The Kings of the East

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!