USA - In London last week, I met a Nigerian man who succinctly expressed the reaction of much of the world to the United States these days. “Your country has gone crazy,” he said, with a mixture of outrage and amusement. “I’m from Africa. I know crazy, but I didn’t ever think I would see this in America.”
A sadder sentiment came from a young Irish woman I met in Dublin who went to Columbia University, founded a social enterprise and has lived in New York for nine years. “I’ve come to recognize that, as a European, I have very different values than America these days,” she said. “I realized that I have to come back to Europe, somewhere in Europe, to live and raise a family.”
But there is another aspect to the decline in America’s reputation. According to a recent Pew Research Center survey of 37 countries, people around the world increasingly believe that they can make do without America. Trump’s presidency is making the United States something worse than just feared or derided. It is becoming irrelevant.
Trump has managed to do something that Putin could not. He has unified Europe. As the continent faces the challenges of Trump, Brexit and populism, a funny thing has happened. Support for Europe among its residents has risen, and plans for deeper European integration are underway. If the Trump administration proceeds as it has promised and initiates protectionist measures against Europe, the continent’s resolve will only strengthen. Under the combined leadership of Merkel and new French President Emmanuel Macron, Europe will adopt a more activist global agenda. Its economy has rebounded and is now growing as fast as that of the United States.
In 2008, I wrote a book about the emerging “Post-American World,” which, I noted at the start, was not about the decline of America but rather the rise of the rest. Amid the parochialism, ineptitude and sheer disarray of the Trump presidency, the post-American world is coming to fruition much faster than I ever expected.
A common enemy is a unifying force.
The EU has not been very united recently. Unification could well come about when the nations of Europe face a common enemy.
Europe now has a common enemy – the USA – which is threatening trade wars with Europe, and sanctions on Russia which would further hurt Europe. The following comments made in this article should make us think back to what Mr Armstrong has said in the past!
“...people around the world increasingly believe that they can make do without America. He [President Trump] has unified Europe... If the Trump administration proceeds as it has promised and initiates protectionist measures against Europe, the continent’s resolve will only strengthen... Europe will adopt a more activist global agenda.”
Back in the June 1955 Plain Truth Magazine, Mr Armstrong warned:
“In its final phase, to appear in our day, will merely be a restoration of that ancient Roman Empire – a United States of Europe which we are beginning to foster within the confines of the ancient Roman Empire! We are building the Frankenstein Monster that is destined to destroy us!” (Plain Truth Magazine June 1955)
Over 50 years ago, Mr Armstrong warned of terrible trade wars between the USA and Europe (Plain Truth Magazine, December 1963).
The message has always been consistent:
“We don’t understand German thoroughness. From the very start of World War II, they have considered the possibility of losing this second round, as they did the first – and they have carefully, methodically planned, in such eventuality, the third round – World War III!
The Bible foretells that third round – and it spells DOOM for us, as God’s punishment, because we, as a nation, have forsaken Him and His ways! The third round is termed, in prophecy, an invasion by ‘BABYLON’ – a resurrected Roman Empire – a European Union. I have been proclaiming that since 1927” (Autobiography - Volume 2).
Watch this situation closely!
“Just what is an APOSTLE?”
Today we find the Church of God in a “wilderness of religious confusion!”
The confusion is not merely around the Church – within the religions of the world outside – but WITHIN the very heart of The True Church itself!
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