Greetings from Charlotte
The world is in turmoil. The Middle East is unsettled. An off-ramp for the war in Ukraine has not been found, even though President Zelensky has said that he would accept the current boundaries if he could have security guarantees. “If” is such a big word! Riots in France have spread to Italy, Portugal, and Belgium. In this week’s News and Prophecy section, there is an article about cyberattacks on grocery stores in France and other European countries, including Germany. Many store chains use the Internet to set temperatures for their refrigerator and freezer units, and hackers are resetting temperatures in the middle of the night to as high as 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit), rendering food inedible. This is another indication of how vulnerable our modern world is and how just a few bad actors can create significant and far-reaching havoc.
Anyone with eyes to see should recognize this is not going to end well without the return of Christ. The challenge for each of us is how to handle so much bad news. The answer is found in Luke 21:31: “So you also, when you see these things happening, know that the kingdom of God is near.” —Gerald E. Weston
Church Administration
Tomorrow’s World Presentations
Last week, we held one online presentation to the Canadian subscriber base and one follow-up presentation in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The follow-up presentation drew five repeat guests and one new guest. This week, Mr. Wachowicz will give an initial presentation in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, and Mr. Lawdi Ferreira will give a follow-up presentation in Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa. Thank you all for your continued prayers and support for the Tomorrow’s World Presentations.
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Do You Know Your Adversary?
The Bible reveals that Satan the Devil is real, that he has deceived the world (Revelation 12:9), and that he has blinded most of mankind to God’s truth (2 Corinthians 4:4). While this becomes obvious to the few whom God calls (1 Corinthians 1:26–28; 2:7–16), we need to realize that we can also be misled and deceived if we do not recognize how Satan operates—because converted Christians are his special targets (1 Peter 5:8–9). We need to remember that Satan got to David (Deuteronomy 17:17; 2 Samuel 5:13; 11–12) and Solomon (1 Kings 11:1–4), and he even tried to mislead Jesus Christ (Luke 4:1–13) by appealing to human reason and human desires.
Satan has repeatedly used human instruments in his attempts to divide and destroy the Church Jesus founded (Acts 8:1–3, 9–25; 12:1–4; 3 John 9–10), and he is still at it. He will use whatever method and whomever he can (2 Corinthians 11:1–15) to divert the Church from its God-given mission to preach the Gospel and warn this world about coming events. So, let’s be alert so we can recognize and resist our aggressive and persistent adversary. —Douglas S. Winnail
News and Prophecy
Cyberattack on Grocery Stores
Use of the Internet has become commonplace, even in areas we would likely not expect. For example, many grocery stores now monitor and adjust refrigeration temperatures by means of Internet-connected systems. Yet these operational technologies that make food stocks easier to manage also make them vulnerable to malicious attacks. This was the case with a recent cyberattack in which “hackers raised the temperature of refrigerators and freezers at hundreds of French supermarkets to as high as 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) overnight, causing fires and spoiling food” (Reuters, October 13, 2026).
Dominique Schelcher, CEO of the French supermarket group Coopérative U, noted the severe nature of the crime, stating, “Targeting equipment essential to the preservation of fresh products and to the food supply of the French people is of extreme gravity and is unprecedented.” Hackers may have accessed the refrigeration units by exploiting outdated software. As of this writing, law enforcement officials have not publicly identified the hackers themselves.
But the attack in France was not unique. A cyber analyst from Sekoia Threat Detection and Research reported that Belgium, Germany, Poland, Portugal, and Spain had also been affected. These attacks are similar to an attack on refrigeration units in “about a dozen US military commissaries in late August.”
As cyberattacks target civilian food supplies, such vulnerabilities should call to mind the Bible’s warnings about what happens, particularly in Israelite-descended nations, when God’s laws are disobeyed (Leviticus 26:14–26; Deuteronomy 28:15–19). To learn more, read our brief commentary “Bread and Milk.”
Drastic Changes in the Persian Gulf!
On October 10, the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen launched a brazen attack against Saudi Arabia’s King Khalid International Airport, killing 13 and injuring 300 (The Guardian, October 12, 2026). A few days after the airport attack, a ballistic missile hit the site of a major Aramco operations center in Saudi Arabia (Reuters, October 13, 2026). Since the start of the war between the United States, Israel, and Iran in February, Arab nations have faced attacks from armed groups operating within other Arab countries, and the relatively peaceful Persian Gulf nations have been battered by deadly and destructive attacks from Iran as well.
According to Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik, in the last year “the Gulf has entered a new era of instability that is not temporary and cannot be reversed. This may feel like an overstatement… but the gradual erosion of peace and security in places such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE has changed the region more dramatically than its leaders would like to acknowledge.” Just over a year ago, “Iran fired missiles at an airbase in Qatar that hosts American troops, in retaliation for US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.” Iran has also attacked military and industrial sites and critical infrastructure in Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. “The Houthi resurgence represents a new reality in a region that is bewildered and losing lives and capital, stuck between old alliances that no longer work and new hostilities that are too calamitous to confront.”
While the Houthi have been attacking Saudi Arabia for years, this attack on an international place of public transit, almost certainly involving the intentional killing of civilians, raises their aggression to a new level—and, sooner or later, such aggression will meet with retribution. At no other time in history is it more important to watch the Middle East. This region of the world will become increasingly volatile as the return of Jesus Christ approaches. For a deeper understanding of events now occurring in this part of the world, read or listen to The Middle East in Prophecy. —Scott Winnail and Francine Prater