The threat from the ISIL/ISIS/Islamic State terrorists just keeps getting worse. It is not only destabilizing and endangering more Mideast nations, but it is also threatening to expand its terror attacks to Europe and the USA. On the good side, the more evil and wicked its tactics become, the more ISIL is moving more nations to take military action against it.
As readers know, the latest wave of attacks and counterattacks began with the grisly burning alive of a captive Jordanian pilot and the beheading in Libya of 21 Egyptian citizens who were Coptic Christians. Jordan responded fiercely to the horrific execution of its pilot by launching at least three days of very harsh air strikes against ISIL targets (first link). That link reports that Jordan’s wave of air strikes may have killed as many as 7,000 ISIL terrorists. If so, I believe that would be a total higher than the US has claimed to kill in all its air strikes vs. ISIL to date. Then Egypt launched air strikes vs. ISIL targets inside Libya to avenge the executions of Egyptian citizens (second link). Both Jordan and Egypt should be praised and thanked by the international community for their responses to ISIL’s cruelty.
What some may not have noticed in media accounts is that ISIL has also threatened recently to take its terrorist war to Rome (third link). Italy is taking this threat seriously and has announced its willingness to participate in a coalition vs. ISIL forces operating inside Libya (fourth link). There are reports that ISIL is now spreading its tentacles so quickly inside Libya that it is moving its terrorists openly in convoys to seize and hold territory inside Libya the way it is holding territory inside Syria and Iraq (fifth link).
ISIL has threatened to launch new terrorist attacks inside Europe and even inside the USA later this year (see sixth link). That link focuses mostly on the threat of ISIL terrorist attacks inside the USA, and it offers evidence that ISIL already has sleeper cells inside the USA. The information all indicates that the real strategic threat posed by ISIL has still not been recognized or grasped by the Obama administration and the administrations of many other western nations. It was just last year that US President Obama was deriding ISIL as a “B-team” group that wasn’t worthy of much of his attention and he also held up Yemen as a success story for his foreign policy. Now, Obama’s Yemen policy has failed abysmally, and, in a report attributed to Egyptian intelligence services, ISIL is becoming an umbrella group to unite Jihadi Islamic terrorists from all over the world under one banner (sixth link). This would make it a global strategic threat.
As an example of how evil ISIL is becoming, there is a report that ISIL burnt alive 45 people in Iraq, and that ISIL is harvesting organs from executed prisoners to sell on the world organ-donor black market to finance its operations (last link). What will it take to wake up the rest of the world to how bad this threat really is? What will it take to arouse the world to take concerted action to wage a serious war on ISIL until it is eliminated?
Paul prophesied in II Timothy 3:1 that “perilous times” would come upon the world in the latter days. Luke 21:25 prophesied that there would be “perplexity” and “distress” upon the nations in the latter days just prior to the return of Jesus Christ. Whether it is proliferating and ever-more macabre terrorism, out-of-control immigration and refugee problems all over the world, the threats posed by growing monetary/banking/financial crises, droughts and weather calamities, the threat of the Ukrainian-Russian war exploding into a larger war, the threat of Iran getting nukes and the possibility that Israel may attack Iran to stop it from happening, etc., the world’s nations are in growing “distress” and “perplexity” in times of increasing perils that seem to defy solutions. This state of affairs was prophesied to occur in the Bible. For those who have not yet done so, I urge you to read my article, Are We Living in the Biblical “Latter Days?, to see that it is not only broad and global trend prophecies that are now being fulfilled, but that very detailed and specific biblical prophecies about the latter days have also been fulfilled in recent times. There is no doubt that we are living in the biblically-prophesied “latter days.” Brace yourself. Biblical prophesies warn that it is going to get a lot worse before things get better.
My thanks to a friend who sent me the sixth link.
- http://www.timesofisrael.com/jordan-approximately-7000-is-members-killed-in-strikes/
- http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/02/16/egypt-hits-isis-affiliated-terrorists-in-libya-after-video-showing-mass/
- https://news.vice.com/article/islamic-state-threatens-to-conquer-rome-in-gruesome-video-that-shows-21-beheadings
- http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/18/us-libya-security-italy-idUSKBN0LM0V220150218
- http://www.worldtribune.com/2015/02/13/isil-convoys-hundreds-fighters-advance-libyan-oil-port/
- http://mobile.wnd.com/2015/02/intel-isis-planning-attacks-on-u-s-soil/
- http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/02/18/isis-reportedly-burns-alive-45-people-in-western-iraqi-town/
