Britain and Europe have been at odds for years—but man, things are really getting tense.

The pending split between Britain and the Continent is a prophecy the Trumpet has made consistently for years—and that Herbert W. Armstrong made for decades before us.

Now, as Germany and European Union leaders grapple with a life-threatening financial crisis, their ruthless measures are intensifying their already gross differences with Britain. Last week, animosity between the two boiled over.

“Germany and the UK are on a collision course,” said Jan Techau, director of the European center of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “The clashes we see now about deepening ties in the EU have always been there, but the crisis makes them more visible. Now it’s crunch time” (November 15).

Here’s one contentious example: a Europe-wide tax that Berlin is pushing as a way to raise money to bail out eurozone countries. It would create a surcharge on financial transactions—which means that upwards of 80 percent of the tax revenue would come from the biggest global financial center in Europe, the City of London. Convenient, no?

Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne acidly called the tax “a bullet aimed at the heart of London.” Former Prime Minister John Major branded it “a heat-seeking missile” targeting the British. Prime Minister David Cameron sarcastically criticized the anti-British motives of the tax’s proponents thus: “I am sometimes tempted to ask the French whether they would like a cheese tax.”

Nevertheless, the Eurocrats are sticking to their guns. Last week at Germany’s Christian Democratic Union party conference, parliamentary leader Volker Kauder warned that the UK had better submit to the tax. “I can understand that the British don’t want that when they generate almost 30 percent of their gross domestic product from financial-market business in the City of London,” he said. “But Britain also carries responsibility for making Europe a success. Only being after their own benefit and refusing to contribute is not the message we’re letting the British get away with” (emphasis added throughout).

It’s all plainly designed to force the British into a fight.

As the euro crisis deteriorates, European leaders are talking about solving it with more Europe while British leaders want less.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel told her party congress last Monday, “The task of our generation now is to complete the economic and currency union in Europe and, step by step, create a political union.” Meanwhile, the same day, Mr. Cameron said the euro crisis brings an “opportunity to begin to refashion the EU so it better serves this nation’s interests … an opportunity, in Britain’s case, for powers to ebb back instead of flow away.” Not exactly a marriage made in heaven.

Mr. Cameron traveled to Berlin last Friday to meet with Mrs. Merkel, but, predictably, the two made no headway toward agreement. One thing their meeting did inspire, though, is a torrent of bitter rhetoric on both sides of the Channel.

Reports emerged of German politicians criticizing Britain for being “freeloaders in the eurozone.” The German media roundly slammed the British prime minister. Bild carried the headline “Europe speaks German, Mr. Cameron! What do the English actually want in the European Union?” It questioned whether it might be better if Britain left the EU altogether. Financial Times Deutschland wrote that Cameron “wants Britain to have a say in the financial crisis, but he doesn’t want his country to have to pay for it. … Great Britain is lacking a constructive approach. That’s why the government in London shouldn’t be surprised that it is hearing an increasing number of European countries sigh words like: Things would be a lot easier if we didn’t have the Brits.”

Meanwhile in Britain, the Daily Mail reported that as Mr. Cameron “returned home empty-handed from crisis talks in Berlin,” Germany “declared that Britain would be forced to scrap the pound and join the euro.” Yet another proposal sure to score big points with the British.

After Germany’s finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, suggested Britain’s pound was doomed and that it should back the euro, Tory mp Philip Davies responded that Schäuble must be “living in cloud cuckoo land.”

“British people will be horrified by what is going on in Europe,” warned mp Philip Hollobone. “Foreign policy going back to the time of Henry viii has been to try to prevent conglomeration of power on the continent of Europe which would be against British national interests. Here we are in the 21st century with a German attempt to create a single economic and political bloc. This is Britain’s golden chance to get out of the European quagmire and set ourselves free.”

British media are joining in the fight against being railroaded by the EU and Germany. “Europe speaks German now! Controversial claim from Merkel ally that EU countries all follow Berlin’s lead—and Britain should fall into line,” the Daily Mail writes.

“We no longer need to fear the jackboot but we have a great deal to fear from German bossy boots,” the Daily Mail’s Stephen Glover wrote last Thursday. “Germany has not been so powerful since 1941 when most of Europe was under her sway and her army was carving its way through the Soviet Union. … [A] once shy postwar Germany is calling the shots in Europe as never before, and her ministers think nothing of delivering us condescending lectures. … [T]he EU has been transformed as a result of recent events, almost certainly irreversibly. And this should make us think very carefully about our role within it. … It is certain that the British people do not want to be the also-ran members of a club run by Germany.”

To this point, the British people haven’t been given much say in the matter. Polls show high public dissatisfaction with the EU, but thus far, calls for an actual referendum—say, on whether to continue EU membership, something that more than two thirds of the public want a referendum on—have been ignored. The director of the People’s Pledge campaign, which is calling for a referendum, has warned that Britain could face more “social disturbance and dislocation” if the British government continues to disregard the will of the people.

Here is the most remarkable aspect of this deepening schism: The reason we have known for decades that this would happen is that it was spelled out in advance in the Bible.

Since Germany reunited in 1990, the Trumpet has prophesied its rise to become the leading power in Europe, which it now is. In tandem with Germany’s rise, we have prophesied the rapid decline of British influence and power in Europe toward its eventual descent to vassal status under Berlin and Rome’s dominance of the EU. This happened on Jan. 1, 2010, with the implementation of the Lisbon Treaty. We have continued to prophesy that Britain will either opt out or be cast out of the European Union.

“Both France and Germany, since the days of modern Europe’s patriarchs, Adenauer and de Gaulle, have sought to hamper, harm, irritate, alienate and barely tolerate Britain, while benefitting from anything it has had to offer,” we wrote in our March/April 2001 edition. “Soon Britain will be forced to leave the European Union. … Watch events within Britain as it grapples with the reality of a failing love affair with German-led Europe. Watch for the very real and coming prospect of Britain being asked to leave the European Union.”

For many years previous, Mr. Armstrong and his Plain Truth magazine forecast this same eventuality. “Germany is the economic and military heart of Europe,” Mr. Armstrong wrote in 1956. “Probably Germany will lead and dominate the coming United States of Europe. But Britain will be no part of it!” In his 1986 book Mystery of the Ages, Mr. Armstrong spoke of “a union of 10 nations to rise up out of or following the Common Market of today (Revelation 17),” and then forecast: “Britain will not be in that empire soon to come.”

But the reason that we and Herbert Armstrong before us have prophesied of Britain’s departure from the EU is deeply sobering—for it contains within it a critical warning. While a break between these two powers is prophesied to occur, the future of Britain is inextricably bound to that of Europe in a manner truly horrifying to contemplate.

The prophecies in the Bible show that Britain, along with America and other Anglo-Saxon countries (biblical Israel), will soon become the victim of a resurrected Holy Roman Empire. As our editor in chief wrote in November 1995, “Do we see what is happening? Germany is rising in power with lightning speed. Why? Because God is behind it and is going to use Germany to correct Israel because of their sins.”

The separation between Britain and the EU is growing by the day. The biblical prophecies that informed Mr. Armstrong’s long-standing forecast that this relationship would eventually end also reveal both the source of Britain’s failings and the catastrophic end of its dalliance with Europe.