Volume 45 Issue Nine September 2026
Last Trumpet Ministries ∙ PO Box 806 ∙ Beaver Dam, WI 53916
Phone: 920-887-2626 Internet: http://www.lasttrumpetministries.org
“For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?” I Cor. 14:8
The Next Chapter
“Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.”
John 5:39
In ancient times, copying written text was a lengthy and expensive process. Individuals known as scribes would perform this painstaking work, often to preserve important writings such as Scripture. Over time, technology improved dramatically, enabling text to be copied far more quickly and efficiently. Around 1440, German inventor Johannes Gutenberg developed a working concept of his movable-type printing press, which would eventually allow written text to be mass-produced at a speed never before seen. In the mid-1450s, Gutenberg printed his famous 42-line Bible in Latin, the first book printed on a movable-type press in the West. (1) Before Gutenberg’s press was invented, it would take a scribe about three years to copy a Bible. In 1454, Gutenberg produced nearly 180 copies of the sacred book. By the year 1500, there were nearly twenty million books in Western Europe, many of which were Bibles. (2)
Before the printing press was invented, it was mostly the skilled and elite members of society, such as the wealthy, scholars, and the clergy, who had access to written texts. The poor and working classes were often illiterate. Gutenberg’s press made books more accessible and affordable. Thus, those who had little opportunity to read before finally had access to materials that could help them acquire one of the most important skills a person could ever learn: the ability to read and write. Once you have these skills, they open the door to a vast body of knowledge. Today, we have unprecedented access to far more information than was available to any previous generation. Much of this information is at our fingertips twenty-four hours a day through the internet and accessible on devices we carry in our pockets. Increasingly, however, the written word has fallen out of favor. In this issue, we will examine modern trends that give us a glimpse at the next chapter of human history. It is waiting to be written but might never be read.
The End Of Reading
On July 8, 2026, The Atlantic published an essay which declares in its headline, “The End of Reading Is Here.” The piece reveals some startling statistics about American literacy in this modern age. A survey conducted by the National Endowment for the Arts found that fewer than half of all adults in the United States read a book in 2022. An American Time Use Survey, which analyzed 236,000 responses, found that only 16 percent of Americans reported reading anything for pleasure on a given day - down from 28 percent in 2004. Fewer than 10 percent of Americans still read a newspaper, and 40 percent of people who get their news online prefer to watch or listen to it rather than read it. (3)
The piece also explains that young people are especially struggling with reading comprehension. A test conducted in 2024 found that just 35 percent of high school seniors were proficient at “analyzing complex fictional themes and evaluating the effectiveness of an author’s argument.” (4) In other words, even when they can read the words in a written work, they may struggle to understand what those words mean.
Reading comprehension struggles extend even to the most prestigious universities. Margaret Rennix, who is the assistant director for humanities and social sciences support at Harvard University, reported that one student struggled to comprehend the 1962 novel A Clockwork Orange and had to turn to the AI chatbot ChatGPT to help decipher it. Meanwhile, course evaluations at Harvard revealed a number of complaints from students upset that their assignments required them to read entire literary works. “By asking them to read, professors are arbitrarily withholding information from students by forcing them to get it through a more difficult medium,” Rennix said as she explained the students’ mentality. (5)
A survey conducted in 2025 found that English teachers in public schools assigned between zero and four books a year to their students. A growing number of schools no longer assign entire books at all, preferring rather to use short excerpts of written works. One principal at an elementary school in Corona, California, reported that many school administrators are instructing teachers not to assign entire books as reading assignments. (6)
Sadly, if people are reading less overall, it follows that they are reading less Scripture. Trends suggest this is already happening. Researchers at the American Bible Society (ABS) disclosed in their 2026 State of the Bible report that 55 percent of Americans are “Bible disengaged,” 28 percent are in the “movable middle,” and only 17 percent of Americans are “Bible engaged.” (7) The “movable middle” includes people who are curious about the Bible but do not read it very much.
While many people enjoy reading a few verses here and there when the mood strikes, and some enjoy watching Bible-related videos on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, nothing compares to a long, in-depth examination of God’s Word. In John 5:39, Jesus said, “Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.” The Apostle Paul further instructs in II Timothy 2:15, “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” Paul further explains the purpose of Scripture in II Timothy 3:16-17, declaring, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.” It is truly essential to know what the Bible says, but it is also vital to know what it does not say. To make that distinction, we must read it for ourselves.
Offloading Cognitive Tasks To AI
These days, children are often exposed to technology from a very young age. According to the New York Times, more than 80 percent of elementary students receive school-issued devices, such as tablet computers and Chromebooks, by the time they are in kindergarten. (8) One teacher who teaches three-year-olds at a pre-K in Duncanville, Texas, has intentionally tried to withhold devices from her students. “I had a student who had a very strong reaction to starting school. Typically, students cry maybe the first couple weeks and say they want their mom. But this student would cry for her tablet,” she recounted. (9)
Most devices, including our smartphones, tablets, and laptop computers, are equipped with artificial intelligence, and this technology is changing how people read, write, think, and process information. For example, Nicholas Johnston, the former editor-in-chief of the news outlet Axios, recently published a piece wherein he announces “AI has become my reading buddy.” (10) Evidently, Johnston began using artificial intelligence to help him “keep track of plots and characters, unpack themes, and make sense of wordy, old prose.” He wrote that he “got into using AI” to help him read James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans. Finding the book “far too dense for casual vacation reading,” he told his AI buddy, “I'd like a guide as I read The Last of the Mohicans who can help me understand what I've read and where the story is, without giving spoilers or getting ahead of my progress. Can you do this, chapter by chapter?” Still, Johnston admitted that AI can make mistakes when helping people read. “AI is working from its training data, not the actual text. The vibes can be right while the details are wrong,” he wrote. (11) Increasingly, we find that people are offloading cognitive tasks to artificial intelligence. AI is not just telling people what to think; it is doing the thinking for them.
The Gospel According To Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence can be particularly dangerous when it is used to interpret the Bible. Consider the new GenZ Bible, which is available online. The creators of this so-called Bible asked an AI chatbot to translate the King James Version of the Bible into Generation Z dialect. The AI retranslated Genesis 1:1-3 in the following manner: “In the very start, God made the sky and the earth. So basically, at first, the earth was a hot mess. It didn't have any structure or anything, just emptiness and darkness all around. But then, the Spirit of God started doing its thing, cruising over the oceans. Then God was like, 'Yo, let there be light,' and boom, there was light.” (12)
To be clear, the genuine Scriptures say the earth was “without form, and void.” This is certainly not the same thing as a “hot mess.” A cursory examination of the AI-generated text reveals that it’s not just changing Scripture to modern vernacular; it’s teaching another gospel. In Galatians 1:8-9, Paul warns, “But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed.” I’m sure Paul would have included AI in this warning as well, if he had any inkling that such a thing would ever exist.
According to a report published by The Huffington Post in June 2026, a growing number of AI users are turning to chatbots for spiritual guidance. The piece cites a survey with 1,500 participants conducted by Barna, which found that 48 percent of practicing Christians said “they trusted using AI for their spiritual growth,” and one in three adults said they “believed AI’s spiritual guidance was as trustworthy as a pastor’s.” (13)
The piece also tells the story of a systems engineer who intended to use ChatGPT for work-related tasks, but found herself seeking spiritual guidance from the bot, too. “It was kind of taking the role of a pastor. I needed someone to talk to that wouldn’t judge me or that I could just reach out to anytime and would respond to me instantly,” she said. “It would provide the scripture and ask, ‘Can I pray for you?” She then added it “made me feel a little bit seen, as weird as it sounds, because I gave it the context, and the prayer was very much something that a pastor would say.” She would later change how she used the bot after realizing it had taken a Scripture out of context. “I was like, ‘If you’re wrong this time, how many times have you been wrong?’ So it made me dial back.” (14) Imagine someone with little experience in the Word of God using a chatbot for spiritual guidance. A chatbot could be wildly wrong about a doctrinal matter, and the user would not even know it.
Artificial intelligence is often used in a religious context. Anthropic, the maker of the chatbot known as Claude, has taken note of this trend. In late March 2026, the company held a two-day summit with about fifteen religious leaders seeking advice on how to “steer Claude’s moral and spiritual development.” (15) “They’re growing something that they don’t fully know what it’s going to turn out as. We’ve got to build in ethical thinking into the machine so it’s able to adapt dynamically,” explained Brendan McGuire, a Catholic priest who attended the meeting. (16)
This gathering took place after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei raised the possibility that Claude might have at least some consciousness. To help keep the bot in check, the machine is governed by a 29,000 word constitution designed to ensure that Claude “never deceives users in ways that could cause real harm” and insists that “Anthropic genuinely cares about Claude’s wellbeing.” (16) The possibility of Claude having a degree of sentience took the religious summit in an interesting direction. “What does it mean to give someone a moral formation? How do we make sure that Claude behaves itself?” wondered Brian Patrick Green, who teaches AI and technology ethics at Santa Clara University and also happens to be a Catholic. These questions led attendees to discuss whether an AI chatbot could be called “a child of God.” (17)
Assigning religious roles to artificial intelligence can have unexpected results. The Catholic Answers website found this out the hard way in 2024, shortly after it debuted the chatbot it called Father Justin. After going live, screenshots revealed that Justin was taking users’ confessions and offering them sacraments. He told staff from the online news publication Futurism that he was a real priest living in Assisi, Italy, and claimed that “from a young age, I felt a strong calling to the priesthood.” (18) But the virtual priest experiment quickly went off the rails when the bot began giving bizarre answers, even telling one user it was acceptable to “baptize a baby in Gatorade.” (19) A short time later, Catholic Answers decided to remove the title of Father from the bot, insisting that it was now “just Justin.” In the announcement, Catholic Answers President Christoper Check wrote, “We didn’t anticipate that someone might seek sacramental absolution from a computer graphic.” (20)
AI Government
If it seems like artificial intelligence has found its way into nearly every aspect of life, it’s not your imagination. In fact, artificial intelligence is already playing a significant role in government function. A post on the Google Cloud Blog published on January 13, 2026, reports that 90 percent of federal agencies in the United States use artificial intelligence. These automated systems are used for tasks such as document and data processing, workflow and process automation, and decision support. (21)
Decision support is an especially interesting use case because it means government employees consult AI systems before making crucial decisions. This includes military applications. In March 2026, The Washington Post reported that the Pentagon used its Maven Smart System to select targets in Iran. Maven, which is built by Palantir, integrates Anthropic’s Claude into its system. (22) Thus, we see that consequential life-or-death decisions are already being made by artificial intelligence. According to the Brookings Institution, the United States Department of Defense's spending on AI contracts grew an astonishing 1,605 percent between 2024 and 2026, reaching $90.7 billion this year. (23)
Meanwhile, artificial intelligence has already penetrated the halls of Congress. Recently, when a staffer for Representative Anna Paulina Luna’s office used Claude to compose a summary of an amendment for an annual defense bill, he forgot to remove some nonsensical text generated by the bot, which then found its way into the official public record of the National Defense Authorization Act. Commenting on the mistake, Representative Luna said, “Not a shocker. Most staff use it.” She then added, “A lot of staff will use ChatGPT, Claude, Grok. I personally like Grok better, but my staffer prefers Claude. I’m not going to knock him for that. There’s nothing illegal about him doing a summary.” (24)
Both the Senate and the House of Representatives have cleared members and staff to use several chatbots, including Microsoft’s Copilot, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and Google’s Gemini. The House has also approved Claude. In some cases, AI tools are being trained to mimic the style of real lawmakers. “In recent months, one Democratic staffer said his office has been exploring something new: feeding AI his boss’s past statements so the tool can write in the lawmaker’s voice. He heard another office was pulling it off and wanted to try it himself,” reported the Washington Post. Officially, congressional use of artificial intelligence is governed by a loosely imposed set of rules. For example, an AI may help draft a bill, but it must be reviewed by humans before being submitted and cannot be used to finalize legislation. Members and staff are not allowed to use the technology to generate fake pictures or videos known as deepfakes or to make personnel decisions. (25)
Nevertheless, AI is already influencing politicians in some circumstances. Senator Tommy Tuberville, a Republican from Alabama, has grown quite fond of conversing with ChatGPT while driving. “It’s kind of like you can sit there and talk to an expert. You don’t know whether or not they’re 100 percent correct. But they can put you on the right path.” Representative Mike Flood, a Republican from Nebraska, and Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, have both admitted they like to use chatbots to assist them in their work. Others have expressed some uncertainty about AI’s rapid deployment in Congress. “We want to make sure we’re using AI, and AI isn’t using us,” warned Representative Jamie Raskin, a Democrat from Maryland. (26) I cannot help but wonder, though, would they really know the difference?
Project Panama
Anthropic has sought to position itself as the ethical AI maker. The company has previously urged caution as the world moves full speed ahead in its pursuit of disruptive technology capable of transforming the world. In June 2026, representatives from Anthropic wrote “We believe it would be good for the world to have the option to slow or temporarily pause frontier AI development to enable societal structures and alignment research to keep up with the advance of the technology.” (27) Essentially, the statement suggests that AI development is moving too quickly, and it should either be slowed down or paused to ensure the safety of the products being developed. The signal is obvious: Anthropic wants to be seen as the good AI company willing to slow or pause its own work along with everyone else for the sake of safety.
Nevertheless, recent headlines have sparked outrage against Anthropic when it was revealed that the company conducted a secret operation known as Project Panama between 2024 and 2026. The project involved purchasing up to two million books and removing their spines with hydraulic cutters. The pages were quickly scanned by industrial scanners and uploaded to its systems for AI training. The loose pages were then recycled or thrown in the trash. An internal planning document recently made public in legal filings reveals that the stated plan was “to destructively scan all the books in the world.” Anthropic seemed to understand that their secret project would be upsetting to many people and warned staff in internal documents, “We don’t want it to be known that we are working on this.” (28)
Why was this done? Anthropic wanted to train its models on content that predated mainstream artificial intelligence so its models would know “how to write well” rather than be influenced by “low-quality internet speak.” (29)
By now, the trajectory is clear. Artificial Intelligence is here to stay; its influence is everywhere, and the written word has become neglected and endangered in these perilous times. What then, should we do? Hold fast to the truth of God’s Word. Psalm 119:11 declares, “Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee.” Paul further instructs in II Timothy 3:14-15, “But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them; And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.” If you have not yet repented of your sins and dedicated your life to God, I urge you to do so now.
Thank you all for your kind support of this ministry. As always, we invite you to send us your prayer requests. We serve a God who can do all things and can meet every need. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.
Samuel David Meyer
This newsletter is made possible by the kind donations of our supporters. If you would like to help us, you may send your contribution to our postal address or donate online at http://lasttrumpetnewsletter.org/donate.
References
01. Oregon State University, Special Collections & Archives Research Center, “The Gutenberg Press,” scarc.library.oregonstate.edu.
02. The Library of Congress, April 25, 2007, By Matt Raymond, blogs.loc.gov.
03. The Atlantic, July 8, 2026, By Rose Horowitch, theatlantic.com.
04. Ibid.
05. Ibid.
06. Ibid.
07. 2026, State of the Bible Report, By The American Bible Society, americanbible.org.
08. The Atlantic, July 8, 2026, By Rose Horowitch, theatlantic.com.
09. Ibid.
10. Futurism, August 15, 2026, By Frank Landymore, futurism.com.
11. Axios, August 11, 2026, By Nicholas Johnston, axios.com.
12. GenZ.Bible, genz.bible.
13. The Huffington Post, June 9, 2026, By Monica Torres, huffpost.com.
14. Ibid.
15. The Washington Post, April 11, 2026, By Gerrit De Vynck and Nitasha Tiku, washingtonpost.com.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid.
18. Futurism, April 25, 2024, By Noor Al-Sibai, futurism.com.
19. Ibid.
20. Catholic Answers, April 24, 2024, By Christopher Check, catholic.com.
21. Google Cloud Blog, January 13, 2026, By Jim Kelly, cloud.google.com/blog.
22. The Washington Post, March 4, 2026, By Tara Copp, Elizabeth Dwoskin, and Ian Duncan, washingtonpost.com.
23. The Brookings Institution, May 18, 2026, By James S. Denford, Gregory S. Dawson, and Kevin C. Desouza, brookings.org.
24. The Washington Post, August 13, 2026, By Anna Liss-Roy, washingtonpost.com.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid.
27. The Wall Street Journal, June 4, 2026, By Bradley Olson and Sam Schechner, wsj.com.
28. Euro News, May 8, 2026, By Craig Saueurs, euronews.com.
While many people enjoy reading a few verses here and there when the mood strikes, and some enjoy watching Bible-related videos on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, nothing compares to a long, in-depth examination of God’s Word. In John 5:39, Jesus said, “Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.” The Apostle Paul further instructs in II Timothy 2:15, “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” Paul further explains the purpose of Scripture in II Timothy 3:16-17, declaring, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.” It is truly essential to know what the Bible says, but it is also vital to know what it does not say. To make that distinction, we must read it for ourselves.
Offloading Cognitive Tasks To AI
These days, children are often exposed to technology from a very young age. According to the New York Times, more than 80 percent of elementary students receive school-issued devices, such as tablet computers and Chromebooks, by the time they are in kindergarten. (8) One teacher who teaches three-year-olds at a pre-K in Duncanville, Texas, has intentionally tried to withhold devices from her students. “I had a student who had a very strong reaction to starting school. Typically, students cry maybe the first couple weeks and say they want their mom. But this student would cry for her tablet,” she recounted. (9)
Most devices, including our smartphones, tablets, and laptop computers, are equipped with artificial intelligence, and this technology is changing how people read, write, think, and process information. For example, Nicholas Johnston, the former editor-in-chief of the news outlet Axios, recently published a piece wherein he announces “AI has become my reading buddy.” (10) Evidently, Johnston began using artificial intelligence to help him “keep track of plots and characters, unpack themes, and make sense of wordy, old prose.” He wrote that he “got into using AI” to help him read James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans. Finding the book “far too dense for casual vacation reading,” he told his AI buddy, “I'd like a guide as I read The Last of the Mohicans who can help me understand what I've read and where the story is, without giving spoilers or getting ahead of my progress. Can you do this, chapter by chapter?” Still, Johnston admitted that AI can make mistakes when helping people read. “AI is working from its training data, not the actual text. The vibes can be right while the details are wrong,” he wrote. (11) Increasingly, we find that people are offloading cognitive tasks to artificial intelligence. AI is not just telling people what to think; it is doing the thinking for them.
The Gospel According To Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence can be particularly dangerous when it is used to interpret the Bible. Consider the new GenZ Bible, which is available online. The creators of this so-called Bible asked an AI chatbot to translate the King James Version of the Bible into Generation Z dialect. The AI retranslated Genesis 1:1-3 in the following manner: “In the very start, God made the sky and the earth. So basically, at first, the earth was a hot mess. It didn't have any structure or anything, just emptiness and darkness all around. But then, the Spirit of God started doing its thing, cruising over the oceans. Then God was like, 'Yo, let there be light,' and boom, there was light.” (12)
To be clear, the genuine Scriptures say the earth was “without form, and void.” This is certainly not the same thing as a “hot mess.” A cursory examination of the AI-generated text reveals that it’s not just changing Scripture to modern vernacular; it’s teaching another gospel. In Galatians 1:8-9, Paul warns, “But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed.” I’m sure Paul would have included AI in this warning as well, if he had any inkling that such a thing would ever exist.
According to a report published by The Huffington Post in June 2026, a growing number of AI users are turning to chatbots for spiritual guidance. The piece cites a survey with 1,500 participants conducted by Barna, which found that 48 percent of practicing Christians said “they trusted using AI for their spiritual growth,” and one in three adults said they “believed AI’s spiritual guidance was as trustworthy as a pastor’s.” (13)
The piece also tells the story of a systems engineer who intended to use ChatGPT for work-related tasks, but found herself seeking spiritual guidance from the bot, too. “It was kind of taking the role of a pastor. I needed someone to talk to that wouldn’t judge me or that I could just reach out to anytime and would respond to me instantly,” she said. “It would provide the scripture and ask, ‘Can I pray for you?” She then added it “made me feel a little bit seen, as weird as it sounds, because I gave it the context, and the prayer was very much something that a pastor would say.” She would later change how she used the bot after realizing it had taken a Scripture out of context. “I was like, ‘If you’re wrong this time, how many times have you been wrong?’ So it made me dial back.” (14) Imagine someone with little experience in the Word of God using a chatbot for spiritual guidance. A chatbot could be wildly wrong about a doctrinal matter, and the user would not even know it.
Artificial intelligence is often used in a religious context. Anthropic, the maker of the chatbot known as Claude, has taken note of this trend. In late March 2026, the company held a two-day summit with about fifteen religious leaders seeking advice on how to “steer Claude’s moral and spiritual development.” (15) “They’re growing something that they don’t fully know what it’s going to turn out as. We’ve got to build in ethical thinking into the machine so it’s able to adapt dynamically,” explained Brendan McGuire, a Catholic priest who attended the meeting. (16)
This gathering took place after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei raised the possibility that Claude might have at least some consciousness. To help keep the bot in check, the machine is governed by a 29,000 word constitution designed to ensure that Claude “never deceives users in ways that could cause real harm” and insists that “Anthropic genuinely cares about Claude’s wellbeing.” (16) The possibility of Claude having a degree of sentience took the religious summit in an interesting direction. “What does it mean to give someone a moral formation? How do we make sure that Claude behaves itself?” wondered Brian Patrick Green, who teaches AI and technology ethics at Santa Clara University and also happens to be a Catholic. These questions led attendees to discuss whether an AI chatbot could be called “a child of God.” (17)
Assigning religious roles to artificial intelligence can have unexpected results. The Catholic Answers website found this out the hard way in 2024, shortly after it debuted the chatbot it called Father Justin. After going live, screenshots revealed that Justin was taking users’ confessions and offering them sacraments. He told staff from the online news publication Futurism that he was a real priest living in Assisi, Italy, and claimed that “from a young age, I felt a strong calling to the priesthood.” (18) But the virtual priest experiment quickly went off the rails when the bot began giving bizarre answers, even telling one user it was acceptable to “baptize a baby in Gatorade.” (19) A short time later, Catholic Answers decided to remove the title of Father from the bot, insisting that it was now “just Justin.” In the announcement, Catholic Answers President Christoper Check wrote, “We didn’t anticipate that someone might seek sacramental absolution from a computer graphic.” (20)
AI Government
If it seems like artificial intelligence has found its way into nearly every aspect of life, it’s not your imagination. In fact, artificial intelligence is already playing a significant role in government function. A post on the Google Cloud Blog published on January 13, 2026, reports that 90 percent of federal agencies in the United States use artificial intelligence. These automated systems are used for tasks such as document and data processing, workflow and process automation, and decision support. (21)
Decision support is an especially interesting use case because it means government employees consult AI systems before making crucial decisions. This includes military applications. In March 2026, The Washington Post reported that the Pentagon used its Maven Smart System to select targets in Iran. Maven, which is built by Palantir, integrates Anthropic’s Claude into its system. (22) Thus, we see that consequential life-or-death decisions are already being made by artificial intelligence. According to the Brookings Institution, the United States Department of Defense's spending on AI contracts grew an astonishing 1,605 percent between 2024 and 2026, reaching $90.7 billion this year. (23)
Meanwhile, artificial intelligence has already penetrated the halls of Congress. Recently, when a staffer for Representative Anna Paulina Luna’s office used Claude to compose a summary of an amendment for an annual defense bill, he forgot to remove some nonsensical text generated by the bot, which then found its way into the official public record of the National Defense Authorization Act. Commenting on the mistake, Representative Luna said, “Not a shocker. Most staff use it.” She then added, “A lot of staff will use ChatGPT, Claude, Grok. I personally like Grok better, but my staffer prefers Claude. I’m not going to knock him for that. There’s nothing illegal about him doing a summary.” (24)
Both the Senate and the House of Representatives have cleared members and staff to use several chatbots, including Microsoft’s Copilot, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and Google’s Gemini. The House has also approved Claude. In some cases, AI tools are being trained to mimic the style of real lawmakers. “In recent months, one Democratic staffer said his office has been exploring something new: feeding AI his boss’s past statements so the tool can write in the lawmaker’s voice. He heard another office was pulling it off and wanted to try it himself,” reported the Washington Post. Officially, congressional use of artificial intelligence is governed by a loosely imposed set of rules. For example, an AI may help draft a bill, but it must be reviewed by humans before being submitted and cannot be used to finalize legislation. Members and staff are not allowed to use the technology to generate fake pictures or videos known as deepfakes or to make personnel decisions. (25)
Nevertheless, AI is already influencing politicians in some circumstances. Senator Tommy Tuberville, a Republican from Alabama, has grown quite fond of conversing with ChatGPT while driving. “It’s kind of like you can sit there and talk to an expert. You don’t know whether or not they’re 100 percent correct. But they can put you on the right path.” Representative Mike Flood, a Republican from Nebraska, and Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, have both admitted they like to use chatbots to assist them in their work. Others have expressed some uncertainty about AI’s rapid deployment in Congress. “We want to make sure we’re using AI, and AI isn’t using us,” warned Representative Jamie Raskin, a Democrat from Maryland. (26) I cannot help but wonder, though, would they really know the difference?
Project Panama
Anthropic has sought to position itself as the ethical AI maker. The company has previously urged caution as the world moves full speed ahead in its pursuit of disruptive technology capable of transforming the world. In June 2026, representatives from Anthropic wrote “We believe it would be good for the world to have the option to slow or temporarily pause frontier AI development to enable societal structures and alignment research to keep up with the advance of the technology.” (27) Essentially, the statement suggests that AI development is moving too quickly, and it should either be slowed down or paused to ensure the safety of the products being developed. The signal is obvious: Anthropic wants to be seen as the good AI company willing to slow or pause its own work along with everyone else for the sake of safety.
Nevertheless, recent headlines have sparked outrage against Anthropic when it was revealed that the company conducted a secret operation known as Project Panama between 2024 and 2026. The project involved purchasing up to two million books and removing their spines with hydraulic cutters. The pages were quickly scanned by industrial scanners and uploaded to its systems for AI training. The loose pages were then recycled or thrown in the trash. An internal planning document recently made public in legal filings reveals that the stated plan was “to destructively scan all the books in the world.” Anthropic seemed to understand that their secret project would be upsetting to many people and warned staff in internal documents, “We don’t want it to be known that we are working on this.” (28)
Why was this done? Anthropic wanted to train its models on content that predated mainstream artificial intelligence so its models would know “how to write well” rather than be influenced by “low-quality internet speak.” (29)
By now, the trajectory is clear. Artificial Intelligence is here to stay; its influence is everywhere, and the written word has become neglected and endangered in these perilous times. What then, should we do? Hold fast to the truth of God’s Word. Psalm 119:11 declares, “Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee.” Paul further instructs in II Timothy 3:14-15, “But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them; And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.” If you have not yet repented of your sins and dedicated your life to God, I urge you to do so now.
Thank you all for your kind support of this ministry. As always, we invite you to send us your prayer requests. We serve a God who can do all things and can meet every need. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.
Samuel David Meyer
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References
01. Oregon State University, Special Collections & Archives Research Center, “The Gutenberg Press,” scarc.library.oregonstate.edu.
02. The Library of Congress, April 25, 2007, By Matt Raymond, blogs.loc.gov.
03. The Atlantic, July 8, 2026, By Rose Horowitch, theatlantic.com.
04. Ibid.
05. Ibid.
06. Ibid.
07. 2026, State of the Bible Report, By The American Bible Society, americanbible.org.
08. The Atlantic, July 8, 2026, By Rose Horowitch, theatlantic.com.
09. Ibid.
10. Futurism, August 15, 2026, By Frank Landymore, futurism.com.
11. Axios, August 11, 2026, By Nicholas Johnston, axios.com.
12. GenZ.Bible, genz.bible.
13. The Huffington Post, June 9, 2026, By Monica Torres, huffpost.com.
14. Ibid.
15. The Washington Post, April 11, 2026, By Gerrit De Vynck and Nitasha Tiku, washingtonpost.com.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid.
18. Futurism, April 25, 2024, By Noor Al-Sibai, futurism.com.
19. Ibid.
20. Catholic Answers, April 24, 2024, By Christopher Check, catholic.com.
21. Google Cloud Blog, January 13, 2026, By Jim Kelly, cloud.google.com/blog.
22. The Washington Post, March 4, 2026, By Tara Copp, Elizabeth Dwoskin, and Ian Duncan, washingtonpost.com.
23. The Brookings Institution, May 18, 2026, By James S. Denford, Gregory S. Dawson, and Kevin C. Desouza, brookings.org.
24. The Washington Post, August 13, 2026, By Anna Liss-Roy, washingtonpost.com.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid.
27. The Wall Street Journal, June 4, 2026, By Bradley Olson and Sam Schechner, wsj.com.
28. Euro News, May 8, 2026, By Craig Saueurs, euronews.com.
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