Western Leaders Can See the Storm, but Won’t Say Why It’s Coming

Britain wants you to stockpile. On October 23, the government told every household to be ready to survive three days on its own. The list includes bottled water, canned food, a flashlight, a radio and cash in case the payment systems go down. Defense Secretary Wes Streeting warned of disruption from “hostile state actors or terrorists.”

[BRIEF]

Britain isn’t the only one doing this. Across the Western world, governments are quietly telling their people to get ready for war on their own soil.

• United States: On September 30, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced a plan called fortress, making 500 military installations able to run for at least 90 days if the civilian grid goes down. One of his senior advisers said, “We can no longer rely on two oceans to protect us.”
• Germany: The civil-protection office rewrote its crisis guide and dropped its old assurance that war was unlikely. Citizens are told to keep about 10 days of supplies.
• Netherlands: The Dutch central bank and other banks advise families to keep at least €70 per adult and €30 per child in cash at home.
• European Union: Since March 2025, Brussels has wanted every citizen to be capable of surviving on his own for at least 72 hours.

Just a few years back, if anyone talked about the end of the world, he was called a doomsday crackpot. Not so today. Western leaders see it coming. However, seeing trouble coming is not the same as understanding it.

• When war threatened ancient Judah, King Jehoshaphat proclaimed a fast and the nation cried out to God (2 Chronicles 20). What does the modern West offer? A pamphlet about bottled water.

Our leaders know how to prepare for war. They do not know how to make peace. As God said plainly, “The way of peace they know not; and there is no judgment in their goings …” (Isaiah 59:8).

Bible prophecy tells us that trouble is coming—far worse than even the most fastidious preppers will survive.

• Jeremiah described the faces of modern Israel, mainly America and Britain, turning pale with fear: “… We have heard a voice of trembling, of fear, and not of peace. … Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob’s trouble; but he shall be saved out of it” (Jeremiah 30:5, 7).
• Jesus Christ called it “great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be” (Matthew 24:21). He said that unless those days were shortened, “there should no flesh be saved” (verse 22).

No 72-hour kit will get anyone through that. Are you preparing your pantry—or your heart?

Even this terrible war has an end. Right after it, the world “shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory” (verse 30). The governments of men can say only that trouble is coming. Only God can save us out of it—and bring it to an end.

Polish Prime Minister Attempts Judicial Coup

In many democracies, the country’s supreme power is not the president, prime minister or parliament. It is with a supreme or constitutional court. The court decides the outcome of close elections, redefines marriage and family, and tells voters they cannot remove migrants, no matter how much they want to.

• The logical outcome of these courts’ growing power is that debates about the future of the country become fights over control of the court.

Poland demonstrated this dramatically over the weekend, when the Polish prime minister tried to take over the Constitutional Tribunal by force.

It began with a technical dispute on constitutional law. Poland’s legislature, the Sejm, elects new judges. These judges must take an oath of office, administered by the president, before taking office. Because there is no definitive court ruling on the matter, the two main political factions interpret this requirement in opposite ways:

• The liberal, pro-EU faction, led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk, argues that administering the oath is a mandatory formality. They believe the president—acting strictly as a symbolic head of state—is constitutionally required to swear in whoever parliament chooses.
• The conservative faction argues that the president has the discretion to refuse the oath. They believe this gives the president ultimate veto power over any newly elected judges.

Conflict escalated when the Sejm attempted to bypass the president and swear in some of the disputed judges themselves. However, the Polish courts have refused to recognize this process as legal.

• This impasse is part of a much larger, decades-long battle. Conservative factions argue that Poland’s judiciary was never properly “de-communized” (purged of Communist-era influence) after the fall of the regime in 1989, fueling ongoing political efforts to reshape the courts.

On Friday night, at the start of a four-day holiday weekend, the prime minister tried to decide the issue by force while President Karol Nawrocki was on a plane to Senegal.

• Backed by government police, a group of liberal judges suspended the court’s conservative chief, Bogdan Święczkowski, and his deputy and barricaded the building. The government then escorted their preferred parliament-appointed judges into the tribunal through a secure side entrance accessible from the prime minister’s residence.
• Learning of the takeover midflight, President Nawrocki ordered his plane to turn back to Warsaw. Despite rumored attempts by Tusk’s faction to block his landing, the president returned to the capital and physically forced his way into the building to reinstate the conservative leadership.

The EU has consistently backed Tusk, who previously served as president of the European Council.

• Polish courts have claimed that they, not the European courts, are the final authority on Polish soil.
• European courts disagree and have fought back hard.
• German courts are allowed to overrule the EU—but other countries are not allowed the same status.

This is the type of news we’re used to hearing from Third World countries. Democracy in Europe is not as stable as many assume.

The EU supported a coup against the constitutional court of one of its member states. For now, it looks like the coup has failed; even some who supported Tusk in the past are outraged. This could blow back badly on Brussels. Nation-states won’t like the idea that the EU can launch a coup against you if it doesn’t like your politics.

Poland’s conservatives are Germany’s biggest critics. Jarosław Kaczyński, Poland’s most important right-wing politician, accused Germany of trying to create a “Fourth Reich” “built on the basis of the EU.” Germany helped bring Tusk to power and has attacked the conservatives repeatedly. The German-led EU will override all norms and laws to get these critics out of the way. The attack on Poland’s conservatives exposes the rise of this German-dominated Holy Roman Empire.

Protests in Germany Turn Violent

Following weeks of large-scale protests in France, more than 100,000 youth protesters took to the streets in over 30 cities in Germany on October 31. The protests were not nearly as large as in France, but they turned violent in some cities. The protesters’ demands vary, and not all of them will be fulfilled.

• The demands include more funding for schools, addiction treatment and psychotherapy; affordability; no mandatory military service; a check on expanding surveillance; and consistent climate action.

Germany is currently in economic straits, cracking down on political dissidents and preparing for war. Mandatory military service is coming, and so is increased surveillance.

The need for tougher policing became clear as the sun set and rioters emerged. Frankfurt saw the worst of it, where several police officers were injured and stores were looted.

• Hesse Interior Minister Roman Poseck said, “We assume there were about 100 attackers motivated by extreme leftist ideology. They have staged a massive attack against the police by throwing bottles, stones and fireworks.”

What’s next for Europe? The protests throughout Europe, biblical prophecies show, are leading to a strong German leader who will come to power by “flatteries” but rule as a supreme dictator over 10 lesser dictators. Thus the protesters’ demands will remain largely unfulfilled.

IN OTHER NEWS

Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens of Michigan endorsed Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers on Sunday after a falling out with her own party’s nominee, Abdul El-Sayed. Stevens lost to El-Sayed in the Democratic primary but said she would support him out of party loyalty. Since then, she has had a public feud with El-Sayed over serious allegations of anti-Semitism. Stevens’ endorsing El-Sayed’s Republican challenger shows just how radicalized the Democratic Party is becoming, especially regarding its relations to Israel and the Jewish people.

China upgrades African arms trade: China has moved beyond supplying African nations with basic weapons such as rifles and trucks to providing more sophisticated military equipment, including integrated air-defense systems, attack drones and electronic warfare technology, the South China Morning Post reported yesterday. “Chinese manufacturers offer a broad package,” Liselotte Odgaard, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, told the publication, “including training, maintenance, financing and increasingly sophisticated technologies.” Bible prophecy foretells a vast international trade network, with China playing a central role. China’s growing trade ties with Africa are one indication that this network is taking shape. Ultimately, it will be used to exclude America and some of its allies from world trade. Read our Trends article “Why the Trumpet Watches the Development of a Massive Anti-American Trade Bloc” to understand where this is heading.