Are the End Times Upon Us?
Is mankind evolving into a more peaceful and prosperous people--or are we on a path toward ever-increasing moral depravity, social chaos and destruction?
Answering that dichotomy depends on one’s worldview, but Christian author Jeff Kinley is in the latter camp, telling The Blaze that he sees human beings continuously and perilously cutting God out of society.
“I look around my world and I think, ‘Wow, we’ve written God out of our own story here,’” Kinley recently said in an interview. “We’re content in living in our own lives.”
The author, who believes Noah, the flood and the ark unfolded as the Bible recounts, draws parallels between contemporary culture and the “pandemic godlessness of the earth” during Noah’s in his new book “As It Was in the Days of Noah.”
Human behavior then and now, he posits, isn’t all that different.
“Humanity had forgotten God so literally every man just did what they thought was right in their own eyes,” Kinley said of the days of Noah.
As for the current conditions, the author described what he sees as “pandemic unrestrained immorality” and “a falling away of the purity of faith.”
Kinley proceeded to describe how society’s current treatment of God mirrors the Bible’s depiction of the “end times”--a time-frame in Christian theology that precedes the Earth’s end.
While he said it’s impossible to judge when the end times might unfold, Kinley described the current conditions as matching those presented in the Bible, citing Matthew 24, among other references.
“As we ramp up to the end times, there’s going to be, as Romans 1 describes, a simmering hostility against God, against biblical morality,” Kinley told TheBlaze.
Kinley repeatedly spoke against the removal of God from society, saying that it leaves mankind to his own devices, creating a horizontal rather than vertical morality--one in which there is a “sliding scale of morality.”
The author also mentioned Israel’s reemergence as a prophetic sign as well.
But rather than make definitive declarations, Kinley exercised extreme caution, likening the scenario to how one generally observes road signs.
“As we look to the end times, I always picture it as sort of road signs in the distance,” he said. “You know that they’re there but you can’t read them. It’s unwise to make predictions about that.”
While considering what the Bible says about the end times can create nervousness in some, Kinley said that it’s not all “gloom and doom.” He believes that there are many people who follow Christ today and that their faith offers hope; now, he wants to reach even more people with the gospel.
“The Bible says that he’s the open door--and the thing that I love about that is as we look around it’s hard to live in dark times, but those who follow Christ know that there’s hope in the end for anyone who puts trust in him,” he said.
Kinley said that Christians shouldn’t be surprised when their faith, ideas and lifestyles aren’t as accepted as they once were. But he also believes in the importance of spreading the faith before the end times unfold.
“We’re not mainstream anymore. We’re more marginal than mainstream,” he said.