“Here is the tremendous news!!” exclaimed Herbert W. Armstrong as he wrote to co-workers Feb. 23, 1959. “There is one little tiny nation in Europe which Russia considers too insignificant to notice, the little nation of Monaco, made famous by the marriage of movie actress Grace Kelly with its prince, and the birth of their son, which saved this little nation’s independence.”

Throughout the 1950s Mr. Armstrong had long sought the right radio station and location to reach the red center of Russia. In the princely possession of Monaco lay a station more powerful, at the time, than Radio Luxembourg and eight times more powerful than the largest broadcaster in the United States. It was Europe’s mega-station.

“Radio Monte Carlo has just opened to us a choice half-hour broadcasting time every Saturday,” Mr. Armstrong continued. With its 400,000 watts of power, combined with two other strong shortwave stations, it blasted the World Tomorrow program throughout Europe and Russia simultaneously at 7 a.m. Monaco time.

Soon, with his wife and eldest son, Richard, Mr. Armstrong traveled to the famed city-state, driving along the Italian and French Rivera and reaching their hotel by nightfall. On Friday, June 29, 1965, he recalled, “we drove, first, up to the Palace of Monaco, which is ruled by Prince Rainier iii” (Plain Truth, August 1965).

The Grimaldi dynasty has ruled Monaco since 1297 when one of the prince’s ancestors disguised himself and his band of warriors as monks, seizing the city’s fortress in the name of the pope.

Prince Rainier came to power in 1949 and was best known abroad for his storybook marriage to Hollywood actress Grace Kelly. But he was known more locally within his dominion for transforming Monaco from a 95 percent gambling state to one today where gaming accounts for only 3 percent of its diversified economy.

The mass-circulation Plain Truth magazine quoted Princess Grace in its March 1974 edition, which focused upon royalty and family values, as saying, “What better ‘thing’ of one’s own can one do than share in the creation of a new life, thereafter integrating it into a loving and wholesome family and continuing to guide the formation of its personality and the molding of its character?”

The following year, Mr. Armstrong, as the magazine’s founder, publisher and editor in chief, was in Monte Carlo, “where he cosponsored with Prince Rainier iii and Princess Grace of Monaco the showing of a film, Paper Tiger, to benefit handicapped children” (Worldwide News, Aug. 4, 1975).

The Worldwide News went on to report, “Proceeds from the film and reception went to the French chapter of the World Association for the Aid of Children. At a dinner accompanying the showing, Mr. Armstrong was seated at the royal table with the prince and princess.”

The occasion clearly impacted him, as he would again refer to his “acquaintance” with the Monacan royals in the October-November 1981 special edition of the Plain Truth in a cover article about the royal wedding of Prince Charles to Lady Diana.

The following year, as the world was shocked by the untimely death of Monte Carlo’s princess in a horrific car accident, Mr. Armstrong wrote co-workers on September 17, “Tomorrow the funeral will be held for Princess Grace of the kingdom of Monaco. Probably the November issue of the Plain Truth will carry a picture of Princess Grace and me dining side by side at a formal banquet.”

After the doors of radio and publishing opened to Mr. Armstrong in the little country, television followed, heightening Mr. Armstrong’s profile via the World Tomorrow program. Viewers throughout Monaco, northern Italy and that nation’s west coast, including Rome, could watch the unofficial ambassador for world peace as he fulfilled Christ’s prophecy of Matthew 24:14 in declaring the gospel message as a witness to all nations.

Prince Rainier ruled almost 56 years, dying in Monaco on April 6, 2005, and leaving his only son as the island nation’s ruler, the very prince of which Mr. Armstrong wrote 10 years after Rainer’s ascent, “saved this little nation’s independence.”

Born in 1958, Prince Albert continues the Grimaldi dynasty as today’s reigning monarch of Monaco. He and his two sisters, Caroline and Stephanie, may well remember talk of a white-haired patriarch whose voice rang out over their country from 1959 to his death in 1986. A patriarch who visited their palatial home, dined with their parents, served the region’s handicapped, honored the marital example of their late parents and most notably preached God’s gospel to its citizenry.

That message continues today with the same power of revealed biblical truth (Revelation 10:11) as Trumpet founder, Gerald Flurry, continues in the spirit of that unofficial ambassador, Herbert Armstrong, to “prophesy again before many peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings.”

Within this regal message is the joyful advance declaration of the coming of another much higher dynasty. One which will divinely seize power and reign over its subjects, globally, with a government of love, wiping away all the tears, sorrow, division and pain that has been inflicted on the world by man’s inhumanity to man under sway of this present evil world’s unseen ruler.

This good news of all good news was prophetically penned by the ancient prophet Isaiah, when he wrote in chapter 9 and verse 6, “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.”