The pope’s visit to Germany commencing today is extremely timely as the tension builds in that country between the leading voices of secularism and the nation’s far-right Catholic elites.

To really understand what Benedict is up to, one has to understand that it has not been the German rationalists who have been behind Germany’s postwar return to power. The real movers and shakers have been the influential Catholic elites who have provided the vision for Germany’s return to imperial power. Benedict does not need the German press on his side. He already has under his wing those who have the influence to break dissent, and he will use it when the moment is ripe.

In the meantime, as in past European history, all the clamor raised by those who dissent with the will of Rome is just revealing to Rome which voices must be silenced when its crusading onslaught begins.

Only the most blind of souls would deny that what Herbert Armstrong prophesied at war’s end in 1945—that Germany would arise to lead a modern form of the Holy Roman Empire in our time—is not now staring us in the face.

Germany’s challenge right now is to handle the euro crisis in such a manner that it emerges as the dominant imperial power, with the European continent subservient to it.

In the interim, the world holds its breath awaiting the fallout from an impending Greek default.

Having all the above in mind, Pope Benedict xvi has timed his visit to Germany and his address to the Bundestag with similar precision to that of his previous visit to Regensburg in 2006, and with similar intent.

In Regensburg, Benedict flung down the gauntlet to both pan-Islamism and also to the secularism that morphed out of the German rationalism of the 18th-century era of the Enlightenment and has since spread like a rash through a largely irreligious East Germany now united with its western counterpart.

Benedict is returning to publicly declare war on the rationalists that have the ear of the public, courtesy of Germany’s organs of mass communication.

One of the leading lights in peddling the cause of the anti-Rome secular rationalists is the news outlet Spiegel. It nailed its colors to the mast in a recent piece headlined “Disillusioned German Catholics: The Pope’s Difficult Visit to His Homeland.”

In its quite anti-pope leader, Der Spiegel declared, “Worlds will collide when Joseph Ratzinger arrives in his native Germany this week for his first state visit. About 100 members of parliament have chosen to forgo the experience, including lawmakers like spd parliamentarian Ulla Burchardt from the western city of Dortmund. ‘A head of state who disregards labor rights, women’s rights and the right to sexual self-determination should not be allowed to address the Bundestag,’ says Burchardt” (September 20).

But the dissidents have shot themselves in the foot. There are more people clamoring to be present at the Bundestag to hear the pope’s address than there are seats available. He’s not there to address the dissidents. It’s the political right and the masses he is out to win.

In a complete misread of Rome’s intentions, Spiegel points to “The German Catholic Church … undergoing a process of consolidation, downsizing and centralization” as an indication of a church in retreat from German soil. Spiegel is dead wrong in its analysis!

What Benedict is doing with his priestly troops is akin to the process that Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg began with Germany’s military forces when he was minister for defense. He’s simply preparing for war—in his terms, a “new evangelization”—a crusading war, by stripping out the dead wood and scaling down to a leaner, meaner hard core of loyalists willing and prepared for the sacrificial effort of crusading for Europe to return to its Catholic, its “holy Roman,” roots.

Like Guttenberg, Benedict is a master tactician and a brilliant politician. The same leftist, secular sources that sought to denigrate the highly popular and politically effective Guttenberg are in play seeking to wreak the pope’s crusade.

They will fail.

They will live to see Rome revive public interest in Europe’s ancient Roman Catholic religion and witness it create, if only for its prophesied brief moment of time, the very unity that is today grossly lacking within the European Union.

That European Union is itself in the midst of the seismic disruptions that will end with a scaled down, meaner and leaner, yet far more powerful union of 10 states controlling the rest, all paying obeisance to Rome and Berlin (Revelation 17:12).

Guttenberg had already started to influence the minds of the German public in support of having German military personnel face open combat in foreign territory. Pope Benedict has declared as part of his main mission in Germany he is seeking to influence the minds of the German public to return to embracing the religion of Rome. In time he will succeed, mark our words, for that is foreordained in the prophecies of your Bible.

“With the pope’s visit to Germany starting tomorrow, the Vatican is seeking to consolidate the position of the Catholic right in the Federal Republic. … The German pope … has planned his stay in the Federal Republic above all to have an effect on the public” (German-Foreign-Policy.com, September 21; emphasis added).

They are Benedict’s twin goals on this trip. To head off the liberal secularists by strengthening the Catholic right and appeal to the masses in a time of national and international crisis, traditionally the time when religion has its greatest appeal. For Benedict, there could hardly be a better moment than now, with Germany caught in the midst of political confusion, the masses lacking any clear vision of their future.

In the meantime, the mass media remain largely clueless as to the real nature of the power of German Catholic elites—the very German “right” that founded the EU, that built its infrastructure into that of the most powerful trading bloc on Earth.

Those are the very same elites who today hold the world to ransom as they pull the strings to ensure they emerge in total control of the global economy for the very brief moment of time that the seventh and final resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire holds sway (Revelation 13:7, 16-17).

These are the very signs that lead to the greatest sign of hope of all (Luke 21:29-31).