How accurate Mr. Armstrong’s forecast was of Germany being the “heart and core of the united Europe”!
Those prescient words were paralleled with stunning accuracy in a 2009 statement by Philip Murphy, America’s ambassador to Germany. “Germany is the centerpiece of the European Union,” he said in Berlin on December 1 of that year.
Europe’s history tells us to expect a European power to play a major role in the world. Germany’s economic and geographic dominance of the Continent tells us that it will be Europe’s leader. But why expect a 10-nation conglomerate?
This forecast is underpinned not just by more than 1,500 years of European history but by biblical prophecy.
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The Source of the Forecasts
At the mention of prophecy, many people immediately tune out. But before you do, realize that all of those forecasts that have already come to pass were based on the prophecies that so many people would dismiss out of hand.
Europe today is living, pulsing proof of the relevance and veracity of biblical prophecy!
Look at this statement Mr. Armstrong made in 1962: “Prophecy shows 10 kings … will arise in Europe and give their power to Germany.” It was because of biblical prophecy that Mr. Armstrong knew a 10-nation union would rise out of Europe in these latter days.
Revelation 17 describes in vivid detail this seventh and final resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire. “There is going to be a resurrection of that old Roman Empire. Not very many people believe it because people have gotten completely beyond really believing the Bible means what it says,” Mr. Armstrong said over 50 years ago. “You’re going to have to live and see it, and you’re going to have to know that God was speaking when He said that this thing was coming.”
The Bible prophesied that after the Roman Empire collapsed in a.d. 476, its “deadly wound” would be healed (Revelation 13:3) and that there would be seven resurrections of a “Holy” Roman Empire to rise out of the territory of the Roman Empire of old.
Emperor Justinian recognized the supremacy of the pope in a.d. 554. Thus, when we come to these prophesied resurrections in Revelation 17, there is a whorish “woman” straddling this resurrected Roman “beast.” This is a prophetic symbol of the great false church that heavily influences and rules over the political empire. It is an unholy union of church and state.
“So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns” (Revelation 17:3). These seven heads and 10 horns are the biblical terms used to describe the Holy Roman Empire in its seven specific stages, culminating in the final union of 10 nations (or groups of nations) at the end of this age.
Here the Bible is plainly speaking of a great political beast rising in Europe, which will be led by a great European religious beast in an unholy alliance that sets out to conquer the world!
These seven successive resurrections of the Holy Roman Empire would have lapses in between, pictured by the mountain peaks and valleys in Revelation 17. As H. G. Wells wrote in The Outline of History, “The Roman Empire staggers, sprawls, is thrust off the stage, and reappears, and … it is the church of Rome which plays the part of the magician and keeps the corpse alive.”
The 10 horns mentioned in Revelation 17 are part of the seventh head. These 10 horns are 10 heads of state in Europe that will join together 10 nations or groups of nations as part of the final resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire.
Many other prophecies align with these in Revelation. Daniel 2 describes in symbol four world-ruling empires, traceable through history, the fourth of which is the Roman Empire, “strong as iron” (verse 40). The prophecy shows that right at the end, this empire will have 10 parts, pictured by 10 toes of this statue. Daniel 7 portrays the same four empires, but with different symbols; it emphasizes the repeated resurrections of the Roman Empire. (These prophecies are explained in our free booklet Daniel—Unsealed at Last!). Additional prophecies that provide still more detail can be found in Isaiah 10, Habakkuk 1 and many other passages.
Notice what one popular writer in Britain, known by the pseudonym Archbishop Cranmer, wrote in 2011: “The European Union is essentially the re-creation of the old empire of Charlemagne: from the moment the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1951, the European Coal and Steel Community bound together the economic and political destinies of France and Germany.” This commentator recently recognized this fact. But who besides Herbert W. Armstrong was writing about it more than half a century ago?
Mr. Armstrong was on the scene during the sixth resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire, and he prophesied of the seventh and final resurrection. We are witnessing that final resurrection today!
The Bible prophesies that this final resurrection would continue for a short time—only 2½ years. All of the prophecies that have come true and are coming true make very clear what will happen at the end of that short period. Though the final reign of this unholy empire will be brutal and bloody, it will end after a short time in the most exciting and hope-filled event in human history: the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
EUROPE’S UNSTOPPABLE EMPIRE
Not only has unified Europe endured decades of ups and downs, it has actually endured death—and then it has resurrected itself seven times over thousands of years. The Bible forecasted this in detail—and European history shows that it came to pass. Some of the Bible’s descriptions of this history are so detailed and so accurate, that critics insist that they must have been written after the events happened, not before.
Yet these Bible prophecies revealed events that happened long after the Bible was finished. In fact, this European history contained in the Bible is still unfolding. Find out which parts of the Bible describe the history of Europe, and whether its current unification effort will succeed once again. Request your free copy of The Holy Roman Empire in Prophecy.
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