WorldWatch
Europe
The European Union concluded its yearlong Conference on the Future of Europe, presenting findings to EU leaders on May 9. Much of the future of Europe is being determined by the present war in Ukraine. Euractiv summarized the reactions of European citizens to Russia’s Ukraine invasion as “Time for the United States of Europe!” The article was signed by “over 200 intellectuals and personalities of different political orientations from 20 European countries.”
“We European citizens are scared by the return of war at the heart of Europe,” they wrote. The Ukraine invasion “exposes the weaknesses and dependencies of the European Union and its member states …. European, and especially Ukrainian, citizens are suffering for the costs of non-Europe in the fields of energy, fiscal, foreign and defense policies.”
One proposal includes a push for a “two speed” Europe, where a smaller group of countries moves toward closer integration. Another would see countries give up the right to veto EU initiatives on foreign and defense policy.
“United States of Europe” was the phrase Herbert W. Armstrong used for decades prior to his death in 1986 to describe prophecy of a revived Holy Roman Empire in Europe. Citing Revelation 17:12 and other scriptures, he said Europe would become a 10-nation superpower. Daniel 11 calls this superpower “the king of the north” and forecasts that “tidings out of the east and out of the north shall trouble him [Europe]: therefore he shall go forth with great fury to destroy, and utterly to make away many” (verse 44).
Elites believe Europe must become stronger in more ways than one. A key factor in a European empire is exerting greater control over the people. To this end, after 16 months of negotiation, on April 23 the European Commission, European Parliament and national governments agreed on regulating large social media networks.
The new Digital Services Act will set up a new EU bureaucracy of about 150 officials to govern all tech companies that have more than 45 million European users, thereby exerting more control over those users. It orders these companies to curb “disinformation” and stipulates fines for noncompliance of up to 6 percent of not just European profits, but of all global revenue. For Twitter, this equates to hundreds of millions of dollars. For Facebook, it would be billions.
The new act brings these restrictions online and targets hate speech for banning if not prosecution, and it also imposes on social media platforms the responsibility to label, add a “fact check,” secretly censor or outright ban users and posts the EU deems “disinformation.”
The law will accord the EU even more censorship power if EU national authorities vote to declare that there is a crisis. Should there be a disease outbreak, for example, the EU could dictate exactly what social media users can and cannot post, and can and cannot see.
In his 2019 article “Germany Is Taking Control of the Internet,”* Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote: “The EU’s behavior on this issue exposes the dictatorial nature of this German-dominated entity. Really, we are witnessing the manifestation of the spirit of the Holy Roman Empire in the tech world. The biblically prophesied seventh and final resurrection of this empire wants to control the Internet!”
Middle East
A new wave of terrorist attacks has struck Israel after a short period of calm. On May 8, a 19-year-old man stabbed a policeman. On May 5, terrorists with an ax and a knife killed three and injured four people who were celebrating Israel’s Independence Day in the city of Elad. This followed an April 29 attack where a gunman murdered a security guard as he shielded his co-worker and fiancée with his body.
Hamas claimed responsibility for that killing, claiming it was retribution for Israeli actions on the Temple Mount. This is the first time in 14 years that Hamas has claimed responsibility for an attack that killed Israelis in Judea and Samaria.
Israel Defense Forces and police have arrested dozens of suspects connected to the recent attacks and deported hundreds of Palestinians who are in Israel illegally. On May 8, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett announced the formation of a civilian national guard comprised of border police, volunteers and reservists to help deter and combat terrorism.
On May 4, the United States Senate voted against the efforts of Joe Biden and his government to negotiate a new agreement with Iran. Senators passed motions to oppose Biden’s attempts to lift terrorism sanctions on Iran and to delist the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from the Foreign Terrorist Organization list. They demanded that any deal must address all of Iran’s aggressive, destabilizing activities, including its ballistic missile program.
The motions are non-binding and largely symbolic. Biden and those behind him have been working for a new nuclear deal for more than a year. They have indicated a willingness to shamefully capitulate to several major Iranian demands.
Meanwhile, Iran continues its race toward nuclear weapons. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken acknowledged on April 26 that Iran would be able to produce nuclear weapons material in “a matter of weeks” if it made a dash for the bomb. With or without a deal, Iran seeks to gain maximum concessions on its way to becoming a nuclear power.
Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry first forecast Iran’s rise as a major power in 1998. Now the world is on the verge of meeting the terrorist-sponsoring, nuclear-armed “king of the south” prophesied in the Bible, a “king” largely empowered by Barack Obama and the United States.
Watch Jerusalem. Violence and bloodshed are about to get far worse there. The Jewish people are facing and will experience terror in their midst and on an unimaginable scale. The violence that will erupt in Jerusalem and the Middle East will spread to engulf the globe. The Bible prophesies this. But it also prophesies hope, beginning in this very same city. Read about this in Gerald Flurry’s book The Eternal Has Chosen Jerusalem.
Asia
On May 8, John Lee was proclaimed Hong Kong’s new chief executive. Lee first came to prominence in 2019, when, as the territory’s security chief, he led an unprecedented crackdown on pro-democracy protesters. The next year, he became the face of a set of national security laws that authorized the Chinese Communist Party regime on mainland China to arbitrarily attack any Hong Kongers that it deemed suspects of “terrorism,” “secession,” “subversion” or “foreign interference.”
Now Lee has reportedly received more than 99 percent of the vote from 1,500 politicians and moguls who were almost entirely handpicked by the CCP.
When Britain ceded Hong Kong to China in 1997, many feared that the freedoms Britain had established there would be erased. The regime promised that Hong Kong could retain a high degree of economic, political and judicial autonomy for at least 50 years. Halfway through that period, China has broken its pledge and turned Hong Kong into just one more tragically oppressed Chinese city.
In “The Climax of Man’s Rule Over Man,” Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote that China’s tightening grip over Hong Kong is a clear example that the globe is rapidly moving into the biblically prophesied “times of the Gentiles.”
China signed a pact with Solomon Islands in April. A leaked draft says the agreement authorizes China to “send police, armed police, military personnel and other law enforcement and armed forces to Solomon Islands” and to dock warships there. This will give the Chinese military a new key location from which to control the region’s shipping lanes.
Genesis 22:17 records God’s promise to Abraham that his descendants would one day “take possession of the gates of their enemies” (International Standard Version). In The United States and Britain in Prophecy, the late Herbert W. Armstrong proved that the peoples of the United States and the United Kingdom descended from Abraham. He showed that this promise in Genesis was fulfilled before World War ii, when the U.S. and UK amassed control over dozens of strategic maritime passages, such as the Panama Canal, Hong Kong, the Suez Canal and Solomon Islands.
With the British and the Americans in control of these sea gates, decades of global stability and economic growth resulted for their nations and for much of the world. But the Bible also prophesied in Deuteronomy 28:52 that if these descendants failed to turn to God, He would cause their enemies to take control of these gates and to use them against them.
In recent decades, control over the Panama Canal, Hong Kong, Suez and numerous others has been ceded to China. Now Solomon Islands can also be added to that list.
On March 28, Chinese General Secretary Xi Jinping intensified his “zero-covid” policy and ordered a rigid lockdown of 26 million people in the third-most populated city on the planet, Shanghai. Many residents had little time beforehand to stock up on groceries and other needs, and delivery services failed to meet the immense demand. After weeks of restriction, many took to social media to publish complaints and to apartment balconies to cry out for relief. Many have clashed with police.
In Luke 21, Jesus Christ Himself prophesied of this future time called “the times of the Gentiles” (verse 24). This term refers to the nations of the world that do not descend from ancient Israel. Mr. Flurry focused on this time period in “What Are the Times of the Gentiles?” The modern Israelite nations are declining, and Gentile nations such as China are about to dominate the Earth with a cruel tyranny that we now have a preview of in Shanghai.
Anglo-America
Dinesh D’Souza and True the Vote released the documentary 2,000 Mules on May 3. The film, which played in select theaters and online, cited geotracking and video evidence to prove Democrats used illegal ballot trafficking to steal the 2020 election in six battleground states. In Atlanta, Georgia, at least 242 “ballot mules” stuffed illegal mail-in ballots into 10 or more drop boxes each. Surveillance video shows these criminals inserting one ballot after another, voting in the dead of night, using gloves so as not to leave fingerprints, and/or taking photos of themselves with a stack of ballots at the drop box to prove to whomever sent them that they had done the deed—so they could get paid. Biden officially won Georgia by only 11,779 votes, which means that these 242 individuals committed enough fraud to steal the state from actual voters. 2,000 Mules presents similar evidence of theft in the greater areas of Detroit, Michigan; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Phoenix, Arizona.
Yet you probably have not heard much about this documentary. Why not? Because minutes after it debuted, Politico published a leaked draft majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito. The leak reveals that the Supreme Court intends to overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that transformed abortion into a special federally guaranteed right. A draft majority opinion had never leaked to the public before, and this ruling would overturn one of the most controversial and unconstitutional rulings in Supreme Court history. But notice the timing. Justice Alito authored this draft two months prior to the leak. The Supreme Court was not scheduled to publish its majority opinion until two months later. So whoever leaked the draft chose to leak it precisely at the release of 2,000 Mules. They wanted to distract people from the election steal—and they succeeded. Pro-abortion protesters showed up at the homes of justices John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh in May. Justice Alito and his family were moved to an undisclosed location for their safety. Abortionists have tried to frighten at least one justice into changing his or her vote before the decision is released later this year.
While Americans are fighting over the Constitution and over the murder of babies, other nations are looking to exploit America’s internal divisions. U.S. Air Force Chief Software Officer Nicolas Chaillan (Ret.) told Fox News on May 3 that there is evidence that China may already be sharing data with Russia, and America wouldn’t stand “a fighting chance” if the two superpowers combined their cyberwarfare capabilities. Many experts believe China and Russia do not even have to physically harm U.S. infrastructure to cause problems, but can instead hack into energy company software to shut down pipelines and drive up oil and gas prices.
America has also been cursed with its most expensive animal health disaster since a 2015 bird flu pandemic cost the government $1 billion, its worst drought since the fall of the Mayan civilization, and its worst illegal immigration crisis ever. It should be evident to anyone with eyes to see that America is being punished for its many sins, including the murder of 63 million unborn babies in the past 50 years.
