Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese General Secretary Xi Jinping met for the first time in two years on February 4. The two signed a joint declaration, stating that the Russia-China friendship “has no limits. There are no ‘forbidden’ areas of cooperation.”

Their statement was explicitly anti-American, as the two pledged to work against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, aukus (Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States) and any other U.S.-led alliance in their regions. The world is heading “towards redistribution of power,” according to the joint document. “Russia and China stand against attempts by external forces to undermine security and stability in their common adjacent regions,” it said—in a clear promise to oppose the United States.

“Pointedly, in a break with the indirect pronouncements of past summits, their statement criticized the U.S. by name six times,” noted the Wall Street Journal.

Russia and China also agreed to wide-ranging economic details—with all Russian regions allowed to export grain to China for the first time—as well as numerous joint projects in trading standards and energy.

“The U.S. now faces a two-front military challenge from an economic alliance loaded with arms and resources across two claimed ‘spheres of influence’: Europe/the Caucuses, and Asia-Pacific,” wrote Michael Every, head of Asia-Pacific financial research at Rabobank.

“Future historians will look back at the recent announcement of a Russian-Chinese alliance as a 21st-century turning point,” he wrote. “Markets would be wise to do the same ….”

Among all the deals, what really caught my eye was a new pipeline. Russia agreed to sell China 10 billion cubic meters of gas a year via a new pipeline that would connect Russia’s far east with northeast China. In comparison, Russia exported a total of 16.5 billion cubic meters of gas last year; so this would be a major increase. But the key detail is that China would pay for the gas using euros.

These two powers sat down and signed a document where they pledged to work together to take down the U.S., so it’s pretty obvious why they’re not doing their gas trade in dollars. Yet these two close friends aren’t willing to use each other’s currencies for their trade. China’s yuan is controlled by the government and seen as unreliable. Russia’s economy is too small and beleaguered to produce a major international currency. So the two have turned to Europe.

The terms of the deal point to a powerful reality: If these two are going to pull down the U.S., they need Europe involved as well. Any kind of global financial system that would exclude or replace the U.S. would be based on Europe.

This is not the first time Russia and China have used the euro for trade; they’ve been rapidly moving in this direction for several years. In 2015, 90 percent of trade between the two was conducted in dollars. By the first quarter of 2020, that had fallen to less than half. By April 2021, the euro was being used for most trade between China and Russia.

This helps blunt any sanctions the United States may wield against Russia. But this shift is not only defensive. As Robert Morley explained at the start of Russia and China’s de-dollarization in 2014:

The dollar enjoys reserve currency status because it is the primary currency used for the payment of international transactions—of which the oil trade is one component, if not the biggest.

The fact that so many nations use dollars to settle trade contracts has enabled the U.S. to run up massive debts, and allowed the Federal Reserve to print trillions of dollars to keep the U.S. economy from collapsing during and subsequent to the 2008 economic meltdown.

This is truer than ever. The money printing over covid-19 has dwarfed the U.S.’s response to the 2008 financial crisis. Around one fifth of all dollars in existence were created since covid hit. America can essentially print money and deposit it directly into voters’ bank accounts, and not have its currency collapse to the value of toilet paper, in part, because foreign countries are still willing to buy billions of U.S. dollars for use in foreign trade. But if that ends, the dollar is sunk. Mr. Morley noted:

The U.S. dollar’s reserve currency status is a big component of America’s superpower status. Want to use dollars for trade? Then you must use America’s financial system—and that makes you subject to the rules and regulations imposed by America. It also opens up your assets to potential seizure.

Reserve currency status is something any future superpower would need.

Attacking this status is another prong of Russia and China’s attack on the U.S. And all this intimately concerns Europe. Russia’s pipelines with China makes its gas weapon more potent. It can threaten to cut Europe off from natural gas and still make money sending the gas east instead of west.

But does this deal also hold a tantalizing carrot? Mr. Morley wrote: “Russia appears to be dangling reserve currency status in front of the European financial powers. Will Frankfurt and Brussels make a deal with Putin?” If Europe joins the push to bring down the U.S., it gets to hold the new reserve currency. That would be a tempting offer.

The Russia-China pipeline shows that a monumental prophecy is already in the early stages of being fulfilled.

Isaiah 23:3 describes a “mart of nations,” a trading bloc that allows merchants to grow rich. This chapter describes Tyre and its allies (such as Zidon) as a new “commercial center” of the world—coming as a rising European power in modern times, as editor in chief Gerald Flurry writes in his booklet Isaiah’s End-Time Vision. The Bible describes “Chittim,” a biblical name for China, as a major member of this new economic system. Ezekiel 27 gives a parallel account. It adds that Tubal and Meshech—ancient names for the people of Russia—will also be a part of this market. These three will be key members of the new world economic system.

Meanwhile, God prophesied that an economic siege—being cut out of the global financial system—would be one of the major curses to hit modern-day Britain and America.

In Genesis 22:17, God promised Abraham that his descendants would possess “the gate of his enemies.” Deuteronomy 28:52 says that the enemies of modern Israel—the nations of Britain, America and Israel in the Middle East—would besiege them using those same gates.

When you put prophecies of this new global economy alongside prophecies of a siege, a clear picture emerges: Europe and Asia will work to create a new economic system. They dominate the globe’s choke points and together use them to besiege Britain and America. Mr. Flurry writes: “When the Holy Roman Empire attacks North America, there will be no help or sympathy from Asia. In fact, considering that China has come to possess most of the world’s strategic sea gates … we believe there may be a brief alliance between the German-led Holy Roman Empire and certain Asian powers (Russia, China, Japan—the kings of the east). Should Europe, the resurrected Holy Roman Empire, find a way to take advantage—even for a moment—of key resources and strategic holdings of China, Russia and Japan, it would have more than enough power to besiege the Anglo-Saxon nations and enslave them.

“This is why Isaiah’s prophecy of an end-time ‘mart of nations’ that includes both European and Asian powers is so intriguing. And why the trend of collusion between these two great economic blocs is worth watching.”

We are watching that prophecy being fulfilled right now! Russia and China are signing pacts explicitly aimed at bringing down the U.S. And they’re getting Europe involved. Everything is unfolding exactly the way the Bible said it would.

I’ve given just the briefest summary of these prophecies. But you need to dig in and prove them for yourself. Don’t take our word for it. Only if you prove them for yourself will you be motivated enough to act. These prophecies are being fulfilled rapidly—now is the time to understand what is coming and turn to God. To get a great introduction to Bible prophecy and to understand what is coming very soon to the world, read our free book The United States and Britain in Prophecy, by Herbert W. Armstrong.