This article was originally published in The Plain Truth magazine in May of 1962. In many ways it was ahead of its time. European unity has been a long and complicated process, but the very type of federation predicted now exists. A common currency, an external border and a unified European Parliament have overshadowed individual member states to a large degree. The EU, taken as a whole, surpasses the United States economically. External threats have increased calls for military unity and self reliance. Cooperation extends into all aspects of life. Yet, it is an uncomfortable unity in many ways. Traditional and progressive values clash, rich and poor nations struggle to find common ground. What does the future of Europe hold? We have come a long way, but we still wait for the final grouping of ten nations predicted in Bible prophecy!
With all eyes on communism, and its threat to the peace of the world, a little-recognized new threat is rising up in Western Europe!
For over twenty-eight years, this magazine, and the World Tomorrow program have been shouting to the people of the United States, and now to those in Britain, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and around the world the frightening warning of what your Bible prophesies is immediately ahead for our people!
It’s Too Fantastic!
“But surely this couldn’t happen,” people have scoffed. It sounds so incredible, so impossible that it just “couldn’t” happen –– say some. But it is happening now, before your very eyes! Europe is uniting –– and for a very special prophesied purpose.
Even as the Apostle Peter prophesied, “Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days [and we’re living in those times!] scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying, ‘Where is the promise of His coming?’” (II Pet. 3:3-4.)
They would argue that “everything is going along about like always” reveals Peter in the succeeding verses. But he warned that these are willingly ignorant of the real events that mark the imminency of the end of this age.
But what is happening?
Several years ago, when Mr. Roderick C. Meredith, Senior Editor of The Plain Truth, had given a sermon on this Biblically prophesied “beast” emerging today, a woman scoffed. “That’s nuts!” she accused. “I’ve been to Germany –– I’ve seen that country –– and they will NEVER rise again!” To her, that was ample proof.
Yes, to some people it was simply too fantastic to believe. But it is happening before your very eyes today! Can you begin to believe NOW that God means what He says?
Daniel Foretold It
Hundreds of years ago, God inspired the prophet Daniel to foretell it. Daniel didn’t know what he wrote. He wanted to know. He asked, “O my Lord, what shall be the end of these things?” (Dan. 12:8.) But he was told to go his way –– and not to concern himself with the answer, because it was to be hidden from the minds of men until this time, NOW! (Daniel 12:4, 9-10.)
Daniel had been called in before king Nebuchadnezzar. The king had wanted a dream explained to him. He had commanded others to reveal not only the meaning of the dream, but the dream itself! Naturally, this was humanly impossible.
But God intervened. God gave Daniel the dream and the meaning of it in a night vision. So when Daniel went before the king to explain the dream, he revealed that the dream was not a thing of passing interest –– and was not even a prophecy just for the immediate lifetime of king Nebuchadnezzar. Rather, Daniel said, “There is a God in heaven that revealeth secrets, and maketh known to the king Nebuchadnezzar what shall be in the latter days” (Daniel 2:28).
Notice it! The vision was concerned with things to occur in the latter days!
All Bible commentaries know Daniel was given a vision of the four successive world-ruling Gentile kingdoms of Babylon, Persia, Greco-Macedonia and Rome. But notice how long the final kingdom was to last!
“Thou sawest till a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image [the huge statue representing the kingdoms] upon his feet…and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth” (Dan. 2:34-35).
He saw until the second coming of Christ to rule the earth with a rod of iron, and to forcibly crush the final remnant of this same system –– which this and other prophecies clearly prove is to be extant at the time of Christ’s return! (Rev. 2:26-27, Dan. 7:21-22.)
WHAT Will Christ Destroy?
In the dream was the great image standing in the plain, towering up into the skies. The image represented the four world-ruling Gentile Kingdoms, terminating in Rome. But the stone, clearly representing Christ, struck the image on the feet. The feet have ten toes!
Notice quickly the explanation of the toes in Daniel and the Revelation. God said, “And as the toes of the feet [there are ten of them] were part of iron and part of clay, so the kingdom [which they, collectively, represent] shall be partly strong and partly broken [weak –– margin]. And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men, but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay” (Dan. 2:42-43).
The ten toes mingle themselves, but only for a short time –– they don’t stay together very long. Notice! It is precisely during the time these ten nations, represented by the toes of the image, are enjoying their brief union together that Jesus Christ of Nazareth is to return to this earth!
“And in the days of these kings [the kings represented by the toes] shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed, and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever!” (Dan. 2:44.)
Some have falsely reasoned this prophecy was fulfilled in history at the supposed “Christianizing” of the heathen Roman Empire. Others supposed that the “Kingdom of God is set up in the hearts of men,” thus fulfilling this prophecy. Still others assume that when Jesus built His Church, this prophecy was fulfilled.
What abysmal error! God plainly says His Kingdom, the ruling government of Jesus Christ, is going to “break in pieces” and consume all these kingdoms!
Let’s understand. Your Bible plainly says Jesus Christ is going to arrive on this earth at a time when there will be ten nations united together, comprising an end-time resurrection of this same ancient system.
We are living in the times of the resurrection of that Beast!
United States of Europe
For years, we have shouted over The World Tomorrow broadcast, and printed in the pages of The Plain Truth magazine, that the nations in Europe were going to unite. Space does not permit a complete account of all these dozens of articles over a period of years!
And, even as my father, Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong, was saying while American and British bombers where wrecking all the big cities in Germany, Germany has risen again.
Today, “Euromart,” a new name in Western news, looms on the horizon. Four out of five Americans do not even know the meaning of “Euromart,” or what part it plays in the international economy.
Beginning as a comparatively “innocent” union for purely economic considerations, the combine of “the Inner Six” has gradually been forged more firmly together, all the while deepening the rift between the Anglican British and the Lutheran Scandinavians, and has surged ahead in remarkable industrial and economic comeback. It comprises truly the strongest industrial and trading combine on the face of this earth!
Others are clamoring for entrance. Rumors are now flying fast and furiously that Spain and Portugal may be planning to unite! This new united nation will want entrance (Spain has already applied) into Euromart! Other nations want in. Greece has already been cooperating, and is considered a nominal member. As we have been shouting for years, the United States of Europe is just ahead!
Literally dozens of new releases have emphasized in recent years and months that the ultimate aims of the European Federation are political, not simply economic. As the Christian Science Monitor said in 1960: “Professor Walter Hallstein [the president of the European Economic Community]…and his colleagues are not building a comfortable trading area. They are building a NEW EMPIRE, a new POLITICAL POWER, a new federation, a new political force big enough to challenge the United States and Canada…” (emphasis mine).
One writer editorialized: “Fascism in Europe is about to be reborn in respectable business attire.”
A Spiritual Union!
Notice another amazing prophecy in the book of Revelation, uncovering the next prophesied event! Here, John saw in vision a great fallen woman. She is clearly described. It is in chapter 17:1-2, “Come hither; I will shew unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters: with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication.” John saw, in vision, a great woman –– symbol of a religious system –– who had been deluding and deceiving the inhabitants of the earth with her “wine” or her false doctrines! Meanwhile, she has also been delving into politics, which God calls spiritual fornication! But this isn’t all.
“So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet colored beast, full of names and blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns” (Rev. 17:3).
Here is a great fallen woman pictured as riding over, guiding and controlling this great beast! Read the entire 17th chapter of the book of Revelation! Notice the meaning of the ten horns: “And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast. These have one mind, and shall give their power and strength unto the beast” (Rev. 17:12-13).
Just exactly as God described through Daniel, here are ten kings, existing at the end time just prior to the return of Jesus Christ –– a union of ten nations which will exist together in real harmony and unity only a very short time (described as “one hour” in this prophecy) and will actually fight against Jesus Christ at His second coming!
Read it! “These [ten kings] shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them, for He is Lord of lords, and King of kings; and they that are with Him are called, and chosen, and faithful” (Rev. 17:14).
How PLAIN! Regardless as to any technical understanding of the Bible prophecy, regardless as to whether you have the keys to the identity of the great nations, regardless as to whether you understand Biblical chronology –– you can plainly see, and cannot escape the fact that your Bible says there will be a union of ten nations, ruled over by a great fallen woman who has made those nations spiritually drunk at the very time of the second coming of Jesus Christ!
Prophecy Races On!
It is time we begin to wake up, and come to our senses. We are living in the most dangerous times in this history of this world!
The emergence of the greatest, most powerful, economic, political, and religious union the world has ever seen is a constant daily process!
And now –– from England’s leading weekly news magazine, March 24, 1962, comes one of the most shocking, one of the most startling news releases of recent times!
This top news source reported, concerning the emergence of the powerful force shaping up in Central Europe, “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 crated the Common Market, had been signed within the Vatican walls, it could not have favored the church more.”
This revealing article went on to describe how the Common Market is now being considered by the Church the work of “Divine Providence!”
Later, Topic said: “Small wonder then that the Roman Church is smiling benignly over the formation of what Vatican officials defined as ‘THE GREATEST CATHOLIC SUPER-STATE THE WORLD HAS EVER KNOWN’” (emphasis mine).
There it is!
The time for doubt and scoffing is past. These prophecies are real –– they are unfolding and happening before your very eyes! Truly gigantic happenings are under way in Europe today which will drastically alter the course of your private life. It’s time you begin to really heed the words of Jesus Christ, who said: “Watch you therefore, and pray always, that you may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man” (Luke 21:36).
