Thousands of refugees and migrants continue to pour into Europe every day, fear of terrorism grows daily and the nations struggle to find a long-term solution. What does the future hold?

The boats keep coming. Overcrowded, unsafe boats flounder and capsize in the rough seas of the Aegean and still they keep coming – this autumn the number reaching Lesbos and other small Greek islands topped 7,000 per day.¹

People smuggling from Turkey to Greece across the dangerous seas is a multi-million dollar business. The people smugglers care nothing for humanity. They are making a fortune from the human misery of those who have lost everything in the war zones of Syria and Iraq – people so desperate that they will risk their lives boarding unsafe boats.

Looking for a Solution

Thousands are plucked from the sea every day and hundreds more simply drown, nameless victims of the greatest tragedy the Middle East has ever witnessed. This is the scene at the Eastern extremities of Europe.

At the other end of Europe, leaders of the EU nations are meeting to discuss desperate measures to deal with the crisis. How can they cope with the million strong flood of humanity that has descended upon Europe this year? How can such a human avalanche be absorbed among the nations? Even more urgently, how can it be halted, or even put on hold for a period, to give time for dealing with the situation in the war zones?

The humanitarian crisis engulfing Europe has no easy solution: neither is it a short-term problem that will be all over in a few weeks or months. Whole populations are on the move and there appears no end to the conflict that is destroying cities and towns across the Middle East and inflicting homelessness, injury and death on vast numbers of people.

The humanitarian crisis engulfing Europe has no easy solution – neither is it a short-term problem.

Europe on High Alert

The complexity is confounded by the mixture of migrants and refugees. The numbers are so great that it is impossible to discover who are the genuine refugees, who are the economic migrants and who are the jihadis slipped in among them by the Islamic State fighters.

Ever since the Paris atrocities on that notorious Friday 13 November, when at least one of the bombers had entered Europe through Greece posing as a refugee, the whole of the EU has been on high alert. The fact that the Paris bombers were a mixture of home-grown and migrant terrorists has added to the sense of fear and confusion.

Mass Fear

That fear and confusion is not confined to Europe but has spread to America as well. Just weeks after the Paris slaughter, a couple went on the rampage with automatic weapons in San Bernadino, California, slaughtering people as they were eating a meal together. President Obama used the occasion for an impassioned appeal for gun reform in the USA where he said that these mass killings were becoming routine.

The danger facing Europe is that mass killings will also become routine in the EU - unless the source of the problem in the killing-fields of the Middle East is dealt with effectively.

The danger facing Europe is that mass killings will also become routine here – unless the source of the problem can be dealt with.

Islamic 'Alliance'

Saudi Arabia has now announced the formation of a new military alliance of 34 Arab nations to fight terrorism. But who will they fight? Who do they define as 'terrorists'? Saudi Arabia has already beheaded more people this year than the Islamic State.² Their branch of Sunni Wahhabi Islam based upon the strict observance of Sharia law is rejected by half the Islamic world, including the coalition led by Iran which is presently fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

Iran and Saudi Arabia have been locked in a proxy conflict for several years, with Iran backing the rebels in Yemen who the Saudis have been bombing. So the chance of this new initiative bringing peace to the Middle East is virtually nil. The most likely outcome is to extend the conflict between the different branches of Islam.

But could this be within the purposes of God?

Though all-out war between Islam and the Western nations (which in some respects would be a war between Christianity and Islam) looks ever more plausible, it could be that internal conflict between the different sects of Islam will save us from World War III.

All-out war between Islam and the Western nations could be avoided – if Islam implodes due to the internal conflict between its various sects.

Looking Forward

In the New Year's Day issue of Prophecy Today we will look more closely at what is happening in the Middle East, particularly in the context of biblical prophecy. The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has gone quiet - the world's attention is upon Syria. But what does the future hold?

References

1 IOM Monitors Mediterranean Migrant Flows: 7,000 Crossing Daily to Greece. International Organization for Migration, Press Release, 10 September 2015.

2 Saudi Arabia Beheads Nearly Twice As Many People As ISIS So Far This Year. MintPress News Desk, 25 August 2015.