Horrors of War in Syria

The Associated Press headline reads starkly, “No More Room for the Dead as Syria’s Aleppo Is Crushed” (December 4, 2016). According to the AP report, “Dignity in death has been lost as the rebel-held enclave that has held out for four years collapses… U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Stephen O’Brien pleaded Wednesday for access to eastern Aleppo, home to some 275,000, ‘before it becomes one giant graveyard.’ In some ways, it already has. Bodies have been left to rot on the streets. Ambulances and rescue vehicles can’t reach them because they have been targeted or because fuel has run out.” Approximately 450,000 have been killed as a result of the fighting of the War in Syria (Iamsyria.org). So many of those suffering in Aleppo are innocent—simply caught up in the fighting because of where they live.

Regardless of the outcome of this particular round of violence and destruction, the horrors of this conflict should call to mind the Bible’s prophecies concerning the eventual destruction of Syria’s capital, Damascus. “Behold Damascus will cease from being a city, and will be a ruinous heap” (Isaiah 17:1). “Damascus has grown feeble… Anguish and sorrows have taken her like a woman in labor… Therefore her young men shall fall in her streets, and all of the men of war shall be cut off in that day” (Jeremiah 49:24-26). Yet, just as God has prophesied the eventual end-time destruction of Damascus, so He also prophesied of the coming Kingdom of God to be set up on the earth (Mark 1:14-15). That Kingdom will finally bring peace to this strife-torn world (Isaiah 11). To learn more, watch our telecast “The Way to Peace.”