One of the most surreal moments in modern history took place on Aug. 1, 1936. It was the opening ceremony of the Berlin Olympics. In the massive 100,000-seat Reich Sports Field complex, each nation marched in front of the cheering crowd to music led by composer Richard Strauss. Next to the Olympic banners throughout the stadium and city were crimson red banners with the swastika. Overlooking the procession was German Chancellor Adolf Hitler, who officially opened the Games.

The Olympics are always a chance for the host nation to showcase its best: its culture, architecture, arts. The entire world watches the spectacle created by the host nation. The 1936 Olympics were the first to be broadcast by radio and television to the world. Berlin had been chosen as the site for the 1936 Olympics in 1931, when Germany was still the Weimar Republic.

What the world saw in 1936 was exactly what Hitler wanted it to see: a carefully choreographed production to display a confident, reborn and resurgent German nation. After the humiliation of losing the Great War, the lows of the Great Depression and the instability of the Weimar Republic, the German people, and most of Europe, were hungry for an unapologetic display of nationalist pride and identity. Most of the world and media fawned over Hitler.

This is sharply contrasted by the July 26 opening ceremony to the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. In a disturbing display of hedonistic post-modern “art,” the ceremony featured drag queens, little children and cryptic religious symbolism. It put deviant lifestyles on center stage. The Olympic torch was transported down the Seine River on a mechanical horse that had the unsettling aesthetic of the pale horseman of the Apocalypse.

Instead of being uplifting, inspiring and confident, the ceremony was met with widespread disapproval and condemnation. It made President Emmanuel Macron look out of touch with his own population and the world. It made France look like a degenerate, pompous and declining nation. This was France’s chance to showcase why it should lead Europe; it turned out to be a grave miscalculation.

Contrasting the 1936 Berlin Olympics and the 2024 Paris Olympics reveals a symmetry to the past. What many Europeans are yearning and searching for is an identity and pride that was absent from Paris but was on full display in Hitler’s Berlin. Bible prophecy reveals that soon Europe will gravitate toward another rebirth of Germany. The Olympics put this biblical truth on full display.

The Nazi Olympics

The 1936 Olympics were highly controversial. Hitler made no secret about his belief in the racial superiority of the Aryans and the inferiority of the Jews. Mein Kampf, which laid out his psychotic vision, was published in 1922. When Hitler took power in 1933, the Olympic Committee considered changing the location. A strong movement to boycott the Olympics started over Hitler’s anti-Semitic policies.

To our shame, the Nazi apologists won. Men like Avery Brundage, head of the United States Olympic Committee, were strong supporters of the Berlin games. The boycott collapsed when many amateur athletic associations voted to participate in the Olympics. Most nations removed Jewish athletes from their Olympic teams to avoid offending Hitler.

This moral weakness was paralleled by the political weakness of the West leading up to the Second World War. This gave Hitler the perfect propaganda opportunity to display the strength of the Third Reich. It was a chance for Hitler to be legitimized as a world leader and to legitimize his racial theories: The Aryan athletes must outperform the inferior races.

The Nazi regime spent over $400 million to build a modern sports complex and Olympic Village as it prepared to display a Germany reborn to the world. Gypsies, Jews and other “societal misfits” were removed from Berlin ahead of the Olympics. Berlin was awash with massive swastika banners. The culture of the Holy Roman Empire, which Hitler was obsessed with restoring, was on full display. It displayed the modernity of German industry and the culture of Charlemagne.

Hitler intended for this spectacle to be permanently recorded. Joseph Goebbels arranged for renowned director Leni Riefenstahl to create propaganda films. Riefenstahl became the favorite propagandist for the Nazi regime after her infamous 1934 work Triumph of the Will, which documented Hitler’s rallies in Nuremberg.

Riefenstahl produced Olympia, a two-part documentary lasting four hours. It was carefully crafted to show the glory of Hitler’s resurrected Germany and its role as the current flag bearer of European heritage. The film revolutionized the cinematography of sports, which modern media continue to emulate to this day.

The Games were a success for Hitler and the Nazis. “Most newspaper accounts echoed the New York Times report that the Games put Germany ‘back in the fold of nations,’ and even made the Germans ‘more human again.’ Some even found reason to hope that this peaceable interlude would endure,” reported Legion Magazine.

The mirage of peaceful optimism after the Berlin Olympics would be shattered three years later as Nazi troops began marching across Europe.

Dangerous Resurrection

Not everyone was won over by Hitler’s propaganda. Legion Magazine continues: “Only a few reporters, such as the American William Shirer, understood that the Berlin glitter was merely a facade hiding a racist and violently oppressive regime.” American author Thomas Wolfe was present at the opening ceremony and viewed it as an “almost religious event, the crowd screaming, swaying in unison, and begging for Hitler. There was something scary about it; his cult of personality.”

Beneath the impressive physical displays in Berlin was a disturbing and dark spirit. That is because Hitler’s regime was what the Bible calls the sixth resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire.

After the fall of the Roman Empire, a new kind of European empire formed when the Catholic Church allied with various state empires throughout history. The Bible prophesied in Revelation 13 that this church-state combine would have seven resurrections. The Bible represents this empire as a ferocious beast that treads nations underfoot. “And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?” (Revelation 13:4).

This beast power is empowered by Satan, who uses it to lie and destroy (John 8:44). This was the spirit behind the disturbing scenes in 1936 Berlin. The display of people worshiping the will of Hitler, and the level of deceit involved in the propaganda, is evidence of this spiritual influence.

Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry writes in Germany and the Holy Roman Empire: “The sixth head ascended out of the underground. That means most of the world was ignorant of its existence. … The beast preys mightily on the world’s ignorance. Deceit is its greatest weapon. The Bible says this is how it crushes its ‘lovers’!” This is a perfect prophetic description of the 1936 Olympics: It was used as a weapon of deceit in order to destroy its enemies.

The Berlin Olympics showcased the sixth resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire. The confidence, modernity, culture and deceit were merely a resurrection of the traditions of the Holy Roman Empire. To many Germans and Europeans who had lived with decades of inept, corrupt and weak leaders, it was exactly what they thought Europe needed. It was a seductive showcase that contains an important warning for us today.

“And there are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space” (Revelation 17:10). This verse was revealed during the sixth head, when Hitler was the “one is” (this is fully explained in Germany and the Holy Roman Empire). The Bible prophesies there will be one more resurrection of this empire during our time right now!

“We can understand the rising seventh head much better and more easily if we understand the sixth,” continues Mr. Flurry. “The sixth head gives us a dramatic preview of what is to happen in the near future one final time. All we have to do is grasp what the sixth head did, then multiply it by about 20 or 30! The Bible reveals that the sixth head has a very close tie to the seventh.”

The Berlin Olympics are also a preview of what the coming seventh resurrection will be like revolving around Germany!

This is why the Paris Olympics are so important—they are setting the stage for this seventh resurrection. The gross display of incompetence and hedonism is causing a severe reaction in Europe. It is causing Europeans to search for a confident, bold, patriotic message. It is pushing them to embrace the heritage of the Holy Roman Empire. The 2024 Paris Olympics could be a symbolic turning point leading to a repeat of the violent history of Hitler’s Third Reich—only it will be much, much worse.

Watch for a pendulum change of culture in Europe as the Continent reacts to the current display of far-left, weak leadership. Watch for Germany to fill this void in Europe and to be at the center of a seventh resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire. That is the warning of the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

To learn more about this vital prophecy, read Germany and the Holy Roman Empire.