For the first time in Austria’s history, on September 29 the Freedom Party (fpö) won the national election. Its campaign opposed the current government’s destructive immigration, coronavirus, foreign, climate and anti-family policies. The fpö also won despite, or because of, its associations with Austria’s Nazi past.

The fpö won 29 percent of the vote, with the mainstream conservative Austrian People’s Party (övp) coming in second with 26 percent. The two could form a majority government led by the fpö, but the övp is reluctant, for good reason.

During World War ii, Austria was a stronghold for SS officers, two of whom became the first two chairmen of the fpö when it was founded in 1956.

In 2000, this political party, led by Jörg Haider, the son of Austrian Nazi Party members, entered a government coalition with the övp. This move caused every European Union member state, along with Israel, to impose a diplomatic boycott on Austria.

In 2017, the fpö entered another coalition with the övp, this time with less outcry. This despite the fact that the party’s leader at that time, Heinz-Christian Strache, was infamous for having been arrested in Germany in 1989 for taking part in a neo-Nazi rally.

Now the fpö promises to build “Fortress Austria,” which includes the “remigration of uninvited foreigners” and a “homogeneous” nation. Election posters promised voters, “Your will be done,” a corrupt allusion to the words of Jesus Christ. Party leader Herbert Kickl campaigned to be Austria’s Volkskanzler (people’s chancellor)—a term once used to describe Adolf Hitler.

The fpö claims to oppose many nation-destroying policies in order to defend Europe’s historical identity.

The fpö is united in this goal with Austria’s nobility, with whom it enjoys close ties. Baron Norbert van Handel, a member of the European Order of Saint George of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine, told the Visegrád Post in 2017: “They are Christian, they believe in the family, in property and in the possibility of defending our society and our culture. And they believe in Europe, in a Europe which is a fatherland of fatherlands.” He supports the fpö because he fears “the complete loss of our culture, of our religion, of our traditions and of everything that has built up our identity during the last 1,000 years.”

That culture and those traditions certainly include the architecture, art and music of Europe’s past. However, the history also includes the persecution, torture and killing of Muslims, Jews and Protestants who rejected the Roman Catholic faith. The rulers of the Holy Roman Empire, including Austria’s Habsburg dynasty, brought both.

Most members of far-right parties have no such vile intentions. However, by lauding and romanticizing Europe’s history, they unwittingly evoke these evils as well. This same history inspired the Austrian-born Adolf Hitler to bring the crown jewels of the Holy Roman Empire from Vienna to Nuremberg, after annexing Austria in 1938—just before sending Jews to death camps.

This may all seem like ancient history and irrelevant to modern-day Austria and Europe, generally. However, biblical prophecy warns emphatically that this old empire will rise again in our day.

Revelation 17 depicts this empire as a vicious beast controlled by a harlot, the symbol of an adulterous church. As the late Herbert W. Armstrong taught, this chapter reveals that Hitler led the sixth resurrection of this empire—and also that it would rise once more. The far right is certainly not the only part of this rising beast; many other left and right-wing ideologies are mixed up in it. But the Bible warns that while this empire presents itself as the solution to mankind’s problems, it is a devastating counterfeit, and it actually opposes God’s true saints (verse 6).

Only biblical prophecy can put these political trends in Austria and Europe in their proper context. More importantly, as verse 14 shows, it reveals the inspiring ultimate outcome that will follow this short-lived empire’s final resurrection.