This past summer, the Western world was focused on the United States Supreme Court’s ruling on same-sex “marriage.” Next, its attention was monopolized by a white woman who identifies as black. Then it was a male Olympic champion who sees himself as a woman. Focus then shifted to transgender rights—women’s rights—minority rights—immigrant rights—prisoner rights.

On July 29, they fixated on Cecil the lion and the man who killed him. Much of the world was outraged.

The American dentist who killed Cecil on safari received death threats. Protesters dressed as “dentist hunters” assembled outside his office and house. Celebrities piled on, including a late-night talk show host who actually wept over Cecil on live television. The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (peta) tweeted that the dentist should be “extradited, charged and, preferably, hanged.”

Why is this the story we are outraged about?

Since July, nine videos (so far) have been released showing Planned Parenthood officials, personnel and doctors discussing the harvesting and selling of body parts of aborted babies (article, page 14). It simply cannot get any more sick than this—finding creative ways to kill unborn children so you can cash in on their dismembered body parts.

Yet there have been no protests. No international outcry. No one has been shamed into resigning. One source measured the percentage of major American news networks’ coverage devoted to playing those videos: 0.008.

An Islamist murdered five U.S. servicemen in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on July 16. On July 1, a stoned illegal immigrant fatally shot Kate Steinle in the back as she walked along scenic Pier 14 with her friend and her father.

Jews are fleeing Europe. Christians are being slaughtered in the Middle East and North Africa. Women and girls are literally enslaved sexually every day in Syria and Iraq. Muslim girls are being mutilated by the tens of thousands in Britain.

The Russian empire is on the march. China is building a navy to take down the U.S. Iran is building the bomb—with America’s help! The United States is being overrun by illegal aliens. The euro is in crisis. Europeans are calling for a United States of Europe.

Yet what do we fixate on? What do we passionately react to? What are we outraged by?

Our selective outrage is outrageous. But here’s what makes our outrage truly incredible—and dangerous. The events we are so pointedly ignoring were prophesied. The Bible prophesied the rise of Asia and Europe—and the fall of America and Britain.

Bible prophecies are now being fulfilled almost by the week, and our peoples are soundly asleep!

This magazine has been trumpeting these prophecies for over two decades, after Herbert W. Armstrong prophesied them for more than 50 years. Now that these prophecies are being fulfilled, our mail bins should be buried; our phone lines should be lit up like Las Vegas; our Web traffic should crash our servers.

Instead, it’s more like a steady trickle of interest. God’s warning message of love is still going out, but to just one from a city and two from a family, as the Prophet Jeremiah said.

“This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God” (2 Timothy 3:1-4).

Would you describe your media, your protesters, your politicians as heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God? Then you are in the last days. And these times are perilous.

The fact that most people are blind is, in itself, a prophetic sign that we are nearing the return of Jesus Christ!

“For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night” (1 Thessalonians 5:2). This means that Jesus Christ will intervene at a time when most people least expect it! Phillips translates part of verse 3 as saying, “Catastrophe will sweep down upon them as suddenly and inescapably as birth pangs to a pregnant woman.” All this happens when most people are lulled to sleep by illusions of peace and security.

Verse 7 says, “For they that sleep sleep in the night; and they that be drunken are drunken in the night.”

But God has a message for the rare individual whom He calls to reject this world drenched in sin and drunk on delusion. If you will turn to God in repentance, faith and obedience to His laws, He is waiting for you. He offers you a superabundant love and mercy, life-changing revelation and truth, and the only sure hope!

“[N]ow it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed” (Romans 13:11).

Now is the time to let God strip away the delusion, to pour our hearts and energies into studying God’s Word, to fervently seek God and His direction in our daily prayers, and to abide by His commandments in our day-to-day living.

Now is the time to wake up, to see the world for what it really is, and to turn to God.