Artemis II and the Overview Effect

Good morning!

The four astronauts of Artemis ii successfully encircled the moon last evening in the first crewed lunar flyby since Apollo 17 in 1972.

[BRIEF]

Their achievements were spectacular. They reached a record 252,756 miles from Earth, more than 4,000 miles farther than anyone before.

• They became the first people to view parts of the moon’s far side with the naked eye. From about 4,000 miles over the moon’s surface, they observed impact flashes from micrometeorites striking the moon.
• They documented color variations on the surface, relatively fresh craters and other features never seen up close by humans. They witnessed a dramatic Earthset and Earthrise and watched a solar eclipse.

NASA

The big-picture view of Earth’s place in limitless space is known to expand a person’s perspective in inspiring ways. Pilot Victor Glover has been waxing eloquent in his communications to his home planet.

• He described our home as a “spaceship called Earth that was created to give us a place to live in the universe and the cosmos.” He spoke of “the beauty of creation” and “all of the amazing things that were done for us who were created,” tying it to reading the Bible.
• As the spacecraft approached its furthest distance away, Glover said, “As we continue to unlock the mysteries of the cosmos, I would like to remind you of one of the most important mysteries there on Earth, and that’s love. Christ said, in response to what was the greatest command, that it was to love God with all you are. And He also, being a great teacher, said the second is equal to it. And that is to love your neighbor as yourself.”

Such profound language isn’t uncommon among astronauts experiencing what has been called the Overview Effect.

• A man who produced the first national conference on the Overview Effect called Earth a “beautiful oasis out in the middle of nothingness,” an “oasis against the backdrop of infinity.” One Apollo astronaut said that, looking at this, you experience “an explosion of awareness” and an “overwhelming sense of oneness and connectedness … accompanied by an ecstasy … an epiphany.”
• As I mentioned before, the first humans to see the full disk of the Earth on Apollo 8 actually read Genesis 1 to humanity.

The Overview Institute says when you see Earth from space, it “is immediately understood to be a tiny, fragile ball of life, hanging in the void, shielded and nourished by a paper-thin atmosphere.”

God sees that view all the time. He “sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers” (Isaiah 40:22). Consider His perspective on the conflicts that divide us and the need to create one global society with a united will, a world of real peace!

• The closer we are to things on Earth, the more caught up in life’s niggling trivialities we will be. But the more we elevate our thinking, and the more we set our affections on things above (Colossians 3:2), the more we will experience that Overview Effect: needed perspective and a sense of awe, wonder and transcendence.
• We will be able to see beyond present suffering and how those sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us (Romans 8:18).

Overview Effect author Frank White says that from space, you don’t see the sun in a blue sky. You see it as a star in a black sky. “So you are seeing it from a cosmic perspective.”

• A cosmic perspective is difficult to achieve with our eyes only five feet above the ground—but it is just what we need.

You exist in a creation that proves the Creator and His love. You were created to have a relationship with that Creator. You are here to learn to see what He sees.

God wants us looking up at the heavens. Why? Isaiah 40:26 says, “Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things …”! See the Creator, and behold His cosmic ambitions.

Trump Threatens Bombing Back to ‘Stone Age’: Iran Defiant

United States President Donald Trump has threatened that if Iran refuses to make a ceasefire deal by midnight tonight, he will commence bombing the country back to the “Stone Age.”

• “The entire country can be taken out in one night,” he said in a White House press conference yesterday afternoon,” and that night might be tomorrow night.” He spoke of a plan to “decimate” every bridge and power plant in the country in four hours, completing the job by midnight tonight.
• Today, he made an even more explicit threat: “A whole civilization will die tonight.”

Iran’s plan: The state-run Islamic Republic News Agency said Iran sent a 10-point peace plan to mediator Pakistan on Monday that includes the U.S. funding Iran’s reconstruction, the removal of international sanctions, and Israel ending its campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

• Iran probably sent the demanding plan expecting it to be rejected—and perhaps expecting Trump not to follow through on his threats.
• Iran has also rejected a ceasefire deal led by Pakistan that offers sanctions relief and other incentives in exchange for Iran ceasing its targeting of ships in the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran’s Trump card: President Trump has indicated he wants to “declare victory” and end the Iran war as quickly as possible. While Iran continues to terrorize civilian shipping in the Strait of Hormuz to strangle the global oil trade, Trump cannot declare victory.

• Control of the strait is by far the most powerful piece of leverage Iran has, and it refuses to relinquish it even as U.S. and Israeli strikes continue and Trump threatens to basically turn the nation off.

Part of Iran’s strategy is to keep President Trump engaged in fighting, soaking up U.S. political, military and financial capital; increasing opportunities for symbolic victories by killing or capturing American troops; and ruining the president’s desired image as a peacemaker who ends “forever wars” in the Middle East.

Bible prophecy shows that Iran will remain in control of radical Islam in the Middle East and actually increase in power to the point of provoking World War iii. The current war is not that war, and that enormous conflict won’t be fought between the United States and Iran. America will actually lose this war, just as it has lost previous wars.

Germany’s Military ‘Mindset Change’

German industry is retooling for war. For over a year now, stories have appeared in the press about struggling German manufacturers turning to weapons production. The Telegraph has another this morning, which makes an important point: This switch is an indicator of a massive, widespread change in German society’s approach to war.

When Germany’s oldest engine maker, Deutz, began thinking about making weapons in 2020, ceo Sebastian Schulte assumed his workers would be against it. “Haunted by the country’s Nazi past, many Germans are squeamish about militarization,” noted the Telegraph.

Instead, “[t]heir response surprised him,” it reported. “His engineers embraced the new technical challenge, and the wider staff welcomed both the potential job opportunities and the chance to help protect Germany from new threats.”

Why? In years before, Germans felt safe under America and nato’s protective umbrella. Now, they no longer trust it.

“If there’s a new threat, then sometimes mindsets change,” said Schulte, “that’s what is happening now.”

“Ten years ago, big industrial companies tried to get rid of everything which was somehow defense-related,” the Telegraph quotes Matthias Wachter from the business lobby group bdi saying. “Defense was like porn and cigarettes—nobody wanted to get involved. It looked really bad on your corporate social responsibility reports.”

“Now, really the opposite is the case. It’s about, ‘How can we help? How can we benefit? How can we bring new technologies and innovation into the armed forces?’”

Coming from highly skilled German engineers, that is a fearsome sentiment.

• “Germany has handed a huge pot of gold to its military, and the country’s vast but beleaguered industrial machine is pivoting towards it,” wrote the Telegraph.

Had this happened 10 years ago, American businesses would have scooped up most of the contracts. But Germany no longer relies on American businesses.

• A recent Politico report found that 160 out of a total of 178 German defense projects have gone to German contractors.

To keep that going, they’re encouraging German manufacturers to step up.

• Defense Minister Boris Pistorius and Economy Minister Katherina Reiche recently brought together 100 ceos from defense and civilian industries to try to spur deeper cooperation.

“We are seeing a remarkable shift: Germany’s industrial powerhouse is becoming a military powerhouse,” Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote last year. The rapid and now open change in mindset is an important part of this.

Herbert W. Armstrong forecast in 1945 that Germany, instigator and loser of two world wars, would start another. For years we have said that its leading industrialists would play a vital role in restoring Germany’s war-making power. They’ve now led the mindset of the German people to turn around too. For more, see Mr. Flurry’s article “Germany Is Arming for World War III.”

IN OTHER NEWS

China opens dialogue with Taiwanese opposition: Cheng Li-wun, chairperson of Taiwan’s Kuomintang opposition party, arrived in China today for a rare six-day visit at the invitation of Chinese General Secretary Xi Jinping. The trip comes amid intensifying Chinese military drills around Taiwan, which the Chinese Communist Party claims sovereignty over and has threatened to conquer by force. The visit also comes as the United States appears to be wavering in its support of democratic Taiwan by pausing or canceling a vital weapons contract. Although Kuomintang legislators have not ruled Taiwan for a decade, they remain a strong political force in the country and adamantly oppose military conflict with China, instead favoring engagement. “If you truly love Taiwan, you will seize every opportunity and every possibility to prevent Taiwan from being ravaged by war,” Cheng told reporters before her visit. “Preserving peace is preserving Taiwan.” Many Taiwanese voters support the Kuomintang’s stance, largely due to rising doubt that the U.S. will keep its promise to protect Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion. The Trumpet has said for more than 25 years that America’s broken will is going to be the main factor enabling the Chinese Communist Party, whether through Taiwanese capitulation or war, to conquer Taiwan.

Who is waging hybrid warfare in Eastern Europe? On Sunday, Serbian President Aleksander Vučić announced that two backpacks containing explosives were found close to the Hungarian border near the Balkan Stream gas pipeline, which supplies Hungary and Serbia with crucial Russian gas. Hungary’s prime minister implied that Ukraine was the culprit, but Ukraine denied it and called it a Russian attempt to interfere with Hungary’s election on Sunday. If this is true, it will further stir Europe’s fear of Russia, which has allegedly conducted other recent sabotage attempts in Eastern Europe.

Is Iran’s new supreme leader in a coma? Citing a diplomatic memo, the Times of London claimed Iran’s new supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, is in a hospital, incapacitated and possibly unconscious. The memo claims Khamenei “is being treated in Qom in a severe condition, unable to be involved in any decision-making by the regime.” Qom, a holy city in Shia Islam, is 87 miles south of Tehran. Khamenei may have been injured in the strike that killed his father and predecessor as supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Power in the country has largely devolved to the radical Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. One way or another, the Bible prophesies in Daniel 11:40 that Iran will get a leader powerful enough to be called a “king.”

Trump Board of Peace getting impatient with Hamas: President Trump’s Board of Peace, which was established in mid-January with the prime objective to bring peace to the Middle East, is getting impatient as Hamas terrorists refuse to lay down their weapons. The New York Times cited four diplomats who said the board is demanding that Hamas finalize an agreement that concerns the demilitarization of Gaza by the end of this week. The lagging negotiations prove once more that Hamas isn’t interested in an autonomous Gaza if it can’t be used to launch attacks on Israel. The board demands that Hamas not only lay down all its weapons but also provide maps of its underground tunnel network that have been used to hide terrorists and hostages. The agreement in turn offers the withdrawal of Israeli troops, lifting of Israeli restrictions on imports of goods into Gaza, and amnesty for terrorists. Hamas terrorists have proved their willingness to sacrifice their own lives and the lives of human shields, hostages, Israeli troops and Israeli civilians to further their cause of terrorizing Israel, so pressure from the Board of Peace is unlikely to prove decisive. It fails to comprehend the evil it is up against.