Good morning!

“Thy mercy, O Lord, is in the heavens,” David wrote in Psalm 36:5. Contemplating the cosmos helps us grasp not only God’s boundless power and ambitions, but also His infinite mercy.

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Ponder that when you study the new image from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory—the first science-ready public demonstration of its giant 3.2-gigapixel camera, the largest digital camera ever made. The stunningly clear picture shows more than half a million galaxies in one view. But this isn’t another beautiful deep-field portrait.

• It focuses on a well-known patch of the southern sky called the cosmos field, located in the constellation Sextans. It was built by carefully combining hundreds of exposures taken between April 2025 and January 2026.
• The cosmos field sits well away from the crowded band of the Milky Way, so only a few nearby stars and thin wisps of dust appear in the foreground. That leaves an unusually clean window into the distant universe.
• Astronomers have studied this region for more than 20 years with the Hubble Space Telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope and other major observatories. Previous images were essentially still photographs—detailed but frozen in time.

What really makes the new Rubin image different is that it’s just the first frame of a 10-year project that will watch the southern sky change night after night, creating a continuous cinematic record of the universe.

• Over the next decade, Rubin will return to the same regions of sky roughly 800 times. Each return visit will let astronomers see what has changed—exploding stars, flickering variables, asteroids moving through the solar system and other brief events.
• Later this year the observatory will release the individual frames and the “change-only” images that highlight moving or brightening objects.
• In effect, the atlas of cosmos will become a long-running movie.

The full survey, already underway, will map roughly 20 billion galaxies and 17 billion stars. The repeated visits over the coming years will deliver a flood of changing objects for scientists to study in detail. It will find millions of new asteroids and other solar-system objects. It will catch vast numbers of supernovae and other sudden brightenings.

• It will also give scientists clearer insights on the invisible forces—dark matter and dark energy—that shape the universe on the largest scales.

Images like this enable us to look both outward in space and backward in time: The light from the faintest galaxies has been traveling for billions of years to reach us.

But the Bible shows that looking out there is also peering into the future. God created all that real estate for a purpose—and human beings are at the heart of it.

• He lovingly made us in His image and likeness, He mercifully cleanses us of our sins when we repent, and He holds plans to glorify us and send us to the stars, planting the heavens with new life (Isaiah 51:16).

God has a name for every star out there (Psalm 147:4; Isaiah 40:26). An untold number of those are the suns of new worlds. Read about how these planets will ultimately become playgrounds for children and families—homes to daughters and sons—in Your Awesome Universe Potential.

The universe is a gift, our unmerited inheritance. Your mercy, O Lord, is in the heavens. God’s love is limitless, infinite as the cosmos.

Receding Rhine—a Warning

As heat waves roll across Europe, the Rhine, Germany’s largest river, has fallen to its lowest level in its 145-year recorded history. This should serve as a warning to Germany that if it continues on its warpath, it will experience worse curses in the future.

The Rhine is the lifeblood of German industry.

• 300 million tons a year transit it to Germany’s most important industrial cities, such as Dusseldorf, Dortmund and Cologne.
• 80 percent of Germany’s domestic water traffic traverses it, ing economist Rico Luman noted.

In some areas, the river is just four feet deep now. Transport ships are forced to carry lighter loads, necessitating more trips, more fuel consumption, more unused capacity and reduced productivity at a time when the German economy sorely needs it.

• Historically, the Rhine reaches its lowest levels in September and October, so experts say that in the coming months, river traffic in some places may halt altogether.

In May, the German economy’s growth prospects were already slashed in half to 0.5 percent for this year due primarily to the shocks of the Iran war.

The Rhine is not the only European river drying up. The Continent’s second-largest river, the Danube, has dried so much that World War ii-era shipwrecks are resurfacing. Italy’s Po and France’s Loire are also receding to levels that reduce waterway traffic.

Gerald Flurry, the Trumpet’s editor in chief, wrote in Nahum—An End-Time Prophecy for Germany, “God wants this world to learn that He controls nature. Many natural disasters are anything but natural.”

• Natural disasters such as this are a curse. The Creator of rainfall, watersheds, tributaries and rivers uses them to communicate a warning to a nation.

In Nahum 1:4, God makes it clear that he dries up the rivers and controls the weather. The book of Nahum contains prophecies specifically for modern Germany.

Germany’s march toward militarism, along with the rest of Europe, is prophesied to lead to World War iii and the worst suffering ever on Earth. If Germany doesn’t repent, it will be punished with far worse curses than low water levels. In fact, it will be punished with a flood of armies (Nahum 2).

As Mr. Flurry warns in Nahum—An End-Time Prophecy for Germany, “God will shake the pillars of the Earth in Germany.”

Priest Demands ‘Reconquista’ of Morocco

A Roman Catholic priest in Pamplona, Spain, went viral after calling for a “reconquista” of Morocco. The comments came after tens of thousands of illegal immigrants rushed the Spanish enclave of Ceuta on the North African coast.

• Spanish news reports said Javier Aizpún asked Our Lady of Africa, the patron saint of Ceuta, to help launch a reconquest of Morocco and convert it back to Catholicism.
• He also said all “Arab colonizers” should be forced out of the part of Morocco once called Mauretania Tingitana so that Spain could reclaim what he described as original Roman Hispania.

Archbishop Luis Argüello, president of the Spanish Episcopal Conference, has also sharply criticized the recent influx. He called the events in Ceuta an “invasion” and said, “demography is a weapon.”

• Catholic opposition to Muslim immigration exists mainly among lay Catholics. Spain’s main nationalist party, Vox, campaigns heavily against “Islamization” and calls for deportations, and about 75 percent of its voters identify as Catholic.

Catholicism was well established in northern Morocco by the fifth century. Islamic forces under Uqba ibn Nafi reached the region around A.D. 681. In 711, they crossed the Strait of Gibraltar under Tariq ibn Ziyad and conquered much of Spain. Charles Martel halted their advance into France at the Battle of Tours in 732.

• In Spain, Catholic kingdoms slowly reconquered the peninsula, finishing the process in 1492 when Ferdinand and Isabella captured Granada.

This is the history Aizpún is referring to when he says, “Let us finish what Queen Isabella the Catholic left undone.” Morocco has remained predominantly Islamic since the seventh century, with Islam enshrined as Morocco’s state religion in its constitution. Aizpún wants Catholics to push into Morocco and right what he sees as a wrong from 1,345 years ago.

Bible prophecy states that a future European power will gain control over parts of North Africa.

• Daniel 11 describes a coming clash between a European “king of the north” and an Islamic “king of the south.”
• Verse 43 says the king of the north “shall have power over the treasures of gold and of silver, and over all the precious things of Egypt: and the Libyans and the Ethiopians shall be at his steps.” The Hebrew word for “Libyans” refers to Berber-speaking peoples who today live across Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia.

Immigrants from the Maghreb are destabilizing Europe, and voices such as Aizpún’s are calling for a decisive European response—a decisive Catholic European response.

For a deeper understanding of this prophesied clash, request your free copy of The King of the South by Gerald Flurry.

Israel Receives Largest German Submarine Since WWII

Germany’s ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems delivered the ins Drakon, the largest submarine built in Germany since World War ii, to Israel’s navy according to Israeli media this week, highlighting Israel’s increasing dependence on Germany for security.

• The roughly $635 million Drakon, Israel’s most expensive such vessel, is the sixth submarine received from Germany.
• Three additional submarines of the more advanced Dakar class are expected to arrive beginning 2031 as part of a separate $3.4 billion deal signed in 2022.
• Israeli news outlet Globes reported on Wednesday that the German government is “expected to finance about 20 percent” of the 2022 deal.

This naval reliance is a dangerous miscalculation on Israel’s part. Both Bible prophecy and history reveal that Germany is not a true friend of Israel.

For submarines, Israel is completely dependent on Germany in general and tkms in particular, and the dependence is expected to continue in the coming decade.
—Globes (August 5, 2026)

The Drakon is the most advanced submarine of any Middle Eastern military. Germany’s ability to build such a weapons platform demonstrates the existing capabilities of its military industrial complex, which is expanding and developing rapidly.

Zoom out: Germany currently accounts for a third of Israeli weapons imports, making it the second largest supplier after America.

This submarine partnership and statistics like those make Germany seem like one of Israel’s only supporters. However, the Bible reveals that Germany is not Israel’s friend. These are gestures to lull Israel into trusting Germany as that nation builds the capabilities to betray it.

IN OTHER NEWS

Chinese-made router found to include hidden backdoor: A computer network router made in China and sold widely around the world contains a concealed entry point that could let operators infiltrate and sabotage connected devices, cybersecurity firm VulnCheck announced on Wednesday. The vulnerability affects as many as 20 ZBTLink-branded router models, and VulnCheck estimates that at least 100,000 of the affected devices are in use worldwide. Discoveries such as this have become increasingly common as China’s manufacturing and technology influence reaches around the world and as its ambitions to dominate intensify. But the frequency of such incidents should not cause us to grow complacent about them. Cyberattacks and hidden vulnerabilities can enable an adversary to suddenly disrupt communications, cripple infrastructure and inflict enormous damage without firing a shot or even revealing its identity. And biblical prophecy reveals that this will play a role in some devastating events to come. To understand, read “China Hacks America—and ‘None Goes to Battle.’”