Incomprehensibly horrifying murders have been making headlines in recent days.

On October 30, a 40-year-old immigrant from Poland ordered her son and a playmate to “kneel on a bedroom floor and pray, then stabbed them both dozens of times, as they begged for their lives,” the Associated Press reported.

The 7-year-old boy had stab wounds on his head, face, neck and back. The report said he was stabbed 100 times; the other child, a 5-year-old girl, about 50 times. Both appeared to have had their throats slit.

The Illinois mother, who murdered her son and the child she had been entrusted to watch, claimed she did so because “the children had evil inside them and she was trying to get the evil and devil out of them.”

This nightmare took place just on the heels of another heart-rending tragedy. On October 25, a New York City mother came home to find her 6-year-old daughter and 2-year-old son lying motionless in their bathtub in a pool of blood and then watched as the perpetrator, their trusted nanny, violently attempted to commit suicide.

It seems like something out of a depraved horror movie. One law enforcement official said the murder was one of “the most gruesome and horrific crimes” he’d seen in 30 years on the job.

How can such horrors happen? Is there an explanation?

In an August Philadelphia Trumpet article, Joel Hilliker commented on the gruesome cannibalism outbreak last spring. “Our world suffers from far more satanic influence than most people realize,” he wrote.

… Revelation 12 reveals the lightning-bolt truth: The violent ruler of the evil spirits, who at one time actually inhabited heaven, has been cast down: ‘he was cast out into the earth, and his angels [the demons] were cast out with him.’ The devil and his countless demons are now roving the Earth, spreading their evil. ‘Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea!’ the scripture warns: ‘for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.’

This is why today’s world is so perilous!

Human history is full of bloody crimes. However, biblical prophecy expressly says that Satan’s influence will increase as his time on Earth draws short.

In addition, the end times are prophesied to include a decline in the natural affection that binds families together and that inspires a protective spirit in adults toward children. “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come,” the Apostle Paul wrote. “For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection” (2 Timothy 3:1-3).

But even this increase in such problems contains hope: The growing prevalence of these mind-numbing acts proves we are living in the last days—which means we are soon to witness the return of Jesus Christ, who will put a stop to these abominable acts! Time is short and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ draws near.

Until then, as Joel Hilliker said, “expect more of these horrifying headlines in the time ahead!”

Now is the time for us to draw near to the one true God who alone can protect us and our little ones during these perilous times. God speed the day when little children won’t have even the slightest inkling of fear that harm can come upon them from the same hands that nurture them.