Before World War ii, Britain and the United States controlled all of the world’s major sea gates, including the island of Cyprus.

As the largest island in the eastern Mediterranean, Cyprus has for millennia functioned as a bridge between Europe and the Middle East. Throughout the epochs of history, the strategic chunk of real estate has been controlled by the Hittites, Assyrians, Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, the Byzantine Empire, Crusaders, Venetians and the Ottomans. Then in the late 1800s, with the agreement of the Ottoman government, Britain took control of the island.

But when the Ottomans declared war on Britain, Cyprus’s status as a protectorate of the British Empire ended. The British annexed the island, and it later became an official Crown Colony. The “unsinkable aircraft carrier” was a vital hub from which the British were able to protect the Suez Canal and project power throughout the Mediterranean. But world famous educator Herbert W. Armstrong knew it would not last. “Britain … seems destined to lose Cyprus,” the February 1956 issue of his Plain Truth magazine said.

Using the Bible as his guide, Mr. Armstrong said the very fact that the UK and U.S. came to control the world’s vital “gates,” as the scriptures call them, is among the most powerful proofs of their biblical identities (Genesis 22:17; 24:60). He also relied on the Bible—specifically Deuteronomy 28:52—to predict the loss of these sea gates years before London and Washington surrendered them.

When the British controlled Cyprus, they faced major political problems in trying to keep the Greek-Cypriots and Turkish-Cypriots in harmony and also in attempting to manage pressures from both sides for independence. In April 1957, after Britain’s weakness had been exposed by the debacle during which it lost the Suez Canal, the Britons succumbed to these pressures and decided that “bases in Cyprus” was an acceptable alternative to “Cyprus as a base.” At the stroke of midnight on Aug. 16, 1960, just as Mr. Armstrong predicted, Great Britain surrendered all control of the island.

But Cyprus’s independence didn’t last long.

As the years went by, the European phoenix began to rise from the ashes once again, and, as several of the Holy Roman Empire’s previous incarnations had done, it set its sights on Cyprus. At the Copenhagen Summit in December 2002, Brussels invited Cyprus to join the European Union. Less than two years later, its membership was official.

In March 2013, in the wake of the global financial collapse, cash-strapped Cyprus accepted a massive bailout deal from the EU. Spiegel Online said the move meant Cyprus “will effectively lose its sovereignty.” Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry said “This Cyprus takeover marks the beginning of one of the greatest military missions in our time. Cyprus provides an intelligence outpost, a naval base, a launching pad and an aircraft carrier for Europe to send its forces into the Middle East” (May/June 2013).

At present, Cyprus still houses some British intelligence installations and radar stations, but, having been engulfed by Europe, the island is effectively under Berlin’s control. The transfer of Cyprus from British to EU control provides evidence of the ongoing fulfillment of two of Mr. Armstrong’s longstanding major predictions: the UK’s decline and Germany’s rise.

To understand how Mr. Armstrong was able to predict these and many other watershed trends and events with such startling accuracy, request a free copy of our booklet He Was Right.