If God Gave the State of the Union

Good morning!

If God had given America’s State of the Union address last night, what would He have said?

[BRIEF]

Would He agree with President Trump, who boasted, “Our nation is back—bigger, better, richer and stronger than ever before”? That “the golden age of America is upon us”?

The president touted America’s successes—in border security, military might, energy production, national spirit, international respect, even Olympic hockey. He presented his numbers, and fact-checkers and political opponents presented alternative numbers.

But what if the things God is evaluating are altogether different? If we want to truly know the state of the American union, we need to know the verdict of the Supreme Judge of the world.

The president isn’t offering an objective state of the American union. He’s making a sales pitch. His approval ratings are low and dropping, especially over the economy; Republicans fear a reckoning in November. Trump insisted, “Inflation is plummeting … incomes are rising fast, the roaring economy is roaring like never before.” Is it? God says the borrower is servant to the lender. And with the nation $38.7 trillion in debt, warning signs of the economy’s vulnerability are flashing.

The president boasted of overseeing “a tremendous renewal in religion, faith, Christianity and belief in God.” Would God agree? The president has only feelings to back his claim. A November Gallup poll showed religion is important in the daily lives of less than half of Americans, a 17-point drop from just a decade ago. But more importantly, how would God judge America’s religion, faith and belief in Him? What is the state of America’s morality and America’s righteousness? You can be sure God wouldn’t count shallow, hypocritical religious talk to the nation’s credit.

The State of the Union address—as well as the presidency and even the nation—was established by men who appealed to “the laws of nature and of nature’s God,” “the Creator,” “divine Providence” and “the Supreme Judge of the world” to declare this nation’s independence 250 years ago. We need to know the true state of our union in God’s eyes. When we evaluate our own lives according to our own standards, we easily deceive ourselves. As Proverbs 16:2 says, “All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes; but the Lord weigheth the spirits.” God is the Source of all our blessings, and He is the one who blesses or curses us according to our doings.

On yesterday’s Trumpet Daily, Stephen Flurry described God’s judgment of America’s state in “The Real State of the Union.” That is the view that matters. It’s not self-congratulatory. It’s not heartwarming or entertaining. But it’s true. And only the truth will set us free (John 8:32).

French Paper Bombshell: Iran’s Failed Coup Attempt

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei faced a coup attempt last month led by former President Hassan Rouhani, right before Khamenei cracked down on Iranian protesters and killed tens of thousands, a report published on Sunday by French daily Le Figaro claims.

• Rouhani reportedly had the support of Mohammed Javad Zarif, his old foreign minister and mentor to current president Masoud Pezeshkian, as well as figures close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. (Pezeshkian himself apparently was not involved.)
• The coup apparently failed when Rouhani couldn’t convince Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s national security council, to join.
• After the events of January, both Rouhani and Zarif were reportedly placed under house arrest.

The New York Times reports that Khamenei has since trusted Larijani with much of the day-to-day governance, sidelining Pezeshkian:

Ayatollah Khamenei has instructed Mr. Larijani and a handful of other close political and military associates to ensure that the Islamic Republic survives not only American and Israeli bombs but also any assassination attempts on its top leadership, including on Ayatollah Khamenei himself.

These reports come as the United States military has amassed its largest concentration of assets in the Middle East since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The U.S. and Iran are scheduled to hold nuclear talks in Switzerland Thursday. If those go poorly, U.S. President Donald Trump has indicated he may order an attack, and its goal might be regime change.

Iran appears weak. But as an adage states, an animal is most dangerous when it is wounded. Iran’s response to last month’s protests—by some accounts murdering over 30,000 people in two days—shows how deadly serious Khamenei is about his regime retaining power. The Trumpet has consistently said radical Islam, led by Iran, will grow in power to fulfill its role as the end-time “king of the south” of Daniel 11:40, a power strong enough to provoke world war. Iran’s regime is not finished.

Industrial AI: Germany’s Strategy to Take the Lead

Germany is focusing on industrial artificial intelligence, and German engineers might be able to build it into more than just a regional AI power. In “Industrial AI: Germany’s Best Chance to Take on U.S., China?” Deutsche Welle wrote yesterday:

Germany launched a major artificial intelligence (AI) project this month to cut its reliance on U.S. providers of high-performance computing and data processing—a move seen as helping Europe to control its own AI future.

In AI investments, Germany is behind. But its well-established industry gives it an opportunity to take the lead in industrial AI.

On February 4, Germany’s Deutsche Telekom opened one of Europe’s largest AI factories in Munich with 14 high-density pods, each providing the performance of a 1,000-square-meter data center in just 80 square meters.

• The “Industrial AI Cloud” facility took only six months to plan, build and launch, compared to the usual 12 to 24 months, and increases Germany’s national computing capacity by a jaw-dropping 50 percent.
• The facility’s nearly 10,000 nvidia Blackwell gpus provide enough computing power for all 450 million EU citizens to use a Chatgpt-stye AI assistant simultaneously, Deutsche Telekom says. But “the Industrial AI Cloud isn’t aimed at individual consumers,” Deutsche Welle wrote. “Instead, it targets Germany’s industrial heavyweights, including automakers, machinery manufacturers and robotics companies.”

“We are investing in AI, in Germany as a business location and in Europe …. We are proving here that Europe can do AI,” Deutsche Telekom ceo Tim Höttges said.

This is exactly what former German Economics Minister and Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg said Germany must do. In a television interview with Puls 4-Talk on July 28, 2019, he said:

Artificial intelligence is still something Europe could shape. We have a well-established industry, which still has to become far more connected to the new technologies. But once this happens, it will develop a totally different field of power than a purely technological or digitalization firm.

“Industrial AI allows Germany to play to its strengths: designing smaller, specialized AI models that utilize more than a decade of data from Germany’s small and medium enterprises, known as the Mittelstand,” Antonio Krüger, ceo of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, told DW.

• “German firms often try to make their AI products perfect before rolling them out,” Ishansh Gupta, bmw’s AI and digitalization lead, told DW. “China and the U.S. roll out imperfect versions to help them improve, learning from user feedback.” This could mean that Germany already has the capacity to further expand—rapidly—its AI computing power, even as it watches the Chinese and the Americans and learns from their mistakes and successes.

Germany has a strategy to take the lead in this sector of AI use, and Guttenberg, who has advocated for it, may play a critical role in it as Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry explained in “The Unknown Future of Artificial Intelligence.”

IN OTHER NEWS

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is visiting China, the first time since taking office, to establish what he called a “balanced, reliable, regulated and fair” relationship. Merz, accompanied by 30 German business representatives, will meet General Secretary Xi Jinping and tour Chinese robotics company Unitree during the two-day visit, the latest of several high-level visits over the past two months as Germany seeks to replace the United States as an economic partner.

China restricts exports to Japan: China’s Commerce Ministry announced yesterday that it will block the export of all “dual-use” products with potential military applications to any Japanese organization connected to the defense industry. The 20 blocked entities include Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and the National Defense Academy of Japan. The new restrictions may include a ban on “rare earths,” metals used in a wide range of technologies. “These measures aim to prevent Japan’s ‘remilitarization’ and nuclear ambitions and are fully justifiable, reasonable and lawful,” the ministry’s statement said. This further escalates China and Japan’s diplomatic conflict over the former’s threat to conquer Taiwan, but the Trumpet expects these two Asian giants to put aside their differences and join forces soon in an alliance biblical prophecy calls “the kings of the east.”

Bill Gates admits to adultery, confirming Epstein files: Yesterday, Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates admitted to the staff of the Gates Foundation that he committed adultery with two Russian women and apologized for his years-long association with the late pedophile and convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. According to the Wall Street Journal, files on Epstein released by the U.S. Department of Justice indicate that Gates continued meeting with Epstein after the latter’s 2008 conviction of soliciting and procuring a child for prostitution, and that Epstein threatened to reveal Gates’s adultery unless he continued meeting with him, ostensibly to discuss philanthropic efforts. The Epstein files continue to reveal that many elites in America and Britain are sexually depraved.