“The economic crisis in Greece is the most important thing to have happened in Europe since the Balkan wars,” one observer wrote in London Review of Books on July 14.

War can be cultural, economic or military in its strategy, but the goal is the same: the conquering of the state that is the object of the aggressor.

A lot of publicity has been given to the economic sins of Greece, with the Greek people receiving much of the blame. Yet the reality is that this nation has been conquered by deliberate strategy.

Back in early 2009, when the masses were rioting in Athens to protest perceived government mishandling of their economy, our editor in chief headlined a leading article in the February 2009 Trumpet, “Did the Holy Roman Empire Plan the Greek Crisis?” In that article, Gerald Flurry wrote, “The Greek government can do little to fix the nation’s economy …. There is no way out—and, according to some analysts, it was designed from the beginning to become that way. Those analysts agree with the brutal facts unfolding in Europe” (emphasis added throughout).

Those “brutal facts” are revealed in Bernard Connolly’s riveting account of the behind-the-scenes imperial strategies of European elites. In his book The Rotten Heart of Europe, Connolly recounts his direct, personal observations of the machinery of the European Monetary Union (emu) in action, its motive and its means. His conclusion, since validated by the EU’s dealings most especially with Greece, is that emu was deliberately created to provoke a financial crisis in Europe as a means for the elites of Europe, specifically Germany, to gain power over EU member nations.

Greece is only the first case. A number of EU member nations are about to be reduced to vassal states, yielding their sovereignty to a single, centralized imperialist authority. They will have to hand over control of their economies to that overarching authority. In the process, they will lose control of major strategic assets—indeed, of whole national economies.

This is all happening in direct and specific accordance with Bible prophecy!

Taking Over Greece

In exchange for the bailout funds it has received, Greece is being robbed of its national sovereignty. It is having to sell off government firms on a massive scale. Observers have compared this to the privatization of some 14,000 former East German companies in the 1990s after the fall of communism, at a huge loss of both jobs and profits.

Greece is also being forced to sell off huge portions of its tangible national assets in an effort to raise €50 billion (us$72 billion) to offset the massive debt it incurred with the EU bailouts. This sell-off will inevitably include vital strategic assets once deemed crucial to its national security. German bankers and merchants are jostling for the best of the pickings. Is this by pure coincidence?

Look at a map of the crucially strategic Mediterranean Sea. Greece, incorporating the island of Crete, is the southernmost tongue of the European continent, bounded by the Ionian Sea to the west, the Aegean to the east and the Mediterranean to the south. Possession of this land is most strategic to any European power with imperialist aims. It is a crucial gateway to Eurasia, North Africa and the Middle East. Twice in modern times, during World Wars i and ii, Germany sought to occupy Greece as a strategic milestone in its effort to establish a Teutonic empire. It succeeded on its second try.

In more recent times, it has been German industrialists who have invaded and plundered Greece, taking advantage of a unique situation that nation faces.

Greece lives under a permanent military threat from its huge neighbor on the Anatolian peninsula, Turkey. The Turks taunt their smaller neighbor across the crucial Bosporus sea gate, daily violating Greek airspace with their fighter jets. Tensions are made worse by continuing disputes over Greek sovereignty attached to certain islands in the Aegean. To counter Turkey’s aggression, Greece has spent huge amounts on defense budgets—as much as 4.3 percent of gross domestic product, proportionately the highest among the EU nations.

Who has been the greatest beneficiary of this defense expenditure? The major supplier of defense equipment to Greece: the German armaments industry.

How much have EU elites actually manipulated ongoing Greek-Turkish tensions for the advantage of the EU’s thriving defense industries? As one Greek source observed: “In this volatile game of geopolitics, the bosses of Euro ‘family’ have always been playing the major role in cultivating and manipulating an unguaranteed stability in the area, thus creating market conditions for their influential military industries to flourish. German defense corporations in particular have been major contractors with the Greek (and Turkish) army for more than two decades” (Antibaro.gr, Nov. 29, 2010).

The same source points to huge fraud and corruption that marks the dealings between German defense corporations and the Greek government. The industrial giant Siemens, used often by the German government as a front for international intelligence operations, has apparently been a major offender: “One of countless scandals in Greece involves millions of euros smuggled under the table by Siemens and siphoned to the leading Greek political parties of New Democracy and pasok as ‘commissions’ or direct bribes for winning certain contracts worth billions. The key person (a Siemens top executive of Greek origin and German citizenship) involved in the plot escaped arrest and trial in Greece and currently shelters in Germany where he is protected by German law” (ibid).

The facts are that Greece’s coffers have been substantially drained into huge profits for German defense industry barons. This includes multibillion-euro contracts for Greece to purchase big-ticket military hardware ranging from tanks to missiles to naval vessels, including submarines.

One of the worst cases of manipulation by German corporatists was the ote debacle. German corporations were contracted to upgrade the Greek national telecommunications system. The whole project was financed by Greece, only to see a 30 percent stake in the system sold to a German company through what appears to be dubious procedures. ote is the major power supplier to the Balkan nations.

“All these sum up to hundreds of billions of euros and, under other circumstances, could have been more than enough to balance the Greek budget deficit and even drastically alleviate the external debt,” that same Greek source observed. “One thing is for sure, those billions were added to the profits of German industrialists, bankers and intermediaries.”

Thus, the most recent German invasion of Greece has not been by armed aggression: It has been by a forceful economic strategy.

Germany is now completing its “grey suit” invasion of Greece by forcing the loss of that country’s national sovereignty, the fire sale of its national assets and the nation’s eventual submission to absolute fiscal control by Berlin/Brussels. That is the guaranteed outcome of this so-called temporary default by Greece, which was arranged, above all, by Germany.

Moving In for the Kill

It is now obvious that certain imperialist elites in Germany are gaining confidence as they successfully promote German interests above those of their EU counterparts. On the surface, this appears to be the opposite of the policy that Berlin, and previously Bonn, stuck to after signing the Treaties of Rome launching the Continent on the road to unification back in 1957. Up till recently, Germany always seemed to try to merge its interests with those of the EU as a whole. But over the past two years, it has become more overt in pursuing its own agenda, defying the wishes of other EU nations. One reason for this is that German elites—who created the euro in order to force weaker economies to become dependent on the stronger—now see that their strategy is working and are moving in for the kill.

EU nations are being thrown into crisis. The folly of emu members sacrificing their own sovereign means of exchange upon the altar of the euro, and thus giving up their right to change interest rates to compensate for cyclical boom and bust trends in their economies, is now clear.

Germany, the strongest European economy by far, now holds the whip hand when troubled emu member nations raise the begging bowl for bailout funds. Germany sets the rules. Among the winners will be German merchants who seize state assets at knock-down prices (Revelation 18).

The formula we see playing out in Greece day by day will now continue to play out elsewhere in Europe as each emu domino falls.

But why push Greece to default?

It was a natural progression, strategically, for German elites to move south to acquire control of Greece once they had the Balkan Peninsula firmly in their grasp (Daniel 8:9). Yet, whereas Bonn under Helmut Kohl was able to entice nato to seize the Balkan Peninsula on Germany’s behalf by force—with expenses largely paid by the United States and Britain—Greece presented a different challenge. It was a fellow nato member nation. Thus, an alternative strategy was brought into play. Germany encouraged massive expenditure by Greece and Turkey on armaments, fomenting the tensions across the Bosporus. This broke the Grecian economy while enriching German industrialists.

Now, with the Greek default, we see once again it’s game, set and match to Germany, just as this magazine has consistently predicted would be the case.

Greece is the latest colony to be added to the Balkans in the German elites’ grand imperial game. Soon Germany will own most of what has any real worth in Greece.

The Next Move

Now, take another look at the map. With the Balkans and Greece firmly in the grasp of EU elites, what should we next look for as their most obvious strategic move? A headline in the July 22 Guardian newspaper gave more than a hint: “Cyprus could be the eurozone’s next crisis point.”

Given the overarching strategy of EU elites to colonize the southern Mediterranean region, there is little doubt that this headline is already becoming a reality. Already, influential high-level Germans are preparing for this very scenario. It will happen a lot faster in Cyprus than it did with the Balkan and Grecian takeovers.

This island country in the eastern Mediterranean was thrust into the international spotlight on July 11 when a massive explosion in its main power facility knocked out over 50 percent of the nation’s power-generating capacity. The costly disaster—from which it will take years to recover at an estimated cost to the nation of €2 to €3 billion—suddenly exposed the fragile state of Cyprus’s economy.

“[T]he government has been urged to take drastic austerity measures to close a deficit almost twice the EU-recommended ceiling of 3 percent,” the Guardian article reported. “Cyprus central bank governor Athanasios Orphanides has warned the political leadership, including President Demetris Christofias; it must instigate immediate cost-cutting measures if it is to avoid going cap in hand to the EU for a bailout.” Orphanides said the event plunged the national economy into “a state of emergency.” It triggered the resignation of the entire Cypriot cabinet and a further downgrade of the nation’s credit rating to just above junk status.

Just one sudden, unanticipated phenomenon can change the state of a nation overnight in this volatile world! As the Financial Times observed, “Cyprus can expect to go through political, social and economic changes that were not on the agenda prior to the July 11 disaster” (July 20).

This turn of events greatly favors the imperialist agenda of German elites. Indeed, it accelerates their timetable for the strategic seizure of the entire region from Zagreb to Nicosia. Control of this region is crucial to command of the vital warm-water sea gates controlling the junction of the Adriatic, Ionian, Aegean and Mediterranean seas, not to mention access to the Suez oil gateway and to the vital Dardanelles crossroads to the Black Sea. Cyprus, like Greece, is also vital to the ongoing development of Germany’s shipping industries; many German shipping companies are based there. In addition, the two nations are currently negotiating a bilateral security of information agreement. This will be a crucial element in Germany’s efforts to capitalize on Cyprus’s location as a vital listening post for Turkish and Middle Eastern intelligence.

Watch Cyprus closely. The impact of this massive explosion on the already embattled Cypriot economy is certain to accelerate Cyprus toward becoming yet another nation in crisis seeking bailout from Berlin/Brussels. The result will be dominance of that island’s economy by EU elites.

Then, with Cyprus in the bag, what lies next, within a strategic stone’s throw from Cyprus? The greatest prize of all.

On to Jerusalem

We wrote in the Trumpet’s August 1998 print edition, “Already there are European troops in Cyprus under the auspices of UN peacekeeping forces. As the EU moves more into Eastern Europe and the Balkans, repeating the history of the old Holy Roman Empire, it would seem inevitable, given the facts of Bible prophecy, that they will draw Cyprus into their fold as a bridge into the Holy Land.”

This is a most crucial element in the EU elites’ plan to take over the southern Mediterranean. Among the titles vested in those who inherited the crown of the Holy Roman Empire was “king of Jerusalem.” That title, claimed by all the Holy Roman emperors of the German Nation, needs to be viewed in the light of the EU’s push south and east into Cyprus—and beyond! The prophecy revealing the progressive imperialist moves by the great northern power south and east and onward toward Jerusalem (Daniel 8:9) is now well advanced.

Our editor in chief placed this into perspective when he stated in the January Trumpet: “More than one crusade has been launched from Cyprus. Will we see the last crusade launched from there as well? Is history about to repeat itself? … Are European leaders already thinking about Cyprus as a launching pad from which to protect their Jerusalem interests?

“You can be certain that they are thinking about how to protect the holy places in and around Jerusalem. The Europeans have thought like this for almost 2,000 years! … Is there a final crusade planned to be launched into the Middle East from Cyprus? Is that why the EU was willing to take a dangerously divided little island as a member? It would not be the first crusade launched from Cyprus!”

How soon will we see fulfilled that fulcrum prophecy of Luke 21:20—Jerusalem surrounded by armies—upon which so many prophesied end-time events turn, including the greatest of all, the prophesied return of the Word of God to impose peace on Earth?

It really is time that you “blow the dust off your Bible,” to quote Herbert Armstrong, and prove these things for yourself! Act now and you may be well prepared for the tumultuous events shortly to break out into a level of global disorder that will take your breath away.

Remember, to forestall may well invite incredible tragedy. But to be forewarned is to be forearmed (Matthew 24:21-22)—armed with the faith to see these events through to their incredible conclusion: the ushering in of a matchless period of global peace and prosperity as prophesied in your Bible (Isaiah 9:6-7).

These dramatic events in Europe, placing so much power in the hands of Germany, indicate we may be a lot closer than we think to that grand prophetic moment!