The intellectually and spiritually blind and halt have constantly scorned us for remaining in lockstep with Bible prophecy, regularly publicizing the reality that Germany would rise from abject defeat in World War ii to lead a final resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire.

Few, if any, have researched this story of the moment as thoroughly as we have. No one has publicized its inevitability as constantly as the Trumpet magazine and the Key of David television program. Now we are on the brink of so many of those great prophecies surrounding the seventh and final rise of the Holy Roman Empire becoming a reality.

So, in very precise accordance with biblical prophecy, today Germany is suddenly calling the tune on the direction of the whole financial future of the world. The prospect of default by the U.S. on its debts is but a sideline story to what is building in Europe at this moment.

On Thursday, July 21, global financial markets hold their breath as eurozone leaders meet to decide the future direction of the European Monetary Union and hence the entire project of European integration. In the box seat, with all eyes on her, is the embattled chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel.

The question on everybody’s lips is, will Merkel blink? Will she blink and trigger the final act of the grand EU dream, the institution of fiscal union and thus the final yielding up of the national sovereignty of eurozone nations to centralized control by Berlin/Brussels? If she doesn’t, the results will be terribly destabilizing not only for Europe, but also for the whole global economy.

As the Telegraph’s Ambrose Evans-Pritchard wrote two days in advance of Thursday’s eurozone summit, “Europe’s leaders have finally run out of time. If they fail to agree on some form of debt pooling and shared fiscal destiny at Thursday’s emergency summit, they risk a full-fledged run on South Europe’s bond markets and a disorderly collapse of monetary union” (July 19).

Merkel sits between the proverbial rock and a hard place. She has to choose between an orderly transition to EU fiscal union or “a disorderly collapse of monetary union.” Neither decision will aid her politically. As Evans-Pritchard rightly points out, “Above her head hangs a Sword of Damocles, a ruling by her constitutional court in September that may curb or even block German participation in the EU’s rescue machinery. The further she goes on Thursday—the further she breaches the ‘no bailout’ clause of the Lisbon Treaty—the greater the risk of a negative ruling.

“In essence, this is a soul-searching drama within Germany over its own national destiny and place in Europe” (ibid; emphasis added).

The crisis has the main players in Europe bitterly divided on just how to handle it. As the Telegraph’s Louise Armistead observed, “With Germany and the European Central Bank polarized on how to rescue Greece, the other 15 members of the eurozone must pick sides.

“France is firmly on the side of the ecb [European Central Bank] in insisting that almost any sign of forcing new terms on private bondholders will be seen as a default. Francois Baroin, the new French finance minister, has taken up where Christine Lagarde left off and supported his compatriot Jean Claude Trichet, head of the ecb. ‘We will take all measures necessary so that there is not a default,’ he said, arguing this is vital to ‘defend the euro,’ which he has vowed to do with ‘all our strength’” (July 20).

Realists recognize, as Armistead said, “The ecb is frantically trying to whip up extra support—but in the end Germany, as Europe’s powerhouse, has the most attractive call.”

It had to come to this. It’s finally Germany’s time to show its true colors. What really is Germany’s place in Europe and the world for now and the immediate future? The best of commentators on the growth of the European Union have long predicted that the “German question” would inevitably be raised at some point in the advanced progress of the European elites’ plan to build an imperial Europe. This is that moment. The whole financial world waits on Germany to provide the answer.

It was Adolf Hitler who, in his Mein Kampf, declared of the Nazi project to build a European—and ultimately a world—empire, that pan-German strategists were secretly using “federalism as a mask.”

As the late Christopher Story, inveterate watcher of the EU project, once observed, “The European Union has developed exactly in accordance with the blueprint elaborated by the Nazis in the 1940s. … [T]he Germans are using European federalism ‘as a mask’ for the final realization of their own previously thwarted idolatrous geopolitical ambitions” (The European Union Collective).

None other than that “strong man of Europe” during the heyday of the German economic miracle, Franz Josef Strauss—mentor of elder German statesman Edmund Stoiber, who in turn oversaw the rapid rise of Germany’s most popular personality, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg—wrote: “[It] was going to be much easier for Germany to make a comeback as a member of an international family, as a member of a European Federation, than as a German Reich. … Our European attitude was the only escape hatch we had, the only approach that made a comeback possible” (The Grand Design).

Will that “mask” of federalism be removed at Thursday’s eurozone summit to reveal the German elites’ true imperialist ambitions?

Watch for an outcome to Thursday’s eurozone summit that, either way, will propel Germany forward as the leading—ultimately dictatorial—power in Europe. And as you watch, remember the inerrant Bible prophecies we have unswervingly preached and published for over two decades, totally consistent with the preaching and publishing of those same prophecies by Herbert Armstrong for most of the latter half of the 20th century.

We have “the more sure word of prophecy” (2 Peter 1:19)—and that “word of God cannot be broken” (John 10:35). The prophecies of the seventh and final resurrection of that old Holy Roman Empire are being fulfilled before your very eyes. Watch Thursday’s eurozone summit for the latest chapter in this prophesied saga as the drama unfolds.

As we watch, we would do well to ponder just how close we are to the grand prophesied climax at the end of this age of man and the ushering in of a far, far better age—a glorious Millennium—of peaceful rule directly under our Maker’s authority (Isaiah 9:6-7). That is, in fact, the most encouraging of visions to contemplate, even as we witness this prophesied final rise of the “Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation” leap into focus.