“Children, it is the last hour …” (1 John 2:18; Revised Standard Version). On May 5, 2001, God revealed to my father, Gerald Flurry, that the world had entered its last hour. Not the last age, not the last century—the last hour. End-time prophecies had been accelerating, but now we had entered a compressed, intensified sliver of time just before the climactic, world-engulfing violence that Jesus Christ prophesied, followed immediately by His return.

Four months later, the world changed forever. We watched our televisions in stunned horror after Islamic terrorists hijacked four airliners and mass-murdered thousands of Americans in the twin towers at the World Trade Center, at the Pentagon and in a Pennsylvania field.

God allowed this to reinforce that the last hour had begun!

That was 25 years ago. The world has not been the same since. And it is getting worse at a pace that should grab the attention of every thinking person. Meanwhile, God’s own Church is also in crisis!

Think about what the world looks like today, May 5, 2026—and how different it is from 2001 or from the 25 or 50 or 100 years before.

In 2008, a mortgage collapse in America triggered the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. It cost trillions and reshaped global power. That same year, Barack Obama was elected president after vowing to fundamentally transform the United States of America. He coordinated unprecedented, bizarre and wildly successful attacks on the Constitution, the rule of law and law enforcement personnel. He stirred up racial divisions. He pushed through absolute sexual insanity. He kept Iran’s regime in power and exacerbated the Arab Spring, which destabilized the Middle East and flooded Europe with millions of Muslim refugees. He launched massive, active censoring and persecution of Americans who did nothing more than continue to believe and do what they had always believed and done.

Also in 2008, Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Georgia, signaling a “dangerous new era.” In March 2014, he annexed Crimea. In 2016, Britain voted to leave the European Union, just as Herbert W. Armstrong had forecast decades prior. The same year, Donald Trump swept into power, largely because people recognized that America was no longer great and might not even survive.

In 2020, as covid-19 cost the world millions of lives and more than $16 trillion, race riots swept America, and an American presidential election was outright usurped by Obama and pretender-to-the-throne Joe Biden. In 2022, Russia launched a full-scale war against Ukraine. In 2023, Hamas carried out the October 7 massacre in Israel, the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust.

Leftist leaders in America are still doing outright suicidal things to this nation, and political violence in America is worsening. Trade wars are simmering. An anti-Iran Muslim alliance is forming in the Middle East, as prophesied in Psalm 83. Germany and Europe are divorcing from America and rearming.

These are not random misfortunes. This is an acceleration. Events that shake our world—insane actions by our top leaders, school shootings, shots fired at the president, dramatic changes in Europe—are now happening every few months!

This is life in the last hour.

This 25th anniversary of the last hour falls just before the 81st anniversary of Victory in Europe Day. The most alarming story in the world is being printed in mainstream newspapers, yet nobody is reacting. The left-wing Guardian in the United Kingdom ran this headline: “Germany’s Military Power Is on the Rise. This Time, It Must Be Firmly Embedded in Europe.”

This time. Even this Guardian author cannot avoid implying that there were previous times. The two most recent times were World War i and World War ii, including the Holocaust.

Germany’s military spending has shot up dramatically, and by next year, it will spend as much as France and Britain combined. The German government is now stating openly that it is building the strongest conventional army in Europe. It has published its first national military strategy—apart from nato—since its last world war. It even named it “Responsibility for Europe.”

“How can we ensure that this time,” the Guardian author wrote, “the growth of German military power is a positive development for all of Europe?”

Twenty-five years ago, that article would have been impossible. Now it’s reality, and people barely bat an eye.

Eighty-one years ago, the United States had 400,000 troops stationed in Germany precisely to prevent this type of scenario. nato existed precisely to prevent it. But now nato is ready to die, and Europeans consider the U.S. as much of a threat as Russia, which means, as they view it, that Germany’s military must rise again.

We have been warning about Germany for decades. Herbert Armstrong warned about it, my father has, the Trumpet has. Not because we hate Germany, but because the Bible warns that it will be used to destroy America—because of our sins! The warning the Guardian so briefly and gingerly touches upon is the very warning God’s prophets recorded in the Bible and that His prophets in our lifetime have been shouting for decades! But nobody wants to hear it. That signals the darkness of this age.

I know what the critics say: The last hour has lasted 25 years? What kind of urgency is that? But the Apostle John wrote about the last hour in the first century. Was he wrong? The Apostle Paul wrote about the end of the age as though it were imminent. Was he a false prophet? Jesus Christ gave the Olivet prophecy (Matthew 24). People scoffed at His disciples for generations. Think about Enoch. He preached for 350 years before the Flood. Think about Noah, who spent a century building the ark while the world mocked. In year 53 or year 78 or year 96 of that 100-year period, what would people have said about Noah? Of course they scoffed. Of course they ridiculed him. But the Flood came.

John thought he was describing his own time. But God was actually using him to prophesy about our time. Antichrists are not distant persecutors. They are people who once knew God and then turned away.

God is long-suffering. His will is that no one perish. He is reaching out to every human being. The 25 years are not a sign that we were wrong—they are a sign that God is merciful. They are also a sign that the hour is almost up.

When John used that phrase “the last hour,” he was referring to people who were critical of prophecy, critical of God—in fact, “antichrists.” Read 1 John 2:18 in full: “Children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come; therefore we know that it is the last hour” (rsv).

In addition to accelerating world events, this is how God showed my father the revelation that we had entered the last hour. God’s own people—true Christians in God’s one true Church—had become antithetical to Jesus Christ! “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us …” (verse 19). These are not fictional villains like some worldly Christians portray; they’re not pagans or atheistic academics or God-hating politicians. God prophesied through John that they went out from us. And they began fighting and are still fighting God’s one true Church! They actually got control of the Church and fundamentally transformed it, censoring, persecuting and casting out true Christians—just as the Bible prophesied.

Again, Christ prophesied what would happen in the end time—both in the world and inside His true Church. The disciples asked Him, “[W]hat shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?” (Matthew 24:3). He did not say, “Don’t get into prophecy,” or anything like that. He launched into one of the longest and most crucial prophecies in all the Bible. And notice one of the things He warned about: “Many false prophets shall arise, and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold” (verses 11-12).

The love of many true Christians, who were once on fire for God, His Word, His law and His prophecies, has indeed waxed cold. This has happened in every era of God’s Church: It’s recorded in the Gospels, in the writings of Paul, Peter and John. It is specifically prophesied for the end time! Jesus Christ personally, explicitly prophesied that He would send a prophet like Elijah just before He returned in power and glory (Matthew 17:1-11). He did exactly that, and He used that man to “restore all things” that had been lost by false churches and false Christians between His first coming and His imminent Second Coming. We saw it! True Christians experienced it, lived it, and know it! And yet many went out from us, and the love of many waxed cold.

Some who leave God’s Church believe they can simply step back and remain neutral. They are not actively fighting God’s work; they just aren’t doing it anymore. They are watching from the sidelines.

Christ doesn’t accept that. He said in Matthew 12:30, “He that is not with me is against me ….” A Spirit-begotten Christian who withdraws from God’s work does not become neutral. He becomes useful to the other side. The devil doesn’t need you to pick up a weapon. He just needs you to stop fighting. He is using many antichrists who would never consider themselves in that category!

In 2001, when God revealed that we had entered the last hour, God’s faithful Church was in the middle of six years of litigation over Mystery of the Ages. Ministers trained by the end-time Elijah (Herbert Armstrong), men who had given years to God’s work, were attacking the spiritual truths and the prophecies of that critical book! They were fighting to make sure a new generation would never read it! But in Edmond, Oklahoma, one minister fought back. And with the backing of Jesus Christ and a small body of believers, he stood up for God’s truth, His prophecies and His work—and won!

That is what it looks like to be on Christ’s side in the last hour.

The existence of many antichrists is a sign of the times. You need to examine yourself and to actively support Christ’s message of truth and of prophecy. The prophecies He inspired, in the New Testament and the Old Testament, are happening. The king of the south is pushing. The king of the north is rising. The Psalm 83 alliance is taking shape. Germany has its war machine. The world is uniting against America. Events are moving at lightning speed.

The Trumpet continues to sound the warning. This is the only Church Christ is using to deliver this dire warning in this late hour. It is a burden, and it is an honor.

We have less than an hour left. May God help us make it our finest.

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