Prophecy Update 9/20/2026

A World Under Increasing Pressure

1 Chron 12:3 Of Issachar, men who had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do…

There is a difference between watching the news and understanding the times. Anybody can scroll through headlines. The men of Issachar were commended because they possessed something deeper: they understood the times, and that understanding affected how they believed God’s people ought to respond. The Bible interprets the times; the times do not reinterpret the Bible.

That is what I want us to do whenever we have a prophecy update. Jesus rebuked people who could interpret the appearance of the sky but could not interpret the signs of their own time (Matthew 16:2–3). So tonight I want to put four developments before you and answer question: “Where is all of this heading, and how should we live while we watch?”

AN ISRAEL-BOUND PLANE HIGHJACKED

We begin with a remarkable story that unfolded today. FlyDubai Flight FZ1073 was traveling from Dubai toward Tel Aviv. The aircraft suddenly descended approximately 17,000 feet and transmitted the international transponder code 7500, which indicates a possible highjacking. Israeli fighter aircraft were scrambled, and the passenger jet was ultimately diverted safely to Tabuk, Saudi Arabia.

OTHER UPDATES HERE

Only days ago Benjamin Netanyahu stood before the United Nations and spoke about another Israel-bound aircraft—the Air France flight hijacked in 1976 and ultimately taken to Entebbe, Uganda. Netanyahu’s older brother, Yonatan “Yoni” Netanyahu, commanded the Israeli rescue force sent to free the hostages and was killed during that operation.

We should equally recognize something the Bible told us long ago: Israel would remain at the center of international attention and conflict as history moves toward its conclusion. Zechariah 12:3 speaks of a future day when Jerusalem will become “a heavy stone for all the peoples.”

THE ERA OF “SUPER INTELLIGENCE” HAS OFFICIALLY BEGUN

Now I want to turn to a story that broke just yesterday, September 29, and I think this may be one of the most significant technology stories we have discussed in a Prophecy Update

President Trump signed an executive order entitled “Inaugurating the Era of Super Intelligence.” The order directs executive departments and agencies of the United States government to begin replacing the terminology “Artificial Intelligence” and “AI” with “Super Intelligence” and “SI”

Then something else happened that makes this story even more important. President Trump met at the White House with leaders from some of the most powerful technology companies on earth, signed a voluntary agreement concerning the development of advanced AI systems. The agreement calls for companies to establish internal controls, submit their processes to independent outside auditing, and create board-level mechanisms for reviewing those audits. But the agreement is voluntary rather than legally enforceable. When Trump was specifically asked whether it was binding, he described it as “morally binding.” In other words, on the very day the United States government formally embraced the terminology Super Intelligence, some of the companies building the world’s most powerful AI systems were sitting together at the White House discussing how they should police the technology they are creating. (⁠AP News)

Think about how quickly this conversation has changed. Only a few years ago most people encountered artificial intelligence as reactive AI: you asked; the machine answered. Now it is rapidly moving toward agentic AI. Instead of merely asking a machine, “What should I do?”, it works to pursue an objective. We are moving from machines that primarily give information to human beings toward machines increasingly capable of taking actions on behalf of human beings.

THE ERA OF “SUPER INTELLIGENCE” HAS OFFICIALLY BEGUN

Bible prophecy describes a future world possessing extraordinary capabilities of communication, surveillance, economic restriction, identification, centralized authority, and enforcement. Revelation 13:16–17 tells us that during the Tribulation the Beast system will ultimately exercise control so extensive that “no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark.”

We have biometric identification. We have facial recognition. We have digital payment systems. We have enormous databases. We have ubiquitous cameras and sensors. We have global communications networks. We have artificial intelligence capable of processing quantities of information no human bureaucracy could manually analyze. And now we are entering the age of autonomous software agents capable not merely of analyzing information but potentially acting upon it. The technological infrastructure necessary for the kind of control described in Revelation is arriving.

But even the people building these systems increasingly recognize that extraordinary capability creates extraordinary risk. What happens when increasingly capable systems do something we did not intend?” And ultimately there is an even larger question: Who governs intelligence more powerful than anything humanity has previously constructed?

God did not condemn Babel because bricks were evil. The problem was what rebellious humanity intended to accomplish with them: “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves” (Genesis 11:4, ESV). Technology magnifies capability. But when capability is placed in the hands of fallen humanity, it can magnify rebellion.

That is why I think yesterday’s announcement deserves our attention. We have reached a moment when the federal government itself is saying that the terminology of artificial intelligence is no longer sufficient for how it wants to describe this technological frontier.

Now put that beside Bible prophecy. John saw a world in which political authority could be exercised across peoples and nations. He saw an economic system capable of determining who could participate in commerce. He saw extraordinary deception. He saw an image associated with the Beast that somehow “might even speak” (Revelation 13:15, ESV).

Daniel 2:20–21 ESV

20 Daniel answered and said: “Blessed be the name of God forever and ever, to whom belong wisdom and might. 21 He changes times and seasons; he removes kings and sets up kings; he gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding;

Humanity may build machines possessing astonishing computational intelligence. We may create systems capable of processing more information in seconds than a person could absorb in a lifetime. Governments may rename AI Super Intelligence. But there will never be an intelligence above the omniscience of Almighty God. There will never be an algorithm He cannot understand, a system He cannot penetrate, a government He cannot overthrow, a ruler He cannot remove, or a future He did not already know before the foundation of the world.

A GENERATION DYING TOO YOUNG

The second story brings us much closer to home. A newly published peer-reviewed analysis by Dr. Steven Woolf of Virginia Commonwealth University examined American mortality data among Americans between 25 and 44 years old, all-cause mortality increased 71.2 percent between 2010 and 2021. Something has gone terribly wrong when people in what should be the strength of adulthood are dying at dramatically elevated rates.

When a society increasingly separates human beings from their Creator, eventually that alienation manifests itself everywhere—in our families, our sexuality, our addictions, our mental despair, our violence, our bodies, and ultimately our mortality. We have unprecedented technology, unprecedented entertainment, unprecedented access to information, and yet millions of people do not know why they are alive. The Church must understand that this is not merely a public-health problem. There is a spiritual hunger underneath much of the despair around us, and Jesus Christ remains the answer the world desperately needs.

TWO SPEECHES AT THE UNITED NATIONS

Then we come to what I believe may be the most consequential story of these four: the speeches of President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before the United Nations. They spoke only days apart, and there was significant agreement between them. They were speaking from two very different vantage points about where the world goes from here.

Comparison 1

IRAN

🇺🇸 Trump: Iran must never possess nuclear weapons. Emphasized the destruction of Iranian military capabilities, but left open the possibility of a future agreement allowing Iran to rebuild economically if the threat is removed.

🇮🇱 Netanyahu: Iran represented an existential threat to Israel. Defended destroying its nuclear facilities as necessary for Israel’s survival and predicted eventual liberation from the current Iranian regime.

USE OF FORCE

🇺🇸 Trump: Strength as leverage. Presented overwhelming American military power as a means of confronting threats and ultimately producing agreements and peace.

🇮🇱 Netanyahu: Strength as survival. Israel uses military force because, in Netanyahu’s formulation, it has “no other choice” when confronting existential enemies.

GAZA / HAMAS

🇺🇸 Trump: Emphasized the end of the Gaza war, return of the hostages, the 20-point peace plan, reconstruction, and the multinational Board of Peace.

🇮🇱 Netanyahu: Emphasized October 7, defeating Hamas, Israel’s conduct during the war, the return of the hostages, and rebutting accusations against Israel.

PEACE

🇺🇸 Trump: Peace through deals and American power. Trump repeatedly portrayed himself as resolving conflicts that others had allowed to continue.

🇮🇱 Netanyahu: Peace through security and victory. Netanyahu’s emphasis was that Israel cannot safely negotiate from vulnerability while enemies seek its destruction.

UNITED NATIONS

🇺🇸 Trump: Criticized UN bureaucracy, global taxation, the ICC, mass-migration policies and international encroachment on national sovereignty, while still describing the UN as potentially useful.

🇮🇱 Netanyahu: Much more confrontational toward the international audience itself, beginning by condemning delegates who walked out and accusing many governments of hypocrisy toward Israel.

Comparison 2

GLOBAL GOVERNANCE

🇺🇸 Trump: Explicitly rejected global government and global taxation: “There is no global government.” Also rejected a globalist governance scheme for AI/Super Intelligence.

🇮🇱 Netanyahu: Global governance was not the centerpiece. His concern was international institutions and governments constraining or condemning Israel while Israel confronts enemies.

NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY

🇺🇸 Trump: America must remain sovereign. Nations should protect borders, culture, independence, and freedom from supranational control.

🇮🇱 Netanyahu: Israel must remain capable of defending itself. Sovereignty is fundamentally tied to Jewish national survival and Israel’s freedom to act against threats.

ISRAEL–U.S. RELATIONSHIP

🇺🇸 Trump: Israel was part of a broader Middle East/security discussion rather than the centerpiece of Trump’s address.

🇮🇱 Netanyahu: Praised Trump explicitly and described the United States as Israel’s indispensable partner in confronting Iran and recovering hostages.

VIEW OF THE MOMENT

🇺🇸 Trump: The world has enormous problems that strong leadership, national sovereignty and negotiated arrangements can solve.

I🇮🇱 Netanyahu: srael remains surrounded by enemies and cannot assume international institutions will protect it.

LOOKING FORWARD

🇺🇸 Trump: Build a safer international environment through deterrence, agreements, reconstruction and sovereign nations cooperating where interests align.

🇮🇱 Netanyahu: Preserve Israel through deterrence, military superiority, national unity and resistance to international pressure.

Bible prophecy tells us that both themes—Israel’s security and the world’s search for peace—will become enormously significant as history approaches the Tribulation.

Daniel 9:27 tells us that a future ruler will confirm a covenant “with many” for one week—the seventieth week of Daniel, the seven-year period we commonly call the Tribulation. Daniel 7 describes an end-times political configuration from which the final ruler ultimately emerges.

THE WORLD IS MOVING TOWARD SOMETHING

I want to leave you tonight anchored. Because if all we accomplish with prophecy is making Christians afraid of tomorrow, then we have badly mishandled prophecy. Jesus didn’t reveal the future so His Church would panic about it. God told us what is coming precisely so we wouldn’t panic when we begin seeing the world moving in that direction. Paul told the Thessalonians to wait “for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come” (1 Thessalonians 1:10). Later he will tell them, “For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thessalonians 5:9). There is tribulation that believers experience because we live in a fallen world hostile to Christ, and then there is the coming eschatological wrath of God upon this world. Those are not the same thing. The Church should expect opposition, hardship, persecution, and suffering; but the Church has also been given a blessed hope. Our expectation is not Antichrist. Our expectation is Jesus Christ.

And that brings us directly into our upcoming study of 1 Thessalonians 3 tonight.

The Bible answers with the final prayer of Scripture: “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” (Revelation 22:20)