It might seem unusual to write an end times article on the suppression of truth, yet I believe it is key to understanding the last days pagan society that we are living in today.

The Bible is clear that the kind of society that we are to expect in the period preceding the return of the Lord is one of exceeding great wickedness. Jesus warned of an increase of wickedness in the last days (Matt 24:12a) and then gave us an example of the kind of society we should expect. He said it would be just as it was in the “days of Noah” (Luke 17:26). What were the days of Noah like? Well, it was a time of so much grievous wickedness and evil that we find the saddest verse in the Bible.

“The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled.” – Genesis 6:6-7

No other time in human history do we find God saying that he regretted creating man, than we do with the days of Noah. Yet, Jesus warned that this extreme pagan wickedness would appear on the earth once again in the days leading up to his return.

A key scripture that gives us valuable insight into how and why a society descends into pagan immorality is Romans 1:18-32. The very first verse of this passage sums up the state in which we find ourselves in the West.

“The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness” (v.18)

And in verses 21b and 22a:

“…their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools…”

We are certainly living in a time where truth is being suppressed on a massive scale. Right across the West, we are systematically being dumbed down as a result of the media, technology, entertainment, and the educational institutions.

Secular social scientists are beginning to notice this disturbing trend. A new study, conducted by Norwegian scientists, shows that IQ scores of today’s young people are in sharp decline.

Their study revealed that the IQ points of those tested peaked among those born in 1975, while people born in 1991 scored five points lower. They say this shift could be due to many factors, including the way children are brought up and educated. For example, there is less focus on subjects like mathematics and languages, while the total amount of time spent watching television or using technology has increased significantly.

Breitbart News previously reported that the number of people buying books in Germany plummeted by nearly 18 percent between 2013 and 2017, the study commissioned by the German Publishers and Booksellers Association found.

The drop was even steeper at 24 to 37 percent among those aged 20 to 50 — the same age group that now spends more than three hours a day on the internet.

Streaming services like Netflix with their binge-worthy television series in particular “exert a great appeal” and frequently replace books as a pastime, it said.

The dumbing down of society is also particularly noted by the type of people that society looks to for advice and guidance. Once upon a time, people looked to godly thinkers, philosophers and theologians in regard to the issues of the day. Now, it’s entertainers and celebrities who dictate what is morally acceptable and what isn’t.

In yesteryear, popular TV shows contained characters with virtuous, noble and interesting personalities. Today, many of the most popular TV shows feature characters with extremely shallow personalities engaging in petty conversations and gossip.

Even sports stars are considered role models and looked to for their political opinions on the national conversation. Why?

Interestingly, all these shifts in our culture was noted by famed science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein back in the 1980’s. He said,

“But there seems to have been an actual decline in rational thinking. The United States had become a place where entertainers and professional athletes were mistaken for people of importance. They were idolized and treated as leaders; their opinions were sought on everything and they took themselves just as seriously — after all, if an athlete is paid a million or more a year, he knows he is important … so his opinions of foreign affairs and domestic policies must be important, too, even though he proves himself to be both ignorant and subliterate every time he opens his mouth.”

Our children are deliberately being dumbed down in our schools and universities. One of the greatest mistakes that many parents make today is assuming that the college that they’re sending their kids to is the same college that they went to. They couldn’t be more mistaken. There has been a seismic shift in the education institutions of America over the past 50 years. The college radical activists in the 1960s and 70s have become today’s tenured professors. These professors are no longer interested producing graduates with good job prospects, but rather producing dedicated leftist activists.

The rot in the education institutions first started back in 1962 when prayer was taken out of schools. This watershed moment in American history cannot be overstated enough. This event ushered in the age of post-modernism, moral relativism and nihilism where the truth of God creating the heavens and the earth was suppressed and the lie of evolution became the norm. Young Americans were then taught that they had come from nothing, live for no reason, and are going nowhere. Slowly but surely, this had a devastating impact on America’s young, which has resulted in much of the social dysfunction such as family breakdown, depression, sexual promiscuity, drug abuse, domestic violence, divorce, absent fathers, teenage pregnancy and suicide.

Incidentally, when young people are taught that they’ve come from animals, it should not surprise us that they then behave like them. As winter follows fall, the sexual revolution began in earnest as a result of the establishment of the secular worldview in American education. Predictably, the legalization of abortion came hot on the heels of the sexual revolution with the Supreme Court ruling on Roe vs. Wade in 1973. The diabolical ruling paved the way for over 54 million babies sacrificed on the neo-pagan altar of ‘sexual liberation’. As Romans 6:23a says, “The wages of sin is death”.

The rejection of Christian values from America’s centers of learning opened up a can of worms of ‘anything goes’ moral relativism. As G.K. Chesterton said, “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.”

The concept of “truth” itself has come under attack and now the vast majority of American universities teach that there is no such thing as objective truth. This in effect, has given way to the rise of Leftism and the SJW (social justice warrior) phenomenon. Considering there is no moral accountability, then the sole motivation for people becomes their own happiness. Hence, one’s feelings are even more important than facts.

So we have got to the point where truth and logic has given way to madness and an entire generation are being taught ridiculous concepts such as ‘sexual orientation’ and that ‘sexual orientation’ is fixed, yet your gender is fluid. In fact, they’re teaching young people that their gender is on a spectrum that can fluctuate from day to day. Yes, this is what they’re teaching your kids in college.

I am reminded of the quote by famed conservative writer and economist Thomas Sowell, “In a democracy, we have always had to worry about the ignorance of the uneducated. Today we have to worry about the ignorance of people with college degrees.” And as prominent conservative columnist Dennis Prager said, “You would have to have gone to college to believe something that stupid.”

Yet, the dumbing down of Americans is partly consequential and partly deliberate. In many instances, political policy, school curriculums and media narratives have been framed to dumb people down in order for them to easily be controlled and manipulated. We can expect in the last days, that more and more politicians (particularly on the Left) will seek to control and manipulate people in order to get their votes.

Sadly, it’s not just the secular aspects of Western Society who have been dumbed down, but also much of the church. Dennis Prager made a sobering, yet telling observation about Evangelical Christians in America today, “One thing I notice about Evangelicals is that they do not read. They do not read the Bible, they do not read the great Christian thinkers, they have never heard of Aquinas . . . I do not understand. I have bookcases of Christian books and I am a Jew. Why do I have more Christian books than 98 percent of Christians in America?”

The lack of discipline to read and study the Bible coupled with decades of “lifestyle preaching” from America’s pulpits has lead to a theologically malnourished church suffering from an epidemic of Biblical illiteracy.

Considering this, it should not surprise us when we see Christians put the LGBT rainbow flag over their Facebook profile and standing with abhorrent organisations such as Planned Parenthood. We are living in a day where many Christians today confuse grace with leniency, confuse holiness with legalism, and confuse ‘judging’ with mere criticism.

The proliferation of ‘pep talk Christianity’ and the lack of expository Bible teaching in church today have done essentially two things.

Firstly, it has watered down the gospel message. As John MacArthur previously quipped, “Sin has become less offensive, heaven less appealing, hell less horrific and the gospel less urgent.” Christians have lost their ‘saltiness’ and have become incapable of preventing the world from falling into decay. As the saying goes, when the church loses its voice, the world loses its conscience.

Secondly, it has created an environment that enables false teachers to flourish. Again, this is part of the end times scenario that Jesus warned of in Matt 24:11, “…and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people.” Consequently, the result of the mass deception is the great falling away.

The inevitable rotten fruit of the great falling away is the increase of wickedness, which leads us to the Romans 1 scenario that we now find ourselves in. Three times in Romans 1, it says that God “gave them over” (vv.24,26,28) as a consequence of the suppression of truth. We are living in a time where we can say with certainty that this very thing is happening right now with Western Civilization.

It may be unsettling reading about the sad moral decline of Western Civilization, but these are things that we must examine in light of the clear signs of Christ’s return. We may choose to be discouraged by these sobering events, or we can be encouraged by the fact that Christ is at the door. Hallelujah!

May we seek the Lord to restore the foundational principle in our nation that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.