A good week for Germany

“What had been derided in summer as a unilateral demand from Berlin has now become European consensus,” Spiegel Online wrote on Friday in reference to a decision made at the EU summit this week. European leaders agreed on a new mechanism for dealing with future financial crises in the eurozone which subjects members to “strict conditionality” when asking for financial assistance. Though the change was initially criticized by European leaders, Berlin was insistent. In the end, Chancellor Merkel got her way, Spiegel wrote.

Stratfor wrote earlier this week that this amendment to the Lisbon Treaty was “Berlin’s first phase of redesigning the European Union.”

It is now more obvious than ever who pulls the strings in Europe. “No big developed country has come out of the global recession looking stronger than Germany has,” the Economistwrote in October. “The crisis has created a new pecking order …. Germany, with its high-competitiveness, low-debt economy, is on top.”

The Wall Street Journal quoted German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, who said last month, “In this crisis Europe will find steps toward further unification.” Indeed it has.

The Trumpet has long warned that Germany would use the financial crisis to further unite Europe—under its own leadership. In 2008, editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote, “Watch Germany. Watch for Germany to be at the helm in a restructuring not only of EU member nations’ economies, but of the entire European Union itself!”

As columnist Brad Macdonald wrote last month, the reason why everything is going right for Germany is explained in Isaiah 10: “Ah, Assyria [Germany], the rod of my anger, the staff of my fury! Against a godless nation I send him, and against the people of my wrath I command him, to take spoil and seize plunder, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets” (verses 5-6, Revised Standard Version). As the Trumpet has often explained, God has prophesied of Germany’s dramatic rise in power. He intends to use the modern-day descendants of ancient Assyria as an instrument to punish the disobedient descendants of ancient Israel.