote that Britain’s throne was doomed to disaster and was, in God’s eyes, no longer the throne of David!

The New Throne of David focuses on Ezekiel 21:27, where God prophesied, “I will overturn, overturn, overturn, it: and it shall be no more.” My father writes that “it shall be no more” doesn’t mean that it will “be no more overturned” but rather that the throne was erased!

How is that possible? How can God erase and destroy that throne in Britain yet keep His promise to David?

God established a new throne of David! When Jesus Christ returns, He will take possession of a throne from the line of David. He will not reign over the nation-state of Great Britain but rather over God’s Church. This is the only way God can establish a new throne in Jerusalem without overturning the throne of Britain a fourth time.

To understand this prophecy, you need to read The New Throne of David. (Request your free copy.)

The scandals in the British royal family are a sign that we are approaching the time when the old throne of David will be completely erased. My father has said that the Hosea 3:4 prophecy that “the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king” will be fulfilled during the prophesied Great Tribulation that Jesus Christ prophesied—and it is already being fulfilled after God erased the old throne of David several years ago.

“When God gave the revelation about the new stone on Jan. 16, 2017, the royal family of Britain was displaced as the royal family of David’s throne,” my father wrote in 2018. “That was a signal of terrible things to come upon Britain, as well as a sharp decline of America and Judah. It was also an indication that we would see a rapid decline in Britain’s royal family. Look at what began happening to Britain’s royal family almost immediately after this change.”

At the time those words were written, Queen Elizabeth ii was still alive and the monarchy’s worst publicity largely involved Harry and his wife acting like spoiled children and Prince William working with a pop star to normalize mental health problems. Things are far, far worse today. The King’s brother was arrested for giving classified information to a convicted sex trafficker, and credible accusations have emerged that he was actually involved in some of the sex. We still don’t know what happened and how much the rest of the royal family knew, but an institution that began with King David and God, which was a source of integrity, morality, nobility and inspiration to generations, has become a source of shame.

The New Throne of David says, “God wants to bury what is happening with that throne in Britain today! He doesn’t want to have anything to do with it again!” God’s focus has already shifted to the new throne.