Good morning!

“Thy kingdom come.” Jesus Christ instructed us to ask God for this every day in our prayers (Matthew 6:10). Recent events make this prayer more urgent. This world desperately needs God’s Kingdom.

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• Prophetically significant events are converging. Here we’ll touch on just three: a debt crisis rattling global markets, Europe consolidating power in one office, and Iran threatening to strike the Continent.

1) A debt crisis is shaking the financial world. U.S. government debt crossed $40 trillion in August. Yields on 30-year Treasury bonds hit a near-two decade peak, showing that investors are losing confidence in America’s economy.

• Herbert W. Armstrong forecast that a financial crisis in America would help drive Europe to unite. Economic and political instability in America are definitely motivating Europe to unify, even to militarize—one of the most important events signaling Christ’s Second Coming.
• It is “in the days of these kings,” 10 European strongmen led by one overall “king of fierce countenance,” that “the God of heaven [shall] set up a kingdom” that will never be destroyed (Daniel 8:23; 2:44).

2) Europe is consolidating power into fewer hands. Germany and France have proposed migrating power from the EU foreign-policy chief’s office into the European Commission presidency. This would concentrate decision-making that has long been split across competing offices.

• Prophecy is clear that Europe will be governed by a single strongman. In 2012, when a German-Franco plot was uncovered to create such an office, Gerald Flurry wrote about it. In 2016, he warned: “The EU has yet to realize this plan. But keep watching Europe—you can expect it to happen soon!”
• This is now happening: The office of a super-president is being created—a modern version of the Holy Roman emperor.

At the same time, 11 EU states, also led by Germany and France, are pushing to strip away the unanimous-vote requirement that allows any single member state to veto the bloc’s foreign policy. See our story below.

• Revelation 17 describes 10 kings who “have one mind, and shall give their power and strength unto the beast” (verses 12-13)—a single authority to whom individual nations surrender their independent voice. This story points directly to that prophecy.

3) Iran is openly threatening to strike Europe. An Iranian insider told the Financial Times that Tehran’s July attack on a U.S. base in Jordan, which killed three American servicemen, was also “a message to Europe: It can receive missiles.”

• Analysts told Al Jazeera that southeastern Europe, with its nato bases and Black Sea access, is “the soft underbelly of Europe.”
• In March, Iran fired two ballistic missiles at the U.S.-UK base on Diego Garcia, roughly 2,500 miles away—proof that their range reaches deep into Europe (though both missiles failed to hit their target).
• Daniel 11:40 prophesies of a “push” from the king of the south, Iran-led radical Islam, against the king of the north, German-led Europe. The events that follow will culminate in “a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation” (Daniel 12:1). As Mr. Flurry wrote in “World War III Will Start With Iran,” the current conflict “is setting the table for the events that are prophesied to ignite a nuclear world war.”

The convergence of such events is exactly what Christ said would mark the approach of His return.

We must watch world events and pray (Luke 21:36) to understand how important it truly is to pray Thy Kingdom come.

• God wants us to nurture a yearning to help God relieve the suffering in this world. He wants us to support His work as it warns this world about what it is doing to itself—and to give people hope of how God is about to stop this madness. The return of Jesus Christ means ending this world’s misery.

How fervently do you pray “Thy Kingdom come” each day?

Iran War Update

• The status of Iran’s nuclear material and centrifuges is still unclear, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported to member states on Tuesday. Iran hasn’t allowed iaea inspections on its nuclear sites since the United States’s Operation Midnight Hammer in June of last year.
• The United States “D-Day” financial sanctions announced on August 24 have yet to meaningfully disrupt Iran’s shadow banking system, Iran International reported yesterday. The London-based news network found that only 2 of the 15 international banks it highlighted in its report that Iran uses to circumvent U.S. sanctions are targeted by the U.S. Treasury Department.

11 EU Nations Demand Less-Democratic Union

France, Germany, the Netherlands and eight other European Union members sent a joint letter to EU High Representative Kaja Kallas ahead of yesterday’s meeting of EU foreign ministers, pushing for the EU to do away with unanimity requirements in foreign-policy decisions.

• The Trumpet has warned for over three decades that such consolidation of power will indeed occur, producing the autocratic, 10-nation, German-led European Catholic empire prophesied in the Bible.

The letter proposes five guiding steps to speed up EU foreign-policy decisions:

1. “Sincere cooperation” between member nations
2. The use of abstentions by nations rather than vetoes
3. Separating foreign-policy issues from “unrelated matters”
4. Replacing unanimity on major decisions with a qualified majority (15 member states with 65 percent or more of the EU’s population)
5. Have nations that veto decisions clearly explain their reasoning

The letter warns that if the EU doesn’t act now, “We will have legitimacy but no strength.”

In other words, these leading nations want Europe to become a strong superpower at the expense of national sovereignty and representative government.

• The letter cites “attempts to undermine the rules-based international order” (a slight against the United States), “strategic competition” and a “fundamentally changed landscape” as impetus to streamline EU-wide foreign policy.

Eleven nations signed the letter. However, Germany is the main force behind the push. It has the largest population and the strongest will in the union, and it stands to gain the most power.

Revelation 17:12-13, as well as Daniel 2, warn that a 10-nation European superpower will rise in the end time.

• Watch for the 27 current member nations of the EU to condense decision-making power into a smaller, more decisive, powerful number of nations—and individuals—that exert control over the rest of Europe.

The main targets of this emerging European superpower will be the United States and Britain. To learn where Bible prophecy reveals this, read The Holy Roman Empire in Prophecy.

Vance Discusses ‘End Times’ and ‘God’s Work’

“I wouldn’t be shocked if we are living in the end times; what I’m trying to focus on is doing as much of God’s work as possible right now, and if that leads to the end times, OK,” Vice President JD Vance told religious podcaster Bryce Crawford on Monday.

Spiritual confusion: “The end times may be coming. In fact, they are coming,” Vance, who recently published a memoir on his conversion to Catholicism, said. “It’s just a question of whether they’re coming thousands of years down the road or a few months down the road.”

Vance didn’t talk about the specific key signs that Jesus Christ and others in the New Testament and Old Testament prophesied. He added:

And one of the things that I think that that Catholics are very focused on that I think is very good for me is this idea that we don’t know when God is coming, but we are commanded to try to, as much as possible, try to make the world the kind of world that God wants it to be.

Dark energy AI: Vance talked about the use of artificial intelligence as a substitute for human interaction and sees this as a sign that the antichrist could be “walking among us.” He also said, regarding the practices of some AI companies, that “you feel like there is some really weird spiritual dark energy.”

• He recounted the story of one acquaintance using AI as a marriage counselor as “kind of satanic.”

Spiritual darkness: Vance said that in meetings with world leaders, he felt “some darkness about it” that sets off his “spiritual alarm bell.”

• He later added that if President Trump had been killed, “We would have had real civil strife in a way that I don’t know that the country could have ever come back from.”

Spiritual discernment: The evangelical podcaster said that he believed that Vance has “some sort of spiritual discernment.” Sadly, that’s not true at all.

A deceived world: For true biblical clarity, we need to understand that evil in this world is not confined to a few individuals, an antichrist or AI—but that our entire world is deceived (Revelation 12:9).

Reviving the Dark Ages: The Catholic Church is in no position to provide sane spiritual direction in these matters. It was because of the evils of the Catholic Church that America’s founding included religious freedom.

The fact that a vice president now advocates for the Catholic Church’s role in making this world a better place shows that America has lost its foundation. If leaders allow the Catholic Church to guide their politics, they allow the revival of the Dark Ages.

IN OTHER NEWS

New jet-powered Russian drones increase pressure on Ukraine air defenses: Russia is pummeling Ukraine with a new generation of jet-propelled drones, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday. The new models are variants of Iranian Shahed drones but can travel almost twice as far and fly at much greater speeds than the original piston-powered models. Russia launches dozens at a time from different positions around Ukraine in an effort to overwhelm the nation’s air defenses. “Jet-propelled drones now account for more than half of the unmanned aerial vehicles Russia is launching to ‘wear down’ Ukraine,” Zelenskyy said. The development demonstrates that even after 4½ years of full-scale war, Russia has not exhausted its ability to adapt and escalate.