Southern Baptist megachurch pastor Robert Jeffress is out with a new book, “Countdown to the Apocalypse: Why ISIS and Ebola Are Only the Beginning,” and shared with Janet Mefferd yesterday some of the signs, besides ISIS and Ebola, that we are witnessing the Last Days.

One of the signs of the impending End Times, according to Jeffress, is the success of the gay rights movement, which he claimed is making people “desensitized” to the persecution of Christians and “will pave the way for that future world dictator, the Antichrist, to persecute and martyr Christians without any repercussions whatsoever.”

According to Jeffress, gay marriage has incontrovertibly driven down the marriage rate and is therefore undermining society.

“It is absolutely no coincidence that last year the marriage rate in the United States was the lowest it’s been in 93 years, and the reason is very clear,” he said. “If marriage is anything you want it to be, why bother to get married at all? Whenever you counterfeit something, you cheapen the value of the real thing, and gay marriage is a counterfeit marriage. What you’re doing is you’re causing all kinds of societal problems where there is not a stable family situation, where there are no marriages, partners come and go, and trying to rear children in that kind of involvement is a prescription for disaster.”

Jeffress and Mefferd also agreed that the book and film “Fifty Shades of Grey” — or as Jeffress called it, “Fifty Shades of Perversion” — is are signs that we are seeing the End Times.