After visiting Lugano, Switzerland, Herbert Armstrong beamed at the site of a possible future Ambassador College in Europe. On March 3, 1947, he wrote to his family in the United States: “I have decided definitely and finally on the Swiss branch of Ambassador. The idea is right. But the place is still open for investigation.

“Today we have seen Lugano! Partly. And what a place it is! It’s all so different—so strange. It’s Italy with Swiss prosperity. A beautiful, prosperous Italy. It’s the most intriguing place we ever saw. It’s certainly Old World. It’s the perfect place for the European unit of Ambassador College.”

So taken was Mr. Armstrong with Switzerland as a prospective European base that he also visited the cities of Geneva and Bern as possible locations for establishing a college. As it turned out, despite his initial enthusiasm, he did not ultimately establish a campus across the Atlantic in Switzerland; he would later raise up a sister college to Ambassador College in Pasadena in Hertfordshire, England.

Switzerland is indeed beautiful. From the placid waters of Lake Lugano as it hugs the Swiss Riviera, to the charm of St. Moritz, the politics of Bern and the financial strength of both Zurich and Geneva, Switzerland evokes the finery of northern Europe. The country is practically synonymous with financial stability and prosperity.

Recently, when the euro crisis hit Italy, the EU’s third-largest economy, investors were quaking at the prospect of the contagion spreading across the Continent. Painful memories of euro bailouts of Ireland and Greece along with Portuguese and Spanish requests for financial deliverance were still fresh in investors’ minds. With the U.S. dollar in decline and Japan struggling—both nations having previously offered safe haven for the transfer of funds in times of economic crisis—many market players have turned to the Swiss for a backup position as they weather the storms of the euro crisis.

During the global economic crisis of 2008, Switzerland’s largest banks were hammered with sizable financial losses, resulting in its largest bank being bailed out by the government. Thereafter, the country implemented various economic incentives, such as a zero-percent interest rate policy in 2009, and other efforts at economic stimulation consummating in its third and most recent stimulus package in 2010. Then came the high-pressure tactics from the EU, the U.S. and other nations for Switzerland to reform its long-abused banking secrecy laws. This resulted in the historic Swiss decision to conform to international economic cooperation regulations, the government also taking the unprecedented step of revealing certain names of account holders who were suspected of using the country’s banks for tax fraud purposes.

Though small in geographic area and population, and surrounded by EU member nations, Switzerland, in its unique wisdom, refrained from joining the European Union. It has thus retained its national sovereignty and its own beloved currency, the Swiss franc. Only eight months ago we cited an EU foreign ministry report that threatened the Swiss to either conform to EU law or risk being shut out of EU markets.

The paradox is, having made that decision, they are riding on the crest of the waves of today’s economically rough seas, while the rest of Europe is in the trough. As Europe bites its financial fingernails, the Swiss remain confident of their fiscal position. “The Swiss economy is growing, unemployment is low and our country has little debt compared with other countries. We see neither deflation nor inflation risks at the moment. The national bank does not need to act,” stated Philipp Hildebrand, chairman of the Swiss National Bank, last month.

However, there is one cloud on the Swiss horizon. Despite the recent flood of popularity of the Swiss franc as a safe haven to investors sensing implosion in Europe, the government in Bern is deeply concerned at the possibility of a housing crisis in Hungary and Poland with the prospect of large-scale defaults in Swiss franc-denominated mortgages that could adversely affect German banks. In short, to weather that looming storm, Switzerland needs Germany and Germany needs Switzerland.

The current financial house cleaning we are witnessing in Europe is exactly what the Trumpet has long predicted: that the European Union, especially the eurozone nations, would not remain sustainable in its current size and structure. Today, many financial pundits are now claiming the same. “The equivalent to China in Asia is Germany in Europe, which is rich enough to keep its own house in order, but not rich enough to support the European sovereign debt crisis. This is when politics and economics create friction, as the EU was created as a monetary unit. However, the politics is left to the domestic stage and the German electorate is certainly getting nervous about bailing out their less wealthy partners,” stated Chris Towner of HiFX.

“There is no other country in the world with which Switzerland has a closer relationship than the Federal Republic of Germany,” states the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs. “The more than 200 agreements between our two countries are supplemented by the bilateral agreement between Switzerland and the EU, which also includes the free movement of persons and the Schengen Association Agreement. Cooperation is further intensified by regular formal and informal contacts. Since 2003 contact between the Swiss parliament and the German Bundestag has been on an institutionalized footing.”

Since Germany unified in 1990, Switzerland has deftly played a cat-and-mouse game with its Teutonic neighbor and the European Union. It’s a game the Swiss are destined to play only as long as it remains convenient to Berlin. For over 50 years Herbert Armstrong declared that Europe as we know it today would eventually rationalize into a German-led, 10-nation combine, a literal seventh and final resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire, taking the spotlight on the world’s political, religious and military stage.

For the Swiss, though they have held tenaciously to their national sovereignty to this point, their days of independence are numbered. Though they may think they can continue to play neutrality games with the EU, they are gravely mistaken. The writing is on the prophetic wall—they just don’t realize it yet.

Germany is now calling the shots in Europe. Its relationship of convenience with Switzerland will last only as long as it takes to impose its own final solution on the crisis of its own making in Europe.

It may come as a surprise to the reader to learn that the Swiss are the primary descendants of the Israelite tribe of Gad. In his book The United States and Britain in Prophecy, requested by over 5 million people worldwide, Herbert Armstrong reveals the identity of the 12 original tribes of Israel, detailing the modern location of the so-called lost 10 tribes: “While the birthright was Joseph’s, and its blessings have come to the British Commonwealth of Nations and the United States of America, yet the other eight tribes of Israel were also God’s chosen people. They too, have been blessed with a good measure of material prosperity—but not the dominance of the birthright.”

As a tribe of Israel, the Swiss face an unenviable catastrophe in the near future together with all the descendents of ancient Israel. That is prophesied in your Bible.

Yet, following that great catastrophe, ancient Gad—modern-day Switzerland—will, together with its brother Israelite nations, shortly after begin to enjoy the life-changing true education Mr. Armstrong at one time desired to share with it in the establishment of a college campus. The Swiss are destined to have their college, teaching true education from the perspective of the dimension most missing in man’s institutions of learning—knowledge of the incredible human potential that man was destined to be offered by his Creator from the beginning.

However, this time, the Swiss will be drafted into an alliance with a never-ending family empire whose King will have powerfully intervened to deliver humankind, once and for all, from its naturally selfish, power-hungry, overspending, war-torn, sin-laden ways.