Returning to Europe after a year-long absence, one can tangibly feel change. Change in the attitude of Europeans toward the impact of immigrants not only on their individual nations, but collectively on European cultural traditions.

To the keen observer of European affairs, the most obvious change in European society over the past year is in the mood rippling across the Continent in reaction to Muslim immigration. It is no more tangibly felt today than in Germany.

Europeans fear loss of identity. Pan-Islamism threatens to undermine a European cultural tradition that has been embedded in that continent since the earliest days of the Holy Roman Empire. Despite the warped perceptions of a liberal press and mass media, the secularism of the past century has not dampened these traditions in the minds of the most influential classes in European society.

A crusading spirit is on the rise in Europe. The old contest between two great religiously based cultures, Islam and Romish Christianity, is raising its head yet once again. The decades-long push of Islamic immigration into Europe is suddenly meeting overt resistance from European governments.

The initial reaction is both political and legislative. It is destined to evolve into an all-out crusading war that will devastate pan-Islamism and largely blow its chief instigator, Iran, off the map (Daniel 11:40). Inerrant Bible prophecy says so, and that prophecy cannot be broken! (John 10:35).

During recent times, in a series of political and legislative initiatives, Switzerland has banned minarets from thrusting skyward in its cities, France is involved in the final stages of enacting legislation to ban headscarves and facial coverings worn by Islamic women, and a Dutch governing coalition exists today solely due to a deal struck with anti-Islam activist Geert Wilders, placing limitations on overt expressions of Islamism in the Netherlands.

Even more recently, in an early sign of the rising anti-immigrant mood in Europe, France sent its Gypsies packing back to Romania. In Italy, the city of Milan is following suit.

Last week, of all media, the leftish New York Times, surprisingly correct in its claim that Germany “risks a lurch to the right,” noted that this was the latest outgrowth of an increasing European tendency. This newspaper observed a startling phenomenon involving “The Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark: passionately democratic countries with strong creeds of tolerance, where parties of the right have now entered the political mainstream pushing anti-immigrant and anti-Islamic agendas” (October 11).

But perhaps the most concerning of all reactions to pan-Islamism is that which has been stirred within Germany by the publication during the summer of the best-selling book Germany Does Away With Itself by one-time German politician and ex-member of the board of the Bundesbank, Social Democrat Thilo Sarrazin.

Sarrazin’s book, based on similar theories to those once touted by Josef Mengele of genocidal Nazi infamy, posits that some peoples are biologically and genetically unsuited to settlement among the German peoples. Pinning his argument on this thesis, Sarrazin claims that German culture is under threat from the millions of immigrants that have migrated from Islamic countries into Europe.

This book has struck a chord with the masses in Germany. Its effect on Germany’s population has moved even the chancellor, who originally decried its contents and whose government has largely avoided comment on the Islamic problem to this stage, to affirm that attempts to build a multicultural society in Germany have “failed, utterly failed.”

Faced with surveys that indicate her electorate largely supports Sarrazin’s claims, and sensitive to upcoming state elections in March on which her political survival hinges, Mrs. Merkel told a gathering of younger members of her conservative Christian Democratic Union (cdu) on Saturday that at “the beginning of the ’60s our country called the foreign workers to come to Germany and now they live in our country.” She went on, “We kidded ourselves a while; we said: ‘They won’t stay, sometime they will be gone,’ but this isn’t reality. And of course, the approach [to build] a multicultural [society] and to live side-by-side and to enjoy each other … has failed, utterly failed.”

Deutsche Welle noted that Merkel’s comments followed a similar speech from Horst Seehofer, head of the cdu’s Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union. On Friday he declared his party’s stance against multiculturalism. Noting in particular the unsuitability of Muslim migrants to German society, Seehofer declared, “Multiculturalism is dead,” to party delegates’ applause.

Using an interesting turn of phrase, the conservative German daily newspaper Bild noted that “Seehofer deliberately launched his new crusade for the Christian Occident during the weekend when Chancellor Merkel met Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan” (October 11; emphasis mine).

The bbc correspondent handling the current story on immigration’s impact on Germany noted the newfound confidence in that nation, its politicians now being prepared to speak their mind on issues that have been taboo to public comment since the last world war. “He adds that there also seems to be a new strident tone in the country, perhaps leading to less reticence about no-go-areas of the past” (bbc, October 17).

Startling figures recently released from a series of polls in Germany reveal the deep-seated mindset of the average German in reaction to the impact of immigration on their society, in particular the inundation of the country by Muslims. Writing for the the New York Times, journalist John Vinocur notes (op. cit.):

• A poll by the Allensbach Institute showed 55 percent of the Germans considered that Muslim immigrants cost Germany “more socially and financially” than what they contribute to the economy.• When the president, Christian Wulff, described Islam in a speech as belonging to Germany in a manner similar to what he called its Judeo-Christian foundations, the newspaper Bild published a poll reporting that 66 percent rejected that view.• Another public opinion survey by Allensbach found 60 percent describing Mr. Sarrazin, whose book has sold over a million copies, as saying “many things that are correct,” while only 13 percent disagreed. Last month, an Emnid poll gave a notional “Sarrazin party” 18 percent of a national vote—theoretically, a better score than any of the election results of the Dutch, Danish or Swedish right-wing populists.

This trend in German public opinion is not an overnight phenomenon. It is symptomatic of a nation reverting to type under stimuli that are bringing its age-old nationalistic tendencies to the fore. It is destined to have identical results to those enacted in times past by the German nation when its imperial aims were threatened by Islam.

Then, as now, Jerusalem was the prize. Then, as now, when Germany felt Islam push at its gates, the Fatherland reacted with crusading fury, under the banner of the Holy Roman Empire.

Islam has pushed Germany too far. Even Germany’s most influential politicians are recognizing that the German electorate is reacting now with demands to stem the tide of Islam. The danger signals here are inherent in the argument being used by the book that has catalyzed the current volatile debate on immigration in Germany. That this will be a hot electoral issue next spring is guaranteed.

Commenting on the phenomenon, the man being freely touted as Germany’s next chancellor, Baron Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, declared, “Obviously, we haven’t sufficiently led the discussion.” If anyone can lead this discussion with the panache and finesse to craft it into an election issue that will work to his favor, it is this particular baron of the Holy Roman Empire. Guttenberg currently hovers at a 71 percent rating among the German electorate in respect of his most-favored status as Germany’s next chancellor.

During my recent visit to Europe, I sat at lunch one day with a wonderful group of 24 Germans and Austrians. They hailed from many different corners of these two countries, the majority being German.

These people are different to most Germans of today. They are true realists who understand the very nature, the history and the future destiny of the German peoples. They see the clouds building on the horizon within Germany today, but they look ahead to the grand future that awaits their peoples, together with all nations, in a far, far better world that beckons beyond—beyond the grave dangers this world faces as it plows headlong toward the final phase of three rounds of world war that started in 1914.

War will be the inevitable outcome of ages of rebellion of humankind against its Maker. And your Bible prophesies that war will be triggered by a blitzkrieg reaction by Germany against an aggressively pushing power which our editor in chief has proven is pan-Islam under the leadership of old Persia, Iran!

Those people I lunched with are warm and friendly, typical fun-loving Germanic folk, given to hospitality, bright of intellect, generally well organized in their personal lives as one would expect the typical Germanic person to be.

But they are not your typical Germans in one respect. Their minds are open to see the revelatory truth of Bible prophecy. Prophecy that depicts the unbreakable reality that the Creator of mankind has destined the German nation to be an instrument of correction on the most ungrateful, rebellious, sin-sick, morally-corrupt-to-the-core peoples, who have the least excuse to be in rebellion against their Maker, the nations of Israel—very specifically, the British, American and Jewish peoples!

That is, believe it or not, Germany’s short-term destiny. And that destiny is tied, oh so closely, to the aforesaid nations—Britain, America and the Judaic nation of Israel.

But the great hope of all this lies beyond the present and the immediate dislocating global future. It lies in the great prophecy that very soon, following the great conflagration ahead, three nations which have never in all of history really seen eye to eye will join forces to aid in forging a new world where peace and harmony will exist for a whole millennia of time!

“In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the land: Whom the Lord of hosts shall bless, saying, Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my inheritance” (Isaiah 19:24-25).

To understand the power of that prophecy, read The United States and Britain in Prophecy and Nahum—An End-Time Prophecy for Germany. They will bring both a new impact and a powerful poignancy to your observation of world events as such events build inevitably toward the fulfillment of these remarkable and very timely Bible prophecies!