Possessing “feet of iron and miry clay”—that’s how the final resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire is described in the great prophecy of Daniel 2.

If ever there was an institution that fulfilled that prophecy to a tee, it is the entity that has grown out of the Treaties of Rome from a seemingly innocuous common European market to its present unwieldy 27-nation combine.

The European Union was always a German idea, designed to create the vehicle for Germany’s postwar return to global power status. As such, it has worked brilliantly.

Germany, the third-largest global arms exporter, is currently second only to China as a global trading entity. The two change positions between first and second depending on economic conditions at the time. At present, Germany is set to knock China off its dominant perch as the giant Chinese real-estate bubble is straining to burst. Meanwhile, German exports are rocketing that nation’s economy back into something akin to the wirtschaftswunder that became a postwar marvel for decades before East and West Germany unified in 1990.

But the EU in its present form has had its day as far as Germany is concerned. Germany is moving to reassert its own national sovereignty over and above the collective of the European Union. In a classic Germanic way, German elites are using Europe’s sovereign debt crisis to bring EU member nations to heel in what will soon prove to be a dramatic restructuring of the EU into 10 specific regions under Berlin’s control.

There’s no surprise here for the keenest of analysts who are aware of how and why the EU came into being, and the true reason for Germany currently breaking out of its postwar “democratic” cocoon. Readers of the Trumpet magazine should be well educated on this score.

The nation’s politicians have suddenly become overtly expressive in mouthing their increasing distaste for the very nation that largely funded them back onto their feet following World War ii—America.

In the run-up to the November G-20 summit, German voices were strident in their criticism of America cranking up the printing presses in an ill-begotten effort to stave off the inevitable declaration of the bankruptcy of the United States.

A couple of Reuters journalists noted that “Berlin has taken the rhetoric to a new level.” They quoted Anton Boerner, head of Germany’s Foreign Trade Association, as observing, “The Atlantic is getting wider” through a “‘creeping alienation’ between America and Europe, which has been exacerbated by the global financial crisis” (November 10).

In relation to the Federal Reserve’s latest quantitative easing strategy, Reuters reported that “U.S. officials were particularly stung by [German Finance Minister Wolfgang] Schäuble and German Economy Minister Rainer Bruederle saying the Fed move amounted to ‘indirect manipulation’ of the dollar to boost exports; this at a time when Washington is criticizing China for exactly the same kind of strategy” (ibid.).

In the current edition of Europe’s World, Schäuble has contrasted the Fed’s policy of propping up a bankrupt America by creating more debt with the German government’s more stringent regulation of its nation’s debt: “Germany’s policy of expansionary fiscal consolidation by means of binding fiscal rules is setting a positive example …. Recent studies show that once a government’s debt burden reaches a threshold perceived to be unsustainable, then more debt will stunt not stimulate economic growth” (Autumn 2010).

As Germany and America continue to pursue economic policies that are diametrically opposed to each other, the one producing positive growth for the German nation, the other driving the U.S. deeper into debt and placing the whole global financial system at greater risk of ultimate failure, the Atlantic rift grows rapidly wider.

This is leading to interesting changes in Germany’s foreign policy toward the U.S. At the same time, German assertiveness is moving toward greater expression of a German nationalist spirit, which is destined to fracture the whole European Union into the 10 constituent components prophesied in Revelation 17:12.

In the Europe’s World article, Schäuble states: “The eurozone’s fiscal rules lack bite in both substance and form. … Countries that repeatedly ignore the recommendations for excessive-deficit reduction and those that manipulate official statistics should have EU funds frozen and voting rights suspended.” This is but the thin edge of the wedge for creation of a two-tier Europe.

Ireland is the current test case. Ireland has caved in to EU elites’ demands to accept their bailout proposal to stave off that nation’s economic collapse and limit the risk of contagion spreading throughout the eurozone. This is a hammer blow to Ireland’s national sovereignty. The nation’s economic policy from this point on will be subject to the purview of the EU’s central bankers.

Already it seems that many EU member nations have been brainwashed into the inevitability—even the desirability—of the loss of national sovereignty in exchange for the doubtful pleasure of joining the European Monetary Union.

“As Europe’s leaders grappled to find common cause on the eurozone crisis, a survey found the single currency’s reputation relatively untarnished in the eight new EU member states—Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria—a majority said they did not fear the loss of national control over economic policy or the loss of national identity” (Europe’s World,Autumn 2010).

European Central Bank (ecb) board member Jürgen Stark declared bluntly, “Instead of continuing to deny the fact that membership of a monetary union also limits the sovereignty of national economic and fiscal policies, eurozone members must finally come to terms with economic reality and follow stricter budgetary rules” (ibid., emphasis mine throughout).

There’s a senior executive of the European Central Bank, based in Frankfurt, Germany, admitting it is a fact that membership of the European Monetary Union limits a member nation’s sovereignty!

There’s no way that back in 1992 when the Maastricht Treaty created the grounds for the formation of the eurozone that any German banker would have declared such a reality! It just would not have been a convenient time to spill the goods on the true nature and intent of European elites in establishing the European Monetary Union (emu).

Now that Germany has the member nations of the emu just where it wants them, the cat’s out of the bag. emu is seen for what it is and a top European central banker confesses as much publicly, that emu members must dance to Frankfurt’s tune!

This places the ecb in a powerfully dominant position in dictating the terms for the very national survival of the emu’s weaker member nations’ economies.

As Giles Merritt comments in another article in the autumn edition of Europe’s World: “Europe’s position as the world’s largest trading bloc, with nearly 40 percent of all international commerce, and the growing importance of the euro—crisis notwithstanding—as a reserve currency, mean that the EU … can set the agenda for negotiating the new global rulebook …. The moment is ripe for Europe’s political leaders to define what the EU’s role must be, and why.”

The point is that it is Germany, by virtue of its overwhelmingly dominant position within “the world’s largest trading bloc,” whose moment is ripe to define just what the EU’s role must be, and why, from here on.

That’s why German political leaders, bankers and industrialists are now speaking out demanding change in Europe, change which is destined to see the sovereignty of one nation, Germany, reign supreme politically, economically, financially, industrially and militarily one more time as a global power to be reckoned with. The great shame of it is that our leaders in Britain and America simply either don’t see it and the grave dangers it poses to their future national security, or if they do, they simply won’t admit it!

Well, hear this!

Out of this current EU crisis will emerge a complete restructuring of the European Union. Bible prophecy declares that Europe will fracture into 10 separate regions under 10 leaders, the stronger dominating the weak, all 10 in turn paying political and economic obeisance to Berlin, and ideologically submitting to Rome!

You need to watch this sovereign debt crisis in Europe closely. In particular, watch for the next prophesied phase of increased regulation of the EU economies by Berlin’s government and Frankfurt’s bankers. It will involve the consolidation of EU members’ taxation systems, a powerful nail in the coffin of their individual national sovereignty.

In Daniel 11:20 we read that in these times, a “raiser of taxes” will enter the picture in the great northern power prophetically called the king of the north. EU President Herman Van Rompuy very early in his presidency called for the imposition of an EU tax.

Giles Merritt gets very close to the prophesied mark when he states: “The eurozone crisis is not a passing phase but the symptom of a serious ailment. The €500 billion safety net agreed to in response to the Greek debt crisis and the threat of similar crises in Spain, Portugal and Ireland only bought time—perhaps three to five years. It has not resolved the fundamental economic imbalances between eurozone countries. Only a fiscal union can do that, and taxation is the sacred cow that the EU’s sovereign governments refuse to discuss. The eurozone countries are therefore stuck in a place where they cannot go back by scrapping the single currency, yet cannot go forward unless they do what a big but unevenly distributed economy like the U.S. does: pool tax revenues to even things out” (ibid.). That bespeaks fiscal regulation, the very thing that Hitler’s economics minister, Dr. Walther Funk, advocated for Nazi control of Europe’s economies!

Berlin and Frankfurt, through their lackeys in Brussels, have seized centralized control of emu member nations’ means of exchange via the imposition of the euro, replacing their previous national currencies. They have seized control of setting member nations’ interest rates. The next move is to seize control of their taxation systems. The ultimate third-party control of any EU member nation occurs when, economically exhausted by having sold itself to the emu, the nation rolls over and capitulates to the controllers in Berlin, Brussels and Frankfurt such as Ireland did on Sunday, and allows itself to be bought, lock stock and barrel, by a power that your Bible calls the king of the north.

Watch for more “Irelands” in the EU over the coming months. And as you watch, note the progressive loss of sovereignty of EU member nations, with the dramatic exception of one—Germany!

The European Union is fracturing; its divisions run deep. Its sovereign debt crisis is symptomatic of a monetary system that was destined to divide its member nations into the strong and the weak, and lead to the overwhelming dominance of the Continent’s historically strongest nation, Germany.

“November 9 marked the 21st anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Yet if the open-borders Europe of the Schengen agreement is no longer divided by concrete walls, barbed-wire fences and sandy death-traps, 21st-century Europe remains deeply divided nonetheless” (National Review,November 12).

We have long pointed to the prophetic reality that the only glue that will hold Europe together for the brief time that the seventh and final resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire will dominate the global scene is the power of its traditional Roman Catholic religion.

To Germany’s south, another voice is being lifted up in a more carefully measured manner than that of the more strident cries of German politicians and bankers for change in Europe. It’s the voice of a pope. Having recently reinforced the ultra-conservative ranks of the curia with 24 newly appointed cardinals, Pope Benedict xvi is calling for a new evangelizing crusade. He recently reiterated the very same appeal made by his predecessor, Pope John Paul ii, from the very same spot—the end of the Canterbury pilgrims’ road, Santiago de Compostela, Spain.

While the media fixated on the perversity of kissing homosexuals as the pope spoke his piece, Benedict didn’t miss a beat. He called for a grand evangelization of Europe, a return to the Holy Roman Catholic precepts of a bygone age. Some commentators are now starting to pick up on the pope’s theme. “Herman Van Rompuy may sense, however dimly, that the Europe of the 21st century needs something more than the allure of the welfare state to sustain itself—not least because that welfare state is about to crash into a fiscal wall. … Those interested in resolving that dilemma are more likely to find creative and historically nuanced answers in Rome than in Brussels, and from a Bavarian theologian rather than a Belgian politician” (ibid.).

Read our booklet Daniel—Unsealed at Last! for real insight into what is currently shaping up in Europe, what it means for the immediate future in the developing global order and what lies beyond.