Nearing Midnight

This will be the last fund drive of 2008, so I think it is a good time for me to reflect on how productive the year has been for Rapture Ready. I want to thank everyone who has contributed in some way to this site. RR stands as the largest and most active prophecy website on the net, but it also has the distinction of being the greatest example of team effort by prophecy-minded Christians. While the vast majority of prophecy sites are centered on one individual, RR has been featuring the work of a number of writers who have an expertise in the field of prophecy. This year has been our most productive year ever as far as bringing in new talent.

On a sad note, we recently lost one our featured writers. John Funk passed away October 30 from complications resulting from surgery. Despite horrible back pain, John continued to send me articles until the very end. It's distressing to lose such a gifted writer and dear friend. I am happy knowing that he is in a better place, and that he now realizes what a wise investment he made by writing all those articles.

The Rapture Ready message board has seen amazing growth. Last quarter, I said, "We are very near the point of setting all-time highs for traffic." Well folks, on Election Day we hit the all-time record--and then some. I was expecting to sit down to watch McCain and many of his fellow Republicans get slaughtered, but instead, I spent most of the night on the phone with our service provider trying to balance the load. The main site was designed to handle heavy traffic, and I was thrilled that it was able to weather the storm.

I upgraded the message board to a bigger server package, and I'm planning on soon moving RaptureReady.com to a larger server. This will be our fifth move to a box with greater bandwidth. When the rapture takes place, the site's accessibility will be the most important factor in all our preparation.

One of the main goals of Rapture Ready has been to provide the world with a wealth of information to help people make sense of the end times. I've noticed that the site's vast number of resources--more than 20,000 articles--has had a growing influence on society. One way to measure the impact is by the number of books that reference the site. Google has a feature that allows you to search the content of books they happen to scan. In the past few years, there has been an explosion of books that utilize the content of RR.

In the past few years, I've noticed the trickle has turned in a flood. While the majority of the references are not of a positive nature, it shows the witness is getting out to people. When the rapture finally takes place, I think any book that had previously attacked this site as being a bunch of nonsense is worth its weight in gold.

This year has been absolutely disastrous for the stock market. The Dow Jones is currently on track to have its worst year ever. I'm sure many of you folks who have investments have looked at your portfolios and wondered what you could have done with all the money you lost. I'm not sure we Christians will be here to see the Dow return to its old highs. Our closeness to the tribulation hour makes me very pessimistic about the economy returning to the good ol' days.

There is no "down" day when it comes to investing in the Kingdom of God. Everyone who has supported ministries like Rapture Ready will be rewarded with healthy returns. The current financial meltdown could be an omen of a bigger loss to come. The crash may have wiped out 30-40 percent of most portfolios, but when the rapture occurs, it will wipe out 100 percent of our worldly holdings.

A convenient way to contribute to Rapture Ready is through a regular donation. PayPal subscribers and people who have their banks send funds to our PO box have become a vital part of our ministry. If you're interested in signing up, you can find the link on the Donation Depot page. Donations can also be sent to our PO box at:

Working out has never been something I have looked forward to in the course of trying–as they say—to prevent the temple from becoming a coliseum. So, I surround myself with audio that helps take my mind off of the discomfort–even the fleeting pains—that come with the sweat equity one must put into keeping this flesh useable for as long as possible in striving for quality of life.

Radio talk shows are usually the format I choose to take my mind from the physical exertion I’ve never found particularly a thing of joy. So, it was with welcome surprise that I heard a week or so ago the well-known talk host, Glenn Beck, filling the airways on my radio at a convenient morning hour. I have since been listening to His syndicated show that recently was chosen to replace other programming on the station to which I’ve tuned for a number of years.

Beck’s religious belief system is Mormonism, and that system doesn’t include any of the beliefs we of the premillennial, pre-trib eschatological view hold. I preface the balance of this commentary with this because of the profound nature of Mr. Beck’s talking points on the strange, troubling times in which America and the world are embroiled.

He believes, I infer from listening to him for these past days, as do I and many of my colleagues and others, that the changes proposed by the impending Obama administration, combined with the national and international economic meltdown, portend something of an apocalyptic future for the planet, should things continue in the same direction. The talk show host seems, as a matter of fact, even more pessimistic in his outlook than many of the pre-trib Christian emailers Todd and I hear from on a daily basis. His thoughts are downright morose in some instances, while he pontificates on things of the future.

Beck was one of the few public voices that predicted (in 1999) that if Osama bin Laden wasn’t captured or killed, New York City skyscrapers would soon have dead bodies in them. This, I’m sure, he based upon the bombing of the twin Trade towers by bin Laden’s cohorts in 1993.

It was with a chill running down my spine while showering after the workout that I listened to Glenn Beck talk about what he sees for this nation in the near future. While the content of his talk was on the surface disturbing, I have to admit a part of what he said–one line—confirmed in my mind that what he spoke was Holy Spirit engendered and intended to comfort. This, totally without the talk host having any idea of the astounding thing he had just said, I’m almost certain.

Mr. Beck said (I paraphrase) that America is on a track that is taking it at phenomenal speed toward the darkest hours of its history. He said further that he believed that by this time next year–by Christmas, as he refined his thoughts, America will be unrecognizable as she has been known.

He then said something that caused the chill down the spine to feel like “the Tingler” was portrayed to feel in that old Vincent Price horror movie, if anyone remembers that film. Beck said that America’s and the world’s move into that darkest time of history would not come incrementally. That is, things would not simply get worse and worse morally and economically until the point is reached that the world is irretrievably lost. He said that he believed that the country and the world would experience a great cataclysmic event that would be greater than the attacks of 9/11/01. The great, all-consuming crash into the abyss of calamity will come in an instant. I inferred that Mr. Beck was talking along the lines of the geopolitical, not the supernatural.

But, it was his next words that were the most chilling. He said he believed that the event would happen suddenly, and forever change the world for the worse. He said that it would happen–and now I quote him—“in the blink of an eye.”

The Apostle Paul gave the same prediction nearly two millennia ago. He knew nothing of stock markets that could crash, nuclear weapons that are capable of ending all human life on earth, of a nation so blessed--both materially and spiritually--that it far surpasses any civilization in history in ability to disseminate the gospel through technologies that make living life exponentially better than anything Solomon experienced...a nation that continues to degenerate morally into one over which its forefathers would weep bitterly, should they see the levels of debauchery and antithesis to U.S. constitutional governance to which it has fallen.

Paul prophesied a “blink-of-the-eye” moment of change that will disastrously alter forever life on this planet of rebellious earth-dwellers, which is what the KJV calls those who will not accept Christ and turn from their wicked ways: “Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed” (1 Cor. 15:51-52).

"The American Apocalypse: Is the United States in Bible prophecy?" is stirring dynamic interest among those who are receiving galley copies of this timely book by Rapture Ready's own Terry James. You will want to be among the first to understand where the chilling changes that have taken place, and are promised to take place, are moving this most Blessed nation in history. The book is available for pre-order at locations to which the information will help you link.