Decades of accuracy in global forecasting

Many readers of the Philadelphia Trumpet newsmagazine tell us they recognize the same message the Plain Truth carried for 52 years under the direction of its founder, Herbert W. Armstrong. Subscribers point to similarities between our style of writing and presentation and those of the Plain Truth in its heyday.

There is a reason for this—and it will be made plain in this publication.

Mr. Armstrong was one of the most prominent religious leaders of the 20th century. He was watched, read and followed by millions of people worldwide. At the time of his death in 1986, the newsmagazine he founded back in 1934 was produced in seven languages; global circulation peaked at 8.4 million. (By comparison, Time magazine’s circulation that year was 5.9 million.)

What happened to the Plain Truth? One example will explain.

A Total Editorial Change

For more than five decades under Mr. Armstrong’s leadership, year in and year out the Plain Truth had powerfully and consistently shouted a warning in print about the revival and unification of Germany. It proclaimed that Germany would be the dominant force behind a powerful union of European nation-states that would surpass the Russian bloc and even Britain and America in power and hegemony. These statements don’t seem so strange today—but imagine predicting that when Germany lay in rubble after World War ii. That is what the Plain Truth did. It was truly a unique publication in the world of news analysis and commentary.

Mr. Armstrong did not live to see the Berlin Wall breached on November 9, 1989, or Germany unite on October 3 a year later. By that time, however, an amazing thing had occurred: Those who took over publishing the Plain Truth after Mr. Armstrong’s death in 1986 had totally changed its editorial policy!

Here is what the publishers of the “new look” Plain Truth said about that earth-shattering event in 1989: “Following the spectacular news about the opening of the Berlin Wall, we unexpectedly received a call from a news station in Seattle. The news director was well aware of the World Tomorrow program and the fact that for more than 40 years the Church had been predicting the reunification of Europe in some form. He asked for on-air comments about whether the Church believed the opening of the wall was the commencement of end-time prophetic events.

“We responded that it was premature to make statements like that ….

“The news director was disappointed that we would not proclaim this to be the absolute beginning of end-time events, but it was interesting that he did say that what the Church has predicted from the Bible was remarkably close to what appears to be happening” (Pastor General’s Report, Nov. 21, 1989; emphasis added).

To longtime readers of the Plain Truth, such a tepid assessment of the dramatic events surrounding the fall of the Berlin Wall was dumbfounding. The magazine had lost its vision, its reason for being! It was fast beginning to deny its editorial heritage of forecasting events boldly and outspokenly. Readership dropped off quickly. Soon the publishers were facing a financial crisis as subscribers’ donations disappeared. Readers and supporters of Mr. Armstrong’s flagship magazine decamped in droves.

At one time, those readers had a vision—a vision of reality that gave them a confidence in the future. Millions of Plain Truth readers who saw the Berlin Wall tumbling down on their television screens combed the pages of the Plain Truth in vain, searching for a perspective on the next event that would hasten the rise of the European power Mr. Armstrong had prophesied.

Many of those former Plain Truth readers are now among the hundreds of thousands who receive the Trumpet. We have striven to provide readers the same brand of analysis that made the Plain Truth such a success.

What underpins that analysis? As long as Mr. Armstrong was at the helm, the Plain Truth often proved accurate, penetrating and well ahead of its time. That is because its articles were based on how world events were fulfilling the prophecies of the Bible.

Why Prophecy

Prophecy is a widely misunderstood but crucial aspect of inspired biblical instruction. It fills no less than a third of your Bible, from its opening pages to its final chapters. God sent prophets and commanded them to record details about events far in the future (e.g. Isaiah 30:8; Daniel 12:4, 8-9). Only the living, Almighty God can prophesy and then bring those prophecies to pass. In Scripture, He openly mocks any false god who would dare try (e.g. Isaiah 41:21-23). Yet He promises that every word He utters will transpire just as He has said (Isaiah 55:10-11).

Jesus Christ Himself was a prophet. Revelation 19:10 states that “the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.” Jesus commanded His followers to “watch and pray”—to be vigilant to certain “signs of the times” foreshadowing the end of this present age of man (Luke 21:34-36). And He personally prophesied about major world events that would occur some 2,000 years after He had walked the Earth.

As important as prophecy is, it is also difficult to comprehend. It is written in symbol, using ancient names and unfamiliar terminology. Thus, most people—even those who value the Bible—pay it little attention. This is a mistake. God intends prophecy to be understood—it is His tool revealing His part in steering world affairs!

As the Apostle Peter said, “We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts” (2 Peter 1:19). God wants us to heed prophecy: It points toward the dawn of a new day, when Jesus Christ will return to Earth to establish His Kingdom! However, we cannot simply figure it out on our own. In fact, Peter continues, “Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation” (verse 20). Understanding prophecy is impossible without God’s revelation! He must supply the interpretation and reveal the meaning.

How does God do this? “Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets” (Amos 3:7). God’s “secret” includes the meaning of all these prophecies He recorded millennia ago and preserved for our day, “the time of the end.” And it is to “his servants the prophets” that He would reveal it.

One prophecy Jesus taught His disciples was that He would raise up a servant in the end time, a latter-day type of Elijah the prophet, who would prepare the way for Christ’s return and who would “restore all things.” (Read about this in Matthew 17 and in your free copy of A Pivotal Sign of the End Time.)

God fulfilled this prophecy. He raised up a man to restore all the foundational teachings of the Bible, truths that had been lost over the centuries since Christ’s day, to the Church of God—Christian living, prophecy, everything! That servant, like Moses, Elijah, Isaiah and all the other prophets, was a specific man in a specific time doing a specific work.

That man was Herbert W. Armstrong. God revealed the truths of the Bible—all but lost to false Christianity over the millenniums—to this end-time type of Elijah. He revealed the true gospel, true Christian living, the true purpose of life and the true meaning of key prophecies. It was God’s time for these prophecies to be known, and it was this man, fulfilling a specific prophetic office, to whom He gave that understanding.

That revealed knowledge was the foundation of the Plain Truth’s message. And after Mr. Armstrong died and his successors abandoned the mission he fulfilled and the truth he taught, that unfinished work needed to be continued.

‘Prophesy Again’

In 1990, we started the Trumpet on a shoestring budget, a handful of subscribers and one objective: to pick up where Mr. Armstrong left off.

In Revelation 10:11, God gave one of His servants a commission to “prophesy again.” That command, if you understand the context, reveals the need for the work we are doing today. Mr. Armstrong had a strong work of prophesying. But that work was tragically dismantled—and God had to raise up another organization to resume that work. Our work is grounded in what God taught through Mr. Armstrong and what He is teaching today. We follow what Mr. Armstrong did, building on the understanding God gave him.

This publication is a look back at our roots. Our staff scoured through decades of old Plain Truth issues, looking for bold predictions. We then matched those prophetic statements with what actually happened, or is now happening, on the world scene.

The result was amazing. The sheer number of prophetic statements made by Mr. Armstrong and his editorial team, and their accuracy, will astound you. And since we first undertook this “he was right” project back in 2000, a great many more events have unfolded according to the prophecies Mr. Armstrong proclaimed. This updated edition aims to show how much further advanced the world is toward the climax of the age.

God has opened our understanding of these events in advance for several important reasons. Think deeply on the profound implications of the message in these pages. Mr. Armstrong’s legacy is truly remarkable and important to remember. His lengthy track record of accurate predictive analysis should build our faith in the certainty of biblical prophecy and, more importantly, help us to see the great God behind it all. God is communicating with you right now, in these urgent final days of this age. Take warning—and take action.

He was right that Germany would rise again through a European Union

Throughout the 52-year lifespan of the Plain Truth under Mr. Armstrong, the Editorial staff pointed to events that were leading to the inevitable rise of a European federation. Before World War ii, Mr. Armstrong foretold it. During the heat of the Battle of Britain, he continued to forecast it. And when Germany lay defeated, crushed to smoldering dust by the onslaught of the Allies, he kept proclaiming the future resurrection of Germany—never wavering from his warning that it was destined to lead a European combine.

Mr. Armstrong delivered his forecast for Europe for decades, consistently and in detail. He continued sending out that warning message over the airwaves and in print until his death in January 1986.

As Germany lay in ruins in 1945, Mr. Armstrong took to the airwaves to warn that the defeated power would “come back” as part of “a European Union.”

European nations are becoming “distrustful of America and thinking more and more about uniting themselves into a united states of Europe,” he wrote in March 1950. “Germany is the economic and military heart of Europe,” he wrote in May 1953. “Without Germany such a federation of nations is impossible. Yet the other nations of Europe will not trust Germany or a German leader. Still, in spite of this, it is probable that none but a German can provide the dynamic, inspired leadership required to organize such a political military federation.”

The next year, his Plain Truth magazine reminded readers of the promise the Allies had made to “destroy German militarism and Nazism and to ensure Germany will never again be able to disturb the peace of the world.”

“And now, a short nine years later, behold the spectacle of Washington and London making every possible diplomatic effort, backed by American dollars, to do two things: Create a united states of Europe, and to rearm Germany. … Germany inevitably [will] emerge as the leader of a united Europe.”

That was written less than 10 years after World War ii, when Germany was divided and still crushed from defeat. Europe was almost rebuilt (thanks to the massive aid of the United States Marshall Plan) but was still disunited. Despite all appearances of the German nation at that time, Mr. Armstrong reiterated his prewar claims that a German revival would lead to a united Europe.

By the mid-1960s, signs of a reemerging Germany were more frequent, but Europe’s only noticeable moves toward unification remained solely in the realms of trade and commerce. Yet the Plain Truth said political unity would not be far behind. “[I]f 300 million Europeans were united and could speak with one voice, this would excel any might in the world today. … One thing you can count on. In fact it is so sure you can bank on it: The cry of a political union in Europe will get louder, and before long we will see the Common Market develop into a United States of Europe” (September 1967; emphasis added throughout).

Mr. Armstrong continued to warn that the rising economic power in Europe would soon develop a military focus. “Europeans want their own united military power!” he wrote in August 1978. “They know that a political union of Europe would produce a third major world power, as strong as either the U.S. or the ussr—possibly stronger!”

As time went on and this empire did not rise as fast as Mr. Armstrong initially expected, he held fast this forecast.

In a letter to Plain Truth readers on July 24, 1983, he said that since the magazine’s beginnings nearly 50 years before, it had “warned of a coming sudden appearance of a resurrected ‘Holy Roman Empire’ in Europe—a union of 10 nations in Europe under one government, with one united military force. For 50 years I have been crying out to the world the Bible prophecies of this coming ‘United States of Europe’—a new united superpower perhaps more powerful than either the Soviet Union or the United States!”

His final book, Mystery of the Ages, published in 1985, described “a sort of soon-coming ‘United States of Europe’—a union of 10 nations to rise up out of or following the Common Market of today (Revelation 17). Britain will not be in that empire soon to come.”

Across these decades of warning, Mr. Armstrong emphasized three important points:

1) Germany would lead this united economic—then military—power.

2) It would need a “spiritual binding force.”

3) It would follow a strong German leader.

Germany’s rise to power as the leader of a united Europe has already happened. Events are swiftly moving toward the fulfillment of the other two forecasts.

A New Method of Domination

In World Wars i and ii, Germany and its allies had attempted to achieve global dominion by first conquering their European neighbors. After forecasting Germany’s rise as part of a “European union” in 1945, Mr. Armstrong closely watched the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community in the 1950s.

In 1956, Mr. Armstrong described Germany’s new approach toward Europe: “[T]his time the [Germans] plan to sidestep the causes of past defeats. Instead of exhausting their own strength by holding European nations as captives at the expense of vital Gestapo manpower, they plan to head and dominate a united states of Europe—and add the manpower of those nations to their own military divisions” (June 1956).

In 1951, Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and West Germany came together to form the European Coal and Steel Community. In 1957 the Treaty of Rome transformed them into the European Economic Community, with a common market and a customs union.

“I want you to notice, it was an economic combine—not a political or military union,” Mr. Armstrong wrote in 1959. He later said, “It is the beginning of the uniting of the nations of Europe.”

These nations, he explained, would work to share a common currency. Citing prophecies about the wealth of this rising European empire in Revelation 18, he wrote: “So you see, one of the outstanding phases of this coming revived Roman Empire, the modern Babylon, is to be great economic prosperity, in world trade, by ships. These nations could never fulfill that prophecy until they united to bring about uniform currency reform.”

Over the next three decades, the European Economic Community gradually brought in new members and expanded its scope. The next major milestone was the 1992 Maastricht Treaty extending the Common Market into a political and monetary union, exactly as Mr. Armstrong had prophesied. In 1993, the European Economic Community—then comprised of 12 nations— was given a new title: the European Union.

The EU has a permanent presidency, its own currency, its own diplomatic corps, a border force, a parliament, a central bank, a flag and an anthem.

Germany was, and remains, the primary force behind the EU, which acts as a convenient spokesperson for German ambitions. The Plain Truth of October 1976 explained this subterfuge: “West Germany has tried so hard for so long to bring about common community positions on one front after another. In addition, by always espousing the common European cause, she is less suspect of nationalistic motivations. After all, Word War ii is not that far in the past.”

In recent years, that history has faded so far from men’s minds, the smokescreen is hardly necessary.

Germany is, by a wide margin, the EU’s largest economy. It is the busiest transit hub for maritime cargo and road freight for the union. Frankfurt is home to the European Central Bank. Germany has used this economic control to establish a clear dominance over the EU.

In 1995, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher warned, “You have not anchored Germany to Europe. You have anchored Europe to a newly dominant, unified Germany. In the end, my friends, you’ll find it will not work.”

The 2008 financial crisis made this obvious. Greece, Italy, Cyprus, Ireland and others all needed bailouts. Germany would provide them, but German taxpayers didn’t want to hand over their cash to bailout profligate foreigners, as they saw it. They must have control in the countries they bailed out. It was a well-laid trap, designed by the architects of the EU to force the Continent together (see “Our Financial 9/11 Was Prophesied!” page 29).

In late 2011, after Berlin and Brussels brought down the governments of Greece and Italy, Simon Heffer wrote in the Daily Mail that the world was witnessing “the economic colonization of Europe by stealth by the Germans.” He observed that, in the past, it would have “taken an invading military force to topple the leadership of a European nation. Today, it can be done through sheer economic pressure” (Nov. 8, 2011).

British politician Nigel Farage also recognized that Germany had used Europe’s economic crisis—itself engineered by German elites—to reshape Europe into a distinctly Germanic edifice. In a blistering speech before the European Parliament in November 2011, he said, “[W]e are now living in a German-dominated Europe—something that the European project was actually supposed to stop—something that those that went before us actually paid a heavy price in blood to prevent.”

In March 2013, after Germany’s bailout of Cyprus, Charles Moore, the official biographer of Margaret Thatcher and former editor of the Daily Telegraph, wrote: “After victory in 1945, Churchill broadcast that Germany ‘lies prostrate before us.’ Today, most of southern Europe lies prostrate before Germany.”

That same month, Heffer said, “The Fourth Reich is here without a shot being fired: and the rest of Europe, and the world, had better get used to it.”

Gotten used to it, Europe has. Besides occasional complaints of “too many Germans in top jobs” (Politico, Feb. 21, 2018), the people of Europe have grown quite accepting of German dominance.

From all this, it is clear that the power over Europe that Germany twice sought in the 20th century by armed aggression has, in this 21st century, become a reality. And besides the Kosovo War, it has happened almost bloodlessly!

The Germans did, indeed, “sidestep the causes of past defeats,” just as Mr. Armstrong predicted back in 1956! They have, indeed, come to “head and dominate a united states of Europe—and add the manpower of those nations to their own,” just as he prophesied! Germany is working toward the final resurrection by exactly the method Mr. Armstrong said it would. How accurate Mr. Armstrong’s forecast was of Germany being the “heart and core of the united Europe”!

This is living prophecy—unbreakable, unchangeable prophecy of inevitable events that are now coming to pass before your eyes. The EU is already a literal European empire—the final resurrection of the old Holy Roman Empire—with Germany as its “heart and core”!

A United Military Force

The united military power Herbert W. Armstrong warned of is also taking shape behind the scenes. For decades, Germany and Europe’s war-fighting power has lagged behind its economic power. It has relied on and largely submitted to the United States in this realm. This is changing, and there is no going back.

The old German High Command—which the World War ii Allies swore would remain forever dismantled—has been assembled once again, wearing new clothes and sporting a new name: the Command Staff of the Armed Forces. It is the brains behind the development of a powerful, nuclear-armed European defense force.

Germany has also quietly built the foundation of a united European military force. Under the Lisbon Treaty, or EU constitution, the EU is empowered to develop a united military force supported by a consolidated European armaments industry.

And here is the vital detail of that arrangement: Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court has maneuvered to ensure that German law overrides EU law. Berlin has the final word on whether the German Army participates in any EU military operation. The remarkable upshot of this is that, now, Germany must give the “go” on any deployment of any EU battle group. Thus, the deployment of EU battle groups is essentially at the direction of the German High Command under German parliamentary approval!

The EU also has its own border agency. EU representatives in Brussels can now legally deploy armed soldiers within EU territory even against that nation’s wishes. This represents a genuine erosion of one of the most fundamental aspects of national sovereignty: a state’s monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. Encyclopedia Britannica calls this “a defining characteristic of the modern state.”

Alongside these grand European gestures, Germany has been making rapid progress on another front. In 2013, then German Defense Minister Thomas de Maizière grew impatient with efforts to create an EU military through a long-imagined grand treaty of some sort. So he announced a different approach: Germany would build an EU military one nation at a time. It would work with its neighbors, integrating their forces into the German Army one by one. Once a handful or so of nations had signed up, the multinational force could form the core of a larger EU military.

The Dutch were the first to sign up, integrating two thirds of their Army’s command structures into the German Army. In 2023 they finished the job, subordinating all brigades of the Dutch Army into the Germany Army.

In 2017, Romania agreed to have its 81st Mechanized Brigade work closely with Germany’s Rapid Response Forces Division. This division is now in charge of a Dutch and Romanian brigade. The Czech Republic agreed to have its elite 4th Rapid Deployment Brigade work with Germany’s 10th Armored Division—one of only two mechanized brigades that the Czech Republic has.

Germany has also taken on important positions of leadership in nato:

• In 2018, nato accepted Germany’s offer to establish a nato command center to facilitate rapid troop movement.
• Germany is building a new naval headquarters in Rostock. The headquarters will command operations for the United Nations, nato, the German Navy and the European Union.
• Ramstein Air Base is the headquarters of nato’s air command. nato also established a space center at Allied Air Command in Ramstein in 2020. This is controlled by the U.S., but Germany is also working on its own independent Space Command.
• American nuclear bombs are deployed in six European bases, including Germany’s Buchel Air Base. They can be carried by German and Italian Tornado warplanes.
• In 2025, Germany set up its first permanent foreign base, which will host 5,000 soldiers, in Lithuania.

The gradual process of removing restrictions on the German Army is nearly complete.

Now Germany is also emerging as Europe’s military leader. Traditional Britain or France were the EU’s biggest military spenders, and therefore took the lead on military matters. Germany has more than doubled its military spending since 2015, and plans to double it again by 2029. This year, Germany is close to doubling France’s military spending, by 2029 they’re projected to spend 2.5 times as much. One EU diplomat called this turnaround “telluric”—or earthshaking. “It’s the most important thing happening right now at [the] EU level,” said another. Germany is not only Europe’s economic leader; it now leads on the military front too.

A Confidence-Inspiring Leader

Bible prophecy makes clear that the final resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire will be led by a confidence-inspiring individual. Passages such as Daniel 8:23 make this clear. In the Good News magazine of May 1953, Mr. Armstrong wrote about this man: “Without Germany, such a federation of nations is impossible. … [I]t is probable that none but a German can provide the dynamic, inspired leadership required to organize such a political military federation.”

In 1956, Mr. Armstrong wrote that the Europeans were “thinking more and more about the coming United States of Europe! [Europe is] going to unite against us! And now Europe is about ready for it! The stage is all set! All that’s lacking now is the strong leader—the coming führer! The Germans are coming back from the destruction of World War ii in breathtaking manner. Germany is the economic and military heart of Europe. Probably Germany will lead and dominate the coming United States of Europe.”

Just as Mr. Armstrong did, we at the Trumpet have long watched for a German strongman to enter the scene who will fulfill this pivotal prophetic role.

In 2009, a German with “dynamic, inspired” leadership qualities suddenly leaped into view. He appeared on the front line of German politics in February 2009 when he was appointed as the nation’s minister of economics. Then, just after Germany’s national election that September, Chancellor Angela Merkel instantaneously quintupled his political stature by making him defense minister in her new coalition cabinet. This man is Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg.

We have watched his political progress with keen interest because of how closely his biography matches the Bible’s prophetic description, which Herbert Armstrong powerfully explained. Particularly noteworthy are Guttenberg’s family and his political connections.

His early development in political life was guided by Edmund Stoiber, a Catholic conservative who himself was groomed by Franz Josef Strauss, the famous German strongman who had grand designs for a united Europe led by a dominant Germany.

Guttenberg is also connected through part of his family line to the house of Habsburg. Strauss and Otto von Habsburg shared a common dream of a united Catholic Europe. Both personally shared details of that vision with Mr. Armstrong during visits they made to the campus of Ambassador College in Pasadena, California. Otto von Habsburg dreamed of reviving the Holy Roman Empire. Mr. Armstrong knew that dream was destined to become reality.

Take the aristocratic Guttenberg’s impeccable Frankish-Bavarian Roman Catholic connections into mind and add them to the thread of political thought that has pervaded Bavarian politics for decades under Strauss and Stoiber: the dream of a united Catholic Europe under German leadership. Add to that something that neither Strauss nor Stoiber ever possessed: a striking family title that cements all these connections together. The sum of all this is a German man to watch.

What is that family title? Guttenberg’s official title—granted to his forebears during the 18th century—is Reichsfreiherr. The English translation is “Baron of the Holy Roman Empire.” That’s a fascinating title when you consider what is happening in Europe!

During his brief and controversial appointment as Germany’s defense minister, Guttenberg quickly enacted policies making it easier for the Bundeswehr to engage in combat in Afghanistan. He was the first German politician to officially use the formerly taboo word “war” when describing the conflict in that country. He was also instrumental in convincing the German public of the need for a more assertive and aggressive German military.

Guttenberg’s shooting political star seemed to crash in March 2011, when he resigned from all political offices in the wake of a plagiarism scandal. Though he is avoiding public office for now, Guttenberg maintains a public image. He promotes his personality and politics widely but subtly, through diligent effort, meaningful projects and quality works. He writes thoughtful, articulate articles on key issues—articles that expose the weaknesses of opponents and sell himself as an intelligent politician with real solutions. Guttenberg weighs in on such issues as Germany’s national elections, the Syrian crisis and the need for greater German leadership in the world. In every case, his thoughts are insightful and infused with strength of opinion and leadership rare in today’s world. Out of political office, he remains shielded from hard decisions and the worst criticisms and is able to promote what he sees as the solution.

During his political exile, Guttenberg has also maintained intimate relations with political friends and allies in Germany and beyond. The baron has often hinted at a return to politics, and we continue to watch to see whether this man fulfills Mr. Armstrong’s Bible-based prophecy of a rising powerful political leader destined to rule over a resurrected Holy Roman Empire.

Why the Forecast

How could Mr. Armstrong have made such startlingly accurate forecasts? They are all based on revealed truth from your Bible.

Since antiquity, the topography of the city of Rome has been famous for its seven hills. In an allegory associating these hills with seven successive revivals of the Roman Empire, the biblical book of Revelation speaks of “seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth. And there are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space” (Revelation 17:9-10).

Up to the early 1930s, when the Plain Truth was born, many were confused about the true meaning of this prophecy. But Mr. Armstrong knew that God has delivered the message of Revelation not to hide, but rather “to shew … things which must shortly come to pass” (Revelation 1:1). God showed Mr. Armstrong that the five fallen “kings” in Revelation 17:10 symbolized the five revivals of the Roman Empire that had occurred up to that time under the guidance of the Roman Catholic Church. God also revealed to him that the last resurrection of this empire would be on the scene during Jesus Christ’s return and would once again rise in Europe and consist of 10 European nations.

In the November-December 1940 Plain Truth, Mr. Armstrong identified the five fallen kings as:

• Justinian, who conquered Rome in a.d. 554
• Charlemagne, crowned in a.d. 800
• Otto the Great in a.d. 962
• Charles v (commencing the Habsburg dynasty) in 1530
• Napoleon Bonaparte, who crowned himself emperor in 1804

He then wrote, “The one that is, is the present Italian dynasty.”

He was referencing the words in Revelation 17:10 “and one is.” This implies that the sixth revival of the Roman Empire would exist at the very time this mysterious vision in Revelation would first be understood.

God began to reveal Revelation 17 to Mr. Armstrong in the late 1920s and early ’30s, which caused him to closely watch Benito Mussolini. In one of his final articles, which appeared in the Plain Truth magazine after his death, Mr. Armstrong reflected: “In 1929, Mussolini arranged a concordat with the papacy. Then about 1935, Mussolini, having united Ethiopia, Eritrea and Italian Somaliland to Italy, proclaimed it to be the reestablishment of the Roman Empire. I announced the news of this … restoration myself on radio at the time” (March 1986).

Mussolini ended up allying with Hitler, who went on to lead the empire. Starting in 1940, Mr. Armstrong thought Hitler might lead this final resurrection. He wrote: “At present, Hitler looms up as the most likely candidate. But we repeat, the time is not yet! Hitler, too, may sink to oblivion and an altogether different man step suddenly on the stage to become the dread ‘beast’” (Plain Truth, November-December 1940).

Only after the war did Mr. Armstrong realize that both Hitler and Mussolini were part of the sixth head. In 1948, he wrote: “[T]he sixth was Mussolini’s Roman Empire, and it was finally really taken over by Hitler during the war.” Later, he referred to the “one [that] is” as the Hitler-Mussolini axis (Plain Truth, October 1962). (This prophecy is thoroughly explained in our free booklet Daniel—Unsealed at Last!)

In 1945, Allied forces defeated this sixth revival of the Holy Roman Empire. That left just one final resurrection to come: Revelation 17:10 calls it “the other is not yet come.” On May 9, 1945, just after Germany surrendered in World War ii, Mr. Armstrong told listeners of The World Tomorrow: “The third round is termed, in prophecy, an invasion by ‘Babylon’—a resurrected Roman Empire—a European Union. I have been proclaiming that since 1927. For a while I thought Hitler might organize it—especially when he tied up with the Roman Mussolini. It wasn’t done in this Second World War. It will be done and provoke the third!”

Keep in mind that Mr. Armstrong began to warn about the rise of this brutal empire in 1927. Then he started writing about it in the Plain Truth five years before hostilities broke out between the Axis powers and the Western Allies in 1939! All along he knew that the final resurrection would be a united empire of 10 kings—something Mussolini and Hitler never achieved.

Live the Drama!

In a sermon delivered on November 27, 1982, Herbert Armstrong referred to that first issue of the Plain Truth published in 1934. “I was rather astonished when I once again read what I had written there, very close to 50 years ago,” he said. “The heading is ‘Is a World Dictator About to Appear?’”

He then quoted from the article: “Everybody senses that something is wrong with the world, that some mighty event is about to occur. What is it? Bible prophecy tells! Here is a solemn warning and it is the plain truth!

“We live today in the most strenuous, anxious, momentous hours of the Earth’s history. Today we stand on the very threshold of colossal events that will stagger the mind of mortal man. Just now it is like the lull before a great and devastating storm. Everyone senses it! …

“It is commonly known today that Mussolini’s whole aim is to restore the ancient Roman Empire (that is, the resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire).”

In that sermon, Mr. Armstrong then commented, “He had conquered Ethiopia. He added that to Italian Somaliland (which he already had) and Eritrea and Italy; and had made a concordat with the Vatican. So once again there’s the union of church and state, although it wasn’t a real union; but he proclaimed he had renewed the Roman Empire. … It was ‘the beast that was, and is not, and yet is’ at that time,” quoting Revelation 17:8.

That 1934 article continued, “[T]he nations prepare even more feverishly for war!

“Three or four short years ago many laughed and scoffed when we said that there would be another world war in five to seven years. They do not laugh and scoff today. Everyone knows the next world war is coming, and soon.”

That war did come five years later—when World War ii began in 1939. Mr. Armstrong commented in that 1982 sermon: “So once again the Plain Truth, even in its first issue, was way ahead of its time. It was predicting what was going to happen. People scoffed and said, ‘That’s a crackpot. He doesn’t know what he is talking about.’ But World War ii did happen. It did come.”

Herbert Armstrong spoke those words back in 1982. Since his death on January 16, 1986, many who followed and supported him to that point have turned away, calling him, as some did over 70 years ago before World War ii, “a crackpot.”

But the prophecies Mr. Armstrong published and broadcast to multiple millions over his 57-year ministry are smacking the gainsayers square in the face! Just as he prophesied World War ii ahead of its time, so he prophesied World War iii way ahead of its time, giving cogent detail of the conditions that would prevail in Europe just before that war explodes on the world scene.

He prophesied that Europe would unite under a resurgent German nation. It has.

He prophesied that a confidence-inspiring leader would arise to lead the seventh resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire on its final crusade. Europe is crying out for such a leader, and we may well have pinpointed his identity.

Mr. Armstrong prophesied that a spiritual binding force would draw Eastern Europe out of Soviet communism back into its spiritual fold and weld a united European economic, monetary, political and military force together as the final resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire. That prophecy was largely fulfilled as we entered the second decade of the 21st century with the EU constitutionally united as an imperialist power.

Even as you read this, the final elements of those great prophecies contained in the books of Daniel and Revelation are rapidly coming together. Not long ago, Europe’s unification was given little publicity by global press. Now, daily headlines speak of a dominant Germany and its influence over the global financial system. Soon the world will feel that power extended onto the global scene—politically and militarily!

We at the Trumpet have the privileged job of publishing the great prophecies revealed through Herbert Armstrong and demonstrating their fulfillment through daily world events.

The delay in fulfillment of end-time biblical prophecies was arrested at the death of Herbert Armstrong. His task was to declare them in advance. Ours is to warn of the present-day and immediate future reality of their actual, dramatic fulfillment! As our editor in chief notes in his booklet Prophesy Again, “This is living drama. God has given us many revelations about this commission to prophesy again.”

Now is the time to be tuned in to these many revelations and to really live this great prophetic drama!

He was right that the Nazis went underground

“We don’t understand German thoroughness. From the very start of World War ii, they have considered the possibility of losing this second round, as they did the first—and they have carefully, methodically planned, in such eventuality, the third round—World War iii! Hitler has lost. This round of war, in Europe, is over. And the Nazis have now gone underground. In France and Norway they learned how effectively an organized underground can hamper occupation and control of a country. Paris was liberated by the French underground—and Allied armies. Now a Nazi underground is methodically planned. They plan to come back and to win on the third try.”

This is what Herbert W. Armstrong declared on May 9, 1945, during the founding conference of the United Nations, just hours after World War ii ended. Europe was in ruins. Nazis going into hiding, with secret plans to evade detection, could not possibly be real, could it?

All these years later, the truth is clear. A series of reports have detailed secret Nazi plans to infiltrate German business, politics and military, and return to power. This is no conspiracy theory: It has been the subject of government investigations and reported by mainstream media. Yet no one has asked what these discoveries mean for modern Germany and its future.

The Nazi war machine went underground in two main ways. First, Nazi leaders—the brain trust of Nazism—plotted to survive. Second, Nazi leaders found ways to infiltrate the new government and administration. After the war, almost every German insisted that he had not supported the Nazis. Hundreds of thousands of Nazi members without high profiles and famous names claimed to renounce their ideology and stayed in their jobs, blending into the background. Hiding in plain sight, these ex-Nazis ran the postwar government—and helped their higher-profile colleagues escape.

Planning to Go Underground

Evidence of senior Nazis planning to go underground is clear.

On August 10, 1944, government and SS representatives met with leading industrialists. Representatives from Volkswagen, steel manufacturer Krupp and armaments company Rheinmetall were there, with several others. A United States intelligence document describing the meeting was declassified in 1996. It reported that the group was told, “… German industry must realize that the war cannot be won and that it must take steps in preparation for a postwar commercial campaign. Each industrialist must make contacts and alliances with foreign firms, but this must be done individually and without attracting any suspicion. Moreover, the ground would have to be laid on the financial level for borrowing considerable sums from foreign countries after the war.”

After this meeting, a smaller group assembled. Here, a handful of industrialists were told that the Nazi Party “would be forced to go underground,” the U.S. intel document reveals.

At the same time, others were preparing for the end.

From 1942 to 1945, Maj. Gen. Reinhard Gehlen commanded the Wehrmacht’s Foreign Armies East military intelligence unit, a highly capable intelligence network in Eastern Europe and Russia. With his detailed knowledge of Russia’s advance, he clearly saw that the war would be lost. So he too prepared. He had his intelligence files printed on microfilm and stored in watertight containers, and he hid them in the Alps.

Within the Catholic Church, planning to shelter key Nazis also began before the war ended. In 1942, Monsignor Luigi Maglione contacted the ambassador of Argentina, asking about the nation’s willingness “to apply its immigration law generously, in order to encourage at the opportune moment European Catholic immigrants to seek the necessary land and capital in your country.” Clearly, he anticipated Germany’s defeat and an exodus of Nazis seeking refuge.

As the war wound down, many were preparing to hole up. “One day we shall come back. Until then, à bientôt.” Those were the words of a military spokesman on Nazi radio, September 1, 1944, offering only a “goodbye for now.”

Nazi Bureaucrats

While the high-profile Nazis fled, most bureaucrats were allowed to remain. For years, functionaries in Germany’s postwar government claimed their innocence. They were no Nazis, they insisted. Some may have served the Nazis but did not support them and merely did the minimum required.

The truth is very different, as has been revealed by a series of shocking studies by the German government in recent years.

• The German Foreign Ministry, “[f]rom day one, … functioned as an institution of the Nazi regime and backed its politics of violence at all times. … In this sense, one can say that the Foreign Ministry was a criminal organization,” said Prof. Eckart Conze, who chaired an 880-page study into the department.
• Three quarters of justice officials in postwar West Germany were former Nazis. Thirty-four of the ministry’s leading judges and lawyers were Stormtroopers for Hitler, according to a 2016 Justice Department investigation. The Local wrote, “The fascist old-boys network closed ranks, enabling its members to shield each other from justice, the study found—helping explain why so few Nazi war criminals ever went to prison” (Oct. 10, 2016).
• “The Reich’s Finance Ministry literally plundered the assets of the Jews,” said former Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück. “It was systematic. … The Jews were stripped of savings, assets, anything with a financial or material value.”
• Ex-Nazis assembled an underground army in 1949, which could have fielded 40,000 soldiers with 2,000 officers, according to a 2014 government report. It wound down once the official army began in 1955.
• Other documents show that SS war hero Otto Skorzeny also set up a secret army—but little is known about its size.
• Once the official German Army was established, it quickly filled with personnel from the Nazi-era military. In 1976, for example, of the 217 Bundeswehr generals, only three had not served in Hitler’s military.
• Seventy percent of Nazi government officials were allowed to stay in the government after the war, according to a 2011 German government report.
• Twenty-five cabinet members, one president and one chancellor of postwar Germany were former card-carrying Nazi Party members. A postwar minister of justice and a finance minister were members of Hitler’s Stormtroopers.

The Secret Service

This profusion of Nazis in German politics allowed them to continue in other key positions. One of the most influential was Maj. Gen. Reinhard Gehlen, whom we left back in 1944 hiding intel in the Swiss Alps. Gehlen surrendered to the Americans and offered them a deal: I control the leading German intelligence unit focused on the Soviets, and all my intelligence is stashed away. Set me free, and I can hand you a ready-made anti-Soviet espionage unit.

Incredibly, America accepted. Gehlen was freed. He was paid to rebuild his organization, using many of his old staff. He also recruited other ex-Nazis. He wasn’t picky: ex-Gestapo, ex-SS, war criminals, Nazis who had participated directly in the Holocaust—all were welcome. According to one estimate, 10 percent of his staff had worked for SS head Heinrich Himmler. Yet the Americans let Gehlen’s network flourish—to counter the Soviets.

In 1956, Gehlen’s spy agency was formally transferred to West German control and became the Federal Intelligence Service (bnd). Gehlen remained the spymaster.

Unsurprisingly for an organization full of Nazis, the bnd helped Nazis on the run. In 2011, documents leaked to Bild found that the organization had helped cover for Adolf Eichmann, one of the chief organizers of the Holocaust. It also recruited Klaus Barbie, the “Butcher of Lyon,” as an agent in 1965, despite his war crimes being so extensive and well documented that he had been sentenced to death. The bnd employed the daughter of Heinrich Himmler, the “Princess of Nazism,” who remained an ardent Nazi and supporter of ex-SS members until her death.

But the full extent of the bnd’s Nazi history is lost forever. The bnd destroyed the files on approximately 250 of its early officials.

When did this cover-up take place? The late 1940s? The ’50s perhaps?

It happened in 2007.

Vanishing Commanders

It is beyond dispute that Nazis went underground after the war ended. They conspired to keep each other hidden and avoid punishment for their crimes. Secret reports published decades later confirm exactly what Herbert Armstrong forecast in 1945. How could he have known?

He based his forecast on Bible prophecy. He long taught that Germany was the modern descendant of biblical Assyria. The Bible has very specific prophecies about Assyria.

Nahum 3:17 states: “Your commanders are like swarming locusts, And your generals like great grasshoppers, Which camp in the hedges on a cold day; When the sun rises they flee away, And the place where they are is not known” (New King James Version). Jamieson, Fausset and Brown Commentary explains, “Cold deprives the locust of the power of flight; so they alight in cold weather and at night, but when warmed by the sun soon ‘flee away.’ So shall the Assyrian multitudes suddenly disappear, not leaving a trace behind ….” On a cold morning, a hedgerow may be covered in grasshoppers. But just a few hours later, they will have all vanished.

But this scripture is not simply describing “the Assyrian multitudes.” It is more specific: It describes the “commanders” and “generals.” During the war, these “commanders” dominated the headlines. Afterward, they vanished.

Lower-level personnel insisted they had nothing to do with the Nazis. The Nazis had almost conquered the globe—yet somehow, once Germany was conquered, it became difficult to find any Nazis.

Another key prophecy forecasts this dramatic vanishing act. Revelation 17:8 describes a beast, symbolic of a major world power, that “was, and is not, and yet is.” This beast exists, then vanishes—only to then “ascend out of the bottomless pit.” You could say it comes out of nowhere—from “underground.”

Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry explains this prophecy in his booklet Prophesy Again: “During World War ii, we saw the Hitler-Mussolini axis, but then it disappeared from the scene. It ‘was not’! And yet, God says, ‘it is’! The Axis powers lost the war, but as Mr. Armstrong preached time and again, they just went underground—into ‘the bottomless pit’ (verse 8). They’re still there—they’re just underground.”

This passage adds a vital truth: What goes underground will come back up again.

There are signs that beneath the surface, the Nazi spirit still lives in Germany.

The signs of this beast are there, but few recognize them. Revelation 17 says that when this power fully ascends, “the people who belong to this world … will be amazed at the reappearance of this beast” (verse 8; New Living Translation).

But you need not be “amazed.” In fact, knowing what Herbert W. Armstrong taught from the prophecies of the Bible, and linking it with history and current events, you can know exactly what is going to happen. Because, once again, Mr. Armstrong was right!

He was right that the German military machine would return

The industries that equipped Germany for world war are back in business.

German industrialists played a vital role in bringing Hitler to power. Mr. Armstrong explained that the primary tool Germany was using to revive the nation’s empire was its cutting edge, world-class industry.

In 1953, Mr. Armstrong even identified one company that he believed would one day be resurrected to work in cahoots with the German empire. At the end of World War ii, the factories and facilities of German industrial giant Friedrich Krupp AG lay in ruins. After the war, its owner, a staunch Nazi supporter named Alfried Krupp, was convicted at Nuremberg. He was imprisoned for war crimes.

“Alfried Krupp, who once provided Germany with most of her munitions that plunged the world into the holocaust of the last war, can no longer manufacture crude steel or own coal mines in Germany,” wrote Mr. Armstrong. “But Alfried Krupp is not giving up on his plans! No indeed. Latest reports reveal that Krupp has made contracts with foreign governments to build up his vast empire abroad” (Plain Truth, November 1953).

History has proved these forecasts startlingly accurate. Today, Germany’s military industry, including that of the Krupp company, is thriving.

Plans to Rebuild the Nazi Empire

The 1944 document that showed the Nazis planned to go underground also revealed that industrialists were to play a major role in bringing it back up.

On August 10, 1944, German corporate leaders representing several of the nation’s most powerful companies at the time met with German military and political personnel in Strasbourg, France. The purpose of this meeting, and a follow-up meeting the same year, was to launch the industrialists into “a postwar commercial campaign.”

This campaign was to “finance the Nazi Party, which would be forced to go underground” and to ensure that “a strong German empire [could] be created after the defeat.” These industrialists were specifically told to “make contacts and alliances with foreign firms” and to strengthen Germany “through their exports.”

According to that 1944 document, representatives from Friedrich Krupp AG, Volkswagenwerk, Messerschmitt, Rheinmetall, Rochling and Büssing were among those who met with top Nazi leaders to prepare to rebound after the eventual German defeat.

German industrialists must, the document said, “through their exports increase the strength of Germany.” These companies were instructed to place existing financial reserves at the disposal of the Nazi Party “so that a strong German empire can be created after the defeat.”

Now, decades later, these companies are returning to military production.

A man named “Dr. Kaspar” represented Friedrich Krupp AG at the meeting.

Despite his undeniable connection to Nazi Germany, Alfried Krupp was released from prison in 1951. He reassumed control of Friedrich Krupp AG in 1953. Krupp died in 1967 with his personal copy of Mein Kampf on his nightstand, and his company continued to flourish on the path he had set for it.

In 1999, the corporation merged its steel operation with Thyssen AG. Today, Essen remains the headquarters for ThyssenKrupp Stahl AG. In 2009, it sold stakes and entire production sites of its civil shipbuilding operations in Germany. It also struck an agreement to jointly produce naval surface ships with the Abu Dhabi mar Group. Essentially, the company took strides in the direction of military production, moving back toward its historic focus: manufacturing military equipment. ThyssenKrupp is ranked 66 on Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s (sipri) list of the world’s largest weapons-producing companies.

Though the Krupp name is above reproach in Germany today, the indisputable facts of history show that Mr. Armstrong’s forecasts about this powerful company were well founded and uncannily accurate.

Rheinmetall

Rheinmetall has been at the forefront of German military manufacturing for over 100 years. Despite the Allies’ initial ban on arms production, Rheinmetall was again mass-producing machine guns by 1956. By 1972, Rheinmetall was selling the Leopard 2 battle tank. After a series of corporate acquisitions, Rheinmetall became Europe’s leading military supplier of systems and equipment for ground forces, providing everything from artillery and munitions to communications, surveillance technology and guided missile systems. Rheinmetall subsidiaries, which also include significant automotive component manufacturers, are located throughout Europe, the Americas and China.

Rheinmetall is secretive about the location of its factories. As a German company, Rheinmetall is subject to German government restrictions on what it can export. In 2008, it began a “firmly calculated” plan to evade these restrictions, according to Investigate Europe (Dec. 19, 2024).

In 2008, Rheinmetall bought a majority stake in the South African defense company Denel Munitions. Why? “Rheinmetall was investing in a financially bankrupt company, but technically, Denel Munitions had tremendous potential,” a former manager of Rheinmetall Denel Munition told Investigate Europe. Rheinmetall was buying the ability to sell weapons overseas via a South African subsidiary exempt from its export restrictions. When it sold one of Denel’s factories in 2017, a Rheinmetall manager said it was one of 39 “similar facilities” worldwide.

Helping other countries build their own ammunition plants is good business for Rheinmetall. Not only does it get the initial buyout, it “lock[s] the customers into their product range,” according to the Rheinmetall Denel Munition former manager. Recipients of the factories allegedly have to sign an exclusive deal to buy only Rheinmetall products.

In January 2010, Rheinmetall partnered with another top German firm, man Group, to produce a new national champion and leading supplier for wheeled military vehicles in Europe. man (Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Nürnberg) has its own impressive 250-year history and now builds trucks, buses, diesel engines and turbo-machinery.

It’s not the first time these two have cooperated. In World War ii, the two produced the hugely successful Panther tank.

It appears some are finally waking up to the transformation occurring within Germany’s military industry. But Herbert Armstrong warned about this “long-held German desire” to rebuild the nation’s military industry for decades!

The Other German Titans

Volkswagen, another German corporation documented for its collusion with the Nazis, has become the world’s third-largest automotive company by revenue. Volkswagen owns the Bentley brand, international vehicle manufacturer Audi, Seat and Skoda, which manufacture and sell cars in Spain and in Southern and Eastern Europe, and Lamborghini, which makes sports cars in Italy.

Messerschmitt, Germany’s famous World War ii manufacturer that built much of the fighting aircraft in the Luftwaffe, is also prospering today, though under a different name. Like Krupp, much of Messerschmitt’s infrastructure was destroyed in the war; the company was even forbidden from producing aircraft. Yet it too has risen from the rubble of World War ii to become part of a world-leading corporation. Messerschmitt was eventually allowed to build aircraft again under the name Airbus. In 1989, after several postwar mergers, it became part of Daimler-Benz Aerospace (another German industrial giant). Daimler-Benz Aerospace then later helped found the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company (eads), becoming a 30 percent owner. In January 2014, eads renamed itself as Airbus Group, taking the name of its commercial aircraft-building subsidiary, which became its largest revenue generator.

Airbus Group today is one of the world’s leading players in aerospace and defense technology. The multinational group includes the world’s largest helicopter supplier and is also a major shareholder in mbda, the international leader in missile systems. Airbus Group produces the Eurofighter and other military aircraft. Galileo, the European satellite navigation system being constructed to rival the U.S.’s gps, is being built in large part by Airbus Group.

Ukraine War

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine turbocharged this German return to arms.

All this is fueled by record levels of German defense spending. After the invasion, Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced a €100 billion fund to boost defense spending. In 2025 Germany’s incoming government announced an extra €400 billion.

Before the war, Rheinmetall was selling 70,000 artillery shells per year. Its target for 2025 is 1.1 million. Rheinmetall’s share price exploded from a little under €100 a share before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to over €1,600.

Yet the war has proved a major obstacle for another sector of the German economy.

For decades, Germany has been a manufacturing powerhouse—its auto industry in particular is a national success story. Yet it now faces serious obstacles. Germany’s status as a manufacturing hub depends on access to cheap raw materials from Russia. The Ukraine war has put a stop to that. Meanwhile tariffs and competition from China have eaten into demand for U.S. vehicles. Volkswagen saw its earnings plummet by 64 percent in the third quarter of 2024, compared to the previous year. The president of the German Association of the Automotive Industry warned the nation could see 140,000 job losses in his industry over the next decade.

Yet the same Ukraine war has caused weapons manufacturing to boom. The solution is obvious: Switch from making cars to making tanks.

Rheinmetall and man are working with Volkswagen to switch some of its auto plants to making military vehicles. Rheinmetall announced it would convert two plants that currently make civilian auto parts into plants for making ammunition. Hensoldt, which makes radar systems used on Ukrainian battlefields, announced plans on March 5, 2025, to take on 200 workers from auto parts suppliers Bosch and Continental.

The month before, the Franco-German arms manufacturer knds acquired the Alstom train factory in Görlitz, Germany—which it will repurpose. Much more is in the works. The Italian news outlet Corriere della Sera published leaked details of a plan to shift Italy’s auto industry to making arms. Subcontractors in Italy currently make parts for the German car industry; they could shift to supply the German arms industry.

Through corporate mergers and acquisitions, German corporations are reaching out beyond their nation’s borders to gain control of vital strategic industry. Even Germany’s most notorious World War ii companies, which were systematically disassembled and banned from future arms production by the Allies, have emerged as European and global powerhouses.

Few people see it, but Germany’s industrial war machines have been revamped and rebuilt, and they are back in fighting order—exactly as Herbert Armstrong predicted would happen!

He was right that the Iron Curtain would fall

One clear, specific prophecy Herbert W. Armstrong gave that has been fulfilled was that Eastern Europe would free itself from the Communist yoke and join with Western Europe.

This forecast comes from one of the most foundational prophecies about the course of world history.

Daniel 2 describes an enormous statue of a man. It was a symbol, whose meaning the Bible makes plain. The image had four parts, each one representing a powerful empire (verses 36-40). These four empires would reign, one after the other, until God set up His own Empire—His Kingdom ruling over all the Earth (verse 44).

The first empire, typed by the image’s head of gold, the Bible tells us, was ancient Babylon. The next, symbolized by the statue’s chest and arms of silver, we can easily see from history, was Medo-Persia. This was followed by the Greco-Macedonian Empire of Alexander the Great, symbolized by the statue’s brass stomach and thighs. The last part of the statue was the legs of iron, symbolizing the Roman Empire.

Unlike the three empires before it, this one would be split into two legs. Anciently Rome had two capitals, Rome and Constantinople.

Like the beasts described in Daniel 7 and Revelation 17, this Roman Empire would be repeatedly revived—up until the return of Jesus Christ. In its final stage, this empire would be made “part of iron, and part of clay” (Daniel 2:42), meaning it would be a fragile mixture of nations that do not naturally fit together (verse 43)—a perfect metaphor for the EU.

This empire’s division into two legs continues all the way to the end. The image has 10 toes, a symbol that this final empire would be made up of 10 kings—something other Bible passages confirm (Daniel 7:24; Revelation 17:12). But these kings would be split—five would come from Western Europe, five from the East. Hence Mr. Armstrong’s forecast that certain East European nations would break away from the Soviet bloc and ally with the EU.

A Track Record of Success

In the October 1951 Plain Truth, Mr. Armstrong wrote that “it is prophesied, some of these Balkan nations are yet to throw off the Soviet yoke and realign themselves with the pope! As long as the churches still function and the people still attend them, the only change being their submission to Moscow and separation from Rome, there is possibility of an internal political coup, brought about by underground Catholic influence, which can restore their tie to Rome. Yes, that’s highly significant, as we shall see! …

“Do not underrate or sell short Catholic power, strategy, and resourcefulness!”

The April 1952 Good News magazine continued this warning: “Russia may give East Germany back to the Germans and will be forced to relinquish her control over Hungary, Czechoslovakia and parts of Austria to complete the 10-nation union.”

In 1955, Mr. Armstrong wrote: “[S]ome of the Balkan nations are going to tear away from behind the Iron Curtain. Russia has lost already, to all appearances, Tito’s Yugoslavia. Russia probably will lose still more of her Eastern European satellites.”

Not many believed that statement then, nor this Plain Truth report from the following year: “Communist oppression in Eastern Europe is being overthrown. … We have shown years in advance what would happen to Russia’s ill-fated empire in Eastern Europe. These prophecies have been in your Bible for the past 1,900 years. But the world, and the churches of this world, have refused to believe them” (December 1956).

In January 1957, Mr. Armstrong wrote, “When the right psychological moment arrives, a number of these [East European] nations will break away from Moscow ….”

That “right psychological moment” didn’t arrive quite as early as Mr. Armstrong thought it might. But in 1989, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the moment marched in with force!

Mr. Armstrong also continued to forecast that the Vatican would play a role in this dramatic split.

The Plain Truth declared that the papacy had its mind set on leading the diplomacy that would create the rapport between East and West Europe: “One of the biggest roles desired by the Vatican is that of mediator between East and West. … The Vatican, you can be sure, will continue to do its part in courting the Eastern European countries. Its Ostpolitik has been to bring them back into the ‘fold’ for a long time. And that is certainly the path it must continue to travel” (February 1972).

When Pope John Paul ii appeared on the scene, Mr. Armstrong made a far-sighted prediction: “The character, personality and actions of the Polish pope, John Paul ii, indicate more than possibly that he may be the pope to offer his good services to unite the nations of Europe once again. European nations want, seriously, to be united. Of themselves they are unable. John Paul ii could make it possible” (Good News, January 1980).

Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher’s stalwart opposition to the evils of communism helped defeat the Soviet Union. But so did Pope John Paul ii’s campaign to free his native Poland.

Here is how the Associated Press described that dramatic history: “Martial law had crushed the church-backed Solidarity labor movement, and Poland’s Communist rulers expected a chastened Pope John Paul ii ready for compromise when he visited his homeland in 1983.

“Instead, his voice rising, the pontiff lectured a surprised party chief, Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, as the nation watched on television. History would be his judge, the pope warned, demanding that union rights be restored for the Soviet bloc’s first free trade union [Solidarity]” (Jan. 9, 1998). In the face of this demand, Jaruzelski capitulated. The Vatican-funded Catholic Solidarity movement triumphed, and Poland broke the Communist yoke and sought attachment to the European Union. The Vatican had driven a wedge under the Iron Curtain that was destined to crack it asunder and cause its total collapse!

Mr. Armstrong was specific about which nations would be part of this rising European empire: “It now looks entirely feasible that Yugoslavia may be included in this revived Roman Empire. Also the pope’s native Poland and Romania, and possibly Hungary. Add Austria, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal and France. There will be a union of 10 nations in the general area of the medieval Roman Empire in the new united Europe. Probably Holland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden will not be included [in the final 10]. But Ireland may. Britain will not! … I have been forecasting this revived Roman Empire publicly since February 1934! Now it may go together suddenly, rapidly!” (co-worker letter, June 10, 1980).

Throughout the Cold War, Mr. Armstrong’s insights were correct! No wonder a radio station contacted the Worldwide Church of God in 1989, wanting to hear more about the man that had clearly been proved right.

By 2007, every single nation that Mr. Armstrong had predicted would join the European unification project—Austria, Poland, Hungary and Romania—was an EU member. By 2014, every nation that had emerged from Yugoslavia was either an EU member or under Europe’s control. These are the exact nations that Mr. Armstrong said would join this European power!

Yet another of the powerful prophecies broadcast and published throughout the previous five decades by Herbert Armstrong had been fulfilled! Though he did not live to see it happen, Europe’s East and West have been reunited—and in exactly the way he said they would be.

He was right about the revival of the Catholic Church

Many historians and analysts underestimate the role of the Roman Catholic Church in European history. Many also underestimate the extent of the Vatican’s involvement in the affairs of Europe and European countries today.

Herbert Armstrong never made this mistake.

We have seen how Mr. Armstrong for decades prophesied of the emergence in this end time of the seventh and final resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire. And though this globe-controlling “United States of Europe,” he warned, would be ruled by Germany, biblical prophecy points to the necessity of some additional power to glue the fractious nations of Europe together. After all, Daniel’s prophecy likened the final resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire to a brittle mix of iron and clay (Daniel 2:41-43). Matching Daniel 7 with Revelation 13 and 17, Mr. Armstrong understood that glue would be religion. Under God’s guidance, he linked these prophecies with history and came to see clearly that the deadly spiritual force guiding this European superstate would be the Vatican.

This Vatican is the “holy” in the term Holy Roman Empire.

“Europeans want their own united military power!” Mr. Armstrong wrote in 1978. “They know that a political union of Europe would produce a third major world power, as strong as either the United States or the ussr—possibly stronger! … But they well know there is but one possibility of union in Europe—and that is through the Vatican” (Good News, Aug. 28, 1978; emphasis added throughout).

To members and co-workers he wrote on January 23, 1980: “What Russia is doing will be the spark to bring the heads of nations in Europe together with the Vatican to form a ‘United Nations of Europe.’ The politicians cannot do this by themselves. Only with the collaboration of the pope can they do it.”

“I have been proclaiming and writing ever since 1935 that the final one of the seven eras of the Holy Roman Empire is coming in our generation—a ‘United States of Europe,’ combining 10 nations or groups of nations in Europe—with a union of church and state!” he wrote in the January 1979 issue of the Plain Truth. “The nations of Europe have been striving to become reunited. They desire a common currency, a single combined military force, a single united government. They have made a start in the Common Market. They are now working toward a common currency. Yet, on a purely political basis, they have been totally unable to unite.

“In only one way can this resurrected Holy Roman Empire be brought to fruition—by the ‘good offices’ of the Vatican, uniting church and state once again, with the Vatican astride and ruling (Revelation 17:1-5).”

Herbert Armstrong and the Plain Truth continually referenced Europe forming a church-state union under the auspices of the Vatican.

A Catholic Creation

Did you know that most of the EU’s “founding fathers” were staunch Catholics?

To men such as Jean Monnet, Robert Schuman, Alcide De Gasperi, Otto von Habsburg and Konrad Adenauer, the European project was a religious ambition as much as it was a political aspiration. The Catholic Church, to recognize their pursuit of a Catholic European empire, is in the process of canonizing both Schuman and De Gasperi. Again, these men were politicians, not priests.

Most people today have no understanding of how central the Vatican and the Catholic Church were in creating what we now know as the European Union. In 1962, Topic, a prominent British magazine at the time, wrote: “The Vatican, usually cautious over political changes not of its own inspiration, now considers the Common Market the work of divine providence. Not since the times of Spain’s Charles v has a Roman Catholic political force been so strongly welded. Not since the end of the Holy Roman Empire has the Holy See been offered a Catholic rallying point like the Common Market. If the ‘Pact of Rome,’ which created the Common Market, had been signed within the Vatican walls, it could not have favored the church more.”

In The Principality and Power of Europe, a book exposing the origins of the European Union, Adrian Hilton writes, “Europe’s leaders and the Roman Catholic Church are still working together towards the common goal of unity. Many of Europe’s political leaders … see a crucial role for the Roman Catholic Church in their efforts, providing a powerfully cohesive common religion to hold Europe together politically.” How many people today realize this—that the Vatican is one of the chief architects of European unification?

“Since World War ii, each pope has thrown his weight behind moves toward the creation of a supranational European union,” Hilton continues. “Pope John xxiii insisted that Roman Catholics should be ‘in the front ranks’ of the unification effort. In 1963, Pope Paul vi declared: ‘Everyone knows the tragic history of our century. If there is a means of preventing this from happening again, it is the construction of a peaceful, organic, united Europe.’ In 1965, he further observed: ‘A long, arduous path lies ahead. However, the Holy See hopes to see the day born when a new Europe will arise, rich with the fullness of its traditions.’”

In 1975, Pope Paul vi declared this concerning European unification: “Can it not be said that it is faith, the Christian faith, the Catholic faith that made Europe? … It is there that our mission as bishops in Europe takes on a gripping perspective. No other human force in Europe can render the service that is confided to us, promoters of the faith, to reawaken Europe’s Christian soul, where its unity is rooted.” Knowing the history and prophecy of the Holy Roman Empire, that statement is chilling!

A Force for Unity

Throughout the Soviet era, the Plain Truth encouraged its readers to “[l]ook for the Vatican to exert more influence in European affairs. … Vatican influence over European affairs is destined to grow in the months ahead” (August-September 1970).

As we have already seen, the Catholic Church played a vital role in breaking Eastern Europe out from behind the Iron Curtain and allowing it to join the European Union. But the papacy had grander ambitions.

On November 9, 1982, Pope John Paul ii, speaking on his pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, Spain, issued the following declaration to Europe: “I, bishop of Rome and shepherd of the universal church, from Santiago, utter to you, Europe of the ages, a cry full of love: Find yourself again. Be yourself. Discover your origins, revive your roots. Return to those authentic values which made your history a glorious one and your presence so beneficent in the other continents. Rebuild your spiritual unity. … You can still be the guiding light of civilization.”

From the mid-1990s, the Trumpet eyed the German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as a potential replacement for the ailing John Paul ii. In April 2005, when he took to the papal throne under the name Benedict xvi, this became reality.

His chosen name, Benedict xvi, was inspired by the life and work of Benedict of Nursia, a fifth-century monk venerated as the patron saint of Europe and the founder of the Benedictine monasteries.

During his first speech as pope in 2005, Benedict praised his namesake and explained how he laid the groundwork for European unification. “[Benedict] represents a fundamental point of reference for the unity of Europe and a strong reminder of the unrenounceable Christian roots of its culture and civilization,” he stated

On March 13, 2013, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio was elected Benedict’s successor. The Argentinian Jesuit assumed the name Francis i, after Francis of Assisi—founder of the devout, humble and evangelistic Franciscan order of priests.

The selection of the Argentinian caught many by surprise. He was the first non-European pope in more than 1,200 years, the first-ever pope from the Americas, and the antithesis of the ultratraditionalist that many assumed would replace Benedict xvi.

Francis began reaching out to all religions, meeting with leaders from the Orthodox Church, Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists, and also Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus. Francis decided to forgo the papal limousine and luxurious apartments in the Apostolic Palace and to instead use a regular car and live in a small guesthouse apartment.

Many people were stricken with Francis fever. “Suddenly, being a Catholic feels good,” Catholic author Cristina Odone wrote in the Telegraph on November 17, 2013. “I am so grateful to [Pope Francis] for making Catholic a word that does not automatically conjure up thoughts of homophobia, sexism and pedophilia.” Pope Francis made gentle jokes and won hearts. He delighted many with his modesty and gentleness, his seemingly inclusive overtures and his apparent desire to steer the curia away from absolutism and conservatism. He spawned a surge in Catholic Church attendance in Italy, the United Kingdom, Spain, France and all Latin American nations.

Francis had the respect of the media: Foreign Policy called his the most impressive voice in the international arena; Time named him Person of the Year for 2013.

When Pope Francis died on April 21, 2025, he was succeeded by an American who seems cast in a similar mold. How will this man advance the prophecies of the Bible?

The final iteration of the Roman Catholic Church described in Bible prophecy, and which Mr. Armstrong wrote so prolifically about, will unite Europe in the Holy Roman Empire. It seems the American Pope Leo xiv would be unable to accomplish that. This would suggest that there will be at least one more pope to follow him.

Bible prophecy says that, in the end time, the Roman Catholic Church’s leadership will appear to be gentle, sincere and “like a lamb” (Revelation 13:11). What we can be sure of is that the Vatican will continue working to win hearts, to sway European affairs, and to position itself as the “spiritual binding force” prophesied to ultimately bind Europe together. We can be sure that the “mother” church will once again serve as the cultural glue enabling the restoration of the ancient Holy Roman Empire.

Bible prophecy makes it inescapably clear.

He was right that Protestant groups would return to Catholicism

“Protestant churches everywhere are gravitating toward union with the Roman Catholic Church. These religious movements are speeding the fulfillment of the prophecies of the resurrected Roman Empire. For 30 years I have been proclaiming this tremendous event over the air and in print.”

—Herbert W. Armstrong, 1963

From the early 1930s, Herbert Armstrong spoke out about a coming unity between Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox.

Notice this excerpt from the October 1961 Plain Truth: “The pope will step in as the supreme unifying authority—the only one that can finally unite the differing nations of Europe. The iron jurisdiction over both schools and religion will be turned over to the Roman Catholic Church. Europe will go Roman Catholic! Protestantism will be absorbed into the ‘mother’ church—and totally abolished.”

Through the pages of the Plain Truth, Mr. Armstrong prophesied of this coming church unity. Notice, again: “The final—albeit short-lived—triumph of Catholicism is recorded in literally dozens of Bible prophecies. Right now—whether we want to believe it or not—the stage is being set for the greatest revolution in religion the world has witnessed. … The mighty problem of achieving unity is twofold. First, it involves reconciliation of the Orthodox Schism that officially commenced in 1054 and divided the churches in the East …. Second, it involves restoration to the Roman Communion all Protestantism which developed from 1517 onward” (November 1963).

The Vatican has broadcast the importance of its aim for unity for well over a century. Pope Leo xiii stated it in the opening comment of his June 29, 1896, encyclical to the church: “[N]o small share of our thoughts and of our care is devoted to our endeavor to bring back to the fold, placed under the guardianship of Jesus Christ, the chief Pastor of souls, sheep that have strayed. … [T]he most worthy of our chief consideration is unity. … We earnestly pray that He (‘the Father of Lights’) will graciously grant us the power of bringing conviction home to the minds of men” (On the Unity of the Church; emphasis added).

At the time Mr. Armstrong made his forecasts, reconciliation between Catholics and Protestants seemed impossible to most onlookers. In the 1930s, when church unity was being prophesied, nothing was further from the minds of Protestants. Injustices they had suffered at Catholic hands were still considered fresh wounds to most.

But today, some nine decades after Mr. Armstrong first broke that news to the world, we see the Anglican Church and Rome’s other Protestant daughters returning to the fold. And we see the Orthodox Schism being rapidly healed!

Early Steps Toward Unity

Catholic calls for unity garnered little attention from Protestants until the 1960s. Around that time, some of them began to take some tentative, gingerly steps toward the Catholic “mother” church. By the end of the 1960s, interfaith ecumenical prayer services had been held in practically every major city of the United States, and “pulpit switches” between priests and ministers were becoming widespread.

Anglicans and Catholics carried on private meetings with Lutherans throughout 1966. The Methodist Church also encouraged holding study groups together with Catholics.

In 1967, Catholics and Anglicans held an unprecedented joint service in Madrid at the British Embassy’s Church of St. George. The event caused some Protestant leaders at the time to seriously question the need for an ongoing Protestant movement. Lutheran Bishop of Berlin Otto Dibelius said, “If the Catholic Church of 450 years ago had looked as it does today, there never would have been a Reformation.”

Likewise, Dr. Carl E. Braaten of Chicago’s Lutheran Theological Seminary concluded that it was becoming increasingly difficult to justify “a need for Protestantism as an independent movement.”

A decade later, in October 1979, for the first time in history, a pope visited the White House. Pope John Paul ii’s trip to President Jimmy Carter officially ended 200 years of estrangement between the U.S. government and the Vatican. While in the White House, the pope implored “all Christians—Catholic, Protestant, Anglican and Orthodox—to transcend our present and past differences on this occasion, and to mark the papal visit as a sign and stimulus for reconciliation … and to pray for the unity we seek.” In its December 1979 issue, the Plain Truth called it “an event unthinkable just two decades ago.”

In 1982, Pope John Paul ii traveled to England, Scotland and Wales. There he declared in London’s Roman Catholic Westminster Cathedral, “Today, for the first time in history, a bishop of Rome sets foot on English soil”—and said he prayed his visit would “serve the cause of Christian unity.” He conducted a service with the archbishop of Canterbury in Canterbury Cathedral, headquarters of the Church of England. In his sermon, he appealed to his audience, which included millions watching on television, to be “praying and working for reconciliation and ecclesiastical unity.”

In 1998, the Vatican and the Lutheran World Federation—which represents a majority of Lutherans worldwide, some 70.3 million believers—affirmed that Roman Catholics and Lutherans share a basic understanding. New York Times called the event “a triumph for supporters of the ecumenical movement, which has urged closer cooperation among churches” (June 26, 1998).

Pope John Paul ii undertook enormous effort to promote unity. He was the most traveled pope in history. During his 27 years as pope, he visited no fewer than 127 countries, many of them multiple times. This was one clear sign of his tremendous effort to offer the olive branch to Catholicism’s protesting daughter churches.

Yet as successful as John Paul was in his life’s work of bringing Catholics and Anglicans together, it was his death that ushered in a new phase of rapid reconciliation.

Out of Many—One

With an estimated 4 million mourners paying their respects in Rome, John Paul ii’s funeral is believed to have been the largest single gathering of Christianity in history. It rallied together what was, at the time, the largest gathering in history of heads of state (besides United Nations meetings), even surpassing the 1965 funeral of Winston Churchill. Among the attendees were four kings, five queens, 70 prime ministers and presidents, and 15 or more leaders of other religions.

Among these was Rowan Williams, archbishop of Canterbury, who became the first Anglican leader in history to attend a pope’s funeral. Williams called John Paul ii “one of the very greatest” Christian leaders of the 20th century. The Australian said his decision to attend the funeral signaled that “the rift between Anglicans and Catholics stemming from the Reformation could finally be healed …” (April 12, 2005).

John Paul ii’s death swept Protestant churches up in papal adulation. The frenzy prompted the Guardian to print the headline “It’s as if the Reformation Had Never Happened.”

John Paul ii’s successor, Pope Benedict xvi, sought to capitalize on these euphoric sentiments, and from the start of his papacy said his “primary task” was to unify all Christians. However, though his goal was the same as John Paul’s, his approach toward achieving it was decidedly less diplomatic.

In 2007, the “mother” church restated the doctrines of “Dominus Iesus,” a document Benedict had signed in 2000, saying non-Catholics were “gravely deficient” and that Protestant churches are “not churches in the proper sense.” The restatement also said Orthodox churches suffer from a “wound” because of their failure to accept the pope’s authority.

In October 2009, Pope Benedict made this historic offer to all the “gravely deficient” Anglicans: Any who so desired could be granted membership in the Roman Church while retaining his or her Anglican practices, and any married Anglican clergy could be accepted as priests in a newly established Catholic-Anglican community. The offer was attractive to the many Anglicans who had been angered by their church’s increasingly liberal stance on issues such as the ordination of female clergy and homosexual priests. Around 900 Anglicans, including 61 clergy, entered the Catholic Church during a special service on Easter in 2011, and defections have steadily continued since. More importantly, it is a template that could be used to bring other groups back to Rome.

Meanwhile, liberalism in the Church of England pushed out a lot of clergy. One third of Catholic priests ordained in England from 1992 to 2024 were former Anglican clergyman.

In October 2011, Benedict ushered in another historic change. Back in 1701, the Act of Settlement had been enshrined into British law, forbidding the monarch from marrying a Catholic. Benedict applied some pressure, and without putting up any semblance of resistance, the British scrapped the centuries-old law.

Around that time, a convert from Lutheranism named Tim Drake, who now works as a prominent Catholic journalist and radio host, wrote an article for the National Catholic Register titled “The Lutheran Landslide.” He wrote: “One of the most underreported religious stories of the past decade has been the movement of Lutherans across the Tiber. What first began with prominent Lutherans, such as Richard John Neuhaus (1990) and Robert Wilken (1994), coming into the Catholic Church, has become more of a landslide that could culminate in a larger body of Lutherans coming into the [church] collectively” (March 25, 2011).

The next great victory in the “mother” church’s goal of re-assimilating the Protestants came in January 2013. That month, the Catholic Church and several large Protestant churches signed an agreement to recognize baptisms performed by each other.

In 2014, Francis became the first-ever pope to visit a Pentecostal church. He formally apologized to Italy’s Pentecostals for the persecution they suffered at the hand of the Catholic Church during the fascist dictatorship of Benito Mussolini. Joel Osteen visited the Vatican and the pope sent a recorded message to Kenneth Copeland Ministries, a large Pentecostal group seeking unity, the same year. “Brothers and sisters, Luther’s protest is over. Is yours?” asked a speaker at the event. The pope beseeched the audience, “I am [yearning] that this separation comes to an end and gives us communion.”

In 2016, Justin Welby, then Archbishop of Canterbury prayed publicly with Pope Francis. At another event the same year, Pope Francis said, “As the bishop of Rome and pastor of the Catholic Church, I would like to invoke mercy and forgiveness for the non-evangelical behavior of Catholics toward Christians of other churches. At the same time, I invite all Catholic brothers and sisters to forgive if today, or in the past, they have suffered offense by other Christians.”

“Non-evangelical behavior” is an interesting euphemism for the massive violence unleashed in the wake of the Reformation. Modern scholars estimate 50 million people died in the religious violence that followed in persecutions, counter-persecutions and religious wars.

Unity between Catholicism and the Church of England took a major leap forward after Charles became king in 2022. His coronation the next year was arguably the most Catholic coronation for nearly 500 years. The procession was led into Westminster Abbey by what are claimed to be fragments of the “True Cross,” gifted by the pope. The “Gloria” sung at the coronation was performed in Latin. Aside from the traditional Latin greeting of the King, this may have been the first time Latin has been sung during a coronation since Elizabeth i’s in 1559. Cardinal Vincent Nichols blessed King Charles, marking the first time a Catholic archbishop has taken part in a coronation in over 400 years. Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin also attended, representing Pope Francis. The last coronation attended by a cardinal was probably that of Mary i in 1553.

Then in 2025, King Charles and Pope Leo prayed together—the first time king and pope had done so since the Reformation. Pope Leo also gave the King the title “Royal Confrater [or fellow-brother] of the Abbey of St. Paul.” It’s a title typically given to Catholic monarchs, made honorary protectors of the Vatican.

Healing the Schism

The Catholic Church has also long desired to restore its influence over the Eastern Orthodox Church, which split from Rome in the Great Schism of 1054. As in the case of the Protestants, in recent years Catholic leaders have made great strides toward that end.

In 1964, Pope Paul vi and Eastern Orthodox Patriarch Athenagoras i met and expressed regret at the “reprehensible gestures” of the Great Schism. Those gestures were the excommunications that both groups served one another, and the two leaders rendered these excommunications null and void during their meeting.

In November 1979, John Paul ii met with Greek Orthodox Patriarch Demetrios i, stating a determination to end the “intolerable scandal” of divisions within the Christian-professing world.

In 2000, John Paul mapped out a deal with Orthodox leaders aimed at ending that “scandal” by establishing the primacy of the pope over Orthodox bishops. But the deal stalled, and John Paul did not live to see it come to fruition.

In November 2006, Benedict traveled to Istanbul for a meeting with Bartholomew i, head of the Orthodox Church. There he reiterated the words of his predecessor, saying, “The divisions which exist among Christians are a scandal to the world.”

In October 2007, Benedict and Orthodox leaders resurrected the deal that John Paul had initiated years earlier. They came to an agreement that established the primacy of the pope over all Catholic and Orthodox bishops—though some disagreement remains over exactly what authority that grants the Catholic leader.

As significant as Benedict’s strides toward Orthodox reconciliation were, however, they proved to be just an opening act for his successor, Pope Francis i. At Francis’s behest, Bartholomew traveled to Rome in March 2013 to personally attend the new pope’s installation ceremony. Media presented the event as something that hadn’t happened for a millennium, since the Great Schism divided Christian East from Christian West. Vatican experts believe it was actually the first time in history that a bishop of Constantinople attended the installation of a bishop of Rome.

In May 2014, Francis undertook a two-day trip through the Middle East that coincided with a visit to the area by Bartholomew. The two held a meeting with the motto “So that they may be one,” accompanied by a logo depicting an embrace between St. Peter and St. Andrew—the patrons of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches.

Afterward, Francis and Bartholomew continued calling each other “brother Peter” and “brother Andrew” and working toward unity. After Francis’s death, Bartholomew expressed deep sorrow, calling him “a precious brother in Christ” and “a true friend of Orthodoxy.”

The war with Ukraine had brought the two closer together. The Russian Orthodox Church is essentially an arm of the Russian government, with the leader a former kgb agent. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church was formerly subordinate to the Russian Orthodox Church. After the invasion, they split. The rest of the Orthodox Church recognized the Ukrainian Orthodox Church’s independence. This prompted the Russian Church to cut ties with Patriarch Batholomew in 2019. Separated from the most populous Orthodox Church, the weakened patriarch turned to Rome for support.

In reciprocation, Pope Leo xiv made a historic concession to the Eastern Orthodox patriarchs when he joined Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox and Protestant leaders in Iznik, Turkey, on November 28, 2025. At a meeting commemorating the 1,700th anniversary of the First Ecumenical Council, the heads of 27 churches recited the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed in English. They did not include the “Filioque clause” added by the Roman Catholic Church in 1014. This small linguistic change could herald the beginning of a major religious revolution.

It took two councils—the First Council of Nicaea (a.d. 325) and the First Council of Constantinople (a.d. 381)—for the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches to agree that they believed “in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father; who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified; who spoke by the prophets. In one holy, Catholic and apostolic church.” Centuries later, Pope Benedict viii added the Filioque clause to the creed, a Latin phrase meaning “and the Son.” This addition emphasized the Roman Catholic belief that the Holy Spirit proceeds jointly from the Father and the Son rather than from the Father alone. The Eastern Orthodox rejected this addition, and it was a major contributing factor to the Great Schism of 1054.

The fact that the current leader of the Catholic Church is willing to recite the creed without this clause is a major olive branch to the Eastern Orthodox churches. Pope Leo knows that the Catholic Church cannot be a major political player as long as it remains divided, so he is glossing over doctrinal differences, such as the “Filioque clause,” to bring Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants together under Rome’s overall authority.

What sort of unity will emerge from these steps toward reconciliation? Will the two sides meet in the middle—or are we about to see a more profound reunification?

True Unity on the Horizon

For now, the Vatican is willing to compromise to draw in its daughters. That won’t always be the case. As Gerald Flurry wrote in May 2007, “Indeed, biblical prophecy indicates that full unity will not be achieved purely voluntarily. At a certain point, the mother church will abandon its efforts to woo her daughters back by flatteries and instead revert to the age-old method of preserving ‘Christian’ unity by exerting physical force.”

In the end, this coming reconciliation between the Vatican and its protesting daughters will not usher in the peace mankind so desperately desires: just the opposite! It will bring about the fulfillment of the prophecies of Revelation 13, which speak of a universalist religion that imposes its will upon the Earth with crusading power. It will enforce a social contract that dictates not only who will work but who will eat! (verses 16-17).

For well over 50 years, Herbert Armstrong prophesied of this great religious power and its coming global dominance. But he looked beyond the great time of trial this religious power and the empire it leads will bring to this world. He prophesied of another empire, an empire that will soon overcome all other imperial and religious forces to finally impose justice on all mankind—the very Kingdom of God under the divine rule of the Author of pure religion, the living Jesus Christ!

He was right that Europe would dominate Latin America

Carefully planned and executed by the EU and the Vatican

When Germany lay smoldering in the rubble of World War ii, a lone voice warned that Berlin’s will for global dominance had not been broken and that it would rise again—one final time. That voice said Germany had prepared a blueprint for its revival long before its defeat by Allied powers.

This final time, instead of stony-faced, jack-booted soldiers conquering nations by blitzkrieg force, it would be posh businessmen equipped with the weapons of the new euroforce: tailored suits, briefcases and laptops. This war would be fought in corporate boardrooms, at political functions and business lunches, and through meticulous international diplomacy.

And this time around, that voice warned, Europe would have the help of Latin America. Of course, that voice belonged to Herbert W. Armstrong, and time has proved that his forecast was spot on.

Nazi-Latino Underground

“Germany’s plans in South America were temporarily halted by her defeat in World War ii,” the Plain Truth reported in May 1962.

What were these plans? Germans had been making inroads into Latin America even back in the 1530s, in the earliest decades of European colonization—long before the various German peoples were united into one nation.

The primary influx of Germans occurred in the mid-1800s, when Latin American nations had stabilized and Germany remained disunited. In communities throughout Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Argentina, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, Guatemala and elsewhere, industrious German immigrants began to exert robust influence in politics, culture and especially the business sector.

That Plain Truth article continued, “South America will be conquered by business agents, not by guns” (quoting T. H. Tetens, Germany Plots With the Kremlin; emphasis added).

Much of the German influence had a positive effect on Latin American development and prosperity, but as the decades went by and the Third Reich rose back in the homeland, some of these German immigrants proved to be aggressive Pan-Germanists, fascists and Nazis.

A study into these early Teutonic inroads into Latin America shows that some leading Germans planned to extend their vision of a German-led empire into Latin America and to capitalize on the Catholic culture they shared in order to tap into the reserves of the resource-rich continent.

Germany’s crushing defeat in World War ii slowed those plans, but it did not stop them. In fact, it set events in motion that delivered a great boost to Germany’s long-term strategy in Latin America.

After World War ii, over 55,000 Germans fled their native land to seek havens in other nations. Thousands of Nazi sympathizers also fled from Croatia, Hungary and Yugoslavia to continue working for the next European religious-corporate reich. Many of these war criminals fled through the Vatican-engineered “ratlines.” The majority of them ended up in Latin America.

The October 1957 Plain Truth said, “During World War ii, Argentina was an outspoken friend of Hitler, sheltering Nazi officers and men, offering safe haven for Nazi ships and submarines. Many Nazis found their way to Argentina and safety while Hitler’s regime was collapsing under the steady rain of Allied bombs.”

Juan Perón, president of Argentina during the postwar years, openly boasted about how delighted his government was to absorb well-trained, highly educated Nazi war criminals after Germany’s defeat. “The German government has invested millions of marks into the development of these people; we only paid for the airplane ticket,” he said.

By 1950, Berlin had carved out a high-level military presence in Argentina; German companies were again firmly planted in several Latin American nations; Adolf Hitler’s puppet ruler, Ante Pavelić, was injecting fascist ideology into Paraguay; and the Nazis had intelligence agents entrenched in Argentina, Chile, Venezuela, Ecuador and other nations.

In the decades since then, the Vatican has helped many German and other European corporations tap into Latin America’s most lucrative industrial and agricultural markets. German corporate giants such as ThyssenKrupp, Siemens, Bayer, Volkswagen, I. G. Farben and Deutsche Bank became household names south of the Rio Grande, across Panama, in the Andean nations, and clear down to southern Argentina and Chile.

Since Germany’s unification in 1990 and Berlin’s subsequent climb to the ruling seat of the European Union, all levels of EU trade and investment in the Latin American region have increased dramatically.

Herbert Armstrong knew far in advance that communism would fail to entice the Latinos and that British and American influence there would dwindle. He knew it would be German-led Europe that would ultimately achieve its long-term goal of economic and religious domination of Latin America. Europe today is rapidly achieving that goal.

Modern Symbiosis

The modern strategic partnership between the EU and the Latin American region was initiated in June 1999 at the first European Union, Latin America and the Caribbean (EU-lac) Summit held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

The EU-lac includes all nations of the EU and Latin America, representing a population of about a billion people. It meets every two years to boost cooperation on issues ranging from trade and science to culture and politics. In 2010, the two sides created the EU-lac Foundation. Where in all of Europe and Latin America did they decide to build the foundation’s facilities? Hamburg, Germany.

In recent years, the EU has finalized free-trade pacts with Chile, Peru, Colombia, Mexico, Panama, Costa Rica, Honduras and Nicaragua. It has also been laboring to conclude formal talks toward a free-trade pact with the entire Latin American region.

After 25 years of negotiation, the EU and the Latin American trade bloc mercosur signed a free-trade deal on December 6, 2024. Once ratified by the EU’s 27 member states, it will create a free-trade area of nearly 800 million people: those in the EU, plus Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. These two blocs already trade about $115 billion with each other annually. The EU is second only to China in trade with mercosur—even more than the U.S.

By developing this relationship, which it calls a “strategic alliance,” Europe is directly challenging Washington’s bygone hopes of creating a Pan-American free-trade area. This challenge to U.S. influence was also predicted by Mr. Armstrong.

The Icy Exclusion of the United States

The May 1962 Plain Truth declared that “the United States is going to be left out in the cold as two gigantic trade blocs, Europe and Latin America, mesh together and begin calling the shots in world commerce.”

In perhaps the most powerful statement in its 1999 report, the European Commission declared, “The European alternative can thus represent a viable counterweight to what is sometimes perceived as excessive economic and political dependence.” This is saying that Latin America could and should break its dependence on the United States and instead rely on the Europeans.

The Plain Truth asked its readers some sobering questions in its April 1966 issue: “Can you see why we warn readers that the Latin American Common Market and the Central American Common Market are dangerously close to becoming partners with the European Common Market? Can you see these giant combines are dangerously close to turning their backs on America and Britain, once and for all? Can you see why we warn you that the Nazis—hiding out all over South America—are dangerously close to rising again, this time to be victorious as prophesied in Isaiah 10, Jeremiah 25:15-33?”

Today, we might ask if we see the seriousness of the EU-mercosur combine, and the implications of its congealing cooperation. An economically unified, politically stable Latino bloc is necessary to ensure constant delivery of goods to Europe. It is also a way for the Europeans to reduce U.S. geopolitical power. These are major reasons why Europe, with Vatican assistance, is working hard to constantly shore up its influence in Latin America.

One sobering sign of this slide away from the U.S. came in February 2014. Fueled by anger over Washington’s unapologetic spying on Latin American and European leaders (including a tap on German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone), the EU and Brazil agreed to lay an undersea cable stretching some 3,500 miles from Lisbon to Fortaleza. The $185 million cable project is designed to keep the U.S. out of the loop in EU-Latin American communications and could pave the way to push Washington further out of Latin America. The link was completed on February 1, 2021.

Once Europe’s unification is complete, the U.S.’s position with Brazil and other Latin American nations will slip rapidly into oblivion.

The Catholic Connection

The headquarters of the Catholic Church is in Europe. Yet it is not Europe but Latin America—incorporating Mexico, the Central American isthmus and the continent of South America—that constitutes the most catholicized landmass in the world. The region’s largest country, Brazil, has more Roman Catholics than any nation on the planet, and Mexico is a close second. No continent is more aligned with the Vatican than Latin America.

The Plain Truth recognized the deep importance of the religious roots Europeans and Latin Americans share. In October 1957, it said, “Latin American nations will join in with the European revival of the old Roman Empire ….” Throughout history, that empire has been guided by the Vatican.

In recent decades, the Vatican’s role in the EU-Latin American relationship has become increasingly pronounced.

During his 1979 to 2005 papacy, Pope John Paul ii visited all 24 countries of Central and South America. The visits were part of an effort to stabilize the region and to remind Latin America of the religion and culture it shares with Europe and of its trade obligations to the EU. Pope Benedict xvi, with a 2007 visit to Brazil, kept the momentum from his predecessor moving forward.

A few years later, Benedict handed the church’s reins over to a man who was perhaps better qualified than any other to orchestrate the third and final act of Latin America’s joining in with “the European revival of the old Roman Empire.” Pope Francis i, born Jorge Bergoglio, became the Catholic Church’s first Latin American pope in history. He grew up in Argentina—the Latin American nation more culturally and politically influenced by its connection to Nazi Germany than any other.

Pope Francis’s role in absorbing Latin America into Europe’s imperialist drive was crucial. Langley Intelligence Group Network said, “[H]e will be very strong towards bringing Argentina, Venezuela and Cuba into the Catholic fold.” Time proved that to be true.

The importance of Latin America to the Catholic Church was also underscored in the choice of Francis’s successor, Pope Leo xiv. Though an American, Leo spent much of his life in Peru, has Peruvian citizenship, and speaks fluent Spanish, in addition to English and Latin.

Remember, while Germany still lay defeated, Mr. Armstrong warned that it would rise again behind the cloak of a uniting Europe. He also declared that Europe would dominate the Latino common market largely by harnessing the Catholic Church’s religious dominance.

The Catholic Church seems set to draw Latin Americans under its influence and to forge an intercontinental empire, which is, in reality, the biblically prophesied seventh and final resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire!

EU Arming Latin America

Between 2020 and 2024 over 40 percent of weapons imported by South American nations came from the EU, according to sipri’s Arms Transfers Database. Compare this to the 12 percent from the United States and the 11 percent from Great Britain. It is also noteworthy that more of the EU arms came from France than any other nation.

South America is full of navies with arms purchased mostly from Europe and armies that rely completely on European tanks. This did not all happen merely in the last 10 years.

South America has clearly avoided being dependent on America for critical weapons systems, but it is dependent on Europe. That doesn’t happen by accident. Knowing they couldn’t afford to manufacture their own advanced weapons, national leaders evidently all came to a similar conclusion: They didn’t want to be dependent on the U.S. or Russia, so they chose to side with Europe. South America is welded to Europe’s military system. The alliance is secure. South America’s military is hugely dependent on Europe.

Chinese Checkers in Chile and Beyond

It is crucial to watch the deep economic inroads China is steadily making into Latin America, especially since the year 2000. Europe is certainly watching them! But there is a fundamental difference between Europe’s drive into Latin America and that of China.

Beijing is there for a straightforward reason: It needs resources to fuel China’s rise, and Latin America has plenty of them. The EU’s trade and humanitarian efforts in Latin America, on the other hand, are deeper and more complex. Rather than a simple thirst for resources, Europe’s efforts are founded on the blood ties, religion and language it shares with Latin American nations and peoples.

It is true that Europe’s influence in Latin America has slipped slightly as the ambitions of China, and Russia to a degree, have swelled. But we should not expect these powers to always view this as a zero-sum game. Instead, watch for the Europeans to increasingly partner with China and Russia in this vital region and beyond. Isaiah 23 and Ezekiel 27 show that the nations of Europe and Asia will form an alliance, called a “mart of nations,” which will work against the United States. Their cooperation in Latin America will provide a vital staging ground for their anti-American ambitions.

He was right that a U.S. financial collapse would lead to European unity

Herbert W. Armstrong warned that a massive financial crisis centered in America would ripple across the whole world—and would spark the rise of the seventh and final resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire.

In light of recent events, that forecast truly is impressive and an undeniable testament to Mr. Armstrong’s matchless grasp of biblical prophecy.

The Proof

In 1968, Mr. Armstrong wrote a letter discussing the catastrophic economic conditions that would plague the United States and Britain in the end time. “If the dollar is devalued, inflation will almost surely result,” he wrote, “and eventual economic collapse for the United States” (co-worker letter, March 26, 1968; emphasis added throughout).

Referring to prophecies such as those in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28, he continued: “Those of you who truly believe the prophecies of your Bible know such economic collapse is prophesied to happen! … We have shown how God prophesied a virtual trade war will get under way against the United States and Britain—and how our national [economies] will falter and then collapse!”

Over the next 16 years, Mr. Armstrong’s forecast became even more specific. In 1984, he wrote that a massive banking crisis in America “could suddenly result in triggering European nations to unite as a new world power larger than either the Soviet Union or the U.S. That, in turn, could bring on the Great Tribulation suddenly. And that will lead quickly into the Second Coming of Christ and end of this world as we know it” (co-worker letter, July 22, 1984).

In August of that year, he expounded on what would precipitate the nuclear catastrophe described in Matthew 24. “Now we’re hearing in the news of a soon-coming nuclear winter,” he wrote. “Nuclear explosions will produce an Earth-covering cloud that will give us a nuclear night. The sun will not get through. Crops will not grow. Billions will be killed by the nuclear blasts. Those remaining will starve. … [T]his is no wolf-wolf cry! It is prophesied in your Bible! It is real! And … economic crisis threatens to bring this about …” (co-worker letter, Aug. 23, 1984).

In autumn 2008, the first shock waves of that economic crisis struck.

America’s Financial 9/11

The days surrounding September 11, 2008, are now infamous. The image of many of America’s most prestigious financial institutions rapidly collapsing has been etched into the minds of the American populace. That disastrous week represented a turning point in U.S. financial power.

What remains is a gaping crater in the nation’s now-discredited economic core. America’s economy will never fully recover.

Subprime mortgage loans touched off a major recession in America that quickly went global. Millions of jobs were lost. Between 2008 and 2013, 460 banks failed in the U.S. alone. (Contrast that with the five years prior to 2008, during which only 10 banks failed). The U.S. government injected trillions of dollars into rescue packages and bailouts, further burdening an already debt-saturated economy.

In 2011, for the first time since World War ii, U.S. debt exceeded its gross domestic product. By October 2013, the country’s national debt surged past $17 trillion.

Note this accurate forecast from the September 1983 Plain Truth. After a G-7 summit, the author noted “how important confidence in America is to the stability of the entire Western world.” A crisis of confidence in America was bound to have dramatic global ramifications, it said—a forecast that has proved frightfully true. That article then made this additional, more specific point: “The lack of confidence in American leadership must ultimately lead to a parting of the ways between the United States and Western Europe ….”

The inevitability of this trans-Atlantic split is clear in biblical prophecy. Still, the insight to know that it would be precipitated by convulsions within the U.S. that would shatter global confidence is remarkable. The September 2008 economic calamity moved events toward the fulfillment of this prediction. It rocked America’s reputation, while in Europe it led to a very different series of events. It acted as a catalyst for Europe to unite itself and to begin stepping into the vacuum created by America’s crumbling financial system.

Europe Rises

Within 14 months of the events of September 2008, all 27 European Union members had ratified the Lisbon Treaty. By December 2009, the EU constitution had taken effect, moving the EU toward becoming an imperial power.

As you read earlier, this was exactly what Mr. Armstrong forecast would happen!

German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück summed up European sentiment in October 2008 when he stated that “the origin and the center of gravity of the problem is clearly in the U.S.” German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy agreed, both making it clear that they believed the global financial crisis was America’s fault. Pope Benedict xvi threw his voice behind the Europeans too. In a July 2009 encyclical, he joined the chorus calling for a new world financial order independent of the U.S.

Soon, Europe’s demands for tighter control over global finance gave rise to tangible actions. At the G-20 summit in November 2008, the world’s most powerful economies discussed the creation of international bodies for regulating global finance. Europe, which dominates the G-20, quickly emerged at the forefront of the movement to reform the world’s financial system.

A “new balance of power” is being worked out in Europe, reported independent news organization EurActiv. “France and Germany are openly challenging the rule of the City of London as Europe’s main financial hub, and are keen to see Paris or Frankfurt as powerful financial centers in a new, more regulated global system” (July 31, 2009).

By 2009, a sovereign debt crisis was emerging in Europe. Unlike the U.S. debt woes, the EU crisis seems to have been deliberately engineered within Europe’s Economic and Monetary Union (emu). As Bernard Connolly explains in The Rotten Heart of Europe, the emu is a construct of German elites designed to benefit Germany’s export economy at the expense of the rest.

By 2011, Germany, the undisputed leader of the EU, had taken charge of managing the euro crisis. The Jesuit-educated son of Rome, Mario Draghi, assumed control of the world’s largest central bank, the European Central Bank (ecb), on November 1 of that year. By December 8, he had submitted to all EU leaders a fiscal pact for EU nations demanding that the ecb be handed full control of the mechanisms by which it would be implemented: the Exchange Rate Mechanism and the European Financial Stability Facility. EU leaders, except those in Britain, agreed to these demands.

The eurozone debt crisis is the catalyst dividing Europe into a “two-speed” Europe. The fiscal pact formalizes it, consolidating a minority of EU nations—the eurozone—into a fiscal union. Ultimately, the strongest Roman Catholic economies within the EU will break away from the rest, demanding that they yield to the power of the Rome-Berlin axis or be cut off from vital resources (Revelation 16-17). This is the next step toward refining the rising “United States of Europe” into a 10-nation imperial bloc as Herbert Armstrong prophesied in 1952: “But there will be a United States of Europe—a union of 10 nations” (Who or What Is the Prophetic Beast?).

Trade War

In the years between America’s financial 9/11 and the beginning of Donald Trump’s second presidential term, America’s national debt increased by more than $26 trillion, pushing its debt-to-gdp ratio up to 124 percent.

After President Trump announced tariffs on dozens of U.S. trading partners on April 2, 2025, investors began selling off longer-maturity U.S. treasuries in large quantities, sending yields higher and forcing President Trump to put a 90-day pause on many of his reciprocal tariffs. Soon after this happened, Silvia Merler, an Italian citizen who is the head of esg (Environmental, Social and Governance) and Policy Research at Algebris Investments, published a paper calling on the EU to “think strategically and seize the opportunity to fill the void created by Trump” (Bruegel, April 11, 2025).

“The abrupt U.S. turn to protectionism offers a chance to strengthen the international role of the euro as a global reserve currency and of euro assets as an appealing haven,” she wrote. “Europe has the motive, means and opportunity to do it. The question is if it also has the will. … Taken together, the strong equity sell-off coupled with the rise in U.S. treasury yields and the weakening of the dollar point to a previously unfathomable possibility that the unchallenged status enjoyed by U.S. risk-free assets within the global financial system might start to be questioned. In this scenario, the rest of the world may value diversification in safe assets.”

In short, Merler wants eurobonds to replace U.S. treasury bonds and is hoping that President Trump’s trade war will convince Germany to underwrite EU debt. So far Germany has refused to do this, but it may soon have little choice. As America’s debt grows larger and larger, Germany will take charge of defending Europe. Eurobonds may be the only way to raise enough money to remilitarize overnight.

America’s national debt has made the dollar a dangerous investment, so Europeans are now plotting to seize the global reserve currency for the euro. In time, this economic clash will lead to a hot war.

“Either we start raising high tariff barriers against other countries, starting a trade war which in time will trigger the nuclear war that will destroy us—or American workers are going to have to meet the competition of the workers in other countries, by lowering living standards,” Mr. Armstrong wrote in March 1971. “Obviously American workers are not going to choose to do the latter” (Plain Truth).

Americans are indeed raising high tariff barriers, but their national debt is too great for them to remain the world’s dominant economy for much longer. The balance of power is shifting to Europe.

How Could He Have Known?

Go back and reread the forecasts made by Mr. Armstrong about the unification of Europe, the rise of a European superpower, and the event that would set it all in motion. Remember: He made those statements when the Soviet empire dominated Eastern Europe and Germany was still cut in two. The European Union didn’t even exist until almost a decade later. Yet Mr. Armstrong clearly forecast the future of Europe, even explaining that financial crises would contribute to its rise as a superpower.

How could he have known?

Mr. Armstrong relied on what the Apostle Peter called the “more sure word of prophecy” (2 Peter 1:19). He had 100 percent faith in the Bible as God’s Word and that it was God’s mind in print. For more than 60 years he studied, meditated on and declared it as the definite Word of God. How was he so well informed about Europe specifically? He studied the prophecies such as those recorded in Daniel 2 and 7 and Revelation 13 and 17, which forecast these events.

Then, thankfully, Mr. Armstrong wrote down the truths God had revealed. For decades, he recorded them in articles and booklets, and he discussed them before tens of millions on his World Tomorrow television broadcast. He wanted to share the insight God gave him with the largest audience possible.

To learn more about the future of the seventh and final resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire, and what it means specifically for Britain, keep reading!

He was right that Britain would leave the EU

“Britain is going to look back on Monday, January 1, 1973, in all probability, as a most tragically historic date—a date fraught with ominous potentialities! For that date marked the United Kingdom’s entry into the European Community.”

That statement in the March 1973 Plain Truth is classic Herbert Armstrong: gripping, plain, sincere—and true.

Just ask the growing number of Britons grappling with the realization that the European Union has established a major beachhead within British society. Ask the 17.4 million majority “Brexit” voters who, on June 23, 2016, voted decisively to leave the EU. For them, it’s growing increasingly difficult not to look back on January 1, 1973, and lament it as a “tragically historic date.” Today, the “ominous potentialities” Mr. Armstrong referred to have become alarming realities.

The Date That Shocked the World

Few expected Britain’s rejection of the EU. Even Nigel Farage, who helped lead the effort to get Britain out, conceded his side had lost the vote—only for a last-minute count of votes to turn his defeat into victory.

But Herbert W. Armstrong forecast Brexit decades in advance. From the earliest days of his broadcasting work in the 1930s, he forecast the advent of a united European power. In 1956 he wrote, “Probably Germany will lead and dominate the coming United States of Europe, but Britain will be no part of it” (emphasis added throughout).

Later, in 1978, with Britain firmly entrenched in the European Economic Community, Mr. Armstrong described a “soon-coming resurrected ‘Holy Roman Empire’—a sort of soon-coming ‘United States of Europe’—a union of 10 nations to rise up out of or following the Common Market of today.”

“Britain will not be in that empire soon to come,” he wrote.

Once again, Mr. Armstrong was right.

The British public voted to join the EU in the belief that it was merely a trading bloc. Yet they found it steadily taking over more and more aspects of their life. Britain opted out of the euro while the rest of the EU pushed toward economic union. France, the Netherlands and Ireland all voted against a European Constitution, yet on January 1, 2010, the EU adopted one under the Lisbon Treaty.

With each step toward a superstate, more people became aware of the “ominous potentialities” Mr. Armstrong warned about. For many, the Lisbon Treaty was the final straw. “Britain is no longer a sovereign nation,” wrote British politician Daniel Hannan the morning after the treaty was enacted. “At midnight last night, we ceased to be an independent state, bound by international treaties to other independent states, and became instead a subordinate unit within a European state“ (Telegraph, Dec. 1, 2009).

The Lisbon Treaty “tramples [Britain’s] Magna Carta into the dust,” Ambrose Evans-Pritchard lamented in the Telegraph. “The founding texts of the English constitution—charter, petition, bill of rights—have one theme in common: They create nothing. They assert old freedoms; they restore lost harmony. In this they guided America’s Revolution, itself a codification of early colonial liberties,” he wrote (Dec. 6, 2009).

Why Britain Is in This Predicament

How did Britain—the nation that very recently ruled the greatest and most benign empire the world has ever known—become a victim in this abusive relationship with the EU? Why is formerly Great Britain now sidelined and languishing in minor-power status?

The reasons for its staggering decline are numerous: Many British claimed undue credit for the prosperity they enjoyed, and they succumbed to guilt and self-loathing, which prompted them to relinquish most of the empire. At the same time, two world wars decimated the strength of the nation. Britain was further drained by its decades-long but never-quite-successful campaign to hitch itself to Europe. Finally, it underwent a revolution in morality, culture and religion.

Have the British, in all of this, simply been victims of the inevitable cycles of history? Was it coincidence that they acquired a globe-girdling empire, and was it coincidence that it was later ripped away? For answers, we must look far back in ancient history.

Over 3,000 years ago, God began inspiring His prophets to record exactly what would happen to the British Empire. The biblical name “Ephraim,” the Israelite tribe that became modern-day Britain, appears in well over 100 passages. Britain is also one of the modern-day nations collectively called “Israel” in many prophetic passages and is also occasionally referred to by other biblical names. (For proof of modern Britain’s identity in the Bible, request a free copy of Herbert W. Armstrong’s book The United States and Britain in Prophecy.) Scripture foretold the British Empire’s rise and decline, including the very curses it is experiencing today. Prophecies also make clear that these circumstances will lead to Britain’s eventual, complete collapse.

Through several decades under Mr. Armstrong’s editorial eye, the Plain Truth reported in detail the curses that were increasingly plaguing Britain, all the while forewarning that they are merely the prelude to far worse.

Several Plain Truth articles in the 1960s in particular detailed Britain’s woes at the time: economic problems, low food production, struggles with defining its commonwealth, racial tension, a burgeoning and unsustainable welfare system, notorious laziness, and preoccupation with entertainment. The Plain Truth pointed out that, even at that epoch, Britain was often viewed as inferior to Europe, sometimes referred to as “the sick man of Europe” and “an international charity case.” Britain was not really considered integral to the economically uniting Continent.

On more than one occasion, the Plain Truth expounded on detailed prophecies of correction from God, elaborating on His efforts to arrest Britain’s attention, turn the nation around, and set it back on a path paved with blessings.

Consider these paragraphs from the December 1964 Plain Truth: “Relations between Britain and Europe will continue to deteriorate until ‘The Lord shall bring a nation against thee from far … which also shall not leave thee either corn, wine, or oil …. [H]e shall besiege thee in all thy gates …’ (Deuteronomy 28:49-52).

“These prophecies reveal a soon-coming ‘siege’—a trading blockade—of modern-day Israel! Of all the nations that compose modern-day Israel, none is more vulnerable to such a trade embargo than the United Kingdom. Under present conditions, the British Isles are entirely unable to feed their population without massive food imports. Even during the strenuous agricultural efforts of World War ii, Britain was able to produce barely half her food requirements! Since then, population has increased, farming land diminished.

“Yet the British public remains apathetic! … The new generation insists only on less work and more benefits. The welfare state, supported by each government in turn, encourages just such an attitude. … But as the cry grows louder for wage increases, unemployment pay, sick benefits, pensions, allowances, national assistance, grants and payments—the entire economy staggers, unable to stay afloat!”

Now, having stumbled through those tough times with no improvement in its behavior, Britain faces an intensification of its problems. Its welfare state has bloated to far greater proportions—as has its drag on the economy. And its corruption and immorality are far worse. Britain today is a house divided, and the 52-48 Brexit vote in June 2016 accentuated and worsened the divisions within the United Kingdom.

Will Britain Awaken?

Scriptures such as Job 12:23 and Isaiah 40:15 clearly reveal that it is God who makes and unmakes nations. He made Britain what it once was, and He is unmaking it today.

Scripture explains—in passages like Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28—God’s reasons for inflicting curses on Britain. Still, Britain toils on, trying to solve its problems with its own ingenuity. Instead of looking to God, Britain is relying on its “allies” like Europe—or as the Bible calls them, its “lovers.” “[T]hey have gone up to Assyria, Like a wild donkey alone by itself; Ephraim has hired lovers” (Hosea 8:9; nkjv). (For proof that Assyria refers to Germany, request a free copy of Germany and the Holy Roman Empire.)

God never intended for Britain to join with Europe. Its ill-advised efforts to do so have revealed fatal weakness and lack of trust in the Source of its national greatness. At the same time, they have portended the downfall of the country!

In 1966, the Plain Truth made this important statement: “The big question: ‘What will it take to wake up the people of Britain?’ Will it take a terrible economic depression, or will it take national military defeat at the hands of a German-dominated United States of Europe?” (October 1966).

The article referred to the prophesied ultimate fall of Britain!

As Bible prophecy makes clear to those who have the key to understand it, Britain will learn its lesson only through total defeat and the subjugation of its people as slaves to a United Europe!

“I know Ephraim, and Israel is not hid from me …. They will not frame their doings to turn unto their God …. Ephraim also is like a silly dove without heart: they call to Egypt, they go to Assyria [Britain is fulfilling this prophecy even as you read this]. When they shall go, I will spread my net upon them; I will bring them down as the fowls of the heaven; I will chastise them, as their congregation hath heard. … My God will cast them away, because they did not hearken unto him: and they shall be wanderers among the nations” (Hosea 5:3-4; 7:11-12; 9:17).

The Plain Truth’s question—will Britain awaken?—is more pressing than ever. What will it take to wake up the people of Britain?

Britain Bows Out

Today there is little doubt that the “ominous potentialities” that Mr. Armstrong warned about are coming to pass. Politically, economically and judicially, Britain has greatly weakened and is increasingly subservient to the EU.

This is what Mr. Armstrong said would happen—decades ago. Mr. Armstrong’s conclusion in that 1973 article was ominous: “Britain’s entry into the European Community portends a tragic situation.”

The tragedy of that situation has become increasingly evident today.

In numerous articles, Mr. Armstrong made clear that Britain’s dalliance with Europe would end. “The stage is all set!” he wrote in 1956. “All that’s lacking now is the strong leader—the coming führer! The Germans are coming back from the destruction of World War ii in breathtaking manner. Germany is the economic and military heart of Europe. Probably Germany will lead and dominate the coming United States of Europe. But Britain will be no part of it!”

Herbert Armstrong warned for decades that Britain would not be a part of the coming final resurrection of the German-led Holy Roman Empire. Even as British Prime Minister Edward Heath deceitfully ramrodded his country into the Economic Community in 1973, Mr. Armstrong warned that it was an experiment doomed to failure and that the British—as many are doing right now—would look back on that day as a “tragically historic date.”

The reality is undeniable. He was right.

He was right that America would lose its wars

If that prediction seems bold now, how bold would it have been in 1950?

“He kept us out of war!” cheered the president’s most loyal constituents. President Woodrow Wilson was campaigning for reelection. True to his campaign slogan, the president had kept America out of war. That is, unless you consider the sinking of American ships by German submarines a warlike act. Wilson’s defense had been a steady stream of handwritten notes, pleading for the kaiser to stop shooting Americans.

Herbert W. Armstrong attended that campaign rally in the autumn of 1916. Amid the throngs of Wilson supporters, he found himself not more than six feet away from former President Theodore Roosevelt.

“He kept us out of war,” Mr. Armstrong heard the former president say with contempt. “I was president for 71/2 years,” he continued. “And if I were president now, I would send the kaiser just one note—and he would know that I meant it.”

Mr. Armstrong told that story often because it perfectly illustrated what he had been repeating for decades—that the United States had lost the will to use its power. Shortly after World War ii, he predicted that the United States had won its last war.

Korea and Cuba

After victory in World War ii, the Korean War was the first in a long line of non-victories for the United States. When hostilities broke out in 1950, President Harry Truman gave command of American forces to Gen. Douglas MacArthur, a World War ii hero. From the outset, MacArthur was free to cross the 38th parallel to invade North Korea. But when China’s Communist forces joined the side of the enemy, U.S. forces were sent reeling. MacArthur urged Washington to approve a full-scale attack on China, telling one congressman that “there is no substitute for victory.” But his plea fell on deaf ears. Truman fired MacArthur in 1951, and the war eventually settled into a stalemate with both sides suffering huge numbers of casualties.

The Korean War ended the career of America’s last great general. It also marked the beginning of a new era in American battle strategy: limited warfare.

The Bay of Pigs incident was a good example of this new strategy. President John F. Kennedy kick-started this political-military disaster. In 1961, more than 1,400 Cuban exiles, trained by the Central Intelligence Agency, landed on Cuba’s shores hoping to spark a popular uprising. But without U.S. naval and air support, Castro’s troops easily crushed the rebellion. Nearly all of the U.S.-led invaders were killed in battle or died in Castro’s prisons years later.

After the Bay of Pigs debacle, Mr. Armstrong wrote in the January 1963 Plain Truth that the U.S. should have driven Castro and communism out of Cuba. Since it did not, Mr. Armstrong asked, “Is the United States going to find that, having left Castro and godless communism on the American doorstep, it is going to continue causing us every kind of trouble and harassment?”

The decades since then have shown that it indeed has.

Mr. Armstrong pinned the blame not on the U.S. military, nor even President Kennedy, but on the American people! He wrote in the October 1961 Plain Truth, “Unless or until the United States as a whole repents and returns to what has become a hollow slogan on its dollars: ‘In God we trust,’ the United States of America has won its last war!

“I said that when we failed to win in Korea! … I say it again, now that the United States government endorsed this Cuban fiasco—its president gave the ‘go ahead’—and God, the God America has deserted, gave it its most humiliating defeat! What does the Cuban debacle mean?

“It means, Mr. and Mrs. United States, that the handwriting is on your wall!”

Those are strong words! Yet their full weight and power were unknown until the U.S. became involved in its next major conflict.

The Vietnam Spectacle

As early as November 1961, the Plain Truth informed readers that the U.S. would “almost certainly” have to fight a major battle in Vietnam. Sure enough, in 1964, America began sending troops there.

Several analysts at the time realized that a war in Vietnam was imminent, but only Mr. Armstrong was absolutely confident about how it would end. In April 1965, just months after hostilities broke out, the Plain Truth blared this headline: “Why United States Cannot Win Vietnam War!”

The article said, “The United States is committed not to win in Vietnam! … The late Gen. Douglas MacArthur once stated that unless a nation entered into a battle with victory as its goal, it was defeated before it started. He was right!

“Make no mistake about it—the U.S. and the other nations involved in support of South Vietnam would like to win! But they are afraid to take the action necessary to win!”

A year and a half later, Mr. Armstrong wrote, “The United States is not winning. Yet the war has been stepped up enormously during 1966. People see no results. People compare the size and power of the United States to that of North Vietnam—a little country hardly the size of one of our states, such as Florida. They can’t understand why the United States—the most powerful military nation in the world—can’t whip little North Vietnam” (Plain Truth, January 1967).

The war lasted another eight years, ending in the shameful evacuation of American officials from the rooftop of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, South Vietnam. It was the longest war in America’s history, and was the nation’s most humiliating defeat. Historian Paul Johnson called it a “collapse of American power.”

During those years, the Plain Truth often touched on another casualty of the Vietnam War: American honor worldwide. Mr. Armstrong wrote, “No military nation can operate a military force, by accepting defeat in an enemy attack, on the excuse we wanted to save the lives of men who had offered those lives to protect our honor and our freedom! … How many more lives will yet be lost in future battles because enemies will now be emboldened by this display of weakness to anticipate easy victories over a United States that is afraid to fight?” (January 1969).

Indeed, the war in Vietnam gave America’s reputation as a superpower quite a beating. The Plain Truth pointed this out in February 1978 and then made this stunning prediction: “The days are over when the military might of the United States is used to accomplish what America perceives as correct and proper. … America’s influence and prestige is on the rapid decline. The pride of our power has been broken. The time is fast approaching when the United States will be so weak and so fearful of its own shadow that, as the Prophet Ezekiel predicted, the trumpet will sound the call to battle, but none shall answer (Ezekiel 7:14).”

There could have been no more accurate prediction of the years that followed.

Anti-war Era

If the Korean War marked the start of the limited warfare strategy, America’s ignominious defeat in Vietnam marked the beginning of its anti-war strategy. Nothing illustrated this aversion to danger like the Iran hostage crisis.

In November 1979, a band of Iranian revolutionists stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and captured 52 U.S. staff members. President Jimmy Carter repeatedly demanded that Tehran return the captives, but Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini said he was beating an empty drum. “Carter does not have the guts to engage in a military operation,” Khomeini taunted. Carter’s only show of “force” was a bungled rescue attempt in April 1980 that left the bodies of eight U.S. servicemen burning in the Iranian desert. Television cameras captured the sickening images for all to see. It was another humiliating defeat. Iran held the world’s greatest superpower at bay for another eight months after the botched rescue mission. One wonders how Theodore Roosevelt would have handled the situation.

With more conservative leadership during the 1980s, some might argue that America regained some of the pride in its power. President Ronald Reagan sent troops to Grenada in 1983 to stamp out communism from the West Indies. In 1986, he bombed Col. Muammar Qadhafi’s military headquarters in Libya in response to a terrorist act. These small skirmishes, however, hardly qualify as decisive military victories for the United States. (The population of Grenada, after all, is slightly smaller than Fargo, North Dakota.) If anything, they revealed an increasingly gun-shy America willing to use its military might only in small, relatively risk-free conflicts.

Consider Lebanon. In October 1983, an Islamic terrorist rammed a truck packed with explosives into Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 Americans. Four months later, President Reagan withdrew all U.S. troops, a move that all but dissolved the Lebanese Christian power structure.

After that fiasco—which was yet another embarrassing U.S. retreat—the Plain Truth was quick to remind readers of what it had been saying for decades. The November-December 1983 issue had an article titled “Why America Has Won Its Last War.” In it, Mr. Armstrong’s book The United States and Britain in Prophecy was quoted: “[T]he United States, even still possessing unmatched power, is afraid—fears—to use it, just as God said ….”

The Gulf War ‘Victory’

If ever there was a conflict that could have proved Mr. Armstrong’s prediction wrong, surely it would have been the Persian Gulf War. Even Mr. Armstrong’s own church pointed to this war (several years after he died) as justification to back away from the “America has won its last war” prediction. “[W]e were wrong,” wrote Mr. Armstrong’s successor, Joseph Tkach, in a co-worker letter dated March 25, 1991.

But the fledgling Philadelphia Trumpet magazine did not agree with the Plain Truth’s new message. Instead we clung tenaciously to Mr. Armstrong’s forecasts. “America Has Won Its Last War,” we declared on the cover of the May 1991 Trumpet, shortly after the Gulf War ended.

After a short ground invasion, the Bush i administration claimed victory in the war. But Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry firmly challenged that assessment. It is true that, until 1991, the world had never witnessed such an awesome display of technologically advanced firepower. Yet despite this show of force, the Persian Gulf War was not one “that tested the U.S. will,” he wrote.

“The truth is we won a battle in Kuwait. We did not win a war. The job was left unfinished,” Mr. Flurry wrote. “Saddam Hussein is still in power—even stronger in some ways—and has turned Iraq into a killing field. Isn’t [that] a sign we didn’t win the war? That we lacked the will to win, as it says in Leviticus 26:19?” What the U.S. did was essentially kick a massive problem down the road. “[This] will probably plague and haunt President Bush and America for the rest of our lives!” he wrote. A look at the darkening chaos in Iraq today shows that prediction to have been startlingly accurate.

Mr. Flurry was most critical of how, after encouraging the Kurds and Shiites to rise up against Saddam Hussein, the Bush administration abandoned them. Hussein then restarted his murderous rampage against these peoples, creating a humanitarian disaster. Mr. Flurry called this “the greatest betrayal in U.S. history.” “President Bush’s ‘new world order’ has brought some of the greatest shame on our nation’s history!” he wrote. “American leaders say the U.S. has no UN mandate to interfere in Iraq on the refugees’ behalf. This statement alone shows that we lack the will to use our power for a just cause. And if the Iraqi refugee crisis isn’t a just cause, nothing is!”

The following statement—which Mr. Flurry wrote well over three decades ago—powerfully summarizes the trepidation that has saturated America’s foreign policy in recent decades in Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine and beyond: “America still fears getting bogged down in a Vietnam-type civil war in Iraq. Even after we had them almost defenseless! That is because God has broken the pride of our power—our will to win! … America must come to see they are under a curse from God and repent of their sins” (ibid).

The fact that American actions in the 1991 Gulf War betrayed the Kurds and Shiites and left Saddam Hussein in power shows that it was, at best, another stalemate for the United States.

The years that followed revealed even more powerfully how deeply broken America’s pride in its power is. Remember the U.S.’s “nation building” effort in Somalia in 1993? It took only 29 American casualties to scrap that mission. Then the 1996 bombing of Khobar Towers in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, prompted a $353 million retreat further into the Saudi desert. When terrorists blew up U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi in 1998, President Bill Clinton responded with a wrist slap: a cruise missile strike on suspected terrorist facilities.

The United States even backed away from a conflict in Haiti, one of the poorest nations in the world. A U.S. naval assault ship was actually held at bay by a small mob of Haitians at Port au Prince in 1993. The U.S. scrapped the mission because it feared casualties.

The War on Terror

On September 11, 2001, the U.S. experienced the deadliest attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor. Islamist terrorists killed nearly 3,000 people and plunged the U.S. into full-blown war.

From the start, this war was doomed to fail. Consider the very definition America gave to it. Entrapped in political correctness, and thus uncomfortable with any unfavorable portrayals of Islam, America’s leaders defined it as a “war on terror.” This is confusing. Terror is not an enemy but a tactic. Failing to clearly identify Islamist extremism and its chief sponsoring nations as the enemy is like defining World War ii as a “war on blitzkrieg” so as not to directly implicate Germany.

Characterizations of the “terrorist threat” as vague, shadowy, elusive and ubiquitous were also misleading. The threat emanates predominantly from a few nations, such as Saudi Arabia and, above all, Iran. Just as the overnight collapse of the ussr reduced the Communist threat, ending state support of Islamist terrorism would all but end terrorism.

The trouble is, Iran has allies: most notably Russia and China. Afghanistan was friendless and powerless—so the U.S. selected it (or, more accurately, the Taliban) as the first target in the “war on terror.” In terms of contributing to global terrorism, the Taliban was insignificant compared to Iran, but this is the trouble one runs into after failing to properly define the enemy.

America’s subsequent attack on Iraq (or, more accurately, Saddam Hussein) was even more problematic because it eliminated the single greatest check on Iran, virtually guaranteeing the eventual ascendancy of the Islamic republic.

As a result of America’s failure to correctly define the enemy, in the years since 2001, the U.S. has effectively done nothing to target Iran or degrade its support of terrorism. The “war on terror” has actually left Iran stronger. Iran has directed, funded, armed and personally assisted in the Hamas and Hezbollah attacks that transformed Israel and Lebanon into battlegrounds.

Iran tests weapons capable of carrying nuclear payloads and regularly calls for Israel to be “wiped off the map.” Yet the United States still tries to reason and negotiate with Iran. As a senior official in the Israeli prime minister’s office said, “While the world is discussing where and when the next meeting with Iran will be, Iran is rapidly advancing towards obtaining a nuclear bomb.”

Even if the U.S. had won a decisive victory in its campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, it would still be far from winning the war on terror. As long as the chief sponsor of Islamist terrorism, the Islamic Republic of Iran, is still in business, the war on terror has not been won.

But the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were far from victories for the United States—they were abject defeats.

The Joe Biden administration surrendered to the Taliban and evacuated American soldiers in absurd haste to leave Afghanistan to these barbarians in 2021. This terrible defeat was a spectacle before the entire world. Many people said the debacle proved Biden’s incompetence. But this catastrophe wasn’t the result of bungling and bad judgment. It was a deliberate, planned effort to destroy America. The Biden administration left behind a staggering $85 billion worth of U.S. military equipment—including 2,000 armored vehicles, 45 Black Hawk helicopters, 208 aircraft, 10,000 air-to-ground rockets, over 2,500 bombs, and millions of U.S. dollars in cash. Victor Davis Hanson noted that the night-vision equipment, more than 20,000 grenades and 1,400 grenade-launchers, more than 7,000 machine guns and 600,000 small arms, and millions of rounds of ammunition are “the perfect equipment for jihadist terror operations and asymmetrical street fighting” (Independent Institute, Aug. 30, 2021). Overnight, America created one of the most well-funded, heavily armed terrorist nations in the world!

In Iraq, America’s loss was equally apparent. Washington actually pursued dialogue with Iran, soliciting its help in bringing the bog in Iraq under control by reining in the Shiites. It also has considered joining forces with Iran to combat the Islamic State, the Sunni terrorist group now in control of great swaths of Iraq and Syria. In order to tidy up its business in Iraq, the United States “superpower” requested aid from the world’s top state sponsor of terror!

Far from winning the war on terror, America surrendered Afghanistan and Iraq to Iran!

“The most powerful [Muslim] country in the Middle East is Iran,” Mr. Flurry wrote in a 1994 article titled “Is Iraq About to Fall to Iran?” “Can you imagine the power they would have if they gained control of Iraq, the second-largest oil producing country in the world?” You don’t have to imagine now; Iran has this much power.

Donald Trump severely criticized the Biden administration for leaving American weapons behind in Afghanistan, but as president, he is not doing enough to contain Iran. On June 22, 2025, he ordered the United States Air Force and Navy to attack three nuclear facilities in Iran under the code name Operation Midnight Hammer. Yet after an initial show of force, Trump called off further attacks in hopes that Iran would come back to the negotiating table. He naively wants to revive Obama-era nuclear negotiations in a way that will almost assuredly end with Iran becoming a nuclear-armed terrorist state.

Europe

Even more shameful has been America’s foreign policy in Europe. Its myriad infirmities have been well documented in both the Trumpet and the Plain Truth.

Just four years after World War ii ended, Mr. Armstrong wrote, “But while trusting, gullible Uncle Sam, always unable to see more than one enemy at a time, has been busy worrying about Russia, the real menace has been making diabolical and rapid headway—under cover—in Europe!” (Plain Truth, November 1949). In the June 1952 Plain Truth, Mr. Armstrong likened America’s bungling foreign policy in Europe to creating a Frankenstein monster that would eventually turn on its maker.

Gerald Flurry used that same analogy in the September-October 1995 Trumpet. He wrote about how the U.S. strongly opposed the recognition of the breakaway Yugoslav republics of Slovenia and Croatia in 1991. Yet in the face of German pressure, the U.S. caved in and offered its tacit approval. America’s recognition of those two states was the spark that ignited a succession of wars within the Balkan region during the 1990s.

Croatia sided with the Nazis during World War ii. The Croatian leader Germany supported in 1991, Franjo Tudjman, was himself a well-documented Nazi sympathizer. When war erupted, Croatia proceeded to rid its territory of Serbs. Carl Bildt, former European Community mediator in the Balkans, called it the “most efficient ethnic cleansing we’ve seen in the Balkans.”

America had effectively given its full support to the wrong side—and few commentators besides the Trumpet said anything about it.

The Trumpet has been blaring this warning for some years now. During the war in Kosovo, we exposed a further breakdown of U.S. willpower: “[G]iven the apparent lack of will to effectively deploy its military might to actually win a victory [for the right side] in its numerous military adventures in recent years, why bother to deploy force at all …?” (Trumpet, May 1999). The U.S.-led bombing campaign, in the long run, will end up hurting America far more than it did Serbia. This trend of America supporting the wrong side will have a disastrous end, according to biblical prophecy.

By the time the Ukrainian crisis erupted in 2014, America’s broken military will was on full display for the entire world to see. In the early 1990s, Ukraine had one of the most advanced nuclear arsenals in the world. With some 5,000 weapons, it was the third-largest on the planet. But that changed in 1994 when the leaders of the U.S., UK and Russia signed an agreement with Ukraine: Kyiv agreed to give up its nuclear weapons in exchange for a promise from these countries to uphold Ukraine’s territorial integrity.

Article i of the Budapest Memorandum says, “The United States of America, the Russian Federation and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine … to respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine.” Those “existing borders” included the Crimean Peninsula, as well as Donetsk and Luhansk in East Ukraine. When Russia annexed Crimea in the spring of 2014, and actively worked to destabilize the other two regions, it directly violated this deal. And the U.S., by failing to use its power against Russia, failed to live up to the spirit of its promise.

Since the spring of 2014, Russia has seized control of about 20 percent of Ukraine’s territory—including much of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. More than 46,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died trying to defend these regions, but they will not be able to reconquer them without U.S. support. U.S. President Donald Trump believes Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is “gambling with World War iii” and wants to pursue a negotiated peace with Russian President Vladimir Putin that would allow him to keep the land he has conquered. Thus, America’s involvement in Ukraine is shaping up to be another defeat.

So was Mr. Armstrong right to declare after World War ii that “America has won its last war”? Looking from Korea to Cuba to Vietnam to Iran to Lebanon to Somalia to Kosovo to Iraq to Afghanistan to Ukraine, the answer is clear. All these episodes constitute clear American political and military defeats.

Blessings and Curses

There is a reason Mr. Armstrong correctly forecast after World War ii that America would lose the will to use its power and never again win a war. He knew that when God threatened in Leviticus 26:19 to “break the pride of your power,” He was referring primarily to Britain and the United States in this modern age.

The irony is that the same God who promised to break our pride is the one who gave this tremendous power in the first place. God blessed America with unprecedented material wealth because He promised it, unconditionally, to Abraham. He did so because of Abraham’s obedience to God’s laws. That is why, up until World War ii, our peoples were richly blessed. (All of this is thoroughly explained in The United States and Britain in Prophecy. Request your free copy.)

Today, however, because of rampant sin and disobedience to His law, God is turning those blessings into curses. God gave us every imaginable good, but what have we done with those blessings? Let Mr. Armstrong explain: “Like Rome, we’ve grown fat and prosperous and lazy. … We’re the wealthiest, as compared to any other nation, and we are fast growing lazy and soft, seeking luxury and pleasure, and excitement, idleness and ease, labor-saving, step-saving devices and gadgets” (Plain Truth, February 1956). That applies today far more than it did in 1956!

Amid all this material prosperity, we have forgotten God. In fact, we increasingly see examples of active, intentional, malicious hostility toward God—a movement to systematically eliminate God from public life—to establish godlessness as the state religion! And even during those instances in which God receives a token mention, He is never acknowledged as a lawgiver or moral authority. In modern society, we feel accountable only to ourselves.

This is the reason God has been cursing the peoples of Britain and the United States. America’s string of military-political defeats since World War ii is proof of these curses! America has indeed won its last war. It was true in 1950—and true all the more so now.

Our immense wealth in tandem with our broken will is a dangerous combination. As Mr. Armstrong wrote in the June 1954 Plain Truth, aggressor nations covet that wealth. Seeing our weakness and reluctance to use our power only intensifies the desire of these aggressor nations to take that wealth—as soon as they are strong enough to do so.

That will happen—and much sooner than you might think. That is what Herbert Armstrong foresaw.

Mr. Armstrong concluded an article in the October 1954 Plain Truth with these words: “How any American—any English-speaking inheritor of God’s choicest material blessings—can, in face of such stupendous, overwhelming fulfillment of prophecy—such awe-inspiring demonstration of the power and might and faithfulness of Almighty God—accept and partake of these blessings, and then carelessly ignore God’s warning that our sins today are increasing, or fail to get to his knees before the great Almighty, and repent, and intercede in heartrending prayer for all Israelite nations, and help in every way he can to warn our people now of their impending peril, seems impossible to conceive.

“God warns us through prophecy that our sins are fast increasing. And now the day of reckoning is here! The foreign sword already has attacked us. In this fearful awesome atomic age, World War iii will start with atomic bombs dropped on [such cities as] London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, New York, Washington, Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, Pittsburgh—without warning!

“God help our nations to wake up before it’s too late!”

It is clear now that our broken-willed nations will not wake up to these ever more imminent threats. But you, as an individual, still can.

He was right that America would lose its alliance with Europe

The friendship between the U.S. and Europe is not what it appears to be.

Who would have thought, after the savagery of World War ii, that America and Germany would become allies? Yet soon after the smoke from that massive conflict cleared, Washington and Bonn laid the foundation for a close partnership. The United States established the Marshall Plan to rebuild Western Europe, especially Germany, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was launched, binding Europe and North America into a military alliance.

Biblical prophecy shows that this union was destined, from the beginning, to end in ruin. The fraying of the trans-Atlantic relationship we see today is the advancement of this inevitable ruin.

Herbert W. Armstrong had studied the Bible scriptures elucidating that truth. Under his guidance, the Plain Truth understood that the trans-Atlantic alliance would eventually rupture. “Economic recovery masks deep divisions that must eventually rip asunder the Atlantic alliance,” the Plain Truth wrote in September 1983.

In the decades since that article was written, the prophecy has greatly accelerated toward its fulfillment.

‘Can We Purchase Love With Money?’

In early 1952, as America began allowing Germany to rearm, Mr. Armstrong’s Good News magazine explained why the decision was misguided:

“The question … is causing careful observers to tremble! Does America dare arm Germany?

“Can we unite Europe and guide the colossal military machine we envision there by 1955? … Our leading generals in Europe adamantly warn that Germany is a calculated risk. What will a Germany, armed with American help, think of her new power? … Why will the diplomats think that today the hearts of the people in Germany are different from yesterday? Every one of those undemocratic nations when once armed has turned upon us. We are the hated ‘have’ nations, the ‘capitalist’ nations, the ‘imperialistic’ nations.

“The heart of the German people … has not been converted to our way of life. If they really would have come to love us since their defeat, would they now be trying to bargain for domination in Europe and threatening to withhold support from the cause of democracy against Russia? Is that the way love is manifested? Can we purchase love with money?” (Good News, April 1952; emphasis added throughout).

That was written over seven decades ago! Even back in 1952, Germany was fighting for domination of Europe—and America didn’t understand what it meant or chose not to understand. That has been Germany’s goal from the beginning.

Notice, though, how that article pinpointed the problem of America trying to buy Germany’s “love.” Prophecy reveals that this specific tendency, which grew considerably stronger in the decades that followed, was doomed from the start.

The Plain Truth wrote in February 1956: “America seems wedded to the idea that it can buy friends and allies around the world with ready American cash. We intend to hold friendly nations to us by generously supplying money and arms. But it isn’t working!”

The veracity of that statement is undeniable today. Consider the billions of dollars Washington has spent to try to buy allies such as Pakistan, Egypt and Afghanistan—nations that have marched toward radicalism regardless. American money has been pumped into numerous causes in South America, Asia and several other arenas. But none of this largesse has increased support for American policies or earned a jot of respect. The money isn’t talking. Now America is out of cash and has become desperate for foreign money to support its broken economy. These humanitarian efforts are a trap.

But biblical prophecy points in particular to the danger of America seeking an alliance with Germany. For an in-depth study of the specific scriptures that prophesy of the dangers of the U.S.-German alliance, read our booklets Nahum: An End-Time Prophecy for Germany and Ezekiel—The End-Time Prophet. (All of our literature is free.)

Scripture reveals that America would first try to strengthen this ill-fated relationship by pumping money into it, as that Plain Truth article said. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, this impulse led America—under the auspices of nato—to act as a willing lackey of Germany in the terrible Balkan Wars. The U.S.’s desire to please Germany in those wars ended up breaking the Yugoslav Republic into pieces and transforming the former Yugoslav states into virtual colonies of the rising German-led EU empire.

On December 1, 2009, the U.S. ambassador to Germany publicly declared that Germany is “Washington’s most important ally.” He said, “We need strong partners—and nowhere are there better or more committed partners than in Europe. And Germany is the centerpiece of the European Union.”

On February 2, 2013, Vice President Joe Biden echoed these sentiments in his keynote address to European leaders at the Munich Security Conference: “Simply put, President [Barack] Obama and I continue to believe that Europe is the cornerstone of our engagement with the rest of the world and is the catalyst for our global cooperation. It’s that basic. …

“[A] strong and capable Europe is profoundly in America’s interest, and I might add, presumptuously, the world’s interest. … Europe remains America’s indispensable partner of first resort.”

America no longer looks to Britain and its commonwealth for support. Until recently, U.S. leaders looked to the German-led European Union for support.

Meanwhile, as Mr. Armstrong predicted would happen, the EU’s antipathy toward America became more evident in the shadow of the global economic downturn that occurred in 2008. Europe blames the Anglo-American economic model for the crisis. It has taken draconian steps to smother New York’s and London’s financial leadership and to shift the global financial center to Brussels and Berlin. It has seized the lead as the world’s number one financial regulator and has exacted harsh penalties on giant American companies including Intel, Google and Microsoft, forcing these firms to play by European rules. As a direct consequence of the economic crash, all G-20 nations have agreed to permit the EU-controlled Financial Stability Board to influence their economies.

Evidence of Germany’s mistrust and animosity toward the United States is ample. This became especially apparent when Donald Trump became U.S. president in 2017, and even more so when he began his second term in 2025.

A Turbulent Undercurrent

In 2025, U.S. Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth referred to America’s European allies as “pathetic freeloaders.” These comments highlighted a shift in American attitudes toward Europe. Instead of viewing Germany as an indispensable partner, the Trump administration views Germany as a freeloader that should be defending itself.

The love affair between Europe and America is nearing its end as resentment on both sides poisons the trans-Atlantic partnership. After winning the 2025 German elections, Chancellor Friederich Merz said it was his “absolute priority” to make sure Europe achieves independence from the U.S.

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace called Europe’s reaction to Donald Trump’s reelection a “paradigm shift.” “For Germans, the first 100 days of President Donald Trump’s administration have felt like a brutal, multipronged assault on all three pillars of the bilateral relationship with the United States: trade, security and shared values,” wrote senior fellow Sophia Besch. “Germany is acutely vulnerable to the threat of U.S. tariffs, with exports to the United States accounting for approximately 4 percent of its [gross domestic product]. Its security and defense policy is structured primarily around nato and oriented toward sustaining a continued U.S. presence in Europe—Germany hosts the largest contingent of U.S. forces on the Continent and stations American nuclear weapons on its territory. Trump’s initial months in office have cast doubt on the future of these arrangements. … Germany is deeply worried by the United States’ attack on the international order that has helped Germans thrive after the end of the Second World War, but it has not yet given up on defending that order—it sees no viable alternatives” (April 24, 2025).

In other words, Germans are blaming Donald Trump for a breakdown in the trans-Atlantic relationship. Yet as Mr. Armstrong pointed out, the relationship was never that deep.

The March 1974 Plain Truth said, “European antagonism toward the United States and its policies is now in the open. The next few years will bring forth more misunderstanding, conflicts of interest and, at times, outright hostility between the United States and Europe. Europe—including West Germany—will have to build its own unified armed forces, including nuclear weapons. Religious as well as political forces will play a key role in the future.”

The trend that began with the Balkan Wars—of Europe co-opting American power via nato in order to serve its own interests—is changing. nato played a key role in dismembering Yugoslavia for Germany. But after Trump’s reelection, Merz warned that “nato may soon be dead.” Merz and others do not like the level of control America has in nato and would prefer the EU develop an independent military force.

The U.S. has so far lent its power to such causes without much objection. And now, German military goals are increasingly intertwined into nato’s new “strategic concept.” But the undercurrent of what Mr. Armstrong called “conflicts of interest” and “outright hostility” is becoming ever more turbulent. In fact, after President Trump clashed with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office on February 28, 2025, over how to handle the Russo-Ukrainian War, the stock of publicly traded European defense contractors like Rheinmetall soared. The U.S. is reluctant to defend Ukraine from Russia, but Europe does not mind. Many elite Germans feel their nation has gotten all it can from the U.S. and are ready to move on. Some powerful Germans have been thinking more and more about the Holy Roman Empire; they want modern Germany to assume more power of its own in the spirit of that empire. They want to establish Europe as a mighty, German-led superpower.

A Nuclear Power?

Consider this additional grave concern: Under the auspices of nato, the U.S. has hundreds of B-61 nuclear gravity bombs stored in European countries. “The U.S. has supplied some 480 B-61 thermonuclear bombs to five so-called ‘nonnuclear states,’ including Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey,” Global Research wrote in February 2010.

As Europe cannibalizes nato, we should not be surprised if it devours these nuclear weapons as well. The air forces of each of these nato nations have personnel trained in arming and delivering this hardware. The increasing merger of the defense goals shared by nato and the EU has added to the rapid drawdown of U.S. forces from Europe. This removes obstacles for Europe to deploy a nuclear-armed international force.

In fact, America is even encouraging Europe to develop such a force. In the years since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. has agreed to sell 35 F-35 fighter jets to Germany to replace its aging Tornado fighter jets. These jets are being specifically modified to carry the U.S. nuclear bombs stored in Germany in the event of a conflict.

Mr. Armstrong spoke boldly about the weapons of mass destruction America has stored in Europe.

“You may be sure the West European leaders are conferring hurriedly and secretly about how and how soon they may unite and provide a united European military force so they can defend themselves!” he wrote in the April 1980 Plain Truth. “And so they will no longer have to give in meekly to Russia! And who will they blame for their humiliation and their necessity now to have a united Europe, with a united government, a common currency and a common military force as great or greater than either the ussr or the U.S.A.? They will blame the United States! And when they are strong enough to assert themselves, [they] will first attack Britain for standing firm with the United States, and then they will return a lot of hydrogen bombs the U.S. has stored now in Europe!”

That, shockingly, is the ultimate fate of the American-European relationship!

Modern Europe is rapidly growing independent of the U.S. and is strengthening its position as a world power, just as the Plain Truth prophesied. The growing rift between the U.S. and the EU is tipping the balance of power decisively in Europe’s—particularly Germany’s—favor. This should stir the deepest alarm within America’s leaders, if they only knew where it was leading! They ignore Mr. Armstrong’s warnings at their own peril.

He was right that America would lose its maritime possessions

The decline of U.S.-British control over the world’s sea gates

Prior to World War ii, Britain and the United States controlled every major sea gate in the world: Panama, Hong Kong, Suez, Cape of Good Hope, Malta, Papua New Guinea, Timor, West Indies, Gibraltar, Falklands, Cyprus, Gulf of Guinea, Maldives, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Gulf of Aden and others. These “gates,” as they are called in the Bible, were major factors in the economic success of the British and American peoples and were indispensable to Allied success during World War ii. Since that time, however, the U.S. and Britain have, without a fight, surrendered their control as gatekeepers.

Herbert W. Armstrong listed a few of the most strategic passageways in the October 1954 Plain Truth: the Panama Canal, Suez, Singapore, Cyprus and Gibraltar. The U.S. and Britain gained control of these and many others after 1800 because of the unconditional birthright promises God made to Abraham’s seed. One of the major blessings promised to modern-day Israel (the U.S. and Britain primarily) was the control of the “gates” of their enemies (Genesis 22:17; 24:60). The fact that our peoples acquired these strategic gateways itself proves our biblical identity. “We must be modern Israel,” Mr. Armstrong wrote.

Further proof is found in the fact that our peoples have since lost control of those passageways—because that is precisely what God said would happen. Mr. Armstrong wrote in 1980, “As the ‘pride of our power’ continues to be broken, as the British continue to lose their foreign sea gates and possessions around the Earth, as America signs away ownership of the Panama Canal—control over this vital sea gate … this focal prophecy alone represents giant proof as to where the modern ‘remnant’ of the peoples of Israel resides today!” (The United States and Britain in Prophecy).

Since Mr. Armstrong understood that the Bible prophesied the latter-day rise and fall of the American and British peoples, the Plain Truth was able to predict the loss of several vital sea gates well in advance of their occurrence.

The ‘Highway to India’

“The British are giving the Suez back to Egypt,” the October 1954 Plain Truth said. Less than two years later, on July 26, 1956, President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt took a calculated gamble and seized control of the canal from the British. Ten days later, on August 5, Mr. Armstrong wrote an article that appeared in the September 1956 Plain Truth. He said the Suez crisis was of “life-and-death concern for Great Britain.” The British Empire, he explained, had attained greatness largely because of its vast shipping by sea. “If Nasser now can take over and retain Suez, Britain’s lifeline is severed.” In effect, Mr. Armstrong was saying it would signal the end of the British Empire.

“To allow the canal to become the complete property of Egypt, with all rights of control, operation and management in Nasser’s power,” Mr. Armstrong wrote, “would only give this upstart dictator a weapon by which he could sever the very lifeline of the British Commonwealth of Nations …. The Suez Canal is one of the major factors in [Britain’s and America’s] growth to economic power and national greatness never before equaled by any nation.”

Nearly three months after that article was written, on October 31, British and French forces invaded Egypt for the purpose of regaining control of the Suez sea gate. But the effort was halfhearted, and Egypt retaliated by sinking 40 of their ships. The United Nations, led by the U.S., then intervened to arrange a “truce”—which amounted to little more than a British defeat. British forces withdrew by the end of the year.

In the article Mr. Armstrong wrote on August 5, 1956, months before the conflict was resolved, he said, “Britain has lost control of Suez for the rest of this age, and will not be able to gain it back.”

He was right. Britain never regained control of the Suez. The strategic waterway remains under Egyptian ownership and operation. He was also correct to say the clash was of “life-and-death” import for Britain’s empire. Ten years after the Suez crisis, on July 31, 1966, the British Colonial Office in London was shut down.

The British Empire was officially dead.

Loss of the ‘Lion City’

The February 1956 Plain Truth declared that Britain was “destined to lose … Singapore.” Seven years later, in 1963, Singapore took a great stride away from Britain by joining the Malaysian Federation. Two years after that, it withdrew from the federation to unilaterally declare independence. The Plain Truth told its readers that this was yet another British defeat.

Britain had acquired this little island gateway linking the Indian Ocean to the Far East in an 1824 treaty. Singapore had prospered under colonial rule. It had benefited the British as well as the thousands of Chinese and Malay immigrants who flocked there for higher wages. Besides its vital importance during World War ii, the island enclave also enabled the British to keep peace on the Malay Peninsula after the war. By 1960, the British had finally crushed Communist attempts to conquer the island.

Just a few years later, however, they surrendered Singapore without a fuss. “Maintaining the security of a vast area of the world is tragically no longer deemed important to many,” the Plain Truth wrote in March 1969. “The British are voluntarily giving up one of the world’s most strategic ‘gates.’”

The ‘Big Ditch’

Before the Panama Canal was dug, only a handful of human endeavors had ever aimed to transform the basic topography of planet Earth. Men had accomplished numerous marvels of engineering—transcontinental railways, mammoth dams and bridges, and breathtaking royal residences—but none had done anything as foundational as slicing apart the very continents.

Several powers over the centuries have recognized the advantages that a canal through Central America would bring—including Spain, Scotland, Germany and France—but none successfully carried out the project. But America, under President Theodore Roosevelt, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars and over 5,000 lives, proved capable. Completed in 1914, the 51-mile-long marvel of engineering—designated one of the “Seven Wonders of the Modern World”—halved the time required for ships to sail between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. It was a great boon to the U.S. and global economies and also to American morale.

But Mr. Armstrong knew that America’s control over it would not last. “America, before this is all over, is going to lose the Panama Canal unless it repents,” the March 1964 Plain Truth said. Again, in November 1965: “The United States has done nothing but hedge, crawl, dodge, yield, relinquish, back down and give up ever since we began to build [the canal]!”

Then, two years before President Jimmy Carter signed the controversial treaty with Panama promising U.S. withdrawal by the century’s end, the Plain Truth said, “Going … Going … Gone? … Mark my word: The canal will go—if not soon, eventually” (April 5, 1975).

Knowing God had broken the pride of America’s power, the Plain Truth asked, “Can God keep His word? Has He the power to interfere in the course of nations to break our power? Will God make good on His divine promise of punishment upon our peoples? The answer is a thundering yes!” (November 1965).

The Plain Truth correctly foretold how the U.S. would lose it: “Panama is destined to go—sooner or later. But not in glorious and heroic defeat after faithful resistance—but in utter ignominy. In useless and helpless sacrifice—in disgrace and shame” (ibid).

The Plain Truth was also right about who would fill the power void left in the Canal Zone: “And—irony of ironies—we could even see engineers, pilots and technicians from the Communist world manning the canal jobs vacated by Americans!” (July 1977).

It is astonishing that all of these detailed predictions have now come to pass. Despite having completed the mammoth project that no other world power could complete, the U.S. gave it up without a fight—in utter ignominy. “We have given the farm away without a shot,” said Trent Lott, the Senate majority leader at the time of the transfer.

It was indeed people with a Communist history who filled many jobs vacated by Americans. A Hong Kong-based port-facilities company, with tight connections in Beijing, gained control of the canal’s ports of entry and exit—giving China power to decide who enters and exits.

In our January 2000 issue, we reminded our readers about what we have said all along about why the United States lost its most strategic sea gate: “God has ‘broken’ the pride in our power. That is why our people are not stirred by what is happening in Panama. Something is terribly wrong with us! We are afraid to use the power God gave us. … How long must God curse us before we awaken? That is the big question each one of us must answer.”

President Donald Trump is the first U.S. president since Carter to publicly lament the loss of the Panama Canal. In a December 21, 2024, Truth Social post, Trump said he was concerned about the high fees American shipping companies must pay Panama to use the canal and warned that China was dominating this strategic sea gate. He said Panama must run its canal in a neutral manner, otherwise “we will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to us, in full, and without question. To the officials of Panama, please be guided accordingly.”

In response, Panama has backed away from its alliance with China somewhat. But it has not given the Panama Canal back to the United States. Therefore, this vital sea gate remains lost and is vulnerable to being used against the U.S.

The ‘Island of Aphrodite’

Cyprus, the largest island in the eastern Mediterranean, has for millenniums functioned as a bridge between Europe and the Middle East. Throughout the epochs of history, the strategic chunk of real estate has been controlled by the Hittites, Assyrians, Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, the Byzantine Empire, Crusaders, Venetians and Ottomans. Then in the late 1800s, with the agreement of the Ottoman government, Britain took control of the island.

Cyprus’s status as a protectorate of the British Empire ended in 1914 after the Ottomans declared war on the Entente powers, which included Britain. Britain annexed the island and it later became a British colony in 1925. The “unsinkable aircraft carrier” was a vital hub from which the British could protect the Suez Canal and project power throughout the Mediterranean.

But Mr. Armstrong knew it would not last. Britain “seems destined to lose Cyprus,” the February 1956 Plain Truth said.

The British faced major political problems in trying to keep the Greek-Cypriots and Turkish-Cypriots in harmony and also in attempting to manage pressures for independence from both sides. In April 1957, after Britain’s weakness had been exposed by the Suez debacle, the British succumbed to these pressures and decided that “bases in Cyprus” was an acceptable alternative to “Cyprus as a base.” At the stroke of midnight on August 16, 1960, just as Mr. Armstrong predicted, Great Britain surrendered all control of the island.

But Cyprus’s independence didn’t last long.

As the years went by, the European phoenix began to rise from the ashes once again, and, as several of its previous incarnations had done, Europe set its sights on Cyprus. At the Copenhagen Summit in December 2002, Brussels invited Cyprus to join the European Union. Less than two years later, its membership was official.

In March 2013, cash-strapped Cyprus accepted a massive bailout deal from the European Union. Spiegel Online said the move meant Cyprus “will effectively lose its sovereignty.” The Trumpet wrote, “This Cyprus takeover marks the beginning of one of the greatest military missions in our time. Cyprus provides an intelligence outpost, a naval base, a launching pad and an aircraft carrier for Europe to send its forces into the Middle East” (May-June 2013).

At present, Cyprus still houses British intelligence installations and radar stations, but having been engulfed by Europe, the island is effectively under Berlin’s control. The transfer of Cyprus from Britain to Europe is evidence of the fulfillment of two of Mr. Armstrong’s long-standing major predictions: the UK’s decline and Germany’s rise.

The Rock of Gibraltar

Of the major sea gates Mr. Armstrong listed in the October 1954 Plain Truth, only the Rock of Gibraltar has yet to be surrendered. But there is no shortage of evidence to show that Britain’s grip on it is loosening.

“If it were expedient, politically or otherwise, Britain would most probably relinquish Gibraltar,” the Plain Truth declared in September 1974. “In the long run, the British government fully intends to negotiate away Gibraltar,” the August 1982 issue said.

The first chinks in the British armor came to light in 1985 when London and Madrid discussed an agreement to tackle the question of sovereignty over Gibraltar. “For us, this really opens a process of decolonizing the Rock,” the Spanish Foreign Ministry said of the discussions.

Which nation do the people of Gibraltar prefer alignment with? The Rock is actually more patriotically British than anywhere in the British Isles. The Union Jack flutters everywhere on the territory. Fish and chips shops and pubs are ubiquitous. And every time the people—now numbering around 30,000—are asked about the matter, close to 100 percent of them vote to remain under British sovereignty.

But as Spanish demands grow louder, British backbone grows weaker.

In 2002, British Prime Minister Tony Blair tried to hand Gibraltar over to Spain because he viewed it as an annoying “obstacle” hindering a warmer relationship between the UK and the European Union. The secret deal ultimately failed, but Spanish leaders took encouragement from the news and began pushing to allow only Britain and Spain to discuss the sovereignty of the Rock, instead of including Gibraltarian authorities in three-way talks. This approach would allow Madrid to capitalize on the growing British weakness.

In July 2013, Spain ratcheted up its saber-rattling over Gibraltar to a new level, with its Foreign Ministry saying “the party is over” for the peninsula. Madrid unveiled proposals to close Spanish airspace to flights to or from Gibraltar and to impose hefty border fees to anyone entering or leaving the peninsula. The ruckus was mostly an attempt by Spanish politicians to divert attention from Madrid’s faltering economy and scandals, but it shows that Spain has not forgotten about the Rock.

In response to the Spanish frenzy, Peter Hain, who served as minister for Europe under Tony Blair, said that if Britain were to share sovereignty over Gibraltar with Spain there would be “no negatives at all.” Such statements show the faltering will of many Britons to hold on to Gibraltar.

In August 2013, Gibraltar’s Panorama wrote about another way Britain could lose the Rock: “[I]f the UK votes to withdraw from Europe, [it] could plunge Gibraltar into social, political and economic chaos. Gibraltarians are European citizens. If the UK leaves the EU, Gibraltarians will still remain European citizens because you cannot strip a people of their citizenship. Therefore a decolonized, independent Gibraltar, albeit with links to the UK and the British crown as now, would be a nation of European citizens even if the UK withdrew from the EU. … [W]e’d still be European citizens as too would be the Catalans and indeed the Scots if they too opted for independence from their EU member states. Just where that leaves us is anybody’s guess.”

Britain did leave the EU on January 31, 2020, so Gibraltar’s standing is now in doubt. Negotiations for a post-Brexit deal are ongoing and will almost assuredly end with the citizens of Gibraltar having to abide by EU regulations they did not have to obey during the days of Britain’s greatness.

Other Major Losses

The February 1956 Plain Truth declared that Britain’s “hold on South Africa is slipping fast.” South Africa was a proud possession of the British Empire, controlling the waterway around the southern tip of Africa. But the expulsion of South Africa from the Commonwealth in 1961 officially ended British influence over the Cape of Good Hope. The surrender of South Africa to the Communist-influenced African National Congress in 1994 dissolved what remained of British sway over the vital hub.

Without a struggle, the British gave Hong Kong over to Chinese rule in 1997. In receiving Hong Kong, nicknamed the “Pearl of the Orient,” China not only inherited one of the world’s wealthiest trade centers, but it also took over a $380 million naval base built there by the British. “Never before has so much, used by so many, gone for so little,” declared a member of Britain’s Ministry of Defense. “With the end of British rule in Hong Kong,” the Trumpet wrote, “we see the final act performed in the closure of an empire—a God-given empire—and the hastening of the fulfillment of the prophesied curses upon a spoiled and ungrateful nation, the British people” (June 1997).

The island of Malta is another strategic outpost once in British control. During World War ii, Britain’s possession of the island was vital to its success in the Mediterranean. In 1964, however, Britain granted the Maltese political independence. In 1979, the last remaining British troops withdrew from the island, prompting Malta’s prime minister to declare it their “Day of Freedom.” Commenting on the loss of Malta and its Mediterranean island neighbor, Cyprus, the Plain Truth said, “British sea power … has now virtually disappeared from the Mediterranean, once called a ‘British lake’” (September 1979).

Even the lone sea gate victory over the past 50 years did not come without embarrassment. In April 1982, Argentina temporarily seized control of the Falkland Islands from Britain. Located about 250 miles off Argentina’s southern coast, this sea gate gives Britain control of the Straits of Magellan. While the British response to the insurrection defeated the Argentines, it was by no means easy. Argentina downed 34 British aircraft and sank 7 ships, killing 255 British servicemen and 3 Falkland Islanders. Argentina’s decision to challenge Britain was a sobering indicator of just how much damage had been done to Britain’s image in previous sea gate handovers.

More recently, Argentina has renewed its efforts to force Britain to yield control of the Falklands. In 2006, Argentine President Nestor Kirchner warned Britain of a “drastic change” in Argentina’s efforts to gain sovereignty over the islands, launching a parliamentary commission to press the country’s claims. In 2008, in a speech marking the 26th anniversary of Argentina’s failed attempt to conquer the Falklands, Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner stated that her nation’s claim to the islands was “inalienable.” Vice President Julio Cobos spelled out what Buenos Aires had in mind: “We must recover this territory that is ours, that belongs to us.” The following year, Argentina implemented measures against the Falklands’ fishing and other industries. Argentina said the economic warfare measures would remain in place until Britain agreed to enter into talks on Argentina’s claim of sovereignty. Like Gibraltar, the Falklands’ days under British rule are numbered.

We could go on with details about Sri Lanka, Bab el-Mandeb, the Gulf of Guinea and more, but the point is this: During the last half of the 20th century, Britain and the United States surrendered almost every critical sea gate in the world. Herbert Armstrong prophesied of these strategic losses because he relied on the Bible as his guide to understand world events.

On March 21, 2025, the British government decided to hand over control of the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean to Mauritius. The legal process has not yet finalized it, but Britain’s intent is clear. This sea gate is of minor importance compared to some of the other gates lost by America and Britain, but the fact that it is the last piece of land with sun shining on it when night finally engulfs all of Britain’s territories was significant. When this deal is complete, the sun literally will set on the British Empire for the first time in 200 years.

The sun has symbolically set on the British Empire, Mr. Armstrong wrote in the Plain Truth nearly half a century ago. And because the U.S. came to power a little later than Britain, its setting sun is just behind Britain’s. Both nations have long since lost the pride they once had in their power. God said this would happen because of their rampant sin and rebellion against His law. For these reasons, as Mr. Armstrong concluded in the September 1966 Plain Truth, “[M]idnight is fast approaching.”

He was right that the radical left would sabotage the U.S.

Another remarkable forecast taking on new relevance in our day

Imagine the United States allying with Russia. If you were alive when Nazi Germany was rampaging across Europe during World War ii, you didn’t have to imagine it. You saw it: The world’s greatest free-market economy forged a “strange alliance” with the world’s greatest Communist state, the Soviet Union.

When this happened, a peculiar phenomenon surged across America: a wave of popular emotional fervor for the Soviets. Influential men and media fawned over Joseph Stalin. President Franklin Roosevelt appointed kgb defector Harry L. Hopkins as U.S. secretary of Commerce and released Communist Party usa leader Earl Browder from prison to promote “national unity” between American Communists and the public.

Yet even during this trying and confusing time, one strong voice cried out a warning against not only the imminent fascist threat from Germany but also the less-understood Communist threat from the Soviet Union.

America emerged from World War ii victorious. It assumed leadership of the free world and was rivaled only by the Soviet Union. But even at America’s political, economic and military pinnacle, Herbert W. Armstrong warned that the nation would be invaded by a revived Holy Roman Empire led by Germany. And before that, America’s rejection of God would allow communism to weaken the nation so that it could be invaded.

“Communism is a worldwide political movement, organized inside many countries,” he wrote in the April-May 1944 Plain Truth. “From official Communist literature anyone can learn, if he wishes to know the truth, that communism is a plan, in action, for the violent overthrow of capitalism and the capitalistic governments.”

During and after the Second World War, Mr. Armstrong dogmatically proclaimed the biblical truth that Russia would not attack America militarily before the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Instead, he revealed that Russia would wage a psychological warfare of propaganda, infiltration, subversion and demoralization. The Russians would attack “our minds, our moral and spiritual values, rather than our bodies and our earthly possessions.”

“What we fail to grasp, in the struggle with Russia, is this: We are not fighting a single nation in a military war, but a gigantic worldwide, plain-clothes army, masquerading as a political party, seeking to conquer the world with an entirely new kind of warfare,” Mr. Armstrong wrote in 1956. “It’s a kind of warfare we don’t understand or know how to cope with. It uses every diabolical means to weaken us from within, sapping our strength, perverting our morals, sabotaging our educational system, wrecking our social structure, destroying our spiritual and religious life, weakening our industrial and economic power, demoralizing our armed forces, and finally, after such infiltration, overthrowing our government by force and violence! All this, cleverly disguised as a harmless political party! Communism is worldwide psychological warfare!”

Mr. Armstrong warned of a time when end-time Israel (particularly Britain and America) would become “mixed up” ideologically “with foreigners” (Hosea 7:8; Moffatt). He pointed to Hosea 7:8-13, a passage warning that Britain and America would “seek alliances with foreign nations, forsaking God” (ibid). He noted how this passage shows these alliances would “eat away” America’s strength “unknown to him” (verse 9; Moffatt).

Subsequent events have shown that America’s dalliance with communism has perverted its morals, weakened its economic power, and eaten away its strength. This is a tragic story, but America was warned!

The First Stage of Subversion

Thirty-six years after Mr. Armstrong first started warning American radio audiences about communism in 1934, kgb Agent Yuri Bezmenov defected from the Soviet Union and escaped to Canada. After his defection, Bezmenov went to great lengths to warn the people of America that they were at war with communism. Like Mr. Armstrong said, this was not a war of guns and tanks but a war of ideological subversion.

According to Bezmenov, the subversion of foreign nations was so important to the Soviet kgb that most of the notorious spy agency’s resources were allocated to propaganda activities. “Only about 15 percent of time, money and manpower is spent on espionage as such,” he told G. Edward Griffin in a 1984 interview. “The other 85 percent is a slow process which we call either ideological subversion or ‘active measures.’”

Subversion, Bezmenov said, is a long-term process involving four steps: 1) demoralization, 2) destabilization, 3) crisis and 4) normalization.

The first of these steps, demoralization, is a program designed to “change the perception of reality of every American to such an extent that despite the abundance of information no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interest of defending themselves, their families, their community and their country” (ibid).

“It takes about 15 to 20 years to demoralize a nation,” Bezmenov wrote in his book Love Letter to America. “Why that many (or few)? Simple: This is the minimum number of years needed to ‘educate’ one generation of students in a target country (America, for example) and expose them to the ideology of the subverter” (emphasis added).

Mr. Armstrong also warned of this infiltration of America. “I was saying over the air, and writing, back in 1934, that the Communist unwavering strategy was, as a first offensive toward world domination, propaganda,” he wrote in a 1980 issue of the Worldwide News. “They began sowing the seeds of their Communist atheistic education all over the United States—especially among college professors and students.”

“They invaded American university campuses, full force,” he continued, “and the U.S. universities trustingly let them in.”

These reeducation methods took deep root in America during the 1960s and ’70s. Bezmenov warned that kgb agents and their socialistic “fellow travelers” would use abstract art, perverted music, pornographic images, homosexual rights, racist politics, pacifist foreign policy and socialist economics to demoralize America.

This was the era when future U.S. President Barack Obama fell under the influence of Frank Marshall Davis, a radical black pornographer and Communist Party usa member who believed the greatest threat to the world wasn’t the Soviet menace but “Anglo-American imperialist domination.” Obama’s grandfather Stanley Dunham introduced him, thinking Davis could act as a father-figure. So, like many other American youth in the 1960s and ’70s, Obama was indoctrinated in Communist philosophy from a young age.

Shortly before a 10-year-old Barack Obama met Frank Marshall Davis, Mr. Armstrong rhetorically warned: “Why are our people unable to recognize the Communist line—the Communist plan and conspiracy—in college and university riots, in propaganda accusing ‘police brutality,’ in ‘black power,’ ‘black panther’ and other slogans, even in ‘civil disobedience’ and ‘nonviolent’ movements of protest which lead to violence?”

Mr. Armstrong answered this question with this shocking truth: “The guiding hand in student revolt is the Communist Party. Many students, their emotions stirred and enraged to violence, do not themselves realize this. Yet actually, these young leaders of the ‘New Left’ movement are going beyond the Communist Party. Their plan is to stir up college-age students to revolt first and the[n] teenage high school adolescents. If they can corrupt and/or win over tomorrow’s students, they will gain control” (Plain Truth, March 1969).

Seeing the bigger picture, Mr. Armstrong understood that Communist demoralization tactics originated from a higher source than Karl Marx or the kgb. “[C]ommunism is the devil’s effort, through his demon-inspired human tools, to take from us this greatest national and economic blessing God ever conferred on any people!” he wrote in the January 1949 Plain Truth. Even though the Soviet Union fell before its subversion efforts could progress to the stage of “destabilization” and “crisis,” the effects of Satan-inspired demoralization tactics are very much alive in America today. Marxist leaders controlled the U.S. government during the presidencies of Barack Obama and Joe Biden and still control much of U.S. media and academia today.

Corruption of Modern Education

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, documents from the Soviet archives revealed the Communist Party usa received $2 million to $3 million a year from the Kremlin to further its subversion activities.

Most of the efforts put forth by the Kremlin, the U.S. Communist Party and their “fellow travelers” went not toward traditional espionage but toward the infiltration of American education. According to Yuri Bezmenov, the main methods of Soviet demoralization were student exchanges with Moscow, the flooding of college campuses with Marxist literature, international seminars with Soviet participation, the infiltration of universities with radical leftists (often unknowingly under the guidance of kgb subverters), and the establishment of Communist-staffed newspapers and organization of “study groups” to disseminate Soviet propaganda.

In 1976, Barack Obama attended one of these “study groups,” a Marxist-socialist fellowship at Occidental College founded by John Drew called the Democratic Socialist Alliance. In a radio interview with Dr. Paul Kengor on the Glen Meakem Program, Drew explained that in 1980, his girlfriend at the time, Caroline Boss, introduced the 19-year-old Obama to him as a fellow Marxist. When Obama predicted a violent people’s revolution, Drew was surprised. By this time in his life, Drew had abandoned the violent, revolutionary style of Marxist-Leninism in favor of a more gradualist approach espoused by Herbert Marcuse.

Obama’s experience was not uncommon. “Before World War ii the Communist Party in the United States was making great headway,” Mr. Armstrong wrote in the April 1980 Plain Truth. “They began infiltrating the colleges and universities. If they could not ‘convert’ professors, they worked on students who would become teachers later. Thus they were recruiting teachers to teach their doctrine all over the United States.”

According to a former staff director of a Senate investigations subcommittee, between 1935 and 1953, the Communist Party “enlisted the support of at least 3,500 professors—many of them as dues-paying members, many others as fellow travelers, some as out-and-out espionage agents, some as adherents of the party line in varying degrees, and some as the unwitting dupes of subversion” (J. B. Matthews, “Communism and the Colleges,” American Mercury, May 1953).

The ultimate goal of communism is a “utopian” society where every individual is completely reliant on society (the Communist Party). This is why the Marxist-Leninist concept of education emphasizes “mass character” and “collectivism” over “individual abilities.” For a collectivist society to truly succeed, it needs more than just a generation of people who don’t want to support themselves: It needs a generation of people who cannot support themselves!

This is the direction many liberals want America to go. In the words of Bezmenov, “The American romance with state-run education as encouraged by kgb subverters has already produced generations of graduates who cannot spell, cannot find Nicaragua on a world map, cannot think creatively and independently. I wonder if Albert Einstein would have arrived at his theory of relativity if he had been educated in one of today’s American public schools. Most likely he would have ‘discovered’ marijuana and variant methods of sexual intercourse instead.”

Wrecking the Economy

“Communism, of course, is many things,” Mr. Armstrong wrote in the February 1962 Plain Truth. “It is a doctrine …. It is a revolutionary program. It is relentless class war. It is a radical philosophy of history. It is a radical philosophy of society. It is a social system. It is an economic system. It is a political strategy. It is a world conspiracy.”

As “an economic system,” communism pits the poorer classes against those who have been economically more successful by calling for the redistribution of wealth from the property-owning class to the wage-labor class. To accomplish this redistribution of wealth, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote in The Communist Manifesto that private land ownership must be abolished, a heavily progressive income tax must be instituted, and all factories and financial institutions must be nationalized.

The mantra of Marxist economics is: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” In other words, the wealth of those with more “ability” is redistributed to those with more “need.” This philosophy directly contradicts Jesus Christ’s teaching, as taught in the parable of the pounds (Luke 19:12-27), in which each of Christ’s servants is rewarded differently based on how much he produced with what he was given.

The main reason Marxism doesn’t work is that human beings lack incentive to work when they don’t receive the benefits for their labor. 1 Timothy 5:8 says, “But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.” By contrast, Marxism teaches people to rely on others to care for them. It is possibly the greatest enemy of personal responsibility ever invented.

The Soviet Union fell because of Russia’s enthusiastic embrace of Marxist-Leninist economics. As Russian economist Grigory Yavlinsky, an adviser to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, said: “The Soviet system is not working because the workers are not working.”

Despite the economic disaster that befell the Soviet Union, a shocking number of American economists cling to this socialist movement with Marxist traditions. The current political environment of the United States exalts many Communist ideals. Barack Obama appointed many Communist-influenced people to prominent government positions, and President Donald Trump has not been able to remove all of them.

Herbert Armstrong warned that Communist economics would sap America’s strength and weaken its economic power. “Satan is not a visible red devil with tail, horns and a pitchfork,” he wrote in the October 1951 Plain Truth. “The real Satan is invisible. The world doesn’t see him or recognize his works. … It doesn’t grasp the diabolical deception of communism—Satan’s economic delusion, employing propaganda based on false economies as its first arm of attack ….”

The Marxist Plot to Abolish the Family

Herbert Armstrong also warned that Communist subversion would use “every diabolical means” to pervert “our morals,” wreck “our social structure,” and destroy “our spiritual and religious life.”

Perhaps the most “diabolical” of these means is the Marxist plot to destroy the family. The Communist Manifesto derides the family as a capitalist institution based “on private gain.” Marriage, it says, is but the “hypocritical” concealment of private prostitution. The authors hoped and predicted that both “bourgeois family” and “bourgeois marriage” would disappear with the departure of private capital.

Throughout the 1960s and into the ’70s, Soviet front groups were working throughout America to destroy traditional marriage. Federal Bureau of Investigation informant Larry Grathwohl penetrated the revolutionary Communist group Weather Underground. After palling around with Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn and their crew for months, Grathwohl wrote his report, “Bringing Down America: An fbi Informer With the Weathermen.” The report reveals that the Weather Underground network was determined to abolish monogamous marriage, which they viewed as a repressive remnant of male and white supremacy.

In his book The Naked Communist, author Willard Cleon Skousen identified 45 Communist goals for the ideological subversion of America. These goals were read on the floor of Congress on January 10, 1963. Among them are discrediting the family as an institution, encouraging promiscuity and easy divorce, emphasizing the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents, promoting pornography, and presenting homosexuality as “normal, natural, healthy.” These are all designed to advance the destruction of marriage and family.

Under the influence of Marxist philosophy and Soviet subversion tactics, American educators have spent decades trumpeting sexual liberation, militant feminism and homosexual rights. All this has been done under the banner of freedom, but the truth is that these movements have served as Trojan horses in a far more sinister plot to abolish marriage and destroy the nuclear family!

In Karl Marx’s words: “Communism abolishes eternal truths. It abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience.”

Or, in Mr. Armstrong’s words, “Communism is the vulture of decadent, dying politics, religion and society” (Plain Truth subscriber letter, Nov. 24, 1967).

Herbert Armstrong elaborated further in a 1979 World Tomorrow television broadcast. “Now, Satan has a kingdom; he’s the god of the world, and he’s the invisible ruler of the world, and the whole world is under his sway, by God’s permission,” he said. “Satan can’t do anything God does not permit because high above all rule is that of God, and God is permitting certain things for a reason that we learn by experience.

“Jesus said, ‘If a kingdom be divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand’—and that’s a good thing to remember. If the United States gets divided too much between the idea of freedom and the idea of communism, this country could not stand.” Now, over four decades later, it is evident that the United States is very much divided between “the idea of freedom and the idea of communism.”

Because Americans have rejected God and allowed Satan-inspired Communist philosophy to creep into the nation, God will allow this experience to teach America the natural consequences of broken law!

Talk of equality sounds noble, but Mr. Armstrong warned that Communist “equality” was only a means to an end. “As fostered by the Soviet Union,” he wrote in 1949, “communism is launched as a worldwide class struggle, pitting the poorer class against those who have been economically more successful, arousing class prejudice, stirring up race hatreds. While they pretend to stand for peace, they engender only strife, and they feed like a vulture on poverty, discontent, discouragement, confusion and chaos.”

He warned, “Communism is the devil’s effort, through his demon-inspired human tools, to take from us this greatest national and economic blessing God ever conferred on any people!” (Plain Truth, January 1949).

Looking at America today, you have to admit once again that he was right! The second Trump presidential administration is trying to purge Communist thinking from the government, but a century of Communist subversion will not be rolled back so easily. Communism has already weakened America to the point where a revived Holy Roman Empire could defeat and conquer what is left of America’s national strength. Unless the nation repents, that time is just ahead.

He was right that the United Nations was destined for ‘total failure’

Since its inaugural meeting, Mr. Armstrong knew the UN would fail miserably at peacemaking.

In 1945, the nations of the world looked over the global rubble brought about by Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in World War ii and declared, “Never again.” They announced their solution to war and injustice in a San Francisco conference: the United Nations. Herbert W. Armstrong obtained press credentials for the event. His verdict: “I do not see peace being germinated here, but the seeds of the next war! … [T]he United Nations conference was producing but strife and bickering, and was destined from its inception to end in total failure. Yet world leaders were pronouncing it the world’s last hope—with the only alternative annihilation of humanity!”

Mr. Armstrong summarized his views of the conference: “Already I see the clouds of World War iii gathering at this conference. I saw it first as it was injected indirectly into every press conference. We learn of it in private talks with delegates in hotel lobbies. The nations can have peace—if they want it. But they don’t want it. They want gain at the expense of others.”

The UN’s failure is a theme Mr. Armstrong would return to in his coverage decades later. In the January 1977 Plain Truth, he wrote: “The United Nations won’t be able to bring peace. The aggressor nations—and we are so gullible we never recognize them until after they plunge the world into another war—will go right on with their scheming and diabolical planning for world rule.”

By the time Mr. Armstrong died in 1986, the UN’s list of failures was long. Communist China successfully pushed UN peacekeepers out of North Korea during the Korean War; the modern oppression of North Korea’s millions still testifies to the UN’s failure. The UN could do nothing to stop or fix the Vietnam War. Neither did it prevent the various Arab-Israeli wars or any of the other major conflicts that have erupted in its 80-plus years of existence.

However, events since Mr. Armstrong’s death have vindicated his words even more. Since 1986, the UN has proved itself not only failing at the purpose of its existence but even contributing to atrocities.

‘First Military Victim of World War III’

As communism fell in Eastern Europe in the 1990s, Yugoslavia plunged into ethnic infighting. Starting in 1991, a decade of bloody war and ethnic cleansing split the country up into Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, Kosovo and North Macedonia.

The United States, Russia, most of Western Europe and the rest of the world originally opposed Yugoslavia’s breakup. Yet in 1991, Germany and the Vatican unilaterally recognized Croatia and Slovenia’s independence. This led the rest of the West to follow suit, culminating in nato interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo. Today, Croatia and Slovenia are members of the German-led European Union, while Bosnia is governed by a German “high representative” whose authority supersedes the country’s elected officials. (Learn more in Gerald Flurry’s free booklet Germany’s Conquest of the Balkans.)

Yugoslavia was postwar Germany’s first major intervention in a European country. U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher said “the Germans bear a particular responsibility” for what happened in Yugoslavia. Because of this, Mr. Flurry called Yugoslavia “the first military victim of World War iii.”

The United Nations was formed specifically to stop aggressor nations like Germany from repeating what they did in World War ii. Yugoslavia, as a UN member state, was entitled to UN protection for having its sovereignty violated. Yet what did the UN do? It kept silent while Germany again started conquering Europe under its watch.

Even more: UN peacekeepers enforced Kosovo’s separation from Serbia. UN peacekeepers enforced Bosnia’s integration with the rest of Europe. The UN gave Germany legitimacy for its reprehensible actions in the Balkans.

‘The Worst Foreign-Policy Blunder’

In 2015, the Islamic Republic of Iran was an isolated pariah state because of its rogue nuclear program. In 2016, that pariah status all but evaporated, largely because of the UN.

Iran announced its nuclear weapons program in 1984. Iran’s theocratic regime believes “Allah” obligates it to export jihad and Islamic revolution to the rest of the world. In 1984, President Ali Khamenei, now Iran’s supreme leader, called the nuclear program the “only way to secure the very essence of the Islamic revolution from the schemes of its enemies, especially the United States and Israel, and prepare it for the emergence of the Imam Mahdi,” the messiah figure in Iran’s variant of Islam.

The world saw how dangerous it would be to let Iran obtain a nuclear weapon. Throughout the 2000s and 2010s, the UN Security Council reacted to Iran’s nuclear enrichment and missile development by limiting its ability to trade with other nations.

But on Jan. 16, 2016, those restrictions evaporated as part of U.S. President Barack Obama’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Iran agreed to limit nuclear enrichment and dispose of certain nuclear technologies in exchange for removal of UN sanctions.

Mr. Flurry called this nuclear deal “the worst foreign-policy blunder in American history.” Iran’s radical theocratic regime had not changed its goals of perpetual war with the West or of sowing chaos to prepare for its messiah. Even disregarding Iran’s untrustworthy reputation, the agreement had enough loopholes for Iran to continue its program. Examples include the “sunset clause” ending the threat of snapback sanctions, or allowing Iran to close any site it deemed a “non-nuclear military site” from international inspectors. All the while, the removal of sanctions flooded Iran with cash. This allowed it to send millions of dollars to terrorist groups abroad.

President Obama negotiated the deal, but it was the UN that implemented it. It was the UN that removed its sanctions despite knowing Iran’s national character, knowing it would give the nuclear program a lifeline, and knowing Iran would use its new wealth to fund worldwide terrorism. The UN thus helped bring the world closer to nuclear war.

A common theme of Mr. Armstrong’s forecasts revolved around a worldwide catastrophe prophesied by Jesus Christ in Matthew 24: “For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved [‘not a soul would be saved alive’—James Moffatt translation]: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened” (verses 21-22). Such a possibility never existed before the advent of weapons of mass destruction. Helping a radical theocratic regime like Iran’s get a nuclear bomb brings the world closer to the fulfillment of this prophecy.

Sacrificing Ukraine

Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine was a watershed moment for several reasons. It quickly became the largest land war in Europe since World War ii and the world’s first major drone war. The yearslong fighting has been taking place in the same region as some of the fiercest fighting of World War ii and some of the bloodiest crimes of the Holocaust.

The conflict has also exposed the hollowness of the UN’s promise of peace.

The UN has been powerless to stop Russia’s war. As a member of the Security Council, Russia’s veto power prevented the other world powers from even passing a resolution condemning the invasion. All the while, the soil of the Donbas is dyed with the blood of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians.

While attending the UN’s inaugural conference, Mr. Armstrong spoke with delegates from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. The Baltic states were absorbed into the Soviet Union against their will; many opponents of the regime were sent to gulags in Siberia. A Yugoslavian diplomat told Mr. Armstrong that similar atrocities were happening in his newly communized country under the Soviet-supported regime.

“Success of the United Nations’ effort for world peace requires complete harmony between the Big Three,” Mr. Armstrong wrote. “But if America and Britain are to achieve harmony with Russia, it is already apparent it will have to be at the cost of justice in the smaller Baltic and Balkan nations, and Poland. And if the rights of these helpless millions are to be trampled upon with impunity as the price of peace with Russia, then we still have no peace!”

This exact scenario is playing out now in Ukraine. The UN can only do what Russia allows it to do, and the rest of the world is forced to watch.

Helping Hamas

Hamas terrorists from Gaza attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, demonically butchering 1,200 people in the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Much led up to this moment. Israel was in a domestic political crisis and its intelligence services weren’t as sharp as they should have been. Iran had been preparing its proxy Hamas for such an invasion for years. Less known is the UN’s role.

Decades of UN sponsorship had groomed Gaza for this moment. The UN has a direct share in the blame for the October 7 massacre.

The main organ responsible is the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. Founded in 1949, unrwa is tasked with caring for refugees from Israel’s 1948 War of Independence and their descendants. Today, roughly 6 million people in various countries qualify for their services. In Gaza, over 13,000 UN staff members ran roughly 300 schools, medical clinics, financial programs and other institutions.

Various groups have exposed unrwa’s schools for including curricula that glorifies martyrdom and slaughtering Jews. Geography lessons show maps of the “State of Palestine” as encompassing all the Holy Land. Language lessons teach poetry with verses like: “The enemy is despicable, Palestine is ours. The departure of the occupier from our land is inevitable. We shall oppose the enemy’s tanks with blood and flesh.” Such brainwashing within UN-run schools is well documented.

The UN knows its schools push violent propaganda on impressionable schoolchildren who don’t know any better. Those children grow up conditioned—by the United Nations—to become terrorists. The jihadists who massacred defenseless people on October 7, 2023, learned their hatred.

The UN also provides direct cover for Hamas and has continued to do so. Hamas is notorious for using the Gazan people as human shields: deliberately storing weapons in schools, hospitals and other sensitive facilities so that Israel either avoids striking them or is condemned by the world if it does strike. The UN knows this, yet it still plays along with Hamas’s narrative.

For decades, Mr. Armstrong warned that a major part of the coming global catastrophe would be unrest in the land around Jerusalem (see “Visions of Jerusalem,” page 61). The UN is actively encouraging this unrest.

Clouds of World War III

“Already I see the clouds of World War iii gathering at this conference,” Mr. Armstrong wrote in 1945. Perhaps some may have thought it extreme to write that at the founding conference of an international system designed to, if nothing else, prevent another world war. But in view of everything Mr. Armstrong said coupled with Bible prophecy, can the UN’s role in pushing the world toward another global war be denied?

Mr. Armstrong summarized the UN’s work in his booklet The Wonderful World Tomorrow—What It Will Be Like: “[I]t has failed. The United Nations has no power over the nations. It has no power to settle disputes, stop wars, or prevent wars. The so-called United Nations are not united. This effort has degenerated into a sounding board for Communist propaganda. Man has failed his last chance!”

God said of man’s peace efforts: “The way of peace they know not; and there is no judgment in their goings: they have made them crooked paths: whosoever goeth therein shall not know peace” (Isaiah 59:8). And again: “For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape” (1 Thessalonians 5:3). While mankind’s nature remains deceitful and desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17:9), this will always be the case.

But as Mr. Armstrong detailed in The Wonderful World Tomorrow, God promises to bring peace. One of Christ’s names is the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6-7). “Man wants desperately to save the society he has established upon this Earth,” Mr. Armstrong wrote. “But this society—this civilization—can’t be saved! Man, himself, is bringing this world to destruction. God Almighty will soon step in and create a new, peaceful and happy society—the World Tomorrow.”

He was right about peace in Jerusalem

The Middle East—especially the Holy City—is a focal point in both history and prophecy. Mr. Armstrong foresaw how important it would be in end-time events.

How could anyone predict what will happen in a region as unpredictable as the Middle East? For centuries—even millenniums—this region has been chaotic with change. Empires have crumbled, boundaries drawn and redrawn, governments toppled, and whole populations dispossessed. Isn’t it crazy to claim to foresee what lies down the road for this chaotic region?

Yet for nine decades, first the Plain Truth and now the Trumpet have done just that—with astonishing accuracy. For decades, writers of both publications reported on, analyzed and warned about what would—and will—happen in the volatile Middle East.

We have done this by using the Bible as our guide. Regarding the Middle East, the Bible is clear on certain facts of prophecy. Herbert W. Armstrong was emphatic in pointing these out—some of which have already occurred. On other points, he and other writers based their assessments and projections on the principles laid out in prophecy. Many of these were also quite accurate. Time is bringing the specifics into clearer focus. Events that the Trumpet has reported on since our first issue in 1990 have brought more detail to our understanding of how prophecy will play out in the Middle East.

Mr. Armstrong had a close relationship with the State of Israel. He personally met six of Israel’s prime ministers and three of its presidents. Ambassador College, of which Mr. Armstrong was chancellor, sponsored archaeological digs in Jerusalem and elsewhere in the country. Mr. Armstrong was even involved in the Arab-Israeli peace process through his friendship with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.

Based on the Bible’s prophecies, he also had a lot to say about Israel’s future. Unlike most biblical peoples, the Jewish people never lost their identity. And Mr. Armstrong understood that prophecies pertaining to Judah are intended for our time.

Uniting Jerusalem

From the beginning to the end of the Bible, Jerusalem plays an important role as “the city of God” and the city God has chosen (Psalm 46:4; Zechariah 3:2). But the Bible does not merely refer to Jerusalem of old. Jerusalem still exists as a city today. God inspired a third of His Bible to be comprised of prophecy, most of it relating to our modern day. Therefore, it would be logical that God would have prophecies about Jerusalem for our day, and that He would have a man on the scene to explain those prophecies while they were being fulfilled.

After World War ii, the Jews in the Holy Land—their numbers recently increased by Holocaust refugees—declared the independence of Israel in 1948. Israel’s Arab neighbors refused to recognize the Jewish state and invaded. The Jews pushed back the Arab armies but captured only half of Jerusalem—the modern half developed by the British—while Jordan captured the historic city along with what is today called the West Bank.

Mr. Armstrong didn’t expect East Jerusalem to remain Jordanian.

A prophecy in Zechariah 12:2 reads, “Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling unto all the people round about, when they shall be in the siege both against Judah and against Jerusalem.” The jps Tanakh Bible renders the latter part of that verse, “And upon Judah also shall it fall to be in the siege against Jerusalem.”

In May 1963, the Plain Truth made this interesting statement: “Old Jerusalem is today almost entirely in the hands of the kingdom of Jordan. But this prophecy unveils a struggle for the possession of Jerusalem by Judah—the Jews.” Also, Zechariah 14:2 indicates that half of Jerusalem will be conquered by non-Jewish forces just before Jesus Christ returns; that means the Jews will have to control the whole city prior to that time. Based on these and other scriptures, Mr. Armstrong and the Plain Truth staff taught in the early 1960s that the Jews were prophesied to take over the entire Old City of Jerusalem.

On May 1, 1967, Mr. Armstrong, on his return trip from Amman and Jerusalem, spoke to an assembly at the Ambassador College campus in England. “Any day, now, you may expect the Israelis of the country that calls itself ‘Israel’ to flood over with a military invasion into the Jordanian half of the divided city of Jerusalem,” he said. “… Once the Israelis do take over the Jordan sector of Jerusalem, instantly the United Nations and the major individual powers—the United States, ussr, Britain, France—probably will stop further occupation of Arab countries by the Jews. … But the Jews will undoubtedly be allowed to hold the Old City of Jerusalem” (emphasis added throughout).

Just five weeks later, the Middle East erupted into war, just as Mr. Armstrong prophesied. Israel went on the attack and for six days expanded its frontiers in virtually every direction—also taking over Jerusalem. It was a stunning defeat for the neighboring Arab countries, with the war ending in a ceasefire.

However, it was not to be a permanent peace.

The July 1967 Plain Truth reported, “Here on the spot in Jerusalem, a few days after the ceasefire, no one worries about another war. Israelis are exuberant, confident, proud.” Notice the statement that followed: “The air is filled with tense excitement—the Jews expect great events to occur soon. And indeed they will … but not the way the world expects!”

While the Jews anticipated a more stable future on the heels of their victory, Mr. Armstrong and the Plain Truth foretold the opposite.

Family Division

For decades, diplomats, policymakers and others have framed Israel’s conflict with the Palestinian Arabs as primarily one of settling geographic boundaries or one of ideology. Mr. Armstrong pointed to a different cause: family division.

Abraham’s son Ishmael, ancestor of the Arab peoples, was rejected from inheriting God’s birthright gift of national blessings, including control of the Holy Land. God instead gave the blessings to Abraham’s other son, Isaac. Isaac’s son Israel in turn inherited the promise. The Jews trace their ancestry to Judah, one of Israel’s 12 sons. The Jews have always regarded the Holy Land as their ancestral homeland.

God promised to make Ishmael into “a great nation” (Genesis 17:20). Since exploding as a world power in the early Middle Ages, the Arabs subjugated and settled most of the Middle East, including the Holy Land. The Palestinian Arabs are at least in part descended from those original Ishmaelite settlers.

Both peoples claim heritage from Abraham. This family division is the root cause of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

“So the biblical record shows that the promise was denied to the sons of Ishmael, or the Arab race, but was given to Isaac,” Mr. Armstrong said in a 1980 World Tomorrow program. He continued: “[T]here’s been an embroilment of hatred between the Arab people descending from Ishmael and the people that we think of as Jews today descended from Israel, who [was] also a son of Isaac, the son of Abraham. And that’s the way it came on down to our time today. The entire Middle East embroilment has stemmed, believe it or not, over a jealousy of two women over one man.”

Mr. Armstrong also understood that world problems were caused primarily by human nature—not borders or demographics. Much of the thinking behind modern international relations studies looks on human nature as being naturally good. But the Bible describes human nature as “deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked” (Jeremiah 17:9). This nature became man’s nature when Adam and Eve chose to follow Satan’s way in the Garden of Eden.

“Human nature entered into [the world] and, of course, we’re not going to have peace,” Mr. Armstrong said in a 1983 speech. “I may be an ambassador for world peace—I do what I can. But we’re not going to have peace in the world, there’s no need of kidding ourselves, until human nature is changed and until the spirit and attitude of love instead of hate and competition, of cooperation and give enters in instead of get and competition and strife and self-motive.”

He didn’t expect any humanly devised agreement to bring peace to the region. “How can peace be achieved in the Middle East tinderbox?” the June 1973 Plain Truth asked. “The outside powers cannot bring it about. Arabs cannot accomplish it. The Israelis are not able to achieve a solution. The truth is, no human authority or power has the ability or the wisdom to ‘cut through’ the Gordian knot of the Middle East problem!”

“At the moment … the West Bank is a simmering caldron threatening to boil over,” the October-November 1979 Plain Truth stated. “Any early progress toward a Palestinian settlement—despite approaching deadlines—looks extremely dim. The gulf between the parties remains wide and deep. …

“What are the prospects? Despite the peacemaking efforts which continue in the region, Bible prophecy indicates that the future of the Middle East holds war, not peace.”

Much has changed on the ground in the Holy Land since 1979. How have these predictions played out?

Peace, Peace—When There Is No Peace

Mr. Armstrong died in 1986. The following year saw the start of the so-called First Intifada, a phrase from the Arabic word for uprising. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza took part in a violent uprising against Israeli forces that lasted until 1993. The Palestinian Liberation Organization, then the main Palestinian political-terror institution, voted to proclaim an independent state of Palestine in 1988.

Yet at the end of 1988, there were hopes for peace. Amid the violence, plo chairman Yasser Arafat stated he was ready to start “land for peace” negotiations with Israel. Yitzhak Rabin became Israel’s prime minister in 1992. He and Arafat started a process that culminated in the Oslo i and ii Accords, signed in 1993 and 1995. The outcome of these agreements was the creation of the Palestinian Authority (PA), a government with limited authority on domestic issues over part of the Palestinian lands. The PA was supposed to be the foundation of a government over an independent state of Palestine, with control over disputed areas like East Jerusalem to be settled in future negotiations.

The Oslo Accords were controversial. In late 1995, an Israeli right-wing extremist assassinated Prime Minister Rabin for his role in making the Accords happen. Rabin’s own people didn’t approve of his peacemaking.

Mr. Armstrong in 1982 had an opportunity to meet Arafat. In September of that year, Arafat famously met Pope John Paul ii in the Vatican. Around the same time, Mr. Armstrong wrote in a September 17 co-worker letter: “Although my aides told me Arafat had invited me to a meeting with him, I refused to see him or to allow one of my aides to see him in my stead.” Mr. Armstrong in the letter called Arafat a “terrorist leader” and didn’t want to have anything to do with him.

Mr. Armstrong met with many world leaders throughout his long life, including many dictators like China’s Deng Xiaoping and Romania’s Nicolae Ceasescu. He also met with many leaders in the Arab world who had a history of warring with Israel, like Egypt’s Anwar Sadat and Jordan’s King Hussein. In those cases, even if the leaders had an unsavory past, usually they were approaching Mr. Armstrong with an open mind and a genuine desire to learn what he had to say about world peace. Mr. Armstrong knew a man of Arafat’s caliber would not be a man for peace. Time would prove his judgment was correct.

Mr. Armstrong’s warnings about false hope in humanly devised solutions proved prescient. Arafat stated openly that he had no intention of following through with the accords. Between the signing of Oslo i and Oslo ii, on May 10, 1994, Arafat spoke at a mosque in Johannesburg, South Africa. “In my eyes,” he said, “this agreement has no more value than the one signed by the Prophet Mohammed with the Quraysh tribe,” referencing a deceitful peace deal the founder of Islam forged with the original inhabitants of Mecca, only to later go to war against them and conquer the city.

In a meeting with Arab diplomats on January 30, 1996, Arafat clarified what he meant: “We intend to destroy Israel and to establish a pure Palestinian state. … We will make the life of the Jews miserable and take everything from them. … I don’t need any Jews.”

Astonishingly, his comments didn’t deter the Israelis from trying to make peace. At the 2000 Camp David Summit, Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered Arafat a Palestinian state comprised of 95 percent of the West Bank, 100 percent of the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem and more. Arafat rejected it.

According to Suha Arafat, Yasser’s widow, soon after this summit he told her his plan to start the Second Intifada. “They want me to betray the Palestinian cause,” he reportedly said. “They want me to give up on our principles, and I will not do so.” The Second Intifada started on September 28, 2000, and lasted until 2005, claiming over 1,000 Israeli lives. It was supposedly in response to Israeli politician Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount that day. But Israeli and Palestinian sources have since corroborated that the intifada was premeditated and coordinated, with Arafat pulling the strings.

Sharon and the right-wing Likud party took the prime ministership in 2001 on a mandate to be tougher on security. But in 2005, he led a unilateral withdrawal of the military and settlements from the Gaza Strip, handing complete authority to the PA.

The PA is dominated by the secular-socialist Fatah terror group, led first by Arafat and then, from 2004, his successor, Mahmoud Abbas. But Islamist terror group Hamas gained power and influence, and in 2007, it warred with Fatah over control of Gaza. Hamas won the war and turned Gaza into a jihadist, totalitarian enclave.

Despite all this, the Israeli government, under multiple prime ministers, continued to push for a peace settlement. In 2008, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered independence to over 90 percent of Palestinian territory, with Jerusalem as a shared capital. In 2009, reelected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for the resumption of negotiations if the Palestinians would take their security obligations seriously. In 2020, U.S. President Donald Trump unveiled a plan endorsed by Netanyahu where Israel would retain control of West Bank settlements in exchange for land in undisputed Israeli territory.

The Palestinians have rejected every single peace plan. Meanwhile, Hamas in Gaza became an Iranian puppet regime, and it launched the deadliest terrorist attack in Israel’s history on October 7, 2023.

The Bible prophesies that war, not peace, is the future of the Middle East until Christ returns. Mr. Armstrong clearly saw that. He knew pieces of paper signed in the Israel-Palestinian peace process would not lead to lasting peace. In the four decades since Mr. Armstrong died, this prediction has proved to be true. Other prophecies show that Jerusalem’s worst violence is yet to come.

Eyes on Jerusalem

Mr. Armstrong forecast a rising “beast” power in Europe that would wreak havoc on the world. The destruction this Catholic, German-dominated empire will cause will not be random. Its leaders have specific geographic targets. Revelation 11:2 reveals their most-sought prize: “the holy city [Jerusalem] shall they tread under foot forty and two months.” A prophecy in Daniel 11:41 states the same: “He [the leader of this European empire] shall also invade the fair land of Palestine …” (Moffatt translation). Verse 45 states: “And he shall plant the tabernacles of his palace between the seas in the glorious holy mountain ….” This means Europe’s emperor will, right before Christ’s Second Coming, establish his capital in Jerusalem.

Based on scriptures like these, Mr. Armstrong and the Plain Truth watched for Europe and the Catholic Church to take increasing interest in the Middle East.

As far back as 1955, when communism was spreading its tentacles into the region, Mr. Armstrong wrote: “The 11th chapter of Daniel shows … the city of Jerusalem will finally be captured by a revival of the power of fascism in Europe—not by a Communist invasion of Palestine!” (Plain Truth, November-December 1955). While many were concerned about the dangers of communism spreading into the Holy Land, Mr. Armstrong knew the real threat lay elsewhere. He continued, “It will be a fascist revival of a church and state union—a United States of Europe—that will attempt to establish the palace and capital there ….”

It is Europe the Plain Truth warned about—specifically that the Middle East will be the arena in which it first reveals itself as a brutal imperialist power.

German-led Europe is Daniel’s prophesied “king of the north.” Other biblical passages tell of “the abomination of desolation,” referring to armies surrounding Jerusalem (see Matthew 24:15 in conjunction with Luke 21:20). Harmonizing various biblical passages, we can see that these will be European armies.

The clash between the “king of the north” and the “king of the south” described in Daniel 11:40 will most certainly have a religious component, Mr. Armstrong explained. “Meanwhile, the Roman Catholic Church has entered the picture,” the May 1963 Plain Truth reported. “During the first sessions of the Second Vatican Council, the question of peace in the Middle East came under discussion. A tentative suggestion was the reestablishment, under papal jurisdiction, of the kingdom of Jerusalem.

“In the Middle Ages, the Crusaders established in Palestine a Catholic kingdom of Jerusalem. Then, it was to recover Palestine from the Mohammedan ‘infidel.’ Today, it would be established—so goes the suggestion—to keep the peace in the Middle East.”

“Speaking in modern language,” the July 1963 Plain Truth stated, “… when you, yes you, yourself, see a revived, remilitarized Germany, at the head of a united states of Europe—the coming third power bloc of the world in central Europe—marching into Palestine [the State of Israel]—then you had better realize the abomination of desolation is beginning!”

Europe moving into the land of Israel like this would be a major geopolitical turning point. But well before this invasion, we would likely see Europe setting the stage. The Plain Truth watched for it.

Moves on the Ground

The Plain Truth predicted that chaos in the Middle East and Africa would pressure Europe to get involved. “[T]his prophecy [in Daniel 11] awaits fulfillment in entirety in our lifetime, with the prophesied final restoration of the Roman Empire in Europe,” the November-December 1982 issue stated. “This empire will see its vital interests threatened by instability and economic pressures from the Arab world and the region around the Horn of Africa (Daniel 11:40-45). It will, at that time, storm into this region and neighboring parts of northeast Africa to protect its concerns.”

What are these concerns? Oil will be a major one. The Trumpet still stands behind this statement from the February 1966 Plain Truth: “Before the mounting crisis in the Middle East is over, all major nations of the Earth will be embroiled [speaking of man’s final battle against Jesus Christ, commonly known as the battle of Armageddon; Zechariah 14:1-2; Revelation 16:16]. Why will they be there? One major reason is oil. Western Europe’s economy is absolutely dependent upon these reserves. So is that of Japan. Any major disruption of this oil supply—such as an all-out Arab-Israel war—would bring intervention.”

The Catholic Church meanwhile has an especially acute interest in the Middle East because of its religious sites. Time and again, even before Israel became a state, it has pushed for Jerusalem to become a political entity separate from either a Jewish or Arab state but under Vatican influence. The Vatican did not establish diplomatic relations with the State of Israel until 1993.

But the Vatican’s role as a well-respected and seemingly neutral mediator, combined with the Catholic Church’s centuries-old presence in the Holy Land, gives it clout as an entity Israel can potentially work with in stabilizing the region. The May 1974 Plain Truth wrote: “Early in the life of modern Israel, the Vatican issued papal encyclicals saying that the status of Jerusalem must ensure the safety and protection of the holy places. Direct Vatican administration of religious sites in Jerusalem can be a highly visible step toward a Mideast settlement—a step which does not necessarily trample on the interests of either Arab or Israeli. It would provide the symbolic presence of a religious power, as well as a representation of the outside world’s interest.”

Allies

Germany and the Vatican will not be alone in their invasion of the Middle East. A prophecy in Psalm 83 details a confederation of Middle Eastern peoples who unite so “that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance” (verse 4). The parties in the alliance are listed: “[t]he tabernacles of Edom, and the Ishmaelites; of Moab, and the Hagarenes; Gebal, and Ammon, and Amalek; the Philistines with the inhabitants of Tyre; Assur also is joined with them …” (verses 6-8). Neither biblical nor secular history records such an alliance, neither in composition nor in purpose. The alliance has yet to happen. This is a prophecy for our day.

The May 1965 Plain Truth commented: “A very remarkable prophecy is found in the 83rd psalm. It speaks of a number of nations who will be ‘confederate against’ God and His chosen people, Israel. It mentions the people of ‘Edom’ (modern-day Turkey), ‘Assur’ (the father of the people of Assyria—the modern-day Germanic tribes) and peoples of ‘Moab,’ the ‘Hagarenes,’ ‘Gebal,’ ‘Ammon,’ ‘Amalek,’ the ‘Philistines,’ the ‘inhabitants of Tyre’ and ‘the children of Lot.’ Most of these names refer unmistakably to Arab peoples dwelling in the Middle East today.

“The kingdom of Jordan, as an example, is primarily comprised of the descendants of ‘Lot’ through his sons, Moab and Ammon. The capital of Jordan is Amman—named after Lot’s son, Ammon. Verse 8 says, ‘Assur [the modern-day Germanic peoples] also is joined with them: they have holpen [helped] the children of Lot.’ …

“More and more we see anti-American and anti-British feeling displayed by continentals—by the Germans, the French, the Italians, the Spaniards and others. Ultimately these continental countries will unite and will come to terms with the Arab nations while this continental union of nations invades and conquers the Anglo-Saxon peoples of America, Britain and her Commonwealth ….”

The Plain Truth speculated that one way Europe could get involved in the Middle East is through peacekeeping missions. The January 1983 issue, in the wake of increasing violence in Lebanon, said: “One detects, for the first time, a genuine unified European desire to act in the Middle East. … Further down the road, the Europeans might also insist on the right to move into the West Bank area to enforce a homeland for the Palestinians. Such a military presence will eventually be sent to the vicinity of Jerusalem itself (Luke 21:20).”

To summarize: Mr. Armstrong and the Plain Truth were watching for Europe and the Catholic Church to set their sights on the Holy Land in an effort to secure geopolitical interests and protect holy sites. He expected Europe to make alliances with Arab nations, use them to facilitate its entry into the region, and increase its presence in the region through peacekeepers.

Look how far these forecasts have progressed since Mr. Armstrong died in 1986!

Desert Storms

When al Qaeda attacked the United States on September 11, 2001, America began its “war on terror.” But it was not alone; it led a coalition of nations. It invaded Afghanistan as part of a mission with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which includes Germany. Between 2002 and 2021, Germany sent over 150,000 troops to fight the Taliban and was at one point the second-biggest contributor of soldiers.

France, meanwhile, led Operation Barkhane between 2014 and 2022, sending thousands of soldiers to fight Islamic terrorism in the West African countries of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger.

Both missions have since concluded. But both Germany and France continue to make large contributions to peacekeeping missions in the area.

Hamas’s invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023, set the Middle East on fire. Europe quickly got involved. Mere days after the Hamas attack, Germany deployed its Special Forces Command (ksk) to nearby Cyprus. The German government announced it is “ready for a cold start and prepared for all options,” suggesting that special forces were getting ready to intervene in the conflict itself.

Within a month, the Houthis, a Yemeni Islamist group, began targeting Western shipping in the Red Sea. This hurt Europe especially. Europe relies on the passage of Persian Gulf oil through the Red Sea and Suez Canal; otherwise, ships must sail around South Africa, adding weeks to their journey. In February 2024, the EU approved Operation Aspides to protect merchant shipping and fight the Houthis. Germany, France, Italy, Greece and Sweden signed up. At the time of writing, the U.S. and associates in their own mission have borne the brunt of combating the Houthis. The fact that Germany and other EU countries would send their own mission apart from the U.S. shows not only their concern about events in the Middle East but also how Europe increasingly sees its interests as separate from those of the U.S.—and the West at large.

Another country to watch is Lebanon. The terrorist group Hezbollah was the de facto governing authority in this country for years. Starting in 2023, after Hamas started its war with Israel, its fellow Iranian proxy Hezbollah began a near continuous bombardment of northern Israel. In the fall of 2024, Israel invaded Lebanon and had tremendous success in neutralizing Hezbollah. Lebanon had lacked a functioning head of state since 2022, but after Hezbollah’s defeat and humiliation, anti-Hezbollah forces in the Lebanese Parliament were able to elect Joseph Aoun, former head of the military, as president. Aoun approved Nawaf Salam, former head of the International Court of Justice in the Hague, as Lebanon’s new prime minister in February 2025. The month before, French President Emmanuel Macron made his first visit to Lebanon in four years.

Lebanon under Hezbollah was, for years, part of Iran’s proxy empire to attack the West. But with Hezbollah gone, Lebanon is acquiring a pro-European government. And Europe is ready to move in.

Syria is an even bigger example of the emerging formation of the Psalm 83 alliance. Germany was instrumental in ousting Syrian President Bashar Assad and installing the new government in December 2024. We explain this in more detail in “Reviving the Ottoman Empire.”

Church and State

From a prophetic perspective, the Catholic Church’s moves into the Middle East are especially important to track. When Pope Francis visited the region in May 2014, he didn’t fly directly to Israel. He went first to Jordan, then spent most of the next day in the West Bank—visiting the Palestinians first.

In an unscheduled move, he stopped at a section of Israel’s security wall in Bethlehem, covered in graffiti comparing it to the Warsaw Ghetto. Near the spraypainted words “Free Palestine,” he touched the wall and prayed, with cameras capturing the moment. He deliberately directed the world’s attention to that image. That fence was built to stop terrorists from entering Israel to murder Jews—yet the pope’s photo op equated the Jews with Nazis and signaled support for a Palestinian state.

After Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre, the Vatican’s response was also telling. Pope Francis expressed sorrow for “what is happening in Israel,” but didn’t condemn Hamas. Days later, he briefly acknowledged Israel’s right to defend itself, then shifted focus to the “total siege facing Palestinians in Gaza, where there have also been many innocent victims.” He later spoke with U.S. President Joe Biden and Iran’s president, pledging aid for Gaza and support for Palestinian statehood. The pope responded to the horrific murders—mass rape, executions, even the decapitation of babies—with little sympathy for the victims. In fact, he made Israel appear more guilty than the terrorists. The pope’s response to those murders was deeply troubling!

In his autobiography Hope, Francis wrote that “according to some experts,” Gaza may be the site of genocide and “should be carefully investigated.” At the time, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu was under an International Criminal Court (icc) investigation for genocide. Two days after the book’s release, the icc issued its warrant. Francis effectively endorsed the decision—and may have influenced it.

Whether through support for Palestinians or the icc, Pope Francis actively attacked the State of Israel—all while posing as a peacemaker.

The Future

We have seen Germany, Europe and the Vatican increasingly take an interest in the Middle East. We have seen Europe jump into action when its supply of oil was threatened. We have seen Europe endorse regime change in the Arab world. And we have seen the Vatican push itself as a peacemaker in the region at Israel’s expense. These are the kinds of policies Herbert W. Armstrong and the Plain Truth were watching for. They are happening right now!

But Europe and the Catholic Church have yet to reach their goals. We can expect even bigger intervention very soon. When that happens, know that Herbert W. Armstrong predicted it decades ago—and know that these fulfilled predictions are active proofs of the living infallibility of the Bible.

On top of that, the same Bible that prophesies of Jerusalem’s trouble also prophesies of Jerusalem’s subsequent peace in the Kingdom of God. “Rejoice ye with Jerusalem,” the Prophet Isaiah wrote, “and be glad with her, all ye that love her: rejoice for joy with her, all ye that mourn for her … For thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will extend peace to her like a river, and the glory of the Gentiles like a flowing stream …” (Isaiah 66:10, 12).

“God Almighty chose Jerusalem as His city,” Mr. Armstrong wrote in a February 1979 Good News article. “Then, because of the sins of the nations of Israel and Judah, God finally hid His face from Jerusalem—but He ‘… shall yet choose Jerusalem’ (Zechariah 1:17) and ‘… shall choose Jerusalem again’ (Zechariah 2:12). At Christ’s soon coming, Jerusalem shall become the capital of the world, with Christ’s throne ruling all nations from Jerusalem.”

This reality is almost here. As Mr. Armstrong’s prophecies about the Middle East continue to be fulfilled, the closer we get to God’s supernatural intervention in world affairs to bring peace to Jerusalem and all mankind! The continuing cycles of violence around Jerusalem are a sign that Jerusalem’s greatest days are yet to come!

He was right about Turkey’s pivotal role

What is the future of Turkey? The Bible answers.

Herbert W. Armstrong highlighted biblical prophecies that say the modern Israelite nations—America, Britain and the Jewish state called Israel—will suffer coming captivity at the hands of a German-led united Europe. But Europe will not be alone in attacking the Israelite nations. It will be aided by an ally that straddles Europe and Asia: Turkey.

The key is to understand the biblical identity of Turkey.

Turkey’s Biblical Identity

The Turks are descended from the patriarch Esau, son of Isaac and older twin brother of Jacob. God had promised Abraham, Isaac’s father, to make his descendants into the most powerful nation on Earth (Genesis 12:1-4). These blessings were later passed down to Isaac. God told Isaac that he intended Jacob rather than Esau to inherit these blessings (Genesis 25:23). Yet as the firstborn, Esau still started out with the legal right to these national promises. Genesis 25 and 27 tell the story of how Jacob acquired these promises. First, he pressured Esau to sell his birthright for a bowl of red soup. Jacob later impersonated Esau to gain the national blessings from Isaac, who had become blind in his old age.

Little could be done once Isaac and Esau realized Jacob’s deception. Esau was extremely bitter and begged Isaac to give him a blessing.

Isaac responded that Jacob’s descendants would rule over Esau’s descendants. But there was one prophecy Isaac offered Esau: “… Behold, thy dwelling shall be the fatness of the earth, and of the dew of heaven from above; And by the sword shalt thou live, and shalt serve thy brother; And it shall come to pass when thou shalt have the dominion, that thou shalt break his yoke from off thy neck” (Genesis 27:39-40).

Mr. Armstrong analyzed this verse in The United States and Britain in Prophecy: “In verse 39, quoted above, the Hebrew preposition min should be translated ‘from’ or ‘away from,’ not ‘of.’ Actually, the prophesied lot of Esau was more of a curse than a blessing. The Revised Standard Version translates it: ‘Behold, away from the fatness of the earth shall your dwelling be, and away from the dew of heaven on high.’ Moffatt renders it: ‘Far from rich soil on earth shall you live, far from the dew of heaven on high.’ Actually, the Hebrew words convey the dual meaning, and both have happened to Esau’s descendants.”

The nation that sprung from Esau became known as Edom, meaning “red” for the soup Esau purchased. Later scriptural accounts show the Edomites inhabiting the territory directly southeast of the Holy Land. Edom became a peripheral civilization in the biblical narrative. Occasionally, as in 2 Kings 3, Edom befriended the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. More often, Edom and the Israelitish peoples were enemies.

Edom features heavily in biblical prophecy. The book of Obadiah, one of the minor prophets, is directed specifically to Edom. Verse 17 prophesies that Mount Zion, the hill on which Jerusalem is founded, will have “deliverance” through “holiness”—speaking of the Second Coming of Christ. Verses 19-20 show this is when Israel and Judah jointly return from captivity—an event that has yet to happen. It is a time when “saviours shall come up on mount Zion to judge the mount of Esau …” (verse 21). This is a prophecy for the end time.

Notice the description of Edom in this prophecy. Verse 3 indicates Edom’s territory is extremely mountainous. Verse 10 tells of a national attitude of “violence against thy brother Jacob.” Verse 11 shows it can project its military around the area of Jerusalem. Verse 14 states Edom stands “in the crossway” Israelites flee to when attacked; Edom is at a major international crossroads of geography.

Mr. Armstrong knew Edom had a role in end-time events, that there is a nation descended from Edom on the scene now, fulfilling its prophetic role. Combining biblical details with secular history, Mr. Armstrong concluded that Edom is Turkey today.

He continued in The United States and Britain in Prophecy: “The sparse records of history, with other proofs, show that many of the descendants of Esau became known as Turks. Therefore, we must remember that prophecies pertaining to the latter days referring to Edom, or Esau, refer generally to the Turkish nation.

“In Isaac’s dying prophecy, he foretold that Esau’s descendants would come to a time when they should have dominion, and then break the yoke of the Israelites from off their necks. That has happened. The children of Israel, through sin, were driven out of the Promised Land that belonged with the birthright. The Turks came to power and dominion and for many centuries possessed that land. Those descendants, the Turkish people, occupied Palestine 400 years before Britain took it in 1917. Esau’s descendants always have lusted for that land, central promise of the birthright! The Turks have truly lived by the sword!”

“Esau, or Edom, as he is also called, lived southeast of Palestine near Petra. Arab Bedouins live there now. Then where have Esau’s children gone?” the July 1957 Plain Truth asked. “From the days of Nebuchadnezzar, who carried them captive, they disappear for 1,000 years from history. Then suddenly we find Amalek the name of a city in Turkestan in Central Asia (from Paul Herrmann’s Sieben vorbei und Acht Verweht). The Egyptians used to call the Amalekites Amu. In Turkestan is the River Amu today! In Bible times the Edomites inhabited Mount Seir (Genesis 32:3). In Turkestan is the Syr Darya—the River of Syr, or Seir.

“The leading Turkish tribe is the Ottoman. The prophecies referring to Edom or Esau mention Teman as the leading tribe in these latter days (Obadiah 9). The conclusion is inescapable. The Ottoman Turks are the sons of Teman. Merely the vowels in spelling have been changed over these past millenniums. From Central Asia the Turks, or Edomites, moved into Asia Minor. That is where Esau’s children live today! Turkey controls the ‘crossway’ of the nations—the Dardanelles (Obadiah 14).

“How clear, Esau, or Edom, is Turkey today!”

Warning of a Betrayal

As far back as World War ii, Mr. Armstrong was publishing material based on the prophecies of Obadiah. In those early days, he thought they would be fulfilled during World War ii. He was mistaken in that detail, but he knew that Turkey would one day attack the Israelitish nations in a massive betrayal.

“It all started,” Mr. Armstrong wrote in 1940, “when Esau undervaluated the most precious material gift God had ever bestowed—the birthright—that national wealth and greatness which the British and the American people have inherited and enjoyed! Then, after rejecting this colossal gift of God, Esau and his descendants have hated Jacob and his descendants, with jealousy scheming to gain back the birthright by foul means, finally double-crossing brother Jacob, as the Turks now are beginning to do in his hour of sorest need” (Plain Truth, November-December 1940).

Decades after World War ii concluded, Mr. Armstrong stood by his prediction. During a visit to Istanbul, Turkey, in 1971, he wrote a Tomorrow’s World article titled “Visiting a Nation Fraught With Impending Total Disaster.” Mr. Armstrong quoted verses like Obadiah 12: “But thou shouldest not have looked on the day of thy brother in the day that he became a stranger; neither shouldest thou have rejoiced over the children of Judah in the day of their destruction ….” He wrote: “This, in past tense, may refer … to the captivities and exiles of Israel, 721–718 b.c., and of Judah, 604–585 b.c., respectively—but merely as a type of captivities now imminent. The time of the prophecy is now—and the immediate future.” Mr. Armstrong summarized the Bible’s prophecies of Israel and Edom’s coming clash: “All these ancient rivalries are playing crucial parts in the tense world conditions of today!”

“Obadiah’s prophecy reveals that Edom (modern Turkey) will turn against his brother Jacob,” stated the June-July 1980 Plain Truth, “against America and Britain, and also against the Jews of the modern-day State of Israel in Palestine. Turkey will actively cooperate with Jacob’s enemy! That enemy is prophesied as a final short-lived restoration of the ancient Roman Empire as 10 nations or groups of nations in Europe. … America, Britain and the Jews are to suffer crushing national defeat—and Turkey will rejoice! That is the plain message of Obadiah!”

In “Visions of Jerusalem,” page 61, we covered Europe’s prophesied outreach to the Arab world. Psalm 83 specifically lists Edom as a part of this coming alliance (verse 6). Turkey geographically straddles Europe and the Middle East. It is the headquarters of the Eastern Orthodox Church, which is prophesied to join with the Roman Catholic Church. Thus, the Plain Truth expected Turkey to be especially integral within the Psalm 83 alliance.

“Consider: an Islamic country the site of a major focus of a powerful new united Christendom!” the Plain Truth wrote in April 1985. “Turkey’s historic role as a bridge between two worlds—the Christian West and Islamic East—would automatically be enhanced. … Were such an alliance of Christianity and Islam—of Europe and the Arab world—ever to arise in the years ahead, Turkey could well play an instrumental—even indispensable—role in its formation. By virtue of its unique position between two worlds, Turkey could find itself thrust into a middleman role in the piecing together of that new and precedent-shattering political-religious configuration.”

Why This Was Remarkable

Such a forecast contrasts sharply with the pro-Western turn Turkey was taking over that period. Starting in 1923, Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal Atatürk revolutionized Turkish society. He abolished the old Ottoman Empire and changed Turkey from an Islamic theocracy to a secular republic. He moved the capital from Istanbul to Ankara, replaced the Turkish language’s Arabic-based script with a Latin-based one, and banned traditional Muslim clothing. Atatürk sought to transform Turkey into a Westernized, First World nation. After World War ii, Turkey became a founding member of the United Nations. Nervous of the growing influence and ambitions of its neighbor, the Soviet Union, it made itself one of the United States’ and Britain’s best friends in the Middle East, if not the best.

In 1950, Turkey was the second country after the U.S. to respond to the UN’s call to defend South Korea in the Korean War. Turkey contributed about 15,000 soldiers to the conflict, making it the fourth-biggest contributor to the UN force. In 1952, Turkey joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Through nato, Turkey even allowed the U.S. to station nuclear weapons on its soil. In 1955, Turkey signed a separate alliance with the United Kingdom and other Middle Eastern countries to oppose the Soviet Union.

Turkey also had relatively warm relations with the State of Israel. It was the first Muslim country to recognize Israel’s existence in 1949. For decades, Turkey was one of Israel’s few neighbors to have formal relations with it. And throughout the various Arab-Israeli wars—including the Six-Day War when Israel captured East Jerusalem and the al-Aqsa Mosque in 1967—Turkey continued to recognize Israel, often losing prestige in the Arab world for doing so.

Few Muslim countries were more anchored to the Western world order than Turkey. Few countries in the Muslim world embraced Western culture and Western values as much as Turkey did. It was in this context that Mr. Armstrong prophesied that Turkey would betray America, Britain and Judah.

How have events played out since Mr. Armstrong’s death in 1986?

From Friend to Foe

In 2003, former Mayor of Istanbul Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, of the Islamist Justice and Development Party, became leader of Turkey. First through the office of prime minister and then as president, he has transformed Turkish politics. He has loosened restrictions on religious people entering university and lessened pressure on Turkey’s Kurdish minority. But he has also turned Turkey into one of the most oppressive countries for journalists and free speech.

Most importantly for our purposes, Turkey under Erdoğan has substantially altered its geopolitical orientation: It is now significantly against America, Britain and especially the State of Israel.

A telling moment came in 2010 in the form of the Marmara Affair. A fleet led by the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara tried to breach an Israeli naval blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip by force. Israeli commandos raided the fleet in international waters in an incident where nine passengers died, most of them Turkish.

The Turkish government had helped organize the flotilla in active support of Hamas. In the aftermath, Prime Minister Erdoğan said this was “a turning point” in Israel-Turkey relations. President Abdullah Gül said Israel made “one of the biggest mistakes ever in its history” and said Israel-Turkey relations “will never be the same again.”

“Never be the same again” was an understatement. Since 2010, Turkey under Erdoğan has reevaluated Islam’s place in Turkish society. This is best seen in his foreign policy. Turkey has become one of the biggest sponsors of some of the most notorious Islamist terror groups in the world. It supported the Muslim Brotherhood’s post-2011 takeover of Egypt. After Egyptian secularists regained control in 2013, Erdoğan gave the Muslim Brotherhood haven. He did the same thing for Hamas, letting it move its headquarters to Istanbul after it was ejected from Qatar in late 2024.

Turkey has also courted other enemies of the West. In 2017, Turkey ordered Russia’s S-400 missile defense system. The United States was selling its elite F-35 fighter aircraft to Turkey and was concerned that integrating such an important component of the U.S. military into a system integrated with Russian technology could allow Russia to gather data on U.S. defense systems. Turkey went ahead with acquiring the S-400 and has been put on hold from the F-35 program ever since. Russia-Turkey relations have been rocky with Turkey’s support of Ukraine in its fight against Russia since 2022. But Turkey has kept many points of contact open with Russia that other nato members have not.

Turkey has also drawn close to China. In 2013, it became a “dialogue partner” of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a Chinese-led political bloc. In 2024, Turkey expressed a desire to become a full member. In 2015, it joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative (bri); between then and 2022, China invested $4 billion in Turkey through the bri. In 2024, the brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) economic bloc invited Turkey in as a member. (India eventually killed the membership bid due to Turkey’s relationship with Pakistan.)

These may be small steps, but they are giant symbols of intent: to decouple from the West and forge links with America’s and Britain’s authoritarian adversaries.

Yet even as Turkey has turned to the authoritarian East, it has also forged closer ties with Europe. During the height of the Syrian civil war, Turkey hosted hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees, sparing Europe from a flood of refugees. Along with Europe, Turkey has been one of Ukraine’s biggest backers in fighting off Russia’s invasion. Germany has a large Turkish diaspora population, and Turkey is a major export destination for German arms. While Turkey and Europe have their ups and downs, Turkey is firmly on Europe’s side.

In late 2024, Syrian rebels launched a lightning offensive that ousted longtime dictator Bashar Assad. These rebels were supported by Turkey and supplied with Turkish weapons. But these weapons were supplied to Turkey by Germany. Months before the Syrian rebels began their offensive, Germany lifted a yearslong arms embargo on Turkey. Turkey’s famous military drones, which the Syrian rebels used to fight Assad, are made with German parts. German defense corporation Hensoldt has been supplying parts to Turkish drone companies, including its famous Bayraktar brand, for years.

Syria, as taught at Ambassador College under Mr. Armstrong, corresponds to the “Hagarenes” of Psalm 83:6. And as the Plain Truth foretold in 1985, Turkey is playing “an instrumental—even indispensable—role” in forming the Psalm 83 alliance!

As Mr. Armstrong forecast, Turkey has grown hostile to the U.S., Britain and Israel. At the same time, it is growing closer to Germany, acting as a bridge between Europe and the Arab world.

The Future

Turkey’s prophesied betrayal could involve American and British soldiers stationed in the Middle East initially fleeing to Turkey for protection. Biblical passages such as Psalm 83 show Turkey won’t be acting alone but as part of a wider alliance with Europe and the Arab world. (Request a free copy of Gerald Flurry’s booklet The King of the South to learn more.)

No matter how events play out, much of Mr. Armstrong’s analysis is already proving correct. During Mr. Armstrong’s time, Turkey was one of the last countries one would have anticipated turning against America, Britain and Israel. Yet in the years following his death, it became clear that his forecasts were entirely plausible, even likely. It is only a matter of time before circumstances line up for the prophecy to be fulfilled entirely.

He was right that Asia would unite

More Plain Truth predictions now marching toward fulfillment: Russia will join forces with East Asian nations, forming a superpower of a scope and magnitude the Earth has never seen.

If we look at the nations of Asia back when Herbert W. Armstrong was making forecasts about them, and compare it to the situation today, it is undeniable that he was right!

First, consider Russia. The Moscow-led Soviet Union appeared to be the primary threat to the Western world. For decades, it was expanding its territory at the rate of roughly one Belgium per year! As people languished under Communist tyranny behind the Iron Curtain, the Soviets and the Americans built up elaborate missile and space programs that threatened human civilization with extinction. For more than four decades, the world was transfixed by the Cold War standoff; the arms race spawned fears over the possibility of nuclear winter and “global overkill.”

Next, consider China. Under Chairman Mao, the Chinese were weak, backward and too mired in domestic turmoil to pose a formidable threat to world powers.

The bulk of interaction between Russia and China was bickering, wars and imperial conquests. There were periods of partial cooperation, but eventually the two became fixated on a rivalry to see which would triumph in achieving the “one true communism.” In 1964, tensions between Moscow and Beijing reached fever pitch, prompting them to completely sever relations. Chinese leaders called for an overthrow of “Soviet revisionism.”

At the time, most analysts saw the ussr as the main threat, dismissed China as too weak to matter, and expected enduring hostility between Moscow and Beijing. But Mr. Armstrong, relying not on appearances but on Bible prophecy, prophesied the exact opposite.

‘Don’t Fear the USSR’

During the noisy Cold War media coverage, he repeatedly declared—years ahead of the Soviet Union’s fall—that the ussr was not the power the U.S. should fear. The real power to watch, he warned, would be a 10-nation “United States of Europe” that would rise up to play a lead role on the global stage. He said Russia would remain a threat to the world—but not in the way most Westerners thought.

Not many listened to Mr. Armstrong’s predictions. Many scoffed at statements such as this one in the December 1956 Plain Truth: “We have been warning that it is not Russia which will conquer us—it is not Russia which will master Europe … it is a union of 10 fascist nations in Europe which will become a third power in the world and rise up to conquer the democracies of Northwest Europe and America!”

Remember: That statement was made at the height of the Cold War!

Even around the time of the Berlin Crisis of 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962—when many Americans were literally losing sleep over the Russian threat—the Plain Truth categorically declared that the U.S. need not fear the Soviet Union. “The Russians would back down, or give in on almost any point that has arisen, rather than go to war with America!” Mr. Armstrong asserted in the October 1962 issue.

This was an extremely bold take at the time—well outside the mainstream view.

Mr. Armstrong continued to proclaim that the Soviet Union would not go to war with America right up until his death on January 16, 1986. Still, many didn’t believe him. But a few short years after he died, the ussr collapsed and the Iron Curtain rusted away. Suddenly, the “evil empire” lost its foothold in Eastern Europe and the Soviet threat to America was diminished. The Cold War was over, and a reunited Germany appeared—just as Mr. Armstrong had boldly declared!

Cooperation Between Russia, China and Beyond

Mr. Armstrong also boldly declared—despite China’s backwardness and its enmity with Russia—that Beijing would soon rise and side with Moscow. Other Asian states, likely including Japan and India, would also ally with Russia and China, according to his prediction.

He forecast that after the ussr collapsed, a giant Asian superpower, with Russia and China at the helm, would rise up and dramatically affect the course of history. This power bloc—a conglomerate of peoples that comprise one third of the world’s population—would begin cooperating economically and militarily and eventually form a gargantuan Asian superpower of a size and scope the world has never seen. He went on to say that it would play a vital role in the torrent of events that will lead to the conclusion of mankind’s 6,000 years of self-rule!

Even before World War ii broke out, Mr. Armstrong foresaw the emergence of these two superpowers. In the June-July 1934 Plain Truth, he proclaimed, “Scripture prophesies two great military powers to arise in the last days—one the revival of the Roman Empire by a federation of 10 nations in the territory of the ancient Roman Empire; the other … Russia, with her allies.” He suggested those allies would be “possibly China or Japan.”

The Plain Truth of December 1959 predicted that Russia and China would put aside their differences to form a coalition: “Russia’s program is not to take Europe and to attack the United States, first. The Communist program, which our leaders should know, calls first for the seizure of Asia. [Vladimir] Lenin wrote that the way to Paris, London and New York is via [Beijing] and Delhi! … [P]art of the Communist plan [is] to place India and Pakistan in a giant vice between Russia and China. … Red China insists it has a legal right not only to Tibet but [also] to many parts of India and Southeast Asia. … Their constant dream for centuries has been ultimate world conquest! … China knows, however, that in this highly industrialized age she can accomplish this dream only as an ally of Russia. … China is now ready to begin devouring the rest of Asia with Russia’s secret military backing” (emphasis added throughout).

The December 1962 Plain Truth explained which Bible scriptures informed Mr. Armstrong’s prophecies about Asia: “From time to time, news commentators—in describing the coming catastrophic military struggle for world control—use the biblical expression Armageddon found in Revelation 16:16. But what they do not mention is a striking prophecy about ‘Armageddon’ found in Revelation 16:12. In this verse we read that ‘the way of the kings of the east’ is to be prepared!”

Who are these “kings of the east”? Mr. Armstrong said their identities are critical for us to understand if we are to know where modern nations fit in biblical prophecy. Your Bible—mainly in the books of Genesis, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Revelation—shows that the main “kings of the east” are Gog, Magog, Meshech, Tubal and Rosh.

Which modern nations do these ancient names signify? Mr. Armstrong explained: “There is general agreement among students of prophecy that ‘Gog’ in the land of ‘Magog’ is the vast regions of northern Eurasia extending from the Baltic to the Pacific. ‘Meshech’ is Moscow; ‘Tubal’ is Tobolsk. The Bible margin says ‘Prince of Rosh,’ which is Russia” (Plain Truth, April 1981).

So the “kings of the east” are Russia, China and many of the nations neighboring their territories, which they would assert power over.

Eastern Europe’s Breakaway

One key event Mr. Armstrong said would enable the building of this Asian bloc was the slipping of Eastern Europe from the ussr’s grip—an event that has been happening since 1989.

As early as April 1952, while West Germany was still rebuilding after being bombed to ashes in World War ii, Mr. Armstrong’s Good News magazine wrote, “Russia may give East Germany back to the Germans and will be forced to relinquish her control over Hungary, Czechoslovakia and parts of Austria to complete the 10-nation union.”

As we detailed in “The Fall of the Iron Curtain” (page 14), Mr. Armstrong wrote in 1955 that Russia would lose the Balkans and other East European satellite states. This happened 45 years later.

Throughout the Cold War, the Russians believed the West—Germany in particular—would try every means within its power to pry the Soviet satellite nations of Eastern Europe out of Moscow’s grip. The passage of time has revealed that those fears were well founded. Many East European nations—including the Czech Republic, former East Germany, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and the states that once comprised Yugoslavia—did in fact escape the clutches of Soviet Russia! Each is now a member of the European Union or subject to it.

Throughout the Cold War, Mr. Armstrong’s insights were correct!

What is the significance of the loss of these East European nations? It drastically weakens Russia’s western border defenses. Russia has learned, having suffered three European invasions in two centuries, that it needs a strong buffer against Germany on its western flank. With that buffer removed after the Cold War, Vladimir Putin’s Russia has been on a rampage to rebuild it. His 2014 annexation of Crimea, Ukraine, was a part of this campaign, as was his transformation of Belarus into a Russian satellite, which was completed in 2020. In February 2022, Putin showed the world how serious he was about rebuilding the Russian empire: He expanded his aggression against Ukraine into a full-scale war, making it Europe’s largest and deadliest war since World War ii!

Putin’s Russia is also working to bring several other former ussr nations back into the Kremlin’s fold. In August 2008, Putin attacked the former Soviet republic of Georgia taking about a fifth of its territory under his de facto control. In the years since, the rest of Georgia has effectively become a vassal of Russia. Mass protests erupted in 2024 after it became clear that the Kremlin-backed Georgian Dream party had stolen a key election. Despite these protests, Georgian Dream took control, making the nation essentially a Russian vassal. Similar efforts were uncovered in Moldova in the mid-2020s: There, Putin spent $55 million on bribes and illegally funded a pro-Russia party to try to turn the nation into a Russian satellite.

It is clear that Russia is making major gains in former Soviet states. But these are not enough to satisfy Putin. To further increase Russia’s global power, he has been drawing closer to other Asian nations, with particular focus on the world’s two most populous countries: India and China.

Asian Powers Today

In 1989, three years after Mr. Armstrong died, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev made a landmark visit to China, which led to the settlement of demarcation lines the two nations had disputed for centuries and set in motion a dramatic tightening of Russia-China ties.

Russo-Chinese military cooperation leaped to a new level in August 2003 when their armed forces held joint anti-terror exercises under the framework of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (sco), whose members at the time also included Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. This landmark set of war games was unthinkable a few years earlier. Russian and Chinese soldiers together practiced making war, shoulder to shoulder, and shifted Russia-China cooperation into overdrive.

The acceleration hit a new gear in 2012 when Xi Jinping became general secretary of the Communist Party of China. Since then, Russia and China have held more than 75 sets of joint military drills, and Xi has met with Putin more than 40 times as the two build a political, economic and military juggernaut that is reshaping the global geopolitical landscape.

Perhaps the most significant Putin-Xi meeting happened on February 4, 2022, just days before Russia invaded Ukraine. During that landmark summit, Putin and Xi announced that they had formed an unprecedented “no limits” partnership between Russia and China. It was the dawn of a new era of revolutionary cooperation, which days later was shown to include Chinese backing for Russian imperialism of the most brutal kind.

In 2023, China bought an eye-popping 45 to 50 percent of Russian oil exports, a dramatic increase from the 15 percent it was buying before its full-scale war on Ukraine. China’s elevated purchases continued into 2024. And it was enough to greatly soften the blow of Western sanctions on Russia and allow Putin to continue financing the war.

China also supplied Russia with great quantities of militarily useful drone components, semiconductors, ball bearings, trucks, helicopters, optical sights, excavators and machine tools for tanks. In many cases, these were items Russia couldn’t have gotten anywhere else. On July 2, 2024, U.S. Ambassador to nato Julianne Smith said, “China takes every effort, every chance it can get to argue that somehow it’s a neutral player in this war in Ukraine. But in reality, the [People’s Republic of China] is providing a long list of dual-use components, things like machine tools and microelectronics, that are enabling Russia to pursue this war of aggression in Ukraine.”

And China isn’t the only Asian powerhouse supporting Russia’s aggression. After Putin’s illegal land grab of Crimea in 2014, Western powers blasted Russia and said the entire world would view it as barbaric behavior. U.S. President Barack Obama said the nations of the world were “largely united” in believing Putin had violated Ukraine’s territory. But they were wrong! Not only did China issue a statement supporting Russia, so did India.

This shocked many world leaders. India is one of the top economies and military powers in the world. It overtook China in 2023 to become the world’s most populous nation. It is also a former colony of the British Empire, a top trading partner of the United States, and the world’s largest democracy. Still, it said there were “legitimate” reasons for the annexation of Crimea. When Russia launched its full-scale war in 2022, India again backed Putin, abstaining from all UN votes that condemned the invasion, ramping up imports of Russian energy to unprecedented levels, and entering into joint ventures with Russia to develop weapons. Overall, India-Russia trade soared from $13 billion in 2021 to a stunning $66 billion in 2024. The two are on target to reach $100 billion in trade before 2030.

North Korea, too, has come out in full support of Russia. It has sent millions of munitions to keep the Russian war machine humming, as well as an unknown number of missiles and rocket launch systems. Most remarkably, North Korea sent troops—more than 10,000—to fight shoulder to shoulder alongside Russian forces against Ukrainians. North Korea’s government said the country is committed to supporting Russia’s war “until the day of victory.”

Mr. Armstrong never would have been duped into thinking, as Obama said, that virtually all countries had come to think like the West. The Plain Truth of October 1973 said, “The Communists haven’t suddenly changed ideologically. They haven’t come to believe that their system is unworkable. Neither have the Communists given up their hopes of leading the world to socialism. But they do profess that their goals can be reached by means of peaceful coexistence.”

Russia and China share common philosophies economically, politically and militarily. They both have, in the U.S. and its allies, a common enemy. Both are working to lead other Asian nations into an anti-American future.

News of military, economic and political cooperation between Russia and China has become so commonplace in recent years that it mostly goes overlooked in the Western world. It’s clear to today that the bear and the dragon are thick as thieves. But we must remember that Mr. Armstrong predicted this development long before any evidence of it appeared!

The Future

God has prophesied the final outcome of the emerging Asian alliance. Using these prophecies, Herbert Armstrong and the Plain Truth staff writers, as well as Trumpet editorial staff, have accurately forewarned for many years what is coming for Asia. Mr. Armstrong died in 1986, but the Trumpet continues to declare that a nuclear World War iii is coming! Biblical prophecy powerfully supports Mr. Armstrong’s assertion that “the kings of the east” will forge an even deeper relationship in the years ahead—and eventually play a major part in the coming battle of Armageddon!

America and Britain are destined to fall, but it is not Russia, nor a Russian-Asian conglomerate, that these nations need fear, at least not for their direct destruction. It is Germany and the revived “Holy” Roman Empire! Some will scoff—even today. They say the Cold War is over and we need not fear a “hot” war anytime soon. But God has prophesied that our world is about to be rocked!

But our message isn’t all gloom and doom. Just beyond the perilous times ahead is unbelievably good news—the biggest news of all! Yet no major newsmagazine is announcing that good news because the world simply does not believe it.

That good news is centered on the gospel of the Kingdom of God. (The word gospel means “good news.”) The worldwide work that produces the Trumpet magazine is actively warning of the crisis at the close of this age—the crisis which the greatest news forecaster of all times, Jesus Christ, warned of in Matthew 24. This crisis will be followed by a new and better age, when all peoples everywhere will begin to enjoy peace and prosperity under God’s divine rulership.

Which Asian States Will Go Nuclear, and in What Order?

India and Pakistan joined the exclusive ranks of the world’s nuclear-armed powers in 1974 and 1998, respectively. Modern analysts looking back through the history of these developments agree almost unanimously that India’s drive toward nukes was a reaction to China’s nuclear weapons, and that Pakistan’s was, in turn, a reaction to India’s.

In July 1966, before either India or Pakistan had begun their nuclear arms programs, the Plain Truth predicted the sequence of events to a tee. “India knows Red China is completing massive troop buildups on the Indian border. India knows Red China has the atomic bomb and possibly the hydrogen bomb. That means, in the most urgent considerations of national security, India must have the bomb! Purely as a defensive measure against Red China, of course. But then there’s Pakistan! [O]ne nation, born of violent hatreds between Hindu and Muslim. Should India build the bombs, Pakistanis would turn in desperation to the big powers—they would be forced to
obtain nuclear weapons!” (emphasis added).

As with most of his other prophecies, Mr. Armstrong died before seeing this forecast come to pass, but time has proved that he was right!

He was right that Japan would remilitarize

The Plain Truth foresaw Japan’s place in the coming Asian super-alliance.

The Russian bear and Chinese dragon have long been watching as the American eagle’s global dominance wanes. Now they seek to build a global power bloc in the East to replace it. Herbert W. Armstrong believed that for a great Eastern power bloc to establish deep global influence, it would have to be comprised of more than just Russia and China.

But can Japan really ally with its blood enemy China?

Ever since Japan committed some of the worst brutality in history on China before and during World War ii, and failed to apologize in a way that soothed Beijing, tight cooperation between the two has seemed highly unlikely. Yet even in the thick of that tension, the Plain Truth predicted that one day the two Asian powers would rally together. “There is an utter inevitability of the ultimate tie-up between Japan and Red China!” the February 1963 Plain Truth said. “The big question is how long China will remain ‘red’ and survive without a tie-up with Japanese capitalism.”

Mr. Armstrong maintained this forecast even when it looked extremely unlikely, and he did so because it is based on Bible prophecy.

The April 1968 Plain Truth explained: “… Asia will ultimately be welded together into a common power bloc. It will ultimately send its military muscle into the Middle East at the return of Jesus Christ. This prophecy is recorded in Revelation 16 …. Japan will play a vital role in this battle” (emphasis added throughout).

For decades, the Plain Truth pointed to these passages in Revelation and related scriptures, and reiterated again and again that Japan would be a pillar of the future Eastern alliance that the Bible calls the “kings of the east.”

After World War ii, the U.S. eased global fears about Japanese aggression, first by disarming Japan and then with two landmark agreements. First came Article 9 of the Constitution that America wrote for Japan. This article forbade Japan from building a military larger than it needs to defend its immediate geographic arena. Next came the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security, which codified Japan’s dependence on the U.S. for its defense, largely by stationing American troops in Japan and elsewhere in the region.

These measures seemed to defang Japan. But one major result of these deals was that Japan was able to pour immense resources—including vast amounts that otherwise would have gone to the military—into becoming an economic superpower. And that set the stage for a military resurgence.

Notice what Mr. Armstrong wrote in the Plain Truth, March 1971: “Japan today has no military establishment. Some United States forces are still there. But we should not lose sight of the fact that Japan has become so powerful economically that it could build a military force of very great power very rapidly.”

At the time that was written, Mr. Armstrong’s forecast strained the belief of many. But as the years went by, it became clear that he was right.

Tokyo on the Warpath

Throughout the second half of the 20th century, Japan was an economic and industrial heavyweight yet still a benign power, constrained by memories of the atomic explosions that ended its past imperial exploits. But the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001—on Japan’s American ally—exposed this to be largely an illusion.

Just weeks after the attacks, Japan adopted antiterrorism legislation enabling its military to supply logistical support for America’s war on terrorism. Soon after, Japanese forces were in the battle theater. Its quick reengagement exposed the fact that this nation had not, in reality, been the benign power it had portrayed itself as since 1945.

The truth is that Japan, for decades before 9/11, had been evading strict enforcement of Article 9, which states that “the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. … [L]and, sea and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained.” The slow resurrection of Japan’s military actually began as early as 1950 when a National Police Reserve was established to help fill the void left by American troops sent to fight in the Korean War. Then in 1954—with Washington’s full support—the Japanese government transformed this police force into the Japan Self-Defense Force (sdf).

As time ticked by and memories of World War ii faded, the sdf gradually expanded its scope. In 1992, Japan passed the UN Peacekeeping Cooperation Law, allowing sdf personnel to take part in certain nonmilitary aspects of UN missions. Japanese soldiers were then allowed to be stationed outside Japan’s borders. So when the terrorists struck on 9/11, Japan was ready! And it used those attacks as a chance to go even further.

Soon after, Japan acquired missile defense systems, gained the capacity to fly F-2s more than 1,700 miles without refueling, and dropped 500-pound live bombs as part of training exercises. These moves, along with Japan’s deployment of troops to the Indian Ocean to help U.S. operations, comprised what the New York Times called “the most significant transformation in Japan’s military since World War ii” (July 23, 2007).

And Japan didn’t stop there! From 2004 to 2010, its march toward militarization sped up. It sent noncombat troops to Iraq, Indonesia, Nepal, Israel, Djibouti, Somalia and Haiti, all deployments that are hard to explain for a country that is supposed to have strictly a “self-defense” force. Japan also began looking to use space for military purposes. Its Defense Agency was upgraded to become a full-fledged ministry, giving it an amplified voice in the cabinet.

On March 11, 2011, the 9.0-magnitude Tohoku earthquake struck Japan, causing a tsunami and a nuclear crisis. The sdf leaped into action, coordinating and carrying out rescue operations with more than 100,000 soldiers—an utterly unprecedented number in the postwar era. “It is no exaggeration to say that the earthquake has spurred the most significant Japanese military operations since the end of World War ii,” World Politics Review wrote April 13, 2011. Perhaps most significantly, the rescue efforts drastically improved the Japanese public’s perception of its nation’s military forces. Almost overnight, the sdf was turned from a reminder of Japan’s shameful past into a source of pride for the nation’s people.

In 2013, Japan’s leaders built on this momentum as well as the nation’s growing fears of China’s aggression, North Korea’s burgeoning nuclear arsenal and the U.S.’s retreat from global leadership. They committed to a wildly ambitious defense buildup program aimed at doubling the annual spending rate to hit around ¥10 trillion, or us$68 billion, by 2027. (As of 2025, Japan is spending a record ¥8.7 trillion, $55 billion, per year on its military, putting it on target to achieve this goal.)

In early 2014, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe commented on all these measures his nation was taking and said more were needed. “Japan cannot be locked inside a box created 40 or 50 years ago,” he stated.

On July 1 of that year, Abe led Japan in another historic step to unlock that box. Tokyo “reinterpreted” the ban on collective self-defense in its Constitution. For the preceding 70 years, Tokyo had interpreted this as limiting Japan’s forces to acting strictly in its own defense—never in defense of its allies and never in any conflict away from Japan.

The reinterpretation paved the way for the landmark Peace and Security Preservation Laws to be passed in 2015. At the same time, Japan’s massive increases in defense spending empowered the nation to greatly expand its naval power, including upgraded submarines, enhanced anti-ship missiles and, for the first time since World War ii, aircraft carriers. The Japanese also set their sights on America’s F-35, a fifth-generation fighter jet at the vanguard of modern aerial warfare, and committed to the purchase of a jaw-dropping 147 jets.

Yet another major turning point came in 2022 when Japan committed to acquiring long-range missiles and the legal latitude to use them preemptively.

These measures mean Japan can now use its large, cutting-edge military in ways that would have been unthinkable just a decade ago: If a U.S. ship is under fire, Japan can assist it; if the U.S. or United Nations are involved in a “gray zone” activity, Japanese troops can participate; if a North Korean missile is aimed at a Japanese ship, Japan can lawfully destroy it before it is launched.

These developments show that a profound transformation has been underway in Japan.

Japan Will Break from America

The April 1968 Plain Truth warned that Japan would not just rearm but would also break from its alliance with America. “Despite popular belief, Japan is not permanently committed to a pro-Western position. America has foolishly followed the policy of assuming that … Germany and Japan can be converted to the virtues of democracy in less than a generation. … Both Japanese and Germans are willing, for the present, to put up with their so-called democratic form of government—until some serious internal crisis is precipitated. … Japan tolerates her present form of government as long as it is economically expedient. If the time were ever to come—and it will come—that the Japanese could not feed off of American aid, we would witness a remarkable change in attitude toward the United States. Friendship would quickly evaporate.”

At the time that was written, American aid was flowing consistently and the U.S.-Japan alliance seemed unshakable. As such, many analysts would have scoffed at Mr. Armstrong’s warning. But in recent years, U.S. leaders have wearied of backing Japan, and the Japanese are taking note.

The Japanese are “taking our jobs,” then presidential candidate Donald Trump said in 2015. In 2019, President Trump criticized the Japan-U.S. defense pact: “If we’re attacked, Japan doesn’t have to help us at all. They can watch it on a Sony television.”

President Trump then demanded that Japan increase the amount it pays to host U.S. bases fourfold—from $2 billion per year to $8 billion. That’s their “fair share,” he said, stunning the Japanese with the seismic increase he demanded.

Trump’s first term ended before he could make the demand a reality. But for the Japanese, this was enough. The writing was on the wall. They knew it wasn’t just Trump; many Americans shared his stance. It was clear the alliance was in its final years, so they began doing all they could to reduce reliance on America and establish greater autonomy.

They worked hard to strengthen defense ties with European nations, including Germany, Italy and France, as well as Asian countries such as India, Vietnam, the Philippines and even South Korea—a historic enemy. With these nations, Japan has been holding military drills, developing weapons, making intelligence-sharing pacts and mutual troop-access deals, and forming momentous strategic alignments.

At the same time, Japan has been working fervently to boost trade ties with these and other nations. It has invested heavily in regional trade pacts, including the asean-Japan Comprehensive Economic Partnership and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. Japan’s leaders even began deepening trade ties with their nation’s arch rival, China.

The result of such military and economic initiatives is that Japan is no longer exclusively dependent on the U.S., and it is working to reduce the dependency further.

These changes in Japan’s relationship with America were already extremely significant. Then Donald Trump was reelected in 2024, and he returned to the White House even more “ally-weary” than he had previously been.

During his famous “Liberation Day” speech of April 2, 2025, President Trump shocked the Japanese by levying a 24 percent tariff rate on anything they wish to sell in America (though Japan has an average tariff rate of only 4.3 percent on all U.S. products). Trump administration officials said they expected the Japanese to rush to the table and be among the first nations to strike a new trade deal with America after the speech.

But the Japanese recognized that this speech wasn’t a one-off. They saw it as a continuation of a pattern in which President Trump has routinely denounced the U.S.-Japan security alliance, demanded that Japan further expand its military so America wouldn’t have to defend it, and accused Japan of cheating in its trade with America. And so the Japanese did not rush to make a new deal.

Instead, Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba called the tariffs “extremely disappointing and regrettable.” Japanese leaders did agree on a trade and investment framework with the U.S. later in 2025, but they also intensified efforts to reduce reliance on America. As part of this push, Japan has increasingly turned to historic enemies South Korea and China. In March, Japan invited the foreign ministers of China and South Korea to Tokyo for talks to draw their three nations closer. “Given the increasingly severe international situation, I believe we may truly be at a turning point in history,” Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya said at the meeting.

The Japanese even said Trump’s trade measures could disrupt the U.S.-Japan defense pact. “The Trump tariffs can have a very big impact, not just on economics, but … they could have a potentially very big impact in security as well,” said Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera.

These are serious tensions placing intense strain on the U.S.-Japan alliance. They show that, just like Japan’s pacifism, the alliance that has been a defining feature of East Asia for decades could soon be history—just as Mr. Armstrong said.

Will Japan Go Nuclear?

In light of Japan’s unhinged military fanaticism during World War ii and other earlier wars, the idea of it having nuclear arms has always been chilling. But Mr. Armstrong understood that this technological and economic powerhouse could easily and rapidly go nuclear!

The July 1966 Plain Truth stated, “With China possessing the bomb, does Japan dare not build one of her own? Japan is the supergiant of the Orient, rising to dizzying heights of economic prosperity. … Japan could join the ‘nuclear club’ any time!”

The Plain Truth wrote several more such statements over the years. In April 1968, it said, “Washington officials frankly admit that they expect Japan to develop a big military establishment to assist the U.S. in Asian power politics. One Tokyo observer stated that the United States has no other alternative but to push Japan toward eventually becoming a thermonuclear power.”

It is true that Japan already has a highly developed civilian nuclear industry and is home to thousands of top-of-the-line physicists and engineers. If it decided to do so, it could become an independent nuclear power within a single year. This potential is only a “screwdriver’s turn” away from being realized, analysts say. And voices within Japan calling for that “turn” are growing louder.

“Japan should absolutely possess nuclear weapons,” Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara said in 2011.

“We should not put a taboo on discussions about the reality we face,” Shinzo Abe said in 2022.

Japan must “consider America’s sharing of nuclear weapons or the introduction of nuclear weapons into the region,” Shigeru Ishiba wrote in 2024 shortly before becoming Japan’s prime minister.

Such statements, alongside Japan’s ever improving technology, show that the nation will inevitably join the “nuclear club,” just as the Plain Truth prophesied—and very soon.

Japan’s Place in the Alliance

Some specific details of how the “kings of the east” Eastern superpower of Revelation 16:12 will form in the end time are still unknown, but prophecy is unmistakably clear that it will happen. And it will include Japan, just as Mr. Armstrong often said.

The modern peoples of Japan and China remain unsettled by the violence that saturates their shared history. And both sides are worried by the other side’s current military buildup. But they will soon bury the katana (Japanese sword) and join forces!

Much of the groundwork has already been laid for the development of this alliance. And as U.S. influence and will to lead the world fades, not only Japan and China, but also Russia and other Asian states will continue to reposition themselves, laying the foundation for deep cooperation.

All it would take is a major crisis to spur the Japanese into action.

It is possible that in the event of a regional crisis, Japan might be able to persuade other China-wary Asian nations like India, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam to form an alliance to counter the congealing China-Russia axis. But Bible prophecy shows that even if Japan does form some kind of counter-alliance, it would not be long before this Japan-led bloc would throw its lot in with China and Russia.

The stage is being set for the giants of Asia to join forces, including those with rivers of bad blood between them. It is happening just as Mr. Armstrong said it would. Now all it will take is a sudden catastrophic shock to weld the union together. Once united, “the kings of the east” will stun the world with their unfathomably powerful and destructive alliance.

Herbert W. Armstrong’s most important prophecies were of the wonderful World Tomorrow.

Herbert W. Armstrong published many warnings over the course of his ministry. He forecast how events would culminate in terrible suffering worldwide, and he provided a lot of detail based on the Bible’s prophecies as to how they would be fulfilled. And he worked very hard to ensure that the overall tone of his message reflected the inspiring event that all those prophecies point to. It is an event that will bring the final, peaceful end of all the prophecies spoken of.

One of the earliest prophecies Mr. Armstrong highlighted, as far back as the 1930s—possibly the first and certainly the most important, was that of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ to establish the government of God on Earth in the wonderful World Tomorrow.

Mr. Armstrong first determined to broadcast “the wonderful news of the World Tomorrow” in 1933. Later he wrote, “All I had in mind, as the World Tomorrow program was being planned late in 1933, was to serve God faithfully wherever He should lead …” (Autobiography of Herbert W. Armstrong).

Mr. Armstrong consistently preached the Bible’s message of a utopian future governed by divine principles. He showed how humanity’s attempts at self-governance have led to suffering and chaos, and only God’s intervention will establish a perfect world order. He brought to life the scriptural vision of a transformed Earth under divine rule, characterized by peace, prosperity and universal harmony, contrasting sharply with today’s societal ills.

The Bible foretells the establishment of a divine government—not a human democracy, socialism or any other system but a theocracy led by Christ as King of kings. Trained and qualified officials will be divinely appointed, ensuring just and competent leadership. This top-down structure will eliminate corruption and inefficiency, enforcing God’s spiritual and physical laws to create a harmonious society.

The changes this world is about to witness constitute a transformation all humanity can look forward to! Mr. Armstrong expounded on prophecies of the unification of language, removing barriers to communication and fostering global cooperation. Education will be revolutionized, focusing on God’s truth rather than human philosophies, producing a universally educated populace free from ignorance and falsehood. Economically, the world will see unprecedented prosperity. Jerusalem will become the financial capital, and vast untapped resources will be harnessed to eliminate poverty and famine. Agriculture will flourish under divine guidance, ensuring abundant food supplies. Cities will be rebuilt with beauty and safety, free from slums or pollution, and every neighborhood will be clean and secure. Socially, God’s government will eradicate crime, theft and immorality. Health will improve dramatically as God’s physical laws of healthful living eliminate disease, obesity and addiction. Hospitals will vanish and life spans will increase, creating a vibrant, energetic population.

Spiritually, God’s laws will guide humanity. The Sabbath, set apart for spiritual growth, will anchor a world focused on divine truth rather than material pursuits. Universal adherence to God’s Ten Commandments will produce joy and fulfillment as people live in alignment with their Creator’s purpose.

Mr. Armstrong also explained the cosmic scope of God’s plan, suggesting that humanity, once perfected, will inherit the universe, governing under God’s authority.

Regarding the prophecy of this future world, Mr. Armstrong wrote in 1966, “You don’t have to believe it! It will happen, regardless. It is sure—the world’s only sure hope. This advance good news of tomorrow is as certain as the rising of tomorrow’s sun. Humanity won’t bring it about—it is going to be done to us. Humanity is going to be forced to be happy—to enjoy world peace—to see universal abundance and joy fill the Earth” (The Wonderful World Tomorrow—What It Will Be Like).

This booklet has proved to you how accurate Herbert W. Armstrong’s understanding of the Bible’s prophecies of global events was. That understanding underpinned five decades of accurate and authoritative analysis of circumstances in the world around us. It can give us confidence in grasping the meaning of events and knowing where current trends are leading.

You can have even greater confidence in Mr. Armstrong’s understanding of this hope-filled future! Jesus Christ’s return is certain. He promises to end 6,000 years of human suffering and to establish His glorious rule. This is the future that the Apostle Peter alluded to when he wrote, “We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts” (2 Peter 1:19). Revelation 22:16 calls Christ “the bright and morning star.” Revelation 2:28 says that God will give the overcomer “the morning star,” speaking of the Church becoming the Bride of Jesus Christ and shining as He does! This occurs after “the day dawn.” Christ will return, He will meet His saints in the air—and then the day star will rise in the hearts of God’s saints: In a sudden change, members of His Church will become sons of God who look like Christ, and we will become the Bride! That is the hope Peter talked about: the eternal sunrise in our hearts, or our spiritual lives.

Throughout his ministry, Mr. Armstrong encouraged people to prepare for that future by turning to God and obeying the laws that will govern that wonderful world. Serving God today will lead to attaining a role in leading this future world!

And what He expects you to do about it

This booklet has given you many examples of Herbert W. Armstrong’s explanations of biblical prophecy proving accurate. Why is this important? The implications are earthshaking—and personally life-changing.

The first, most important lesson you must take from this is that those biblical prophecies had an all-knowing Author—and that this same all-powerful God is bringing them to pass!

Herbert W. Armstrong said fulfilled prophecy is the greatest proof of God’s existence and of the inspiration of the Bible!

Prophecies uttered thousands of years ago and canonized in the Bible are coming to pass in modern times—unfolding right now before our astonished eyes. No man could possibly bring those things about.

And the fact that so many of those are already unfolding is proof that you can count on the fulfillment of those remaining prophecies that have not yet taken place. Many more biblical prophecies are being prepared step by step through today’s events.

Many people claim to know God. But how many really know the Almighty God of prophecy? Most people pay little attention to this crucial third of the Bible. But if you ignore prophecy, you do not really know the true God.

Understanding how and why God reveals prophecy teaches you a lot about Him.

And these prophecies will impact your life and the lives of your friends and family. God doesn’t give prophecy to entertain us or to merely reveal His power and supremacy. Bible prophecy is God’s warning to you about your future. Will you listen and respond?

The Ultimate Author of Prophecy

Realize: The source of true prophecy is not any man, no righteous prophet, not an angel. In fact, it is not even Jesus Christ. Matthew 24:36 shows that Christ does not know the timing of His own return, which is at the center of all end-time prophecies.

The ultimate source of true prophecy is God the Father!

Read the first verse of the book of Revelation, the greatest book of prophecy in the Bible: “The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John.”

Note: This verse clearly says “the Revelation of Jesus Christ” was given to Him by God—God the Father! The Father gave it to His Son Jesus Christ, who delivered it to an angel, who gave it to a man, the Apostle John. Yet most Bible publishers title the book “The Revelation of St. John the Divine,” introducing confusion and entirely ignoring the divine Source! This is one clear example of why, in the world today—full of evangelists, preachers and self-proclaimed prophets—none truly understand Bible prophecy!

The fact that prophecy originates with the Most High God is deeply inspiring. It shows the weight God places on prophecy. And very few understand this, but it also highlights the government structure of the God Family. It all points back to God the Father.

Though traditional Christianity asserts that Jesus is the center of the gospel message, Jesus Himself said: “[M]y Father is greater than I” (John 14:28). He came to Earth to declare the Father (John 1:18). God the Father is the God Being who is and always will be the Head of the entire God Family. We can only truly understand prophecy when we keep the Father in the picture. You can read more about this in the first chapter of Mr. Flurry’s booklet Daniel Unlocks Revelation, titled “The Father Focus in Prophecy” (request a free copy).

Bible prophecy reveals God the Father, His love for you and His plans for your future. This is the prism through which we must consider the prophecies revealed through Herbert W. Armstrong. God has introduced Himself to you. Will you reciprocate?

God Must Reveal His Truth

How does God reveal His truth? Again we must look to the Bible. In Revelation 1:1, we saw God revealed that prophecy through Christ, through an angel, to a man named John.

Here is another towering lesson we must learn: God specifically reveals the meaning of His prophecies through individuals of His choosing.

Matthew 11:25 says God the Father hides His truth “from the wise and prudent.” Among the scholars of this world, you will scarcely find anyone willing to humble themselves before God to receive revelation. We cannot look to this world’s scholars to understand God’s Word and His prophecies.

Throughout the Bible, we see God revealing His truth to specific human leaders. God worked with Noah, Abraham, Moses, the prophets and the apostles. If people wanted to know God’s revelation, they had to seek it from these men. This truth is reinforced in multiple passages. Carefully consider these scriptures:

“Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets” (Amos 3:7).

“[B]y revelation he [God] made known unto me [the Apostle Paul] the mystery; (as I wrote afore in few words, Whereby, when ye read, ye may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ) Which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit” (Ephesians 3:3-5).

“[W]e speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory: Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God” (1 Corinthians 2:7-10).

“We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts: Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy [Spirit]” (2 Peter 1:19-21).

The Bible is unlike any other text in the world. Every word was directly inspired by God—and it cannot be understood without God revealing it—and He does that through “his servants the prophets.” 1 Peter 1:12 shows that even angels do not understand Bible prophecy until God the Father reveals it to human beings.

That is why Bible prophecy is not of any “private interpretation.”

Thus we see two significant reasons why our world of religion does not understand Bible prophecy: First, people do not honor God the Father, the Source of revelation; and second, they reject His human messenger.

“God’s revealed word doesn’t come from men,” explains Gerald Flurry in The Epistles of Peter—A Living Hope. “The word prophet in the Old Testament means ‘an interpreter of God.’ In other words, God revealed Himself to these men, and they taught what He revealed! They would have been powerless without the Holy Spirit moving them. They were moved by the Holy Spirit. This is how God speaks to mankind. God gives each person on Earth the responsibility to know when men are moved by the Holy Spirit.”

Once you have proved that God exists, that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, you must prove who God’s human messenger is.

All this can be done through Bible prophecy. Prophecy is a significant means by which God reveals both Himself and the men through whom He is working.

The booklet you are reading has enabled you to prove whether Mr. Armstrong was moved by the Holy Spirit and received revelation from God, or whether he used his private interpretation.

Recognizing the truth in Mr. Armstrong’s explanations shows that God was behind that man. You aren’t simply reading the teachings of an astute Bible scholar—you are reading revelation given to a man by the living Creator God, who is communicating those prophecies for specific reasons!

Fulfilled prophecy powerfully proves Herbert Armstrong was God’s prophet. This reality ought to inspire further important questions. What other biblical truths and teachings did Mr. Armstrong teach? Wouldn’t these also be revealed truth from God?

Here is another crucial question. When Herbert Armstrong died in 1986, through whom did the living God continue to communicate?

Advance Knowledge

Look once more at Revelation 1:1: It tells us that God gives us prophecy “to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass.” God gave this prophetic message to show us things that are about to happen—before they do. Only the omnipotent God can do that! No false god would be capable. (Read God’s challenge to impotent idols in Isaiah 41:21-24; also Psalm 33:10-15.)

God says through the Prophet Isaiah, “Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me, Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure” (Isaiah 46:9-10).

When God says something, He ensures it happens. He follows through. This is the foundation of our faith! We can have absolute confidence in the God of prophecy. Like Abraham, we can be “fully persuaded that, what [God] had promised, he was able also to perform” (Romans 4:21). That is faith.

Why would God want us to know in advance that certain things will happen?

There are times when we only recognize the accuracy of a prophecy after it comes true. Christ specifically told His disciples that as we see prophecies fulfilled, it should vindicate God in our minds and strengthen our faith: “And now I have told you before it come to pass, that, when it is come to pass, ye might believe” (John 14:29).

Often, however, God gives prophecy as a warning to alter our behavior, or a motivator to regulate our spiritual life.

Jesus Christ, in His great Olivet prophecy, gave His disciples several signs to watch for in advance of His Second Coming, and said, “[W]hen ye shall see all these things, know that it [the day of His return] is near, even at the doors” (Matthew 24:33). Like many of the Bible’s prophecies, these were advance warning that should keep us attuned to the urgency of the time we live in.

It is through prophecy that God warns us of the consequences of disobedience to Him. Many prophecies foretell of judgment that is coming on the wicked and terrifying punishments that will befall rebellious people. God gives them for the same reason a loving parent warns his disobedient child before disciplining him: It is a prod to correct our behavior and to turn to Him. “Say unto them, As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?” (Ezekiel 33:11).

Prophecy is an expression of God’s mercy. He wants to help us avoid punishment and receive blessings. Bible prophecy is a warning.

We must take these invaluable warnings seriously—believe God—and act.

When we come to understand there is a God orchestrating events and bringing His prophecies to pass, we see the seriousness of His warnings, and we recognize our responsibility to obey Him. It is highly motivating spiritually! As Christ said after giving the signs of His return, “Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come. … Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh” (Matthew 24:42, 44). Knowing the shortness of time incites us to be ready by following after righteousness.

The Beauty of Repentance

Consider the prophecies you have read about in this booklet. God revealed them to Mr. Armstrong to forewarn of the future of America and Britain, of Europe, of the Middle East, of Asia—and to show where today’s momentous events are taking this world.

Has this book had a spiritual impact? Has it proved the existence of the living God? Has it revealed where God is working? Has it built your faith in the God who inspired and revealed these prophecies?

There are many people who have heard what Mr. Armstrong taught and say, If this or that prophecy comes to pass, then I will believe God sent him. Thus they dismiss all the prophecies that already have been accomplished.

And then—all too often—when the prophecy does come to pass, they still do not act!

If that is your attitude, then heed Jesus Christ’s admonition in Matthew 12:39-40: “An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas: For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”

What is the connection to Jonah the prophet? Mr. Flurry explains: “The Jews could observe and prove that Christ was in the grave three days and three nights. By this sign, they could prove that Jesus Christ truly was the Son of the living God—their very Creator, who is far greater than the Prophet Jonah.

“Then if they understood and believed this sign, they could learn a vital lesson. The people of Nineveh repented when Jonah warned them” (Jonah: A Strong Warning to God’s Church; emphasis added).

You can read this inspiring story in the book of Jonah. God’s prophet delivered a warning: “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown” (Jonah 3:4). That is a prophecy. Here was the reaction: “So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them” (verse 5). The king proclaimed that the people should “turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands. Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?” (verses 8-9).

How did God respond? “And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not” (verse 10). He withheld His punishment!

What a powerful illustration of the power of prophecy—and the beauty of responding to it as God intends!

When Jesus brought up this example to the faithless people of His day, He concluded with this fierce condemnation: “The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here” (Matthew 12:41).

The people to whom Christ was speaking refused to repent—and they ended up killing Him.

God wants us to react to a great many of His prophecies the same way the Ninevites did: by simply believing Him, having faith that what He says is true—before the words of the prophet come to pass—and repenting.

If we reject all the evidence God lays before us, if we cling to our skepticism and, as Christ said, are always “seeking after a sign” that God’s prophecies are sure, we will find ourselves in the middle of the prophesied Great Tribulation before we repent!

Believe His Prophets

What does God expect us to do instead? The answer is simple: “… Believe in the Lord your God, so shall ye be established; believe his prophets, so shall ye prosper” (2 Chronicles 20:20). We need to not only believe God but also believe His prophets. This leads us to repent of our evil ways, to follow God and honor the Father—and to support the man He has chosen.

Yet here is the tragedy. Tens of thousands of dedicated members of the Worldwide Church of God did support Mr. Armstrong, but after his death, they fell away.

Astoundingly, none of those who departed from what Mr. Armstrong taught understand Bible prophecy today! They have lost the testimony of Jesus, which is the spirit of prophecy (Revelation 19:10). In fact, many of them today say prophesy not! (Amos 2:12; Isaiah 30:10).

These lukewarm Christians have proved by their actions that they failed to understand this most crucial lesson we hope you take away from this booklet: why God revealed His prophecies to Mr. Armstrong.

Because they failed to understand this, they rejected this pivotal prophecy from Jesus Christ Himself in Matthew 17:10-13:

“And His disciples asked Him, saying, ‘Why then do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?’ Jesus answered and said to them, ‘Indeed, Elijah is coming first and will restore all things. But I say to you that Elijah has come already, and they did not know him but did to him whatever they wished. Likewise the Son of Man is also about to suffer at their hands.’ Then the disciples understood that He spoke to them of John the Baptist” (New King James Version).

This points back to God’s prophecy that He would send an end-time Elijah just before the Second Coming of Christ (Malachi 4:5-6). John the Baptist was a forerunner, who prepared the way for Christ’s first coming. But the ultimate fulfillment occurred in this end time, in the days before Christ’s return. God sent a prophet in the spirit of Elijah.

This man has come and gone already. That shows how near the end of this age we are—how close we are to the fulfillment of all the other end-time prophecies.

God expects us to know who this man is, though the world as a whole does not. It was the man whose words and warnings you have been reading throughout this booklet: Herbert W. Armstrong.

“People didn’t recognize who John the Baptist was. And people today didn’t recognize the office of Mr. Armstrong,” Mr. Flurry notes. “But what is more shocking, even most members in Mr. Armstrong’s own Church failed to recognize who he really was! That is why they are Laodicean! All of the Laodiceans reject Mr. Armstrong as fulfilling this end-time Elijah role! Christ prophesied that they would be blind (Revelation 3:17). They are blind beyond belief! But notice, the true disciples understood—just as God’s Philadelphian disciples understand today” (Isaiah’s End-Time Vision).

Just as Christ’s disciples understood who John the Baptist was, His disciples today understand who Mr. Armstrong was.

“Christ is the Head of His Church, but He also uses a man to be the physical head. He has done that throughout the ages,” Mr. Flurry continues. “… It is through the man that Christ implements His government. Satan, the god of this world, and rebels hate that government and always work to demonize that man. This is not about following a man—it’s about following God’s man.” There is a clear structure from God the Father to Christ to His human messenger, who is supported by a group of people, the Church, to get God’s message to the world.

God the Father is about to send His Son to this Earth a second time—this time in power and glory! What is uppermost in God’s mind is the restoration of His government on Earth (Acts 3:19-21). By revealing the prophecies of the Bible to one man, God begins this restoration process. Prophecy thus not only shows where God is working but also impels us to come under this government and to accept God’s wonderful way of life that it teaches and administers.

In the decades since Mr. Armstrong’s death in 1986, God has continued to reveal His secrets to one man, an apostle. Today God’s warning message of the coming events, as well as the good news of the wonderful World Tomorrow—the work started through Mr. Armstrong—continues to be trumpeted around the world by this work as a witness.

You can escape the horror of the next few years by heeding that witness. Prove the prophecies of the Bible. Recognize the Author behind those prophecies, the all-powerful God who inspired them and is now bringing them to pass. Honor the Father by turning your heart to Him. Believe in Him, so shall you be established. And find and support the man He is using and the Work that man is leading. Believe His prophets, so shall you prosper!