Billionaires and financial leaders meet at G20 in North Carolina

 

The Next Chapter

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)

What Is Claude AI? How Anthropic's AI Assistant Compares to ChatGPT 🤖

 

Anthropic Destroyed 2 Million Books 😳

Anthropic Destroyed 2 Million Books 😳

Julia McCoy

Aug 13, 2026  Future of AI: AGI and Superintelligence

FREE GUIDE: 📘 The Content Creator's AI Blueprint  – https://FirstMovers.ai/blueprint/

Anthropic bought millions of physical books, sliced the spines off with a hydraulic machine, scanned the pages, and threw the originals away — to train Claude.

Court documents revealed an internal effort called *Project Panama*, and a $1.5 billion copyright settlement is now paying authors about $3,000 per book. A judge ruled the destruction fair use.