Stephen FlurryColumnist
Europe in Crisis
May 21, 2010 | From theTrumpet.com
The stage is set for a strongman to emerge. 
Europe is in chaos. The euro is on the brink of collapse. Investors are dumping the currency, as well as stocks, and rushing to inflation-proof havens like gold. Greece is up to its ears in debt and can’t pay it back. Its citizens are taking to the streets in violent protest against any “austerity measures” intended to roll back benefits. Other European nations are now threatening to pull out of the eurozone.
The trillion-dollar rescue package has done little to ease the panic spreading across the Continent. The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, recently admitted the bailout does little more than “buy time” for the European Union. Yet, on Wednesday, Chancellor Merkel urged German lawmakers to accept Germany’s share of the rescue package. “The euro is in danger,” she said. “If we do not avert this danger, then the consequences for Europe are incalculable, and then the consequences beyond Europe are incalculable.”
The German people, meanwhile, are dead-set against the thought of Germany being responsible for nursing the EU’s sick members back to health. This has some wondering if Merkel’s government will survive the crisis. “Once hailed as the undisputed queen of Europe,” the Times of London recently wrote, “the chancellor is facing increasing criticism that she is dithering just when decisive leadership is needed” (emphasis mine).
The sure word of prophecy reveals that decisive Germanic leadership is coming. In fact, that’s the biggest storyline now developing behind the scenes of the current financial crisis. It hasn’t yet made newspaper headlines, but like so many of the events now making news in Europe, we have been forecasting it for decades. As early as 1952, Herbert W. Armstrong said a revived Germany would become “the heart and core of the united Europe.”
Today, Germany is the undisputed king of a united Europe. Yes, at present, it’s an oversized union of disparate parts grappling to solve an economic crisis. But somewhere behind the scenes, there is a strongman who sees this crisis as an opportunity to galvanize the German people and cut down the European Union into a much stronger, more manageable consortium of ten kings.
It’s all prophesied in the Bible! In fact, the current economic crisis is only hastening its fulfillment. Mr. Armstrong accurately predicted this as well. In July 1984, he said a world economic crisis would be the “trigger” that accelerates the formation of a German-led, European superpower.
Even European history attests to the fact that an authoritarian strong man often needs a “crisis” to impose his will on Europe—and the rest of the world.
Germany, from the beginning of the European experiment, has been preparing for this very crisis. Go back and read what we reported in September 2002, when the fledgling euro had just been introduced as the eurozone’s common currency. Back then, Trumpet columnist Ron Fraser alerted our readers to a likely spike in gold prices, which was then selling at about $300 per ounce. At the time, he wrote, the United States and Canada were busy liquidating their gold reserves. Germany, on the other hand, was an active buyer in the gold market.
Added to this, Mr. Fraser noted, every member of the new eurozone had signed over its gold reserves to the European Central Bank in Frankfurt. Thus, whether the euro succeeded or not, Germany would be in the driver’s seat, Mr. Fraser said. He then made this astounding statement:
If an economic crisis in Europe does bring failure to the system that supports the fledgling euro, then it will be up to Germany to suggest the solutions.
That was in 2002. In 2008, after the failure of American banks triggered a global financial meltdown, we warned that the European economy was following a similar path. “European leaders have been waiting for years for just such an economic crisis,” Robert Morley wrote. “A crisis of this magnitude allows them to sweep away national sovereignties and consolidate power ‘for the greater good.’”
Then, when rioting broke out in Greece later that year, in December 2008, we wrote that it was sure to get worse and that Germany had been planning for this very economic crisis long before it even adopted the euro. “The crisis in Greece is a forerunner of a whole rash of similar crises set to soon break out across Europe,” Richard Palmer wrote. “They will provide the catalyst for the EU’s leading nation, Germany, to rise to the fore with solutions of its own making to such crises.”
Now look at where we are—and prepare for what’s coming! On Tuesday, in the same speech she used to get German lawmakers on board with the bailout package, Chancellor Merkel also said Europe needed “an agreement under which, as a last resort, it’s possible to exclude a country from the eurozone if again and again it doesn’t fulfill the requirements.”
That statement reveals the will of the German people. They want new rules where individual eurozone nations must pay for their own financial mismanagement—or else face the possibility of expulsion.
But Merkel’s actions belie those strong words of warning. She’s already caved in to pressure from Barack Obama and French President Sarkozy on the bailout package, which puts German taxpayers on the hook for about $150 billion to help rescue Greece.
Soon to be added to that tab may well be the chancellorship of Angela Merkel.
Germany, and Europe, will soon have their strongman. All the mechanisms are now in place—including the groundswell of support he will need to capitalize on the current crisis—for him to pare down the bloated, 27-member union to the powerfully destructive, biblically prophesied ten kings.
Beginning with Mr. Armstrong’s ministry, we have been forecasting this for more than 60 years—dating back to a time when the cities of Germany were lying prostrate beneath the devastation of the Second World War.
Now, finally, these prophecies are there—being fulfilled—for all to see!
