Dear friends:

Many are wondering if there is anything prophetic about the riots in France, which have also spread elsewhere in Europe.  In the past few days we have seen riots, burning, mayhem, and general anarchy in nearly 300 French cities.

Jesus said when "nation will rise against nation," that will be the beginning of birth pangs before His coming (Matthew 24:7-8).  The word for nation does not mean the artificial political boundaries we draw.  There Greek word for nations is ethnos, where we get the word ethnic.

This is surely an ethnic happening, as is the whole war on terror.  The ethnic group behind it all is the Islamic religion, which transcends national boundaries.  They are at war with the West and the God of the Bible.  It is a worldwide phenomenon.  The politically correct politicians and news media are the only ones who don't get it.

"Islam" means submission.  Islamists want the whole world to submit to the will of Allah, their moon god.  Spiritually speaking, this is Satan wanting the world to submit to him and worship him.  Islamists have been emboldened by Osama bin Laden, who many of them believe is the Islamic messiah.  All they know is hate, killing, and death.  They even hate and kill each other, as Sunnis and Shiites blow each other up.

This ethnic group wants to destroy Israel and the West, especially America, which they call "the great Satan."

This is no doubt the "ethnic group against ethnic group" and the birth pangs Jesus spoke about, as well as the filling of the earth with violence, described in Noah's day and as a sign of the return of the Lord.  Other birth pang evidence in that same passage in Matthew is that there will be "famines and earthquakes in various places."  Yes.

This is all probably God's judgment against the decadent West that has made the one true God only an equal opportunity god with pagan deities, actually less, and ironically using a pagan religion that self-righteously denounces such decadence, while at the same time murdering innocent people.

There are social explanations to the unrest in Europe, but they are eclipsed by the spiritual explanation.  Patrick Buchanan says, "The rioters are of Arab and African descent, and Muslim.  While almost all are French citizens, they are not part of the French people.  For never have they been assimilated into French culture or society.  And some wish to remain who and what they are.  They live in France but are not French.

"These newcomers worship a different God and practice a faith historically hostile to Christianity, a traditionalist faith that is rising again and recoils violently from a secular culture saturated in sex.

"Severed from the civilization and cultures of their parents, these Arab and Muslim youth may hold French citizenship and carry French passports, but they are no more French than Americans who live in Paris are French.  Searching for a community to which they can truly belong, they gravitate to mosques where the imams, many themselves immigrants, teach and preach that the West is not their true home, but a civilization alien to their values and historically hostile to their nations and Islam.

"The soaring Muslim population is a Fifth Column inside Europe."  (From http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=10116.)

This has happened due to out-of-control immigration of Muslims to Europe.  America also has out-of-control illegal immigration of Mexicans.  But thankfully, the Mexicans do not represent a totally alien culture hostile to the dominant faith of our nation.  Nevertheless, significant social problems are on the horizon in America.

Buchanan says, "Their numbers must grow.  For not only do they have a higher birth rate than the native-born Europeans, no European nation, save Moslem Albania, has a birth rate (2.1 births per woman) that will enable it to endure for many more generations.  The West is aging, shrinking, and dying."

And Jesus is coming, just like He said!

Jim