“Mgga” doesn’t roll off the tongue as easily as President Donald Trump’s catchphrase “maga.” But as he celebrated the landslide victory of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt on September 6, he rejoiced in the fact that they would “Make Germany Great Again.”

Whether or not he realizes it, mgga will be Donald Trump’s most important foreign-policy legacy. “Germany must demonstrate leadership,” he said in 2018. He pushed Germany to spend 2 percent of its economy on its military. Then 4 percent. Then 5. Under his watch, Germany has become Europe’s top military spender, upending Europe’s decades-long balance between French military power and German economic power. Germany is even on track to outspend Russia on defense by the end of the decade.

At the same time, Trump’s administration has encouraged the rise of the AfD. Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have both defended the party. Sen. Tom Cotton said it should not be treated as a “right-wing extremist organization.” Elon Musk went further, actively campaigning for the party.

Trump trusts Germany, and he trusts the AfD. And this is only the latest development in a relationship that goes back to the time just after World War ii, when America rebuilt Germany from its defeat. From intelligence sharing to stationing nuclear weapons on German soil to selling Germany F-35s to encouraging Germany to lead Europe—for decades America has placed considerable trust in a nation that has repeatedly proven itself dangerous.

Yet as Herbert W. Armstrong warned in the 1980s, a tremendous shock is coming from Germany to America—one “which the public now least suspects … doesn’t dream is coming.” Bible prophecy warns that Germany is going to betray America. “[O]ur Western peoples will stand aghast” when it happens, but “the stage is being set,” Mr. Armstrong said.

How could this happen? And why? Can we be sure? As Mr. Armstrong said in that same broadcast, “It’s time we … blow the dust off our Bibles” and prove what Scripture says about modern Germany.

The Master Key

The terms Germany, Britain and United States of America are not in your Bible. Understanding what the Bible says about them depends on what Mr. Armstrong called “the all-important master key.”

This master key unlocks an entire third of your Bible: the third devoted to Bible prophecy.

Most so-called Christian denominations view prophecy as essentially irrelevant. Yet why would an all-wise Creator include so much of it in His instruction book for mankind, if that were true?

The Bible’s prophecies focus on the nation of Israel. The key to understanding Bible prophecy, then, is understanding who the descendants of Israel are today.

Most people think the answer is simple: Israel is a country in the Middle East. The people of Israel are the Jews. Yet the Jews are the descendants of just one of the 12 tribes of ancient Israel: Judah. The first time the term Jew is used in the Bible, in 2 Kings 16:6, these “Jews” are at war with Israel.

All Jews descended from Israel, but clearly not all descendants of Israel are Jews.

Bible history records that Israel’s descendants became tribes, then a nation, then the kingdom of Israel. Under Solomon’s son Rehoboam, Judah split away to remain loyal to David’s line; the other tribes formed their own monarchy. Assyria conquered the northern kingdom beginning in 721 b.c.; Babylon conquered Judah more than a century later. They never reunited.

A few northern Israelites escaped captivity, and their descendants appear occasionally in Scripture. But Ezra 2 and 8 and Nehemiah 7 list those who returned from exile as overwhelmingly from Judah, Benjamin and Levi—the tribes that formed the kingdom of Judah. The northern tribes vanished from the record. That is why they are called the “lost 10 tribes of Israel.”

This used to be common knowledge, and explorers often searched for the lost 10 tribes. Wherever they went, the descendants of these tribes must be alive.

Jews Didn’t Receive These Promises

Many people acknowledge that God made promises to Abraham that are fulfilled both in the Jews and in Jesus Christ. But several of His promises are fulfilled in neither. God told Abraham he would be “a father of many nations”—plural (Genesis 17:5). Jacob was promised “a nation [and] a group of nations” (Genesis 35:11; Moffatt). Where are those nations? The Jews form one; God’s Church is “an holy nation” (1 Peter 2:9)—also singular. So where is the group of nations?

Abraham’s descendants would “be as the dust of the earth,” “multiply as the stars of heaven,” and number in the “thousands of millions” (Genesis 28:14; 26:4; 24:60). It will take ages before today’s roughly 16 million Jews number in the billions. These millions would “possess the gate of those which hate them” (verse 60)—the world’s choke points. The Jews have never controlled these. In Genesis 27:26-29, Isaac’s blessing says Jacob’s descendants would be among Earth’s richest and most powerful nations. The state of Israel is strong for its size, but no superpower.

In Genesis 49, Jacob prophesied of “the last days” of each tribe. If 10 tribes are gone, those promises have failed and the Bible is not the infallible Word of God. The 10 tribes must exist; they must include some of the wealthiest nations on Earth—specifically those that dominate others by controlling the world’s transit choke points.

Those nations must include Britain and the U.S. In The United States and Britain in Prophecy (free upon request), Mr. Armstrong sets out this history and logic in more detail and proves that the lost tribes include these two nations.

Israel Betrayed

God gave these nations unprecedented greatness and wealth because of Abraham’s obedience, not their own.

The spotlight on these nations gave them an opportunity to point the world to God. They did some good, but they also used that God-given wealth and power to spread materialism, lawlessness, perversion and godlessness. They could have been model nations, showing that God’s ways bring blessings. Instead they now show that even history’s richest, strongest nations fall if they defy His laws.

Micah 5 describes what would happen to modern Israel. The “remnant of Jacob”—the modern descendants of the ancient tribes—would be like a lion among the nations (verse 8): military victories, economic blessings that help feed the world (verse 7). Yet God says, “[I]n that day … I will cut off thy horses …” (verse 10).

“How plain can you get?” Mr. Armstrong asked in The United States and Britain in Prophecy. “Here God identifies the great peoples of the Earth who are the most wealthy and beneficent, the most powerful—yet at the very time their power reaches its zenith, He suddenly ‘breaks’ the pride of their power (see Leviticus 26:19), cuts off their implements of war, and destroys their cities!”

How does God cut down a modern superpower at the height of its dominance? Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 list the curses God promises to send: weather, agriculture, disease, famine and disaster, culminating in foreign invasion. Other passages say this invasion comes suddenly and catches the dominant nation by surprise. It is not led by Britain’s and America’s enemies, but by their closest allies.

“All thy lovers have forgotten thee; they seek thee not,” God warns in Jeremiah 30:14.

God pictures Israel not merely courting these allies, but paying for their affection: “They give gifts to all whores: but thou givest thy gifts to all thy lovers, and hirest them, that they may come unto thee on every side for thy whoredom” (Ezekiel 16:33).

Britain and America could have celebrated their history with God and taught the world that the Eternal is the source of all blessings and prosperity. They could have continued to demonstrate that lesson by depending on God for their safety and survival in a dangerous world.

Instead, they depend upon themselves, their wealth, their technologies, their armies and their alliances.

During World War ii, Britain and America prayed to God and held national days of fasting. Still, they lacked the faith to rely fully on Him, and they relied instead on their own arms and on the Soviet Union for victory.

After the war, even what trust they had in God faded. They trusted in themselves, and America built a global system of alliances—most notably including nato—to defend against the Soviets. America hired these allies, giving them many gifts, including the atomic bomb, the most destructive weapon man had ever produced.

God is not pleased with this. He explains in Ezekiel 23:35 that Israel “hast forgotten me, and cast me behind thy back ….”

When a nation does this, it breaks the first and great commandment: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind” (Matthew 22:37).

“We violate that as a nation,” Mr. Armstrong said in a World Tomorrow broadcast in the 1980s. “[W]e’ve been deceived into believing that we are really relying on God. [W]e think that God is sort of a myth, and He’s far off. Maybe He is not real, and maybe He couldn’t really help us. … We must depend on something that we can see. And so now we are so afraid of Russia that the United States government feels that it must take what we call a ‘calculated risk’ … and try to build up Germany and Central Europe against Russia.”

So God says He will inspire these lovers to turn on America. “… I have wounded thee with the wound of an enemy,” God reveals in Jeremiah 30:14. In Ezekiel 16:37, God says, “I will gather all thy lovers, with whom thou hast taken pleasure … I will even gather them round about against thee ….”

Impending Disaster

The northern tribes of the kingdom of Israel were conquered by the Assyrian Empire starting in 721 b.c. But over a hundred years later, God inspired the Prophet Jeremiah to record something seemingly odd. Jeremiah 5 discusses the house of Judah and the house of Israel, two separate nations (e.g. verse 11). In verse 15, he writes: “Lo, I will bring a nation upon you from far, O house of Israel, saith the Lord: it is a mighty nation, it is an ancient nation, a nation whose language thou knowest not, neither understandest what they say.” Didn’t that warning come more than a lifetime too late?

The same puzzle appears in Ezekiel 3-4. There God commissions His prophet to go to the house of Israel. Once again, Israel and Judah are described separately in the same passage. Not only does this come about 150 years too late to warn Israel of its doom, but it is given to Ezekiel, a captive of the Babylonian Empire who is never recorded as traveling anywhere, let alone bringing this message to the tribes of Israel, which have already been conquered.

Consider another mystery in Jeremiah 3:18: “In those days the house of Judah shall walk with the house of Israel, and they shall come together out of the land of the north to the land that I have given for an inheritance unto your fathers.” This has never occurred in history; only some from the kingdom of Judah returned to the Holy Land—but not those of Israel.

Some have assumed that the Samaritans, who lived in the land once inhabited by the northern tribes of Israel, are the descendants of these tribes returned from exile. But 2 Kings 17 explains that Assyria moved other peoples into the region (verse 24) who lived there “unto this day” (verse 41). Jesus Christ Himself confirmed that these Samaritans were not from the tribes of Israel when He told His disciples, “Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matthew 10:5-6). The Samaritans cannot be these lost sheep.

So where are they? This is quite a puzzle. Zechariah points to the answer.

A Second Captivity

After some of the Jews began to return to Judea from captivity in Babylon, God said, “And it shall come to pass, that as ye were a curse among the heathen, O house of Judah, and house of Israel; so will I save you, and ye shall be a blessing: fear not, but let your hands be strong” (Zechariah 8:13).

The return from captivity described by Zechariah and Jeremiah—when Israel and Judah will return together—is a future event.

Jeremiah confirms this: “For, lo, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will bring again the captivity of my people Israel and Judah, saith the Lord: and I will cause them to return to the land that I gave to their fathers, and they shall possess it” (Jeremiah 30:3).

The only logical conclusion is that a second captivity is coming on the people of Israel. The first, as sore and bloody and tragic as it was, was only a forerunner.

Who Are Our Lovers?

Anciently the Assyrians took the northern tribes of Israel into captivity, while Babylon captured the kingdom of Judah. God sent many prophets to warn them before these captivities happened. Yet the warnings recorded in the Bible are primarily for the future captivity.

Isaiah 10, for example, describes God using the king of Assyria to correct and conquer nations. It goes on to describe the survivors from Israel and Judah returning home. The first part of Isaiah 10 happened: God raised up Assyria and then struck it down. But Israel didn’t return from captivity, and Judah never went into captivity to that empire.

In this end-time, second captivity, Israel and Judah will fall together. Hosea 5:5 says, “[T]herefore shall Israel and Ephraim fall in their iniquity; Judah also shall fall with them.” This is very different from what happened anciently.

In this second captivity, God says the captors are “Assyria” and “Babylon.” Ezekiel 23:23 foretells that Israel and Judah’s lovers are the “Babylonians … and all the Assyrians.” Note that: The principal lovers are also the principal captors!

Who are these treacherous lovers, whom God calls “Babylonians” and “Assyrians,” today?

The New Testament supplies some answers. Revelation 17 describes a great end-time power using the symbol of a beast, ridden by a whore, with the name “Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth” written on her forehead (verse 5). To know what this symbolizes, we must look to other scriptures that use the same symbolism. The true Church of God is often described as a woman—the Bride of Christ (Ephesians 5:32; 2 Corinthians 11:2; Revelation 19:7-8). The immoral woman of Revelation 17 is a great false church that consorts with the kings of the world.

This woman rides a “beast.” In Daniel 7, four beasts represent four great empires and the rulers who lead them. So this woman—a false church—rides and controls a great superpower. This “beast” is unusual: It has seven heads, which are seven kings, who rule one after the other (Revelation 17:10). Between one king and the next, the beast disappears into the bottomless pit (verse 8), seemingly destroyed.

The final time this beast rises, it has “ten horns which … are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast” (verse 12).

So we have an empire, repeatedly led by a church, repeatedly rising and falling, and in this end time, led by a union of kings.

This is a prophetic description of the Holy Roman Empire, a series of European empires, all strongly influenced by the Catholic Church.

This helps us pinpoint Assyria. It is described almost interchangeably with Babylon in Bible prophecy because, in modern times, it is part of this same empire. The beast of Revelation 17 is described doing all the same things that the Old Testament prophesied Assyria would do: conquer Jerusalem, make war against Jesus Christ, and ultimately be defeated by Christ when He returns.

Assyria describes modern Germany, the military and political heart of Europe. Babylon refers specifically to the religious power.

This mirrors the relationship these two had anciently. Babylon was the great religious power. Assyria was renowned as the political and military power. The Assyrians adopted most of Babylon’s religion as their own and viewed Babylon as a holy city.

Today, the modern religious Babylon and the Assyrian Germany will dominate the final resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire.

America encouraged the creation of the European Union, out of which this 10-nation union will emerge. Because of these prophecies, Herbert W. Armstrong warned that “we’re actually helping to create the Frankenstein that is coming against us.”

Turning Against America

President Trump sees some of the problems with America’s relationship with its “lovers.” America has given much to Europe and has received little gratitude, appreciation or “love” in return.

Even during President Trump’s first term, French President Emmanuel Macron said nato was “brain dead.” He called Trump’s second term an “electroshock” for the Continent.

After his election in 2025, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said, “My absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the U.S.A.”

Both sides turned Greenland into a major issue. Trump said he wanted it. Greenland’s population is so small that he could have simply made an offer: Vote to become American in a referendum, and every Greenlander receives $100,000. It would still have been cheap. Instead, he spoke of invasion, and Europe responded by sending in troops. Suddenly, having nato members on opposite sides of a war was no longer unthinkable.

SEAN GALLUP/GETTY IMAGES

President Trump threatened to pull out of nato, telling the Telegraph, “I was never swayed by nato. I always knew they were a paper tiger, and Putin knows that too, by the way.”

The Iran war created another divide. Europe not only refused to support the campaign, but several European nations barred the U.S. military from bases that, in many cases, America had built and used to protect Europe for decades.

George Saravelos, Deutsche Bank’s head of global currency research, publicly called for EU nations to fight back against Donald Trump economically by dumping U.S. debt. Danish pension fund AkademikerPension did exactly that. The Wall Street Journal reported that many others are discussing such all-out financial warfare in private.

Yet none of this has prompted the Trump administration, or anyone in America, to pause and question whether encouraging Europe to arm is a good idea. If America cannot trust Europe as an ally, is making it powerful really a good idea?

Fed up with this lack of love, the Trump administration has thrown its support behind the fringe parties rising in Europe: the AfD in Germany and the National Rally in France. Trump has embraced them as European versions of the maga movement. Yet in many cases, they are even more anti-American than the mainstream leaders they are replacing.

AfD co-leader Alice Weidel has told senior party figures to reduce their trips to Washington and to instead cultivate ties with Russia and China. The party’s other co-leader, Tino Chrupalla, accused Israel of dragging America into war with Iran, praised Spain for its refusal to cooperate, and called for Germany to evict American troops from German bases.

Marine Le Pen, a leader of France’s National Rally, called President Trump’s war aims “erratic.” Party president Jordan Bardella accused Trump of attempting the “vassalization” of Europe.

Look at the roots of these movements, and this hostility is no surprise. Compact is a magazine by and for AfD supporters. It presents a view of World War ii in which Germany is the victim. Its special editions have included:

• “Lost Homeland,” describing the “unspeakable suffering” of the 14 million Germans expelled from Eastern Europe after the war and the “martyrdom they had to endure”;
• “Crimes Against Germans,” describing how Germany was victimized by war crimes during World War ii;
• “Dresden 1945: The Dead, the Perpetrators and the Trivializers,” describing the “Anglo-American bombing terror” and the “mass murderer” Winston Churchill;
• “The Death Camps of the Americans,” which accuses Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower of carrying out the mass execution of German prisoners of war in 1945.

The party briefly jumped on the maga train after Trump’s second presidential victory, but it clearly hates America. These new European lovers are just as false as the first set.

The Stage Is Set

Jeremiah 1:13 describes this northern European power as a “seething pot,” a cauldron boiling over with resentment. Yet America doesn’t recognize it.

Everything matches, in detail, the precise situation the Bible describes. Even as some in America realize these “lovers” don’t really love them, they are still encouraging them to rearm. Meanwhile, both the mainstream and new upstarts in Europe are seething under the U.S.-led global order, ready to turn against her as soon as the opportunity arises.

Far from being a confusing mess, the prophecies throughout the Bible, written hundreds of years apart, when unlocked with the master key, fit together to form a perfect and detailed picture of the betrayal that is about to stun the world.

Why use so many pages of the Bible to spell this out? So that when it happens, we know it is from God: It is of His design, and He is in total control.

The purpose of prophecy is to help us see God. God raised up Israel. God is now punishing Israel. He controls your destiny too. The key to prosperity, happiness and success lies in putting Him and His law first.

The coming captivity will teach Israel this lesson. God will then deal with Germany and the Holy Roman Empire and teach them that same lesson. Eventually the whole world will learn it. People will dig into the other two thirds of their Bibles and learn how to build under Jesus Christ a world of peace and prosperity that all can share in.