Sons of Issachar: May 27 2026

Written By Justin Scaggs

"Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths." Proverbs 3:5-6, ESV

The past week was busy across every front the watchful Christian tracks while still lacking concrete movement in most areas. Trump moved to widen the Abraham Accords as a condition of any new Iran agreement, while U.S. forces struck targets inside Iran in the middle of fresh talks. Pope Leo XIV released his first encyclical, an unusual and substantive Catholic statement on artificial intelligence. The federal government took another equity stake in a major private company, continuing a shift that has now produced eleven such deals since mid-2025. Elon Musk publicly described Neuralink's roadmap as "Jesus-level miracles." Two separate armed incidents at the White House landed in the same news cycle as the President's $250-million ballroom construction. The WHO confirmed an Ebola outbreak in the DRC that has crossed into Uganda. Congress held another UAP transparency hearing. And global strategic fuel reserves continued to thin while Cuba ran out of diesel and the lights went out across Havana. None of this proves a calendar. All of it needs careful discernment, but our focus needs to remain on Jesus.

Headlines:

1. Trump pushes a wider Abraham Accords as Iran talks tighten and U.S. forces strike

President Trump said this week that more nations joining the Abraham Accords should be a "mandatory" condition of any new Iran nuclear agreement. The framing tied the Accords directly to the bargaining table with Tehran, signaling that broader Gulf and Arab normalization with Israel is being treated as the price of de-escalation. Coverage from outside the U.S. flagged the push as a non-starter for several governments in the region, and Republicans in Congress publicly warned against making concessions to Iran in any deal to end the wider war.

While the Abraham Accords expansion was being floated diplomatically, U.S. Central Command struck missile launch sites and small boats near southern Iran around May 25, describing the actions as self-defense against threats including attempts to emplace naval mines during a fragile ceasefire. Iranian negotiators were in Qatar at the same time. Tehran called the strikes bad faith and warned of further response. Trump's stated bottom line in earlier rounds has been "complete dismantlement" of Iran's nuclear program, an objective Iran has repeatedly rejected.

The language of peace and the language of pressure are again being spoken by the same officials in the same week. Christian witness here is not to predict the outcome. It is to pray for restraint, for honest negotiators, for the protection of civilians on every side, and for our own posture not to harden into either reflexive hawkishness or reflexive cynicism. Peace is a real good. Coercion dressed as peace is a real danger. The believer reads both with sober eyes and remembers we won't see peace until we see the Prince of Peace.

"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God." Matthew 5:9, ESV

"The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD; he turns it wherever he will." Proverbs 21:1, ESV

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2. Pope Leo XIV's first encyclical, Magnifica humanitas, on artificial intelligence

Pope Leo XIV released his first encyclical on May 25. Its title is Magnifica humanitas, subtitled On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence. He signed it on May 15, deliberately chosen as the 135th anniversary of Pope Leo XIII's Rerum novarum, the 1891 social encyclical that addressed the dignity of labor under industrial capitalism. The new text runs roughly forty-two thousand words across five chapters. Its underlying premise is that technology is not "a force antagonistic to humanity" and not "inherently evil," but that AI must be "disarmed" from a mentality of military, economic, and cognitive competition that allows it to dominate human persons rather than serve them.

The encyclical warns explicitly that control of AI must not remain "in the hands of a few," ties the current trajectory of AI to the fueling of present global conflicts, and frames AI deployed without restraint as a threat to human dignity and to the rights of workers. It also urges the safeguarding of truth in an information environment increasingly shaped by machines, the dignity of work as a participation in the work of the Creator, and the pursuit of social justice and peace. In an unusual production choice, the Vatican announced the encyclical alongside an Anthropic co-founder, one of the heads of a leading AI lab, signaling that Rome intends the document as the opening of a sustained negotiation with the AI industry rather than as a closed-door pronouncement.

A Catholic pope writing an encyclical on AI is itself a sign of the times. Whatever one's posture toward Rome, the fact that the largest body of nominal Christians on earth has now made a binding-level statement about AI is worth Protestants noticing. Much of the substance, particularly the insistence on human dignity rooted in being made in the image of God, on labor as more than productivity, and on the danger of placing decisive moral judgment in the hands of machines, is consistent with the Scriptural account. The deliberate echo of Rerum novarum also matters: Leo XIII addressed an industrial revolution that had outrun the moral imagination of its participants; Leo XIV is naming an information-and-cognition revolution that has done the same.

Christian discernment here does not require either applause for Rome or reflexive dismissal. It requires the recognition that the AI question is genuinely religious. It asks what a person is, what work is, what truth is, and who has authority to decide (God and not man in all those cases). Those are not engineering questions. They are theological ones. The church should be teaching about them in our own pulpits, not waiting for the Vatican to set the conversation.

"Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." Genesis 1:26, ESV

"See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ." Colossians 2:8, ESV

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3. The federal government keeps buying private companies

The Trump administration has now taken or agreed to take equity positions in at least ten private companies since mid-2025, continuing a pattern that critics across the political spectrum have publicly characterized as a quiet, ongoing nationalization. The largest investment is Intel, where the administration converted 8.9 billion dollars of CHIPS and Science Act grant money into a 9.9 percent stake in the troubled chipmaker. Other named deals include two rare-earth startups, Vulcan Elements and ReElement Technologies; Atlantic Alumina, a Louisiana-based gallium producer that received a 150-million-dollar federal equity injection in January; USA Rare Earth, which agreed to issue shares and warrants giving the U.S. an eight-to-sixteen percent stake; xLight, a Silicon Valley lithography startup with a commitment of up to 150 million; and L3Harris Technologies, the defense firm, which is in a proposed one-billion-dollar Pentagon partnership in its rocket motor business. Total federal funds committed to equity positions in private firms now approach ten billion dollars, with most concentrated in the Intel deal. A new House Republican bill has been introduced to codify the practice in statute.

The Cato Institute, which is not a friend of nationalization in any administration, called the trajectory "a seismic and disturbing shift." The Center for Strategic and International Studies framed it more sympathetically, as a response to Chinese supply-chain leverage. Both readings can be true at once. The dependencies being addressed are real. Chinese chokeholds on critical inputs, particularly in rare earths and advanced semiconductor lithography, are not invented. And yet the answer is now arriving as direct federal ownership of pieces of named private companies, on a scale unprecedented outside of full-blown financial crises like 2008. The legal authority for many of these deals is contested. The political precedent is open to abuse by any future administration of any party.

God endorses property rights and private ownership in Scripture. Believers did work in a collective environment in Jerusalem after Pentecost during persecution, but the world is not the church, and consolidation of power by the state usually goes poorly for the people living under it. This is not the mark of the beast and we should not speak carelessly. Regulation and even ownership are not, in themselves, evil. Honest weights and measures matter. But the pastoral question is the gradient. Each step toward concentrated state ownership of named private firms is a step toward a system in which political alignment matters more than business soundness, and in which the ability to participate in the economy depends on the favor of whoever currently holds the office. The wise believer does not flee every tool. The wise believer also does not pretend that nothing is changing.

"A false balance is an abomination to the LORD, but a just weight is his delight." Proverbs 11:1, ESV

"The prudent sees danger and hides himself, but the simple go on and suffer for it." Proverbs 22:3, ESV

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4. Elon Musk's "Jesus-level miracles" claim

Speaking at a Forbes innovation event in Silicon Valley and again at the Samson International virtual conference this week, Elon Musk described Neuralink's brain-computer interface roadmap as capable of "Jesus-level miracles," explicitly including the restoration of sight and movement. Coverage in mainstream tech outlets reported the phrasing in full. Clip reels on Instagram and TikTok pushed it into wider circulation. Futurism summarized the moment with the dry observation that Musk had compared his company's work to miracles performed by Jesus Christ.

The technical work behind Neuralink is real. There are genuine medical possibilities in restoring some sensory and motor function via implanted electrodes for specific kinds of injury and disease. We should be grateful for any reduction of suffering. We are not grateful for the theological positioning. Jesus did not heal a few people to demonstrate that some future engineer would catch up. Christ's miracles announced who He was, that the kingdom of God had drawn near, and that authority over disease, death, demons, and matter belonged to Him in His person. They are not, in Scripture, a benchmark for a billionaire's pitch deck.

The Christian response here is neither outrage nor mockery. It is to keep saying what we have always said. Jesus' miracles point to Messiahship. They are signed by His resurrection and verified by His ascension. A brain implant, however genuinely useful, does not raise a man from the dead, does not forgive sin, and does not seat anyone at the right hand of the Father. The miracles of Jesus are not a brand to borrow. These implants are scheduled for widespread adoption with nearly fully automated installation. I will not say this is the mark, but it is a step further along a road that leads to a system that can control who can buy and sell, mediated by something carried in the right hand or forehead.

"Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal." John 6:26-27, ESV

"For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen." Romans 11:36, ESV

"Also it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name." Revelation 13:16-17, ESV

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5. Three rounds of gunfire near the President in a month, and the ballroom that crowded them out

This week brought the third incident of gunfire in the vicinity of President Trump in a single month. On May 23, around 6 PM EDT at the corner of 17th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, a 21-year-old man from Maryland named Nasire Best pulled a weapon from his bag and opened fire near a White House security checkpoint. Secret Service officers returned fire and killed him. A civilian bystander was struck by gunfire during the exchange and was reported in serious condition; whether the bystander was hit by the suspect's initial rounds or in the return fire is still unclear. Best was already known to the Secret Service from previous attempts to enter the White House complex, with prior charges and an outstanding warrant for his arrest, and had a documented history of mental health treatment. Trump was in the residence and was unaffected.

The May 23 shooting follows the April 26 White House Correspondents' Dinner shooting at the Washington Hilton, in which 31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen was arrested after running past a screening area outside the banquet hall. The Department of Justice has charged Allen with the attempted assassination of Trump administration officials. According to court filings, Allen made his hotel reservation on April 6 and traveled by train from his home near Los Angeles in advance, indicating premeditation of several weeks. Both 2026 incidents fall within the same broader pattern as the 2024 Butler, Pennsylvania campaign rally shooting and the Mar-a-Lago golf-course incident later that summer.

In the same news cycle, the lead political-aesthetic story has been the construction of a 250-million-dollar, 90,000-square-foot ballroom on the White House grounds, financed privately, marketed by the White House Rapid Response account as a continuation of presidential modernization, and challenged in writing by congressional Democrats and by the Society of Architectural Historians. The ballroom has drawn detailed visual and architectural-history coverage. The three shootings, by contrast, have received the standard short-cycle treatment and largely faded by the next day.

One thing worth pondering is the contrast in protective response across the two White House events. In both cases people other than the attacker were shot, but the Secret Service response to the May 23 checkpoint shooting was exactly what you would expect: very rapid and very lethal. The response to the April 26 press-event shooting played out differently. The two are worth comparing.

The contrast is worth naming. A nation is in serious trouble when its political life produces three armed incidents in a month against a sitting president and the response is processed, archived, and moved past, while a ballroom addition draws sustained outrage. Both stories have a place. But a culture trains itself by what it lingers on. The Christian response is to mourn the violence without inflaming it, to refuse the satisfactions of partisan blame, to pray for officials and for the men and women guarding them, and to keep the seriousness of human life uppermost when the news cycle moves on.

"If you have raced with men on foot, and they have wearied you, how will you compete with horses? And if in a safe land you are so trusting, what will you do in the thicket of the Jordan?" Jeremiah 12:5, ESV

"Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good." Romans 12:9, ESV

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6. Ebola flares again in the DRC, treatment centers are being torched, and 18 suspected patients are missing

The World Health Organization was alerted on May 5 to a high-mortality outbreak of an unknown illness in the Mongbwalu Health Zone of Ituri Province, in the northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, including deaths among health workers. Laboratory analysis confirmed Bundibugyo virus disease, a species of Ebola for which there is currently no vaccine and no specific treatment. As of late May the outbreak has grown to roughly 750 suspected cases and 177 suspected deaths, with imported cases reaching Uganda. This is the 17th Ebola outbreak in the DRC, beginning only five months after the close of the previous one.

The harder story this week is the local response. There have been at least three attacks on Ebola treatment facilities in eastern DRC in the last week. One center was set on fire after authorities declined to release the body of a young man believed to have died of Ebola; a group of his friends stormed the building and torched parts of it. Eighteen suspected Ebola patients ran out into the surrounding area during the fire and are still unaccounted for. A treatment tent in another site was set on fire a second time. WHO has publicly warned that the violence is threatening the entire response. The State Department has activated an Ebola Response Task Force, mobilized about twenty-three million dollars in initial bilateral assistance, and announced funding for up to fifty Ebola response clinics.

Underneath the violence is rumor. Reporting from the ground describes residents in remote villages who say openly that "Ebola is a lie," or that the disease is "a White man's invention" that does not really exist. Long-standing distrust of outside health authorities, combined with strict and to outsiders bewildering burial protocols, makes the rumor catch fire faster than the truth. A doctor on the response put it plainly: when an epidemic breaks out, if accurate information does not move quickly, people believe whatever is loudest, and that is when violence takes hold. We know from COVID that this is true at home as well as abroad.

The pastoral note is sharper than a generic prayer card. The bottleneck in Ituri right now is not money or vaccines. It is trust. In places where outsiders are believed last, the local church is one of the few institutions still trusted, because it has been there long before the cameras arrived and will be there long after they leave. Pray specifically that the Congolese church in Ituri would be a voice of clear, calm, biblical truth about what is happening, that medical missionaries and Christian doctors would not be among the next casualties, that the eighteen patients who ran into the bush would be found and cared for, and that the eternal souls of the dying would meet the One who really did heal lepers and raise the dead.

"He sent out his word and healed them, and delivered them from their destruction." Psalm 107:20, ESV

"But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the ruler of the synagogue, “Do not fear, only believe." Mark 5:36, ESV

"Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ." Galatians 6:2, ESV

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7. UAP disclosure hearings continue and the witness list keeps growing

The House Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, chaired by Representative Anna Paulina Luna, held another hearing this week titled "Restoring Public Trust Through UAP Transparency and Whistleblower Protection." Testimony came from journalist George Knapp, who described a pattern in which whistleblowers and witnesses who step forward are "routinely insulted, belittled, or worse" and risk careers, clearances, and reputations. Chief Alexandro Wiggins addressed the safety dimension, noting that when crews observe objects that maneuver or accelerate near ships and aircraft in ways inconsistent with known profiles, the matter is first and foremost an aviation and maritime safety problem. Documents shared with the task force argued that the former Soviet Union conducted what may have been the largest state-run UAP investigation in the world.

The witness pool now includes thirty-four senior military, government, and intelligence officials who have publicly broken silence on the topic, including the current Secretary of State, two sitting senators, a former Director of National Intelligence, a former Head of Aviation Security for the White House National Security Council, and a former Secretary of Defense. Members from both parties pressed for stronger whistleblower protection and for the release of records currently held under restricted classification, and members continued to scrutinize the effectiveness of the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, the congressionally mandated body Congress established to coordinate the government's UAP work. The BBC carried portions of the proceedings live.

The Christian posture here should be neither dismissive nor breathless. We do not know what every reported phenomenon is. Some will eventually have ordinary explanations of advanced foreign craft, classified U.S. programs, optical artifacts, or instrument errors. Some will not. The Scriptural account already insists that the unseen world is real, that there are powers and principalities that are not flesh and blood, and that not every spirit is to be trusted. A serious doctrine of angels, demons, and the heavenly host does not require chasing every video, but it also does not need to feign embarrassment when the topic comes up.

What the church should care about, specifically, is two things. First, government transparency about what is genuinely known is a good in itself, and protecting the witnesses who carry that information is a real concern of justice. Second, the rising cultural appetite for "contact" with non-human intelligence is its own pastoral problem regardless of what is finally disclosed. Many of the people most invested in the topic are looking for meaning, for cosmic friends, and for hope. The Gospel speaks directly to that hunger. Read your Bibles, and you will not be shocked when what they describe begins to surface in the world.

"Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world." 1 John 4:1, ESV

"For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places." Ephesians 6:12, ESV

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8. Strategic fuel reserves drained at home, full at the rival's; Cuba runs out of diesel

The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve is at roughly 400 million barrels against a maximum capacity of about 700 million, the lowest level in roughly forty years. The current drawdown is being driven by the Iran crisis: in response to Iran's effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz since the February 28 onset of the U.S.-Israeli war, the International Energy Agency coordinated a release of over 400 million barrels from member-state reserves, with the U.S. contributing approximately 172 million barrels over 120 days beginning in late March. Reporting from energy-trade outlets indicates that Europe has emerged as the lead buyer of the released U.S. crude, with nearly 50 million barrels going to the UK's Vortexa Ltd. alone and discounts of about five dollars per barrel relative to local grades.

The contrast with China is sharp, and worth dwelling on. While the United States is drawing its strategic reserve down to sell into a global crisis, Beijing has spent the same window building. The EIA estimates that China added roughly 1.1 million barrels per day to its strategic stockpile through 2025, reaching about 1.4 billion barrels, and continues to build through 2026. In the standard "days of import cover" measure that governments use to gauge energy security, China's strategic reserve alone now sits at about one hundred and ten days of cover and rising, while the U.S. Department of Energy reports the SPR itself provides about fifty-nine days, and only about one hundred and fifteen days even when private commercial stocks are added in. Policy commentary across the political spectrum has described the prior decade's U.S. drawdowns as a "legislative ATM," used to soften consumer prices in election seasons rather than rebuilt for genuine strategic emergency. The trajectories of the two largest economies are now pointing in opposite directions: one selling cheap into Europe, the other quietly stocking.

In the same week, Cuba's energy minister publicly stated that the country had run out of diesel fuel oil amid the ongoing U.S. oil blockade. Reuters reported widening protests across Havana as rolling blackouts deepened, the latest stage of the 2024-2026 collapse in Cuba's electrical grid. The country imports nearly all of its petroleum products, and previous Venezuelan and Russian supplies have not kept pace with demand. The humanitarian impact, on hospitals, on food preservation, on basic sanitation, is being borne primarily by ordinary Cubans, not by the regime.

The pastoral note is both practical and theological. Practically, chokepoints in fuel are how chokepoints in everything else become visible. A nation ninety miles from Florida cannot keep its lights on. The United States has run down the cushion it spent fifty years building, while the largest peer competitor has spent the same window quietly stockpiling. That is not a partisan complaint; it is a fact in a spreadsheet that any honest person can read. The believer is not commanded to panic, but is commanded to take dominion of the home with some prudence, which historically has meant having a little stored away, knowing your neighbors, and not building a life that breaks the instant the grid hiccups. Theologically, the Lord remains over princes and reserves alike. Cuban Christians have been praying through worse for sixty years. We do well to pray with them now, and to learn from them.

"Go to the ant, O sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise. Without having any chief, officer, or ruler, she prepares her bread in summer and gathers her food in harvest." Proverbs 6:6-8, ESV

"Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation." Psalm 146:3, ESV

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Watch and Pray

Pray for restraint in the negotiations over Iran, for officials with the courage to choose long-suffering over short-term wins, for the protection of civilians on every side, and for the Christian witness in the wider Middle East not to be flattened into partisan reflex.

"First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way." 1 Timothy 2:1-2, ESV

Pray for clarity in the church on AI and on the doctrines of personhood, image, and work that are now being argued out in encyclicals, executive orders, and product launches. Pray that our pulpits would be teaching ahead of, not behind, the cultural debate.

"But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere." James 3:17, ESV

Pray for wisdom over the gradient of state and economic power that is being woven together in our generation, that Christian families would not build their lives on systems whose access rules can change without notice, and that we would steward what is in our hands soberly and generously.

"And those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away." 1 Corinthians 7:31, ESV

Pray that the church would not be embarrassed by the miracles of Jesus, nor lend His name to the technology of any man, however bright. Pray that we would tell the old story plainly: that He healed because He is God in the flesh, that He died for our sin, that He rose, that He is coming.

"Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever." Hebrews 13:8, ESV

Pray for the families of those targeted, harmed, or killed in the recent attempts on the White House perimeter, for the men and women in uniform who stand between the door and the gun, and for our political life to be tempered by truth rather than consumed by it. Pray for the next news cycle to find the church still grieving the right things.

"Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God." James 1:19-20, ESV

Pray for Ituri Province, for medical missionaries and Congolese pastors and the local churches there, and especially for the eighteen suspected Ebola patients who fled into the bush during the fire at the treatment center and have not been found. Pray that the Lord would protect them and the communities they may have gone home to, that rumor and fear would give way to truth, that health workers in Bundibugyo isolation units would be spared further violence, and that the swift containment of this outbreak before it crosses further into Uganda or beyond would be granted in mercy.

"Heal me, O LORD, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved, for you are my praise." Jeremiah 17:14, ESV

Pray for honesty in how the government discloses what it knows, for the protection of whistleblowers, and for the church to be a place where a hungry generation can bring its strange questions and find Christ, not embarrassment.

"For nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest, nor is anything secret that will not be known and come to light." Luke 8:17, ESV

Pray for Cuban brothers and sisters in Christ, who have been praying through hardship longer than most of us have been alive, for power and food and medicine and the local pastors carrying the weight of communities by hand. Pray that our own preparedness would be wise without becoming hoarding, and that the Lord would teach us through what Cuba is bearing this week.

"Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, 'I will never leave you nor forsake you.'" Hebrews 13:5, ESV

Maranatha,

— Sims Corner Church

Justin Scaggs https://simscornerchurch.com
Next

Sons of Issachar: May 20, 2026