Volume 44 Issue Eight August 2025
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
Counting The Cost
“Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten. Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.” - James 5:1-3
The sudden and jarring dissolution of the alliance between American President Donald Trump and eccentric tech billionaire Elon Musk is a poignant reminder of just how rapidly a partnership can deteriorate in American politics. Musk was instrumental in propelling Trump to victory in the 2024 Presidential election, having spent nearly $300 million on the Trump campaign. (1) During the election cycle, he was a relentless cheerleader for Trump, spearheading efforts to encourage people, and especially young men, to vote for the Republican nominee.
For his efforts, Musk earned a spot in Trump’s inner circle, becoming a trusted adviser and confidante. He was tapped by President Trump to head the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, an initiative primarily concerned with curtailing government waste. As of this writing, the department claims to have saved the American taxpayers an estimated $190 billion via spending cuts. (2) However, this goal falls well short of Musk’s previously stated ambition to cut spending by one trillion dollars by the end of fiscal year 2025. (3)
When Musk came to Washington, D.C., as a special government employee shortly after the inauguration of President Trump, he expressed confidence in his ability to dramatically improve the U.S. government's debt crisis. Yet, his actions, which resulted in mass layoffs and the dismantling of government agencies deemed to be wasteful, caused him to become one of the most hated men in America. The electric vehicle maker, Tesla, of which Musk is CEO, saw acts of vandalism, firebombings, and destruction in its showrooms. The automaker’s net income plunged by 71 percent in the first quarter of 2025, and Musk’s personal net worth dropped by a mind-boggling $122 billion. (4)
When we consider that the Department of Government Efficiency managed to cut only $190 billion in spending, a mere drop in the ocean of debt, we gain clearer insight into why most politicians lack the political fortitude to seriously tackle the debt crisis. Can you imagine the outrage that would ensue if Congress were to try earnestly to cut $1 trillion a year in government spending, or raise taxes enough to reverse the annual deficit? I strongly suspect we would see riots in the streets. Above all else, politicians want to win. Raising taxes and cutting government programs is always deeply unpopular. However, Elon Musk is not a politician, and he has never been elected to any government position by the American people. His position as “the world’s richest man” may have given him a false sense of security. As it turns out, however, money cannot buy everything.
The bond between the President and the world’s richest man was abruptly severed in early June 2025 when Musk voiced opposition to the President’s spending bill, calling it a “disgusting abomination” that would saddle the American people with “crushing” debt. (5) Officially known as the One Big Beautiful Bill, the legislation was first passed by the House of Representatives on May 22, 2025. (6) On July 1, 2025, the Senate passed its version of the legislation in a hotly contested showdown that required Vice President J.D. Vance to cast the tie-breaking vote. (7) On July 4, 2025, President Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law. (8)
In the end, the relationship between Musk and Trump became so acrimonious that Musk threatened to use his massive wealth to fund a new political party to compete with both the Democrats and the Republicans. “By a factor of 2 to 1, you want a new political party and you shall have it!” Musk wrote on his social media website known as X. He then continued, “When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste & graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy. Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom.” (9) Trump, long known for his temper and his propensity to hold a grudge, lambasted Musk’s plan to start a new party, stating that doing so would cause “total disruption and chaos.” In other statements, President Trump said Musk was “off the rails” and becoming “a train wreck.” (10)
As the feud continued to escalate, Trump hinted that he might turn the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, on Musk. “Elon may get more subsidy than any human being in history, by far, and without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa. No more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a FORTUNE,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. He then added, “Perhaps we should have DOGE take a good, hard, look at this?” (11) In an exchange with reporters, Trump stated that his administration will “have to take a look” at deporting Musk back to South Africa. (12) One thing is clear, President Trump does not tolerate dissent, even if you happen to be a man who spent hundreds of millions of dollars helping him get elected.
Now that the uproar has calmed down, the pertinent question we should ask is: Was Musk correct in his assertion that the Big Beautiful Bill is a “disgusting abomination?” Let’s examine the facts, and you can decide for yourself.
What Is In The Bill?
The One Big Beautiful Bill is an enormous piece of legislation. Only the most dedicated and avid readers would have the wherewithal to read the entire document, and I would venture a guess that few members of Congress fully read and understood what they were voting for. In fact, when Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer requested that it be read aloud by the Senate clerks, it took them 15 hours and 55 minutes to complete the task. (13) As would be expected, the sprawling document that is now law covers many different issues, and if you are an American citizen, the bill will impact you personally for better or for worse.
Some provisions in the massive piece of legislation are likely to have broad appeal among the American population, while others are more controversial. For example, the legislation makes the tax cuts enacted by Trump in 2017 permanent. The bill also allows taxpayers in the service industry to claim a deduction for the tips they earn, and employees who work more than 40 hours a week will qualify for a deduction for overtime pay. (14)
Other items in the bill include an increase of $150 billion for defense spending, including $1 billion for the development of kamikaze drones and $174 million for a proving ground to test autonomous robotic weapons. (15) “This legislation is a historic investment of $150 billion to restore America’s military capabilities and strengthen our national defense. Our military’s resources have declined over the years… Our defense industrial base has weakened. America’s deterrence is failing and without a generational investment in our national defense, we will lose the ability to defeat our adversaries,” said House Armed Services Committee Chairman Representative Mike Rogers, a Republican from Alabama. (16) The bill also provides $25 billion for the development of a Golden Dome missile defense system to protect American territory from ballistic missile strikes. (17)
Additionally, $170 billion has been allocated for border security and an unprecedented expansion of the federal law enforcement agency known as the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. The infusion of funds includes $45 billion to expand ICE’s network of detention centers, which would increase the housing capabilities of the facilities to accommodate more than 100,000 detainees. ICE is receiving an additional $30 billion to fund every aspect of the deportation process, which could result in the hiring of 10,000 new officers. (18) Todd Lyons, who is the acting director of ICE, lauded the increased spending allocated for his agency in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. “The unprecedented funding for ICE will enable my hard-working officers and agents to continue making America safe again by identifying, arresting and removing criminal aliens from our communities,” Lyons gushed. (19) The new law also gives $46 billion to Customs and Border Protection to fund the construction of new walls and barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border. Twelve billion more is earmarked to fund new vehicles, facilities, training, and hiring for Border Patrol. (20)
Perhaps the most contentious portion of the new law is the changes it makes to Medicaid – a welfare program that helps low-income Americans procure healthcare. According to a report published by Forbes on July 1, 2025, the bill implements cuts to Medicaid that exceed a trillion dollars over the next ten years. These cuts were partially made possible by a new mandate that able-bodied Medicaid recipients work or volunteer at least eighty hours per month. However, opponents to the new policy claim that even working recipients of Medicaid might lose coverage simply because they don’t know how to fill out the paperwork. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that up to twelve million Americans could lose coverage over the next decade. (21) However, a fact sheet published by the White House contends that the new bill does not make any “cuts” to Medicaid at all, but simply eliminates fraud. “The One Big Beautiful Bill protects and strengthens Medicaid for those who rely on it—pregnant women, children, seniors, people with disabilities, and low-income families—while eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse. The One Big Beautiful Bill removes illegal aliens, enforces work requirements, and protects Medicaid for the truly vulnerable,” the fact sheet claims. (22)
The bill also overhauls the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which is commonly referred to as food stamps. The reforms call for individual states to cover a portion of the benefit costs by the year 2028. It further restricts eligibility by raising the work requirement from age 54 to age 64. Parents with children over the age of six will also be required to work. (23)
“The One Big Beautiful Bill” is definitely big, but beauty, as is often said, is in the eye of the beholder. President Trump certainly loves it. “This is the largest tax cut in the history of our country,” The President boasted. He then added, “There are hundreds of things in there. It is so good.” (24) Senator Markwayne Mullin, a Republican from Oklahoma, struck a more ambivalent tone, however. “Not everybody’s going to be happy with this,” he admitted. “I think we’re moving in the right direction to get to a landing spot that no one’s going to love, but it’s better than the alternative.” (25) A report published by CNN on July 16, 2025, claims about 6 in 10 Americans oppose the megabill. (26) According to a poll conducted by SSRS, the number one reason people oppose the new law is “the amount it adds to the federal budget deficit.” An explainer published by the Bipartisan Policy Center estimates that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act will cost 3.4 trillion dollars over the next decade. This cost surpasses $4 trillion when factoring in interest payments on the national debt. (27)
One Big Ugly National Debt
In 2008, a Senator from Illinois by the name of Barack Obama was running for President of the United States. This man, who would go on to win the election in November 2008 and become our nation’s 44th President, had a penchant for criticizing his predecessor’s handling of the national debt while on the campaign trail. Speaking at an event in July 2008, Obama told his audience, “The problem is that the way Bush has done it in the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion from the first 42 presidents. No. 43 added $4 trillion by his lonesome. So we now have over $9 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back. $30,000 for every man woman and child. That's irresponsible, that's unpatriotic.” (28)
However, after serving eight years as President of the United States, the national debt nearly doubled under Obama, rising from 10.6 trillion when he took office to nearly 20 trillion when he left. In 2015, as Obama was winding down his second term in office, a famous businessman and reality television star by the name of Donald Trump was rising to prominence. Trump criticized Obama heavily for his role in the ballooning debt, warning that if the debt continued to grow, “Obama will have effectively bankrupted our country.” Trump further insisted that he would be able to balance the budget and pay down debt. “When you have $18-$19 trillion in debt, they need someone like me to straighten it out,” Trump said in 2015. (29) President Trump would go on to preside over the largest four-year increase in the national debt ever recorded. By the time Trump’s first term concluded in January 2021, the national debt had increased from just under $20 trillion to just under $28 trillion. (30)
The rise in the national debt over the last two decades has been staggering. Before the United States went to war with Iraq in 2003, the national debt was $6.5 trillion. By the time the Great Recession began in 2008, the debt had jumped to $10.1 trillion. By 2017, when Trump was in the White House for the first time, the debt had jumped to $20.5 trillion. As of this writing, the national debt now exceeds $36 trillion and continues to grow. (31) Thus, the debt has grown by about 30 trillion dollars in a little over twenty years. This exponential growth is already having a detrimental impact on the United States of America.
CBS News notes in a report published on June 11, 2025, that the United States spent a whopping 1.1 trillion dollars on interest in 2024. (32) “The interest costs now are bigger than defense spending, which is extraordinary. The budget threat here is that all of these increasing federal interest costs will crowd out all the other priorities in the federal budget that the policymakers want to spend on,” said Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute. (33) In other words, the money being spent on interest payments is money that is no longer available for other priorities, including defense, national security, infrastructure, or assistance for the elderly and veterans. Furthermore, since the government routinely runs a deficit, it means more money must be borrowed to service existing debt. It is akin to a household with heavy credit card debt taking out a new credit card to use for cash advances to pay off the other credit card debt. If these maneuvers continue, it could lead to a painful financial crisis.
There is no indication that the trajectory of the national debt is going to change any time soon. Tucked deep within the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is a provision that increases the national debt limit by five trillion dollars. (34) This provision was a sticking point for Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who was one of only three Republicans to vote against the bill. “In deciding whether to vote for the ‘big, not-so-beautiful bill,’ I ask a very specific question: Will the deficit be more, or less, next year?” Paul later went on to write on the social media platform known as X, “I wasn’t looking for favors. I wasn’t horse-trading. I was fighting for the American people and against our out-of-control debt. Bottom line: I offered my vote for fiscal sanity. Congress chose to sell out taxpayers instead.” (35)
When we hear terms like billions and trillions tossed around so loosely, we can easily become desensitized to their true meaning. For reference, one trillion is a million millions or a thousand billions. Remarkably, if you collected all U.S. currency in the world – every note and every coin in circulation, it would only total about 2.4 trillion dollars according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. (36)
At its current pace, the national debt grows by about $55,000 every second. (37) The Congressional Budget Office, or CBO, estimates that debt held by the public, including individuals, corporations, and other countries such as Japan and China, will reach an eye-watering $138 trillion by the year 2055 unless there is a significant shift in policy. (38) It should be noted that the CBO routinely underestimates how much the national debt will grow. Left unchecked, the national debt could eventually grow so large that it leads to a financial and societal collapse. Interestingly enough, a brief published by Penn Wharton in October 2023 states, “Under current policy, the United States has about 20 years for corrective action after which no amount of future tax increases or spending cuts could avoid the government defaulting on its debt whether explicitly or implicitly.” (39) American leaders would be wise to seriously consider the national debt and what can be done to rectify the exploding debt crisis.
If the United States ever defaulted on its debt, this would no doubt cause a ripple effect around the world. It would not just be an American collapse, but in all likelihood, a global collapse. A global economic collapse would usher in a new era, and I believe the end result would be the implementation of a global antichrist government. I recall many years ago, my father, Pastor David J. Meyer, stated that he believed that when the man of sin is revealed, commonly referred to as the antichrist, he will gain the favor of the masses by offering to forgive their debt. However, this debt forgiveness would come with strings attached. It would usher in a new monetary system, a likely cashless society, wherein no man or woman can buy or sell without a mark in their right hand or forehead. II Thessalonians 2:3-4 warns, “Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.” Revelation 13:16-18 describes the rise of an antichrist economic system, declaring, “And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.” James 5:1-3 describes an economic collapse in the last days. These verses predict, “Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten. Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.” The imagery of cankered gold and silver provides a poignant metaphor for money that suddenly becomes worthless.
Despite the very real risk the United States is facing from exponential debt, the words of our Lord and Saviour hold true now and forever. In his beautiful Sermon on the Mount, Jesus Christ instructs his followers not to worry regardless of what the future may bring. Matthew 6:31-34 instructs, “Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” 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. While the future is uncertain, we know the one who knows the end from the beginning, and we know that our God will never leave nor forsake us. If you have any prayer needs, great or small, we invite you to send them our way. We always give each request individual attention. 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. Axios, June 5, 2025, By Natalie Daher, axios.com.
02. The Department of Government Efficiency, doge.gov.
03. The New York Times, April 14, 2025, By Jess Bidgood, nytimes.com.
04. Axios, April 25, 2025, By Zachary Basu, axios.com.
05. BBC News, June 4, 2025, By Bernd Debusmann Jr., bbc.com.
06. Ways and Means Committee, House of Representatives, May 22. 2025, waysandmeans.house.gov.
07. CBS News, July 4, 2025, By Kaia Hubbard and Caitlin Yilek, cbsnews.com.
08. The White House, July 4, 2025, whitehouse.gov.
09. CBS News, July 6, 2025, By Joe Walsh, cbsnews.com.
10. Ibid.
11. NBC News, July 1, 2025, By Megan Lebowitz, nbcnews.com.
12. ABC News, July 1, 2025, By Rachel Scott, Fritz Farrow, Lalee Ibssa, and Ivan Pereira, abcnews.go.com.
13. The Hill, June 29, 2025, By Al Weaver, thehill.com.
14. Associated Press, July 4, 2025, By Kevin Freking and Lisa Mascaro, apnews.com.
15. Defense CoOp, April 28, 2025, By Jon Harper, defensecoop.com.
16. Ibid.
17. Associated Press, July 4, 2025, By Kevin Freking and Lisa Mascaro, apnews.com.
18. CBS News, July 10, 2025, By Camilo Montoya-Galvez, cbsnews.com.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid.
21. Forbes, July 1, 2025, By Sara Dorn, forbes.com.
22. The White House, Myth vs. Fact - The One Big Beautiful Bill, June 29, 2025, whitehouse.gov.
23. ABC News, July 2, 2025, By Kelly McCarthy and Melanie Schmitz, abcnews.go.com.
24. The New York Times, June 27, 2025, By Carl Hulse and Catie Edmondson, nytimes.com.
25. Ibid.
26. CNN, July 16, 2025, By Ariel Edwards-Levy, cnn.com.
27. Bipartisan Policy Center, July 23, 2025, By Andrew Lautz, bipartisanpolicy.org.
28. Fox News, December 22, 2015, By Fox News, foxnews.com.
29. National Public Radio, February 13, 2019, By Bill Chappell, npr.org.
30. The Washington Post, January 25, 2024, By Philip Bump, washingtonpost.com.
31. The Washington Post, June 11, 2025, By Alyssa Fowers and Jeff Stein, washingtonpost.com.
32. CBS News, June 11, 2025, By Aimee Picchi, cbsnews.com.
33. Ibid.
34. CBS News, July 4, 2025, By Kaia Hubbard and Caitlin Yilek, cbsnews.com.
35. The Hill, July 1, 2025, By Miriam Waldvogel, thehill.com.
36. Federal Reserve of St. Louis, July 24, 2025, fred.stlouisfed.org.
37. Axios, July 24, 2025, By Ben Berkowitz and Danielle Alberti, axios.com.
38. Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, March 27, 2025, crfb.org.
39. Penn Wharton, October 6, 2023, By Jagadeesh Gokhale, Kent Smetters, and Mariko Paulson, wharton.upenn.edu.
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