British Prime Minister Theresa May will meet with United States President Donald Trump later today for face-to-face talks inside the Oval Office, making Mrs. May the first foreign leader to visit the White House since Mr. Trump’s inauguration last week. Both leaders have vowed to make the relationship between their countries special again.

Conservative Party M.P. Iain Duncan Smith told usa Today that Britain has the opportunity to “reinstate” what it once had with the U.S. That relationship has taken a beating in recent years. President Barack Obama, Smith explained, spent time forging relationships with everyone else—meaning everyone except Britain.

President Obama, after moving into the Oval Office in 2009, replaced a bust of Winston Churchill on loan from Britain with a bust of Martin Luther King, and his aides announced that America’s so-called special relationship with Britain was actually more of partnership—not unlike the many partnerships America had with other nations.

In 2010, British M.P.s responded in kind. The Commons Foreign Affairs Committee announced that the term “special relationship” should be avoided. Great Britain should be close to the United States, it concluded, “but there is a need to be less deferential.”

In 2011, President Obama said, “We don’t have a stronger friend and stronger ally than Nicolas Sarkozy, and the French people.” And last year, Germany was Mr. Obama’s best pal. Chancellor Angela Merkel, Obama said, had been his “closest international partner.”

During those same years, the once “special relationship” with Britain was repeatedly reassessed and downgraded. As one secret memo, prepared by a congressional think tank in 2015, revealed, “the UK may not be viewed as centrally relevant to the United States in all of the issues and relations considered a priority on the U.S. agenda” (emphasis added throughout).

And then, there was Brexit. Prior to the historic vote last June, President Obama told Britain that if it didn’t stay in the European Union, it would end up at the “back of the queue” on any future trade deals with the United States!

Last year, UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage said President Obama was the most “anti-British American president there has ever been.” Even though George Washington might lay claim to that particular title, there is no doubting that during the Obama years, the “special relationship” between the United States and Britain completely unraveled.

And that is exactly what the Bible said would happen in these latter days!

Throughout the Obama presidency, we often noted this. The Prophet Isaiah, for example, said the tribe of Manasseh (America) would devour Ephraim (Britain), and Ephraim would devour Manasseh (Isaiah 9:21; New King James Version).

These two Israelite nations—which have maintained such a strong and durable alliance for so many generations—were prophesied, in our day, to forsake their special alliance and to engage in furious strife and contention with one another.

So what are we to make of these recent diplomatic overtures between the United States and Great Britain? President Trump has congratulated Britain for voting to leave the EU. He’s promised to reward Britain with a favorable trade agreement. He invited Theresa May to be the first international leader to visit the Trump White House.

At a Republican congressional retreat yesterday in Philadelphia, Mrs. May said it was time to “renew” the special relationship. “We—our two countries together—have a joint responsibility to lead,” she said.

Is this, then, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher all over again, as the usa Today column suggests? Will the United States and Britain rise together and again lead the world?

What Your Bible Prophesies

Jesus said that in the latter days, there would be great tribulation—“such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.” Without God’s supernatural intervention, mankind would not survive (Matthew 24:21-22). Elsewhere in Scripture, the Great Tribulation is referred to as “Jacob’s trouble” (Jeremiah 30:7).

In Bible prophecy, Jacob primarily refers to the United States and Britain. This is explained in Herbert W. Armstrong’s widely circulated work The United States and Britain in Prophecy. What this means is that the Great Tribulation that immediately precedes the return of Jesus Christ to Earth is a time of trouble coming on our nations! It is the greatest national trouble the United States and Britain have ever faced.

Hosea 5:5 says that our nations will fall together (along with Judah). What this means is that while there may be a renewal of the “special relationship” to some extent, it certainly will not result in the United States and Britain leading the world again.

In fact, that same prophetic passage in Hosea 5 speaks of Ephraim, or Britain, following after the commandment of Jeroboam (verse 11). In his Nov. 23, 2016, co-worker letter, my father identified Donald Trump as an end-time type of Jeroboam presiding over the United States. And poor Britain, the Bible says—“oppressed and broken in judgment”—will follow right along after the sins of Jeroboam.

“Now that the United Kingdom has decided to break away from Europe, it will be desperate to trade with the U.S.,” my father wrote in that letter. One British commentator put it this way in the above-mentioned usa Today article: “[Theresa May] has few friends because of her determination to push ahead with Brexit (Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union). And Trump is also, quite deliberately, alienating the world with his ‘America first’ talk.’”

These two historic friends desperately need each other right now because the 70-year-strong, post-World War ii order has been violently shaken to the core! But it’s not going to work out the way these two nations hope.

“It is possible that Prime Minister Theresa May, by throwing in her lot with Mr. Trump, could ride out any changes to the international order,” wrote the New York Times yesterday. But if that approach does not succeed, it could have severe consequences both for her nation and for the world that Britain plays a role in keeping together.”

The rest of the world is coming undone. Only God can fix it. Stitching together what remains of the “special relationship” will not restore order.

This is not the 1980s. We are living in a new age: the Jeroboam end.

“This election was prophetic!” my father wrote in that co-worker letter. “When there is a type of Jeroboam on the scene, then God will send the sword upon His people because of all its sins.”

We are living through earthshaking prophecies that lead right into the time of “Jacob’s trouble”—a time of national punishment for our many sins.

As Joel Hilliker wrote on this website five years ago,

Darkness is descending on the long, historically extraordinary Anglo-American age. Britain, once a globe-girding empire, is now being bullied by a growing European superstate. America, once the greatest superpower on Earth, is economically battered and is losing its global influence.History teaches that world orders don’t last. They come and they go. This present one is giving way to something very different—and it truly will be the world’s loss.However, Britain and America’s brightest days are not history. Glowing within their remarkable past is the promise of a far more luminous future.

The same prophet who wrote about “Jacob’s trouble” to occur during the Great Tribulation also spoke of a time beyond the Great Tribulation when America and Britain would be restored to their former glory and power to become “a praise and an honour before all the nations of the earth” (Jeremiah 33:9).

Before that time, Jesus said mankind would suffer unlike any time in human history. The devastation will be so widespread that, unless God intervened, there would be no hope for humanity.

But God will intervene. There is hope.