GERMANY - Angela Merkel’s chosen successor Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer has thrown in the towel. Expect fierce leadership and policy struggles. First, the next leader of Germany’s conservatives will be a man — and politically quite different from Chancellor Angela Merkel and her preferred successor Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who announced her resignation on Monday. Personally speaking, my money is on Jens Spahn, the current health minister, over the former CDU grandee Friedrich Merz and North Rhine-Westphalia State Premier Armin Laschet.
Second, the Christian Democrats’ new leader will face a Herculean task. He will need to reconcile the different political wings of the Christian Democratic Union and bridge the deep divide between East and West within the party. He also must find an effective way of countering the rise of the extreme-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). Otherwise, Merkel’s CDU risks marginalization.
Third, please look at who has, at least for now, survived once again: Angela Merkel and her grand coalition. Both have weathered hard storms. Merkel is still looking cool and unruffled while her SPD coalition partners appear increasingly frazzled, but don’t count either out. Both the chancellor and her government could last until the end of their regular term in the fall of 2021.
But after this Monday, one thing at least is clear: whether it takes 18 months or less, for Angela Merkel and the stable state she has come to represent, the countdown has begun. Brace for change in Germany and Europe.
“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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