WorldWatch
Europe
Germany continues to rapidly upgrade its military: The German military now fields its largest force since the aftermath of the abolition of conscription in 2011. Its Defense Ministry reported 186,700 troops as of July 31, plus 81,000 civilian employees. German authorities had expected recruitment to be the hard part, yet they have no shortage of volunteers. Deutsche Welle called it “a comparatively rare success story” in a country beset by bad economic and political news.
Britain and America are helping Germany to expand its military. Germany’s first F-35A Lightning ii flew near its Texas manufacturing site on September 8. The F-35, a stealth multirole platform capable of carrying nuclear bombs, is America’s most advanced mainline fighter. It’s also essentially a computer with wings, and German access will yield insight into its capabilities and vulnerabilities.
Germany may bankroll Britain’s Trident program, the Telegraph reported August 26, stating that a “well-placed source” said Berlin wants “to better integrate itself into the existing British and French nuclear deterrents.” Bible prophecy warns that Germany will repay Britain’s and America’s trust with betrayal.
Germany’s intelligence agencies will free themselves of postwar restrictions under a set of laws that has been approved by the German cabinet and is currently before the legislature. These laws will enable the agencies to conduct sabotage and hacking attacks abroad and substantially increase surveillance of German citizens. The Allies imposed these restrictions because intelligence agents had silenced dissent under Adolf Hitler. Germany has never fully broken with that past: Its postwar spy network was built by Reinhard Gehlen, a Nazi general.
Russia continues to give the German and European public motivation to build weapons factories, increase troop numbers, pursue nuclear capabilities, and enhance its spying. Overnight on August 4–5, a drone carrying an explosive device was found at Leipzig/Halle Airport. Investigators believe its target was a Ukrainian Antonov cargo aircraft. On August 14, nato fighters shot down a Russia-controlled drone over Latvia. On August 20, an F-16 from Romania destroyed an explosives-laden naval drone, also thought to be Russian, near a gas field in the Black Sea. On September 1, coal plants near Brandenburg and Cologne were sabotaged.
Each incident strikes fear in Europeans and pushes them toward unification and rearmament. Poland is a case in point. Since June, German soldiers have been back on Polish soil, this time to help build barricades against Russia. This follows Warsaw’s decision to allow German fighter jets to operate from Polish territory in August 2025 and March 2026, marking a dramatic reversal. In 2014, Jarosław Kaczyński said it would take “at least seven generations” before Poland would accept the presence of German troops. As recently as March, President Karol Nawrocki kept Poland from accessing roughly $55 billion in EU defense loans because German arms companies stood to benefit. But the security situation in Europe is changing dramatically.
Middle East
In August, the United Nations released the results of a comprehensive report about famine conditions in Gaza. It had said in August 2025 that more than half a million Palestinians faced catastrophic starvation and death, but its new report discredits the entire famine narrative.
The new findings estimate that the rate of acute malnutrition in children under age 5 is 0.2 to 0.8 percent, about the same rate as in Germany. Chronic malnutrition (leading to stunted growth) affects about 1 in 8 children, far below the Middle East average according to the World Health Organization’s latest data. A researcher who has tracked malnutrition in famine zones in Africa said she had never before seen obesity emerging in a population that had been declared famine-stricken just a year earlier.
The New York Times, cnn, bbc and other major media outlets have almost entirely ignored the subject of food availability in Gaza this year—a marked contrast from their intense interest in it at this time last year. Their silence demonstrates that media executives determine newsworthiness according to their own biases and agenda, and that this bias prioritizes slandering Israel above reporting the facts.
Israel and Greece signed a $3.5 billion deal on August 31 to build “Achilles Shield,” an air defense system based on advanced Israeli systems including David’s Sling and Spyder. Under the agreement, Israeli defense company Rafael will build a command-and-control system for Greece. This is the largest defense deal between the two countries and Israel’s second-largest after the over $6.5 billion Arrow 3 deal with Germany early this year.
Bible prophecies in Ezekiel 23 and elsewhere characterize the Jewish state’s reliance on other nations rather than God as adultery. Ezekiel 23 specifically names the “Assyrians” and “Babylonians”—references to the modern peoples of Germany and Italy—as its main “lovers.” God prophesies that these “lovers” will eventually double-cross Israel. Read Chapter 10 of Ezekiel—The End-Time Prophet.
Yemen’s Houthi terrorist group conquered more territory on September 10, taking the cities of Mokha and Dhubab on the Red Sea coast and the island of Perim in the Bab el-Mandeb strait. This gives the Houthis control of almost the entire Red Sea coastline in Yemen. The Houthis, a proxy of Iran, used positions on the Red Sea to attack merchant shipping from 2023 to 2025 to reduce international support for Israel. This year, it has launched a similar campaign to attack shipping heading to another Red Sea nation: Saudi Arabia.
The same day, a drone most likely launched by another Iranian proxy in Iraq struck Saudi Arabia’s only pipeline that moves oil from its fields near the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea port of Yanbu. Saudi Arabia, as described in The King of the South, belongs to a developing faction prophesied in Psalm 83. Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote in January 2021 that this alliance is “motivated basically by fear of Iran!” Iran is making concerted efforts to stop nations from supporting Israel and the United States and to harm Saudi Arabia’s crucial oil export capabilities. Expect actions like these to produce the very alliance that Psalm 83 prophesied of 3,000 years ago.
Asia
Military intelligence agents from Russia are recruiting local gang members across Europe to attack weapons factories that contribute to Ukraine’s defenses, the Telegraph reported on August 23. Using messaging apps like Telegram, Russian intelligence officers have recruited members of right-wing extremist groups in various European nations, many of which espouse pro-Russia, pro-Putin views. The latest attack that authorities have attributed to these recruits took place in Estonia on August 15, when arsonists set ablaze a facility operated by Milrem Robotics, a major supplier of unmanned ground vehicles to Ukraine. Earlier attacks targeted facilities in Italy, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Lithuania, all of which produce weaponry or militarily useful items for Ukraine.
As Europeans’ fear of Russian aggression intensifies, they are rapidly building up their own firepower. Germany has dramatically increased its military spending. Poland is building one of Europe’s largest armies. Finland and Sweden abandoned decades of military neutrality to join nato. With these acts of sabotage, Russia is giving the nations of Europe yet another motivation to prepare their militaries and their societies for war. Biblical prophecy reveals that the military power the Europeans are assembling will one day be unleashed on the world with breathtaking, devastating force.
Hackers linked to China’s government targeted dozens of major United States organizations, including the Federal Reserve, the Department of Justice, the Department of Energy, nasa and the Senate, as well as power companies, defense contractors and election agencies, the fbi said in an affidavit unsealed on August 26. The sophisticated hacking outfit used a platform called QScan to scour the Internet for vulnerable devices. The platform was equipped with more than 200 methods for exploiting weaknesses in software, and it successfully infected thousands of routers, cameras and other Internet-connected equipment, accessing untold quantities of sensitive information. Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry has often sounded the alarm about the dangers of the U.S.—particularly its military—relying on computer systems susceptible to enemy sabotage, writing in the June 1999 issue that the nation “could lose the next war before we even begin.”
Russia has been secretly assisting Iran’s development of hypersonic missiles that could threaten United States warships in the Middle East, the Telegraph reported on September 2. The collaborative missile project started in 2023 and has persisted through the current U.S.-Iran war, with the goal of arming Iran with a new generation of difficult-to-intercept missiles that could strike American warships. “This is the transfer of a highly strategically sensitive military technology from Russia that the Iranians have wanted to acquire for decades,” weapons analyst Fabian Hinz said, adding that such a program “would require political clearance from the very top in Russia.”
U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened “tremendous” consequences for nations that maintain trade ties with Iran. But Russia is going much further, helping Iran build cutting-edge weapons to target top U.S. assets and kill American servicemen. Will this revelation make it harder for Trump to give Vladimir Putin, whom he continues to treat with deference, a pass? Whatever the U.S. response, this is further evidence of the danger posed by the prophesied “prince of Russia.”
Anglo-America
The United States government has finally conceded that its fraud problem is enormous—and that insiders, not only outside criminals, are the culprits. After the Justice Department charged 455 people across 45 states in health-care schemes worth $6.5 billion, officials concluded that no single agency could contain the theft. On August 24, Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald announced a National Fraud Detection Center.
Cronyism, deceit and theft have infected Medicare, Medicaid and many other programs. They are symptoms of a spiritual disease at the heart of the nation. Isaiah 1:5 describes the condition: “the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint.” One new government office, laudable as its efforts are, will not heal a disease this far gone.
That same sickness now shows itself in relations with Canada. The U.S. imposed 50 percent tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian goods on August 22 after trade talks collapsed on August 21. Canada answered with matching “dollar for dollar” tariffs that took effect on September 8. Regardless of who is to blame, America and Canada are no longer allies. This fulfills the prophecy in Isaiah 9:21: “Manasseh devours Ephraim, and Ephraim devours Manasseh; together they are against Judah” (English Standard Version).
America’s turn against Judah is visible in rising Republican antagonism toward Israel, especially among younger conservatives. An April Pew Research survey found that 41 percent of Republican respondents now view Israel unfavorably. Commentator Tucker Carlson has tried to ride that wave by courting anti-Israel leftists like Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian. On August 10 he interviewed Hunter Biden, apologized for criticizing Hunter’s drug use, then claimed Israel pushed reports that child-sexual-abuse material was found on the laptop. He stayed silent as Hunter denied dropping the computer at a repair shop and alleged a “Netanyahu operation center” spread his files to sway U.S. political opinion.
As U.S. relations with Canada and Israel worsen, relations with Venezuela improve. On August 28, President Trump announced a major oil deal that more than doubles U.S. reserves. On Truth Social he said U.S. officials and companies gained majority control of over 65 billion barrels of proven Venezuelan reserves in 17 fields. The deal follows the U.S. military’s January capture of Nicolás Maduro.
President Trump has pursued closer ties with socialist Venezuela’s interim government and used oil leverage to pressure Communist Cuba by cutting shipments. These steps weaken Chinese and Russian influence while empowering America. Yet Maduro’s fall has also boosted Vatican influence in Cuba and Venezuela, since the Catholic Church is the only organized opposition in both nations.
In Revelation 17 and 18, God labels the German-led, Vatican-influenced empire emerging in Europe as “Babylon the great.” This power bloc is prophesied to besiege America, the British Commonwealth and Israel, which are currently fighting each other as they struggle with cronyism, deceit and theft.
