Poland is “no longer transferring any weapons to Ukraine because we are now arming ourselves with the most modern weapons,” Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on September 20. The eastern European country has been building its military, purchasing the most advanced weapons systems from the United States. On September 25, the U.S. offered to loan Poland $2 billion at low interest rates to further accelerate its military rise.

Lending to Poland appears to be a win-win situation. But Americans have forgotten their history. Poland represents what the founders of America opposed.

Back in January, Morawiecki announced his country would increase its defense spending to 4 percent of its gross domestic product. Over the next five years, its number of soldiers is expected to increase to as many as 300,000, with an additional 50,000 in reserves—making it the largest land force in the European Union.

In 2019, Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Błaszczak said Poland wanted to join the European Main Battle Tank project, an initiative spearheaded by France and Germany. In recent years, Poland has also turned to the U.S., Britain, Norway, South Korea and others for weapons deals. Recent agreements with the U.S. include:

• Additional Abrams tanks
• Apache attack helicopters
• himars rocket launchers
• Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensors
• Patriot missile defense equipment

In 2020, Poland signed agreements to purchase America’s F-35 Lightning II jets. These went into production last April and will be delivered to Poland between 2024 and 2030.

In military circles, no one questions the quality of the Polish Army.
—Gustav Gressel, former Austrian military officer and security scholar

Many in the U.S. are cheering Poland’s military rise. But Poland’s current government represents something America’s founders vehemently opposed: authoritarian rule in cooperation with the Catholic Church.

The Berlin-based Civil Liberties Union for Europe said in 2022 that Hungary and Poland were “seizing further control of the justice system, civil society and media, while cutting basic human rights and fueling divisions by scapegoating migrants and other minority groups”. The same year, Reuters reported: “Warsaw and Budapest deny wrongdoing and accuse the EU of imposing liberal values alien to what they say are their traditional, conservative and Catholic societies.”

These accusations should be taken with a grain of salt. Poland is fighting many abhorrent liberal trends, such as abortion. However, Poland’s ruling party is uniting powers under a single party. This is concerning if you consider the spiritual influence behind Poland’s government.

Every good Pole should know what the role of the church is … because beyond the church there is only nihilism.
—Jarosław Kaczyński, chairman of Poland’s Law and Justice party

It’s undeniable that liberal trends have destroyed society. But should Europe return to Catholicism?

Poland and Hungary want Europe to unite around Catholicism and strong military cooperation. Poland is demanding the resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire that was ruled by Charlemagne, Otto the Great and the Habsburgs.

In The Habsburg Way: Seven Rules for Turbulent Times, Eduard Habsburg asks:

Why should anybody “do things the Habsburg way” in the 21st century? … Shouldn’t we be wary of rulers, kings, emperors and tyrants in general—and isn’t this the premise on which the United States and many modern nations are built?

The U.S. was built on the premise of separation between state and religion because many pilgrims were fleeing religious persecution in Europe. America is home to the largest number of evangelicals in the world. However, the opposition to the Catholic Church has declined over the years.

Catholics are often just as sincere as any other so-called Christian denomination. But it is also a fact of history that the Catholic Church has united with European states and their military institutions to facilitate the Crusades, the conquest of Latin America, the Inquisition, the Thirty Years’ War and other crimes of religious suppression. Look at the history of Spain, Latin America, Austria and Italy and you see that the more successful the Inquisition was in eliminating other religious beliefs, the more Catholic a country is to this day.

That’s the system so many early Americans despised.

On Aug. 27, 1980, Herbert W. Armstrong asked:

Will Poland free itself from Soviet domination and join with Yugoslavia, Romania and possibly Czechoslovakia—and with Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Portugal and Austria—in a resurrected medieval “Holy Roman Empire” to dominate Europe and equal the ussr and the U.S.A. in world power?

All of these countries are part of the EU or on their way to EU membership.

This empire’s rise is prophesied in Daniel 2 and Revelation 17. “And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast. These have one mind, and shall give their power and strength unto the beast” (Revelation 17:12-13).

This is a frightening development you need to understand. The U.S. is building the military branch of the institution its founders opposed.

To learn more about the history of the Holy Roman Empire and how it will rise again, request a free copy of The Holy Roman Empire in Prophecy.