Europe
Military expansion in Germany took steady steps forward this month. The nation will build a new naval base on the North Sea, after Defense Minister Boris Pistorius signed a letter of intent with Lower Saxony Premier Olaf Lies on October 5. Germany currently has only one naval base on the North Sea. The deal is the latest of several attempts to curb the nation’s industrial decline. Emden is home to one of Volkswagen’s major plants and is facing massive job losses. Germany has repurposed some factories to make armaments, and its new base-building project will provide jobs for laid-off workers.
In previous generations, Britain would recognize increased German naval activity as a threat. But on October 8, British Prime Minister Andy Burnham met with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz for the first time in Berlin, and the two nations launched a joint security partnership to combat cyberattacks, sabotage and other hybrid threats. Bible prophecy warns against trusting Germany.
America’s trust in Germany was seen again when three German Air Force Tornado fighter jets participated in nato’s “Steadfast Noon” military exercises in Italy, which began on October 13 and lasted two weeks. This tests nato’s ability to use the nuclear bombs the U.S. has made available to several of its allies.
Meanwhile, Pistorius announced on October 1 in Lower Saxony that the German military will establish its first drone regiment in 2027.
Germany is currently Ukraine’s largest military partner and has acquired considerable combat data and insight. From the beginning of the war, several German drone start-ups partnered with Ukraine’s military to advance drone warfare technology. Germany is gaining knowledge and experience from the war to equip its military for future combat.
Germany will use its rebuilt military power and shock the world largely due to a secret arrangement with Russia. German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul met his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, on September 26 in New York City on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly—the first time German and Russian foreign ministers have met since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder visited Russia on Vladimir Putin’s birthday on October 7. Schröder has been close to both Putin and top German industrialists for years. As Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry has repeatedly warned, in his 2018 article “Germany and Russia’s Secret War Against America” and elsewhere, the Germans and Russians are once again colluding to limit the amount of power they expend against one another and maximize the power they expend against the nations around them—and against the United States.
Meanwhile, the rise of the Alternative für Deutschland party is shifting German politics. The right-wing party’s Tobias Rausch was elected president of Saxony-Anhalt’s state parliament on October 6. The AfD won only 39 of the parliament’s 83 seats, yet Rausch received 48 votes, with the extra votes coming from members of the left-wing Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht party and likely from members of the mainstream Christian Democratic Union. This means that the unofficial “firewall” that mainstream parties in Germany had raised against cooperation with AfD and other extremist parties has been breached in Saxony-Anhalt. Extremist beliefs are increasingly tolerated and even supported in Germany, leading to a favorable political climate for a tyrant to take power, just as the Bible prophesies will happen.
Striking evidence of this trend can be seen in the German town of Heidenau, Saxony, which banned new “stumbling stone” Holocaust memorials after a September 24 city council vote. The motion, supported by the AfD and the CDU, is another example of anti-Semitism in Germany. The plaques bear short descriptions of Holocaust victims and remind pedestrians of the horrible explosion of anti-Semitism that occurred in Heidenau and across Germany nearly 90 years ago.
Italy’s Chamber of Deputies approved a law granting election winners bonus seats in parliament on October 8. The move provides the prime minister greater power in order to reduce political instability. But opponents compare it to a 1923 law that helped Mussolini cement personal power over the Italian government. The Bible prophesies that Europe is about to become extremely authoritarian, with 10 “kings” rising and lending their power to one overall dictator. Legislation such as this helps prepare Italy to produce one of those kings.
Middle East
On the night of September 22-23, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front launched a renewed rebellion against Ethiopia, in cooperation with other rebels. The Ethiopian government quickly put down the rebellion. But since then, unconfirmed reports suggest the neighboring country of Eritrea, which is close to the Tigray rebels, has moved troops into Ethiopia to support them. It is confirmed that Ethiopia has built up troops near Eritrea.
Between 2020 and 2022, Tigray state and the Liberation Front launched a rebellion against the federal government that quickly devolved into civil war. Both sides committed horrendous massacres and other atrocities. With an estimated death toll of 600,000 to 800,000 people, the war may be, thus far, the deadliest conflict of the 21st century. The threat of it restarting is very real. As Gerald Flurry explains in Libya and Ethiopia in Prophecy, Daniel 11:40-43 prophesy Ethiopia will soon be involved in a massive world crisis as an ally to Iran; as the booklet elaborates, renewed unrest there could help set Ethiopia up for its future role.
Turkey and Pakistan activated their mutual defense agreement with Saudi Arabia on October 5, as Houthi terrorists in Yemen barraged the Saudis with drones and missiles. Turkish media reported Turkey sent air defense systems and Pakistan sent thousands of troops. This activation did not lead to full-scale war in Yemen, but it shows that the three Sunni powers are serious about defending each other against Iran and its proxy groups like the Houthis. Daniel 11 and Psalm 83 prophesy of a “king of the south” and a confederacy against the name of Israel, in the end time, which equate to a Shiite Islamic power bloc led by Iran and a Sunni Islamic bloc that would include Saudi Arabia and Turkey. This Saudi-Turkey-Pakistan mutual defense agreement could be the foundation of this prophesied bloc. The very bloc prophesied thousands of years ago may have had its genesis this year.
Haman al-Hammami, a pilot for a September 29 commercial flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv, stabbed the captain and tried to crash the plane in the desert of Saudi Arabia in an attempted terror attack that would have murdered about 180 people, the vast majority of whom were Israelis. The attack was thwarted when the wounded captain unlatched the cockpit door, enabling passengers to restrain Hammami and allowing off-duty pilots to land the plane safely. It subsequently emerged that Hammami is from Oman but appears to have been radicalized into a jihadist in Australia.
Asia
China is rapidly building up its nuclear weapons program, with major construction underway at sites across the country, according to a September 23 Telegraph analysis of satellite imagery. The new projects include underground test sites, ventilation stacks, massive chemical storage tanks, industrial heat exchangers, support towns for workers and a 2,000-foot-long shock tube for testing how nuclear weapons components withstand powerful blasts. Under General Secretary Xi Jinping, China’s stockpile of nuclear weapons has more than doubled to an estimated 620 nuclear warheads as of January. The arsenal is projected to more than double again by 2035, reaching 1,500 warheads. The new construction projects show that Xi is not only expanding China’s arsenal but also methodically laying the industrial and scientific foundations for a full-spectrum, nuclear war-fighting force.
On September 29, China’s military opened the new Joint Flight Training and Support Center at Ban Keun Airport near the capital city of Laos. China says the facility will serve as a base for Chinese forces to train Laotian military pilots. But analysts expect the facility to function as far more than just a training center. Its nearly 1.2-mile runway can accommodate Chinese fighter aircraft and could be extended to handle the nation’s bombers, transports and aerial-refueling tankers. The development appears to have caught the U.S. off guard, as Laos was not among the nations the Pentagon listed in its December 2025 assessment as potential sites for future Chinese military centers. China already operates a military base in Djibouti in Africa and is expanding its military presence at Ream Naval Base in Cambodia. The new facility in Laos gives it another base for projecting military power beyond its borders, a prospect that takes on added significance in light of Bible prophecies about China’s future military role.
On October 2, Russian President Vladimir Putin oversaw parts of the “Center 2026” military drills in the Ural Mountains, which involved troops from Russia, Belarus, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Pakistan and Tajikistan. Russian Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov said the combined maneuvers simulated “liberating the occupied territory” of a Central Asian nation and “creating a security zone in the neighboring territory.” The training highlights growing military cooperation between Russia, China and a wider group of Asian nations—a developing alliance that Bible prophecy says will soon shake the world. This is explained in our free booklet Russia and China in Prophecy.
Anglo-America
America’s political hatred has turned deadly serious. A poll published on September 23 by the Center for Strategic Politics found that about a third of Democrat respondents admitted they would welcome news of President Donald Trump’s assassination. Of 683 Democratic voters surveyed, 32 percent reacted positively to a headline about Trump being murdered at a rally, 55 percent to one about him dying in his sleep, and 59 percent to one about a military coup removing him.
Meanwhile, violence continues to afflict America’s children. On October 15, a 16-year-old shot his way into Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon, and murdered three children and a teacher before a parent shot him dead. Eight days earlier, a student was killed and two teens were wounded outside a high school in Norfolk, Virginia. Education Week has recorded 26 K-12 school shootings with casualties through October.
Hosea 4:1-3 warn that when there is “no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land,” people swear, lie, kill, steal and commit adultery until “blood toucheth blood.”
Canada’s courts are abandoning equal justice. Harry Cope, a Mi’kmaw man with a long criminal record, repeatedly punched his common-law partner on a sidewalk and threw her to the ground. The trial judge sentenced him to five years; an appeals court reduced it to three, and the Supreme Court of Canada upheld the reduction, agreeing that the trial judge had given too little weight to an indigenous advisory group that recommended Cope’s immediate release. Leviticus 19:15 forbids such partiality in judgment.
Britain’s monarchy, too, is distancing itself from its heritage. Buckingham Palace’s latest Sovereign Grant report, published June 25, redefines King Charles III’s religious role. It states that rather than defending “the faith,” the sovereign now “protects the space for faith within the multi-faith nation.” The title Defender of the Faith, bestowed on Henry VIII in 1521, symbolized England’s break with Rome. Yet in October 2025, Charles prayed with Pope Leo XIV in the Sistine Chapel, the first time an English monarch had publicly done so since the 1517 Protestant Reformation.
These trends share a root cause: Nations that reject God’s law lose respect for human law, marriage and life itself. Until they return to the God who gave that law, the bloodshed Hosea warned of will only spread.