By British newspaper editor Alan Franklin

Major Prophecies in Daniel 2 and 7 indicate that the Holy Roman Empire will be the dominant force in the world when our Lord returns. Twenty five hundred years ago Daniel saw the Roman Empire revived from the dead in the end times.

Those prophecies are today being fulfilled in Europe. I have often spoken about the rebirth of the Roman Empire in the form of The European Union, the superstate of 25 nations that has replaced most of the individual countries of Europe, a country with its own flag and parliament.

Then, in September, came quite a shock: one of those history being created before your eyes moments. The EU, at an astonishing art exhibition sketching the future of the organisation, described itself under the heading : "Roman Empire Returns."

According to this EU exhibition, staged in a brightly coloured circus tent outside the European Commission in Brussels, Belgium-core of the EU - the EU will be renamed "The Union" once it grows to 50 states over the next three decades. The United Nations headquarters will be moved to Gibraltar, a tiny British enclave off the coast of Spain which commands the entrance to the Mediteranean Sea -a very strategic site. This will be as "The EU defends the international order against the American onslaught."

According to slogans at the art exhibition the European Union is poised to overtake America to become the world's number one superpower and predicts that the 21st century will be the "European Century" as the EU pushes its borders deep into Eurasia, North Africa and the Middle East and starts to dominate the affairs of the world through its enormous "legal and moral reach." The euro will break the "overwhelming monopoly of the Dollar" by 2010 as India and China switch their reserves in order to punish America for its "stratospheric deficit."

Anti-Americanism has long been a keystone of EU policy, largely shaped by countries like France and Socialist governments throughout the continent. The exhibition has Uncle Sam in the role of the villain of the modern world and says: "the lonely superpower can bribe, bully or impose its will almost anywhere in the world, but when its back is turned its policy is weakened."

This display, with the overall title "The Image of Europe," was co-ordinated by the European Commission and sponsored by the European Council. The EU's Dutch presidency said it was aimed at narrowing Europe's "iconographic deficit" by conjuring up forceful images.

According to the official website EUpolitix.com, world renowned Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas has pitched his circus tent in the heart of the Brussels EU area "in a bid to communicate Europe to its citizens." In his depiction of the current 25 states of the EU, Koolas has combined images of porn stars, pop stars and political leaders, saying he was deliberately sketching the schizophrenic condition of Europe today. "We are operating in a field that is polarised by extreme vulgarity, hedonism, shamelessness and market driven modernisation," he said.

After its period in Brussels the exhibit will be travelling icon-style around Europe and will be translated into various languages. However, although this gives a glimpse of the values driving today's Europe, where modesty is a thing of the past and extreme vulgarity appears nightly on the Continent's TV screens, this was not the most amazing thing that happened as the new empire unfurled its tentacles.

On May 1st, no doubt coincidentally the foundation date of the Illuminati,
ten new countries, eight of them former parts of the old Soviet empire and the other two island nations, joined the existing 15 countries to create a 455 million population superstate. This "big bang" entry of new members took in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Slovenia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Cyprus and Malta. Romania and Bulgaria have been told they will be admitted around 2007, bringing the population to well over 500 million.The 25 member EU has 20 languages and this will increase further as countries like Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, Macedonia and Albania line up to join, with Turkey knocking furiously at the door, with its population of 70 million Muslims.

Vaclav Klaus, the Czech president, said as his country was absorbed : "In a few days our state will cease to exist as an independent and sovereign entity," not surprising as each new entrant was presented with the 90,000 page Euro rulebook on accession - with every rule having to be adhered to.

Back at Euro HQ, including the new structure known as The Tower of Eurobabel in Strasbourg, France, because it is built to resemble the original Tower of Babel, there are 2,800 translaters trying to ensure that all these people can communicate with each other. Linguists are translating tongues like Maltese into Czech in a mind-spinning 380 possibilities of combinations of any two languages!

As if they didn't have practical difficulties enough, those behind the EU wasted no time after gobbling up the ten formerly independent nations in declaring that they had much bigger ambitions. On May 4 came the amazing headline in The Times of London:"Brussels plans to expand its empire again." This read: "With the largest-ever enlargement of the European Union behind them, European officials are now preparing even more ambitious plans to expand the Brussels empire across North Africa, the Middle East and Asia. "They hope that just as the enlargement (involving the ten countries) helped to entrench democracy in eight former Communist countries, this new policy will stabilise much of the Arab world as well as the still turbulent far eastern regions of Europe."

Next the European Commission- the executive body-set out plans to enlarge the EU to take in all the Muslim countries lining the Mediterranean, from Morocco to Syria, as well as Israel, Lebanon and all the former parts of the Soviet Union that are in Europe- including Russia! Under something called The New Neighbourhood Policy countries such as Egypt, Algeria, Libya, Ukraine and Russia would become full members of the single market, with open borders for trade and investment, and their citizens given the full right to live and work in the European Union. They will be able to become full members of the Union if they reach certain targets... EU diplomats say that Jordan, Morocco and the Ukraine are the closest to meeting their criteria but that most of the North African and Middle Eastern countries will take longer-perhaps 20 years.

Romano Prodi, the Italian who is current President of the Commission, said: "The goal is to create a ring of friends with whom we share common concerns.." The downside is that this opens the door to hundreds of millions of Muslims getting the right to live and work anywhere in Europe. Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, three former Soviet republics in the Caucasus region between the Black Sea and Caspian Sea, have been told they too will eventually be eligible for the New Neighbourhood Policy, although all want full membership. This reaching out to Muslim countries coincides with warnings that, just as the EU wants to take in Israel, so anti-semitism is spreading throughout its territory.

Crude swastikas and stars of David have for years been daubed on buildings throughout Europe and Israel's Ariel Sharon has said: "Europe has a problem" (with anti Semitism). He believes things are being made worse by the huge numbers of Moslems- at least 20 million-now living in Europe, where they number ten per cent, or five million, of the French population, which also includes 600,000 Jews, and a much higher percentage of the young population.

Even in supposedly tolerant countries like Sweden an historian has challenged the taboo on criticising Jews. President Chirac's opposition to the Iraq war paved the way for an open display of anti-semitism among militant Franco-Arab youngsters. Salomon Korn, vice president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, says there is a risk of a pan-European fusion of hatred against the Jews. Edgar Bronfman, of the World Jewish Congress, added: "Anti Semitism is on the rise in many European countries."

The spectre of Nazism has not been banished and, as students of prophecy realise, is something the Antichrist will one day play upon and unleash. The EU's watchdog on racism and xenophobia shelved a report on racism in Europe when it concluded that Muslims and pro Palestinian groups were stoking the flames. Until recent times the far right, still a significant force in many European countries, like France and Germany, had been mainly responsible for anti Jewish hate crime.

Christians who try to declare their beliefs in the brave new Europe had better watch out, however. In Britain a preacher who held up a sign in a town square calling for an end to homosexuality, lesbianism and immorality was "properly convicted" of a criminal offence, according to Britain's High Court. Harry Hammond, 69, was arrested for displaying an "insulting" sign- despite the fact that homosexuals and their supporters were at the time throwing water and dirt over him. Judges ruled that his behaviour "went beyond legitimate protest." His tormentors were not
arrested.

In Sweden-so tolerant of everything but Bible-based belief-a pastor served one month in jail this year for preaching against homosexuality.

Many of us in Britain see the beginnings of a police state in the EU. For example, in April Belgian judges banned a party with politically incorrect views which was also anti-EU. The Vlaams Block, a major party with 18 members in the 150 seat Belgian parliament, two MEPs and many local councillors, was declared a "non party" and prevented from fielding candidates in any election.

There are plans for EU funding of all political parties, but the largesse comes with a snag. To get it you have to sign up to the EU's ideals and pass a raft of tests designed to keep politicians on the "right" lines as far as the superstate is concerned. The parties must also be "pan European"-operating across borders, in another step aimed at breaking down the nation state. This is coupled with an assault on press freedom and EU state funding for broadcasters to make programs that are pro EU propaganda.

Needless to say, there is no money for stating the opposing view, so yours truly need not apply! This October the European Court quietly brushed aside 50 years of international case law in a landmark judgement on press freedom, ruling that Brussels does not have to comply with European human rights codes.

The Euro judges backed efforts by the European Commission to obtain the computers, address books, telephone records and 1000 pages of notes seized by armed Belgian police-on EU instructions-from Hans-Martin Tillack, then the Brussels correspondent of Germany's Stern magazine. Hans' mistake, which ended with him in a prison cell, held incommunicado, was to write a series of hard hitting articles exposing EU fraud and skulduggery, relying on inside sources. The aim was to find the names of those sources and, said one commentator, to "burn" a generation of EU whistleblowers- to make them afraid to tell the press what is going on, in other words.

British MEP Ashley Mote said: "This is a threat to press freedom throughout Europe.the European Commission now has unfettered powers to stop its activities being challenged."

The European Court of Justice had already decided that the EU can lawfully suppress political criticism of its institutions and leading figures in a ruling after a former leading Eurocrat published a book called "The Rotten Heart of Europe." When this man was put in court the EU state prosecutor implied that criticism of the EU was akin to extreme blasphemy and therefore not protected speech. This is not the worst of it.

Article 52 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights declares that all freedoms and rights can be restricted, including the right to free speech- and the right to life! They can also remove your right to a fair trial, the presumption of innocence and the absence of double jeopardy- meaning they can try you twice for the same offence!

The monstrous project that is the creation of the EU began in earnest with The Treaty of Rome in 1957 and now it is Rome which is the base for the signing of the document which officially creates a single superstate- the EU constitution.

Italy is planning to be the first European Union member state to approve the European constitution, having decided not to join the six countries that say they will hold referendums on the issue. The constitution will be signed on Capitol Hill, Rome, where the Treaty of Rome was signed by the six founder nations.

All 25 nations have to sign the treaty before the vast new country can be created, although it is already operating as if the treaty had been signed, taking ever larger slices of national sovereignty away from nation states. The Rome signing ceremony will be the last official duty of Romano Prodi as President of the European Commission and he can move on knowing that the great project which he has pushed for years is almost fully in place.

In future national governments will only be able to act in areas where the EU decides not to. The European Army is already on overseas assignment. The Euro symbol- the stars of Mary-appears on documents, buildings, flags and licence plates through the 25 countries. Europe has a common currency, the Euro, a national anthem- the Ode to Joy-, a supreme court and much else.

Now it awaits just one thing: the supreme ruler who will weld it into the most terrifying institution ever seen on the face of the earth. The Bible calls him Antichrist. Expect his arrival on the scene in the not too distant future.