“Friends, we in Jordan know that when an olive tree takes life, planting is only the first step. A hundred processes then go active to create the cells and structures of life. Roots emerge, growth occurs, and a core of strength ensures survival. From outside comes water and support to sustain life and create new fruit.

“In the arena of the Middle East, a new olive branch has just been planted. Now the real work must begin. It is in our hands to create the process and structures that will give peace roots, help it grow, and sustain it into the future. I urge you to share in this effort. Our partnership can create an historic transformation, and a rich harvest—years of peace and prosperity, that will benefit our peoples and our world.”

So pleaded Jordan’s King Abdullah to the European Parliament gathered in Strasbourg on Dec. 12, 2007. He was referring to the Annapolis peace talks which at the time seemed to many to hold out real hope for a peaceful conclusion to the ongoing tensions between Israel and the Palestinians. The king was intent on highlighting the continuing need for the European Union to continue contributing to that effort.

Ten years earlier, the EU had signed an association agreement with Jordan which established a free-trade area between the partners. Just one year after that agreement, the EU, which was for many years Jordan’s leading trade partner and main source of imports, dropped to second place behind Saudi Arabia.

The Jordanian economy is dominated by industry and agriculture. These two powers, the EU and Saudi Arabia, are essential to the uncharacteristically stable path charted by Jordan amid increasingly rough, unpredictable regional waters in the wake of this year’s so-called “Arab Spring.”

Talks between His Majesty King Abdullah and Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz in Jeddah on July 3 have bilateral and regional dimensions of great importance. The Ahlul Bayt news agency reported (July 4):

The Saudi monarch pledged that his country “will stand with all its potential by Jordan to enable it to face all challenges out of the belief that what affects one country reflects on the other.” Jordan, which borders Saudi Arabia, has in recent months witnessed pro-democracy demonstrations inspired by uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. The leaders’ statement also alluded to ongoing unrest in Yemen, Syria, Libya and Bahrain, where Saudi Arabian troops were dispatched earlier this year to help quash anti-government protests.Also high on the agenda of Sunday’s talks was a Saudi proposal for the admission of cash-strapped Jordan to the oil-rich Gulf Cooperation Council. During the visit, King Abdullah thanked Saudi Arabia for providing economic aid, including a new $400 million grant that the Amman government says will be used to reduce its ballooning budget deficit.

Partnership between the two kingdoms is a cornerstone of their economic, foreign and security policies. The Trumpet has previously reported on the increasing bond between these influential Mideast powers which will soon lead to an alliance with Germany, as noted in our editor in chief’s booklet The King of the South.

Jordan’s king has worked hard to continue the peace efforts of his father, the late King Hussein, to maintain the unity, prosperity and stability of the Hashemite kingdom. Hussein ruled Jordan as its most beloved leader in modern times. He abruptly became king in 1953 at the young age of 17 after witnessing the assassination of his father, King Abdullah. Five years later, his cousin and ruler of Iraq, Faisal, was also assassinated. Bloodshed was a constant during his lifetime as further evidenced by the 1967 war, when Jordan joined Syria and Egypt in attacking Israel. Jordan lost East Jerusalem and the West Bank to Israel and received an exodus of Palestinians across its borders, where today they account for over 65 percent of the country’s population.

In 1970, Jordan squashed a rebellion by the Palestine Liberation Organization, thus ensuring Jordan’s continuing survival and autonomy. Hussein worked to develop stronger ties with Israel, even warning it in advance of the 1973 Yom Kippur attack by Syria and Egypt. He continued to seek peace for not only Jordan but the entire region, concluding a peace treaty with Israel in 1994. But a lifetime of searching for peace amid war had taken its toll. Four years later the king began receiving regular cancer treatments in the United States as his health steadily declined. Early in 1999 he died, and his son Abdullah assumed the throne.

King Abdullah ii’s official website, www.kingabdullah.jo, details his history as the son of the much-loved King Hussein, who named Abdullah after his grandfather, the first king of Jordan. To prepare his son to ascend the throne, Hussein raised the young prince as a man of action on the athletic field and the military training ground. In 1980, Abdullah enrolled in Sandhurst, Britain’s Royal Military Academy, where he was later commissioned as a second lieutenant. Abdullah served in the British Army in the 13/18th Queen’s Hussars Regiment, with duties as a reconnaissance troop leader in the United Kingdom and Germany. In 1985, then Prince Abdullah returned to Jordan where he served with high distinction in various military capacities and in January 1993 was named deputy commander of Jordanian Special Forces.

During this time of training and development, Abdullah probably heard the name Herbert W. Armstrong uttered by his father and perhaps even saw the aged white-haired American when he traveled to Jordan visiting with Hussein and other dignitaries. Abdullah knew Mr. Armstrong was a personal friend of his father’s. King Hussein first met Mr. Armstrong in 1974 and thereafter established an enduring friendship in Jordan’s search for stability, growth and peace with its neighbors. You could say they extended an olive branch to each other. The Jordanian royal family knew that Herbert Armstrong championed the way of “giving,” as an unofficial ambassador for world peace, and witnessed his various initiatives and projects in the service of the Hashemite kingdom’s people. Today, the legacy of the pursuit of peace, of extending the olive branch to all peoples, lives on in the form of the Armstrong International Cultural Foundation.

As news of Mr. Armstrong’s death in early 1986 reached Jordan, Adnan Abu Odeh, minister of the Royal Hashemite Court, wrote, “Their majesties instructed me to convey their heartfelt sympathies and condolences on the passing away of Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong and their hope that the life of benevolence, altruism and the drive for a better understanding among peoples which Mr. Armstrong led will continue to be the inspirational path for others to follow” (Good News, May 1986). It is through the Armstrong International Cultural Foundation’s cultural and humanitarian enterprise that the legacy of that “life of benevolence, altruism and the drive for a better understanding among peoples which Mr. Armstrong led” continues today.

The olive branch analogy used by King Abdullah in Strasbourg while speaking to the Europeans is a powerful one. King Hussein will one day witness, at the resurrection, the peace he sought during his lifetime actually achieved on God’s terms, in His time and way, just as prophesied by Herbert Armstrong. King David wisely declared, “… I am like a green olive tree in the house of God: I trust in the mercy of God for ever and ever” (Psalm 52:8). David saw that the coming of true peace through the extension of God’s mercy to humanity, being analogous to the growth of an olive tree, was only viable in God’s house, under His direction, through submission to His law, administered by His loving government.

The signs are that true peace will come sooner rather than later, but not before a Great Tribulation is triggered engulfing the Anglo-Saxon nations and the tiny Judaic nation of Israel (Matthew 24:21). Jordan, biblical Amman, will play a crucial part as a bridge between the powers extant at the time as prophesied in Psalm 83. It is prophesied also that it will have some type of attachment to Herbert Armstrong’s legacy at that time.

In the meantime, look for Europe’s alliance with Jordan to grow stronger in the months ahead, along with its links with Saudi Arabia, as radical Islamist nations led by Iran are pushed into a clash with a Catholic German-led European Union. That will be one of the most powerful signs of the imminence of the return of the Savior of mankind to extend the ultimate olive branch of peace to this sin-sick and war-weary world.