It’s Poison, but It’s Necessary

Good morning!

Iran is still filling the headlines, but this morning I want to catch you up on a smaller story—about toxins in food—that teaches a big lesson that is not as unrelated as it might seem.

[BRIEF]

President Trump recently signed an executive order saying domestic production of herbicides that use glyphosate—the active ingredient in products like Roundup—is essential for U.S. agricultural production and national security.

This upset a lot of people, who emphasize that this will increase exposure to a chemical linked to health risks, including cancer.

Robert Kennedy Jr., a longtime critic of herbicides and pesticides, had previously called glyphosate a contributor to chronic diseases. But now, as Health and Human Services secretary, he publicly defended Trump’s order. In a post on X, he acknowledged that pesticides are “toxic by design” but said the U.S. food system heavily depends on them. He warned that an abrupt ban would destabilize American agriculture and food production, and called for a more gradual shift. Later he admitted that he was “not particularly happy” with Trump’s decision but understood why sudden elimination of the toxin was impractical.

Yes, this toxin is killing us, but if we don’t use it, we’ll die.

Quite the paradox! But it’s hardly a unique example. In fact, it’s an apt metaphor for much of the way civilization operates, not excluding foreign wars.

Right now with oil prices skyrocketing, fertilizer is also getting more expensive. Nitrogen-fixing fertilizer is turning our soil into sand, depleting our nutrition, polluting our environment, and constantly deepening our dependency on importing, distributing and applying it at mass scale. It’s unsustainable. But we have to keep doing it, or people will starve.

Such examples are everywhere. Think of the push for AI development. Yes, it has toxic effects like encouraging intellectual laziness, amplifying misinformation, inciting delusional behavior, aiding scammers, pornographers and terrorists. Yes, it may one day decide humanity is an obstacle and just wipe us out. But if we don’t develop it at breakneck speed, we’ll fall behind and our enemies will conquer us.

Think of the way we use legal drugs, ignoring the long list of shockingly severe side effects because constant ingestion of pharmaceuticals is supposedly better than the alternative. Think of efforts to legalize illegal drugs, despite their deadliness, to circumvent the troubles created by their being criminalized.

Think of the political compromises: Empowering the corrupt because they’re less risky than the inexperienced and untried. Allowing secret crimes to remain secret because exposing the truth would damage our power structures. Think of our economic policy: Funding bloated budgets, going ever deeper into deadly debt, because otherwise the government collapses. Think of our weaponry: We must proliferate weapons of mass destruction because if we don’t, our enemies will kill us.

Life in this world is a series of compromises. We are resigned to continually choosing what seems the lesser of two evils. We address problems by resorting to solutions that produce different problems. We put off unplugging from toxic influences because the withdrawal symptoms are too severe. We accommodate evil because the alternative is simply too extreme.

Why this insane paradox? Because this is Satan’s world, and human nature is terminally infected by Satan’s nature (Ephesians 2:2; 2 Corinthians 4:4; Revelation 12:9).

We hate it, but we love it. Like Lot’s wife, even as we flee it, we look back with longing.

No wonder God says, “Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.”

Iran Strikes Again, Oil Spikes Again

The risks of a global energy crisis are increasing. Iran struck two oil tankers in Iraqi waters overnight, reportedly killing at least one crew member and setting both tankers on fire. A third ship in the Strait of Hormuz was hit this morning.

• The United States and other nations have said their navies would escort merchant traffic in and out of the Persian Gulf to maintain stability in the oil trade and keep gasoline prices relatively low. But such an operation is complex, and Iran only needs a few successes in targeting civilian vessels to close the strait.

Oil is climbing toward $100 a barrel again. Several factors highlight and contribute to the scale of the crisis:

• On Tuesday, the International Energy Agency, a bloc representing 32 of the world’s biggest economies, released a record 400 million barrels of oil reserves, including 172 million from the U.S., to increase supply and mitigate rising prices—more than was released after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
• Iran’s oil trade is booming. According to the shipping data firm Kpler, Iran is exporting an average of 2.1 million barrels of oil a day through the Strait of Hormuz, up from an average of 2 million barrels in February.
• Iranian military spokesman Ebrahim Zolfaqari threatened yesterday, “Get ready for oil to be $200 a barrel, because the oil price depends on regional security, which you have destabilized.”

The impact of rising energy prices is especially pronounced in Europe, which relies on imports from Russia and the Middle East. Iran’s disruption of oil, gas and other merchant traffic in the Persian Gulf provokes Europe more than the U.S.

In December 1994, Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry said Bible prophecy indicated Iraq would fall to Iran, years before it happened. As he wrote in his booklet The King of the South:

Such a takeover [of Iraq] by Iran would shock the world—especially Europe. It would be a strong impetus for Europe to unite quickly. Such a move would, in all likelihood, give Iran power to cause a sizable increase in the price of oil. [In reality, it would then control virtually all the flow of oil in the Middle East.] This could help trigger a collapse of the Western world’s weak currencies. This in turn could cause Europe to quickly unite into the most powerful economic bloc in the world. That very event is prophesied to occur in your own Bible!

What Mr. Flurry wrote specifically about Iraq can be applied to the entire Persian Gulf region. The world is watching the moves made by Iran, the U.S. and Israel, but Mr. Flurry has emphasized the effect on German-led Europe, which is the “king of the north” prophesied in Daniel 11:40. This verse and others show that European forces will storm the “king of the south” (radical Islam, led by Iran) “like a whirlwind.” Learn more in The King of the South.

Catholic Conservative Beats Communists in Chile

Yesterday, José Antonio Kast was sworn in as president of Chile after a landslide victory in last year’s elections. Many consider Kast the country’s most ultraconservative leader since the country became a democracy in 1990. He won 58 percent of the vote, resoundingly beating his main opponent, Jeannette Jara, a member of the Communist Party of Chile.

• Many media outlets, journalists and commentators are saying that Kast is “Chile’s Trump” because of his hard-line stance against illegal immigration, his tough-on-crime policies and his antiestablishment messaging.
• Kast is a devout Catholic who opposes abortion, same-sex “marriage” and cultural decline in the name of progressivism. He has openly praised President Donald Trump and has criticized the European Union for being too bureaucratic and progressive.

Background: Kast’s German-born father was a soldier in Adolf Hitler’s army in World War ii. Though Kast insists his father was a conscript and did not actually support national socialism, he was also an official Nazi Party member.

• Diplomatically, Kast has shown a clear inclination for strategic alignment away from Communist China and toward the broader Western world. He currently favors the U.S. over the EU.

Unexpected prophecy: Bible prophecy reveals that a 10-nation, Roman Catholic superpower is about to rise that will espouse Kast’s values even more than the U.S. currently does (Revelation 17:1-13). Europe is about to transform.

This is why the late Herbert W. Armstrong forecast that the alliance between Europe and Latin America would grow extremely strong. Roman Catholicism will soon unite many nations against the U.S., and Chile will likely be one of them.

“The EU also has free-trade agreements with Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and—through the Central America Association Agreement—with Panama, Costa Rica, Honduras and Nicaragua,” Gerald Flurry wrote in the March 2026 Trumpet. “It is also working on updating a deal with America’s top trading partner, Mexico. Soon, virtually all of Latin America will be closely tied to the EU. What is really happening here may also seem far-fetched, but it is true: This is part of a well-calculated German strategy to unite the whole world against America!”

Watch for the nation currently led by “Chile’s Trump” to ultimately work with Europe to besiege and destroy the U.S.

IN OTHER NEWS

Iran hits Israel with cluster munitions: Israeli officials and other experts have verified that Iran is firing cluster munitions on Israel, which burst into numerous smaller warheads before impact. Cluster munitions are banned by more than 100 countries, although neither Iran nor Israel joined the ban. The strikes multiply the indiscriminate destruction on the ground, not only escalating the conflict but also highlighting an ominous trend.

Spain permanently withdraws ambassador to Israel: Spain terminated the position of ambassador to Israel yesterday until further notice, six months after recalling its ambassador as a condemnation of the Israeli government. The Spanish Embassy in Israel will now be led by a charge d’affaires. In 2024, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez explained diplomatic actions against Israel by saying that his country “doesn’t have nuclear bombs, nor aircraft carriers or large oil reserves. We alone can’t stop the Israeli offensive,” implying that Spain would use such measures against Israel. Catholic Spain infamously converted, expelled or killed virtually all Spanish Jews, and Judaism was illegal in the country until 1968. The current boldness of this same nation against Israel reveals the surge in Jew-hatred rising around the world—and the falseness of those who say they don’t hate Jews, only the Israeli government. Leaders like Sánchez hold the government of the Jewish state to a standard no other country in the world is expected to meet. Read “Spain Hates Israel” for more information.

Germany overtook China as the world’s fourth-largest arms exporter, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reported on Monday. It is now responsible for 5.7 percent of global exports, almost 25 percent of which went to Ukraine and 17 percent of which went to other European nations. German weapons manufacturing, which has been central not only to the nation’s defense and economy but also to its foreign policy, is rapidly becoming an even more powerful tool in the impressive rise of the German war machine.

Volkswagen profit drops, prompting layoffs: Germany’s largest automaker reported a 53.5 percent drop in operating profit, the company’s worst result in a decade, and will be forced to lay off 15,000 employees by 2030 due to tariffs implemented by President Donald Trump. Even after current budget cuts, closures of factories and layoffs of 35,000 employees, Volkswagen Group expects revenue to stagnate or grow by a mere 3 percent at most this year. These significant consequences for a major aspect of Germany’s industry, economy and pride are causing growing animosity toward the U.S.