Jan 7
Donation Drive January to March
I always look forward to the arrival of a new year because it means the time of our Lord's
return is a year, a month, and day closer. Another reason to celebrate the birth of a new year is the opportunity to reflect on what we have accomplished in the past 12
months.
Rapture Ready has had its most productive year in the history of the site. We added more
content than we did during the previous record year of 2005. Some days, I would add seven or more articles to the main site. As December 31 was ticking down, I rushed to add six more articles to the RR roster.
You can see how busy we've been by the length of our "Newest Articles" section. Because
there is such a plethora of new files, I've had to trim this list twice in the past month.
In recent months, we've added several writers to the roster. Wilfred Hahn is a global
economist who keeps track of a key end-time indicator -- money. Jim Fletcher has taken over the "Israel Watch" section. Britt Gillette is the newest member of our feature writers section. We now have about a dozen folks who regularly contribute articles to the site.
The size and scale of Rapture Ready has made it a domain with no real equal. With more than six billion web pages on the net, it is very hard to get a website into the public's eye.
Because RR has such a strong connection to prophecy, most of our articles go right to
the top of most key word search results.
I’m looking for 2008 to be a birth-pang year. Jesus said the end times would come like labor pains, and I've noted a pattern of active and inactive years. In 2007, we didn't have a major
incident to grab the world’s attention. Much of the activity related to prophecy seemed to be
setting us up for some future occurrence.
Of course, when prophecy surges back into the headlines, Rapture Ready will be a click
away from providing people with answers. Anyone doing a detailed search on the end times is guaranteed to run into our little domain.
The media continues to feature Rapture Ready. I can tell most are holding back, waiting for
something big to happen. During the past year, two reporters have contacted me by email, asking for my phone number so they can call me if something of major prophetic importance happens in the world. (If it's the rapture, their calls will obviously go unanswered.)
We don't slow down, because I feel that God is telling us that the end is very near--and once
the "big one" happens, there won't be a big window of time in which to get ready. Even if the rapture is not the next immediate event, world events are so primed for the tribulation hour that the next birth pang may be shortly followed by the rapture. In all cases, it pays to stay busy with the Lord's work.
One major goal I have for this year is to greatly expand the size of the FAQ pages. Because so many common questions are typed into search engines, the FAQ section is one of our best ways to reach new people. The reason we stopped adding questions to the FAQ page was because it just simply got too big for having all the questions on one page. Our new plan is to rely on a data base to host the bulk of the new entries. By the end of the year, I'm hoping to triple the size of the FAQ page.
After waiting years for the right technology to come along, we are now adding videos to RR.
I plan to record several intros for key web pages, and Terry and I will be getting together to
create video content. We already added some from the Dallas Pre-Trib Conference, and will upload more from all future conferences. If you would like to contribute to the video cause, feel free to contact me.
In order to finance these various projects, Rapture Ready needs your financial support.
The best way to support this ministry is through a regular donation. By knowing we have a
base of faithful supporters, we can make greater commitments. PayPal offers a very easy way to manage subscribers. If you’re interested in signing up as a monthly donor, you can find the link on the "Donation Depot" page.
Donations can also be sent to box address at:
Rapture Ready Ministry
PO Box 185
Boys Town,
NE; 68010.
-- Todd
The Armageddon Magnet
When Uncle Jed Clampett, out shooting some “food”, pierced the ground with his musket ball, up come a bubbling crude. Black gold. Soon the oil men descended upon the Clampetts, and … well, who in America in his or her 40s, 50s and beyond doesn’t know the rest of the story…
It happened for real in the early 1900s in the United States. Texas, Oklahoma, and other points around the nation saw a rush to their oil field discoveries. It was like a magnet that drew the barons of industry to the fields. They went wild with the prospect of powering an economy that would bring riches like no other people of any other nation had ever experienced. The oil magnet was irresistible–and quickly turned to an absolute essential.
The greed that followed the rush to achieve oil procurement created a monopoly that the federal government stepped in to break apart. John D. Rockefeller created a family dynasty from his oil dealings that continues to affect, literally, the world’s economy in ways that are difficult to fully comprehend.
“Big oil” today continues to be labeled as the chief culprit in, if not fomenting, certainly causing, the continuation of conflict–especially in the Middle East. I hate to agree with the liberal mantra against the major oil interests, but must be a realist, and admit that too often the love of money –which God’s Word terms “the root of all evil”--is at the heart of much mischief in the Middle East and other areas that contain beneath their surfaces the black gold industry seeks out so more wealth can be generated.
At the same time, each of us is the benefactor of such grasp for wealth and power. Every time we start our engines or flick the light switches, we are giving a tacit nod of approval to “big oil”.
I do not see this as an intrinsically bad thing. Like you, I enjoy being cool in the summer and warm in the winter. The Creator of all things put the resources there to be used. He gave the brainpower to develop the petroleum sources of energy, and granted the acumen to develop all of the derivative spin-offs thereof.
Man, as he always does, has perverted things to make the blessing something that is quickly turning into a curse for us all. The lust for the black, liquid wealth in order to keep the engines of money-making powered, is, like the most powerful magnet one can imagine, drawing mankind toward the final war of the age just before Christ’s return.
The $100-per-barrel mark was reached this past week. It was very brief, quickly receding to $99 and even lower. The new high was reportedly caused by a single investor who purchased high and sold low, 1,000 barrels, the minimum required for such purchases. The buyer apparently wanted to go into the record books as being the first to break the $100-per-barrel mark.
Regardless of the veracity of the story, the $100-per-barrel barrier being breached causes petroleum domination of earth’s future to come more into view. The following news excerpts frame the movement toward uncertain times ahead:
“The price of oil hit $100 a barrel in commodities trading Wednesday—the first time that's happened—and ended the trading day not far below that chilling Mark, at $99.62 a barrel … Wednesday's jump was surprisingly large and created enough momentum to pull wholesale gasoline and heating oil prices to records that quickly will translate into big retail price boosts.
The striking prices prompted travel organization AAA to issue a warning that ‘record high prices will be paid by consumers for gasoline in the year ahead…’ Oil prices have been in the high $90s for weeks, but the jump to the $100 mark Wednesday came as a reminder that fuel prices might have no ceiling.
‘Headlines about oil hitting $100 will unnerve people. They'll expect gasoline prices to go higher,’ says Mark Vitner, senior economist at Wachovia…” (James R. Healey, USA TODAY, ABC News.com, Jan. 3, 2008).
With the political left in America and around the world getting their way about nixing development of nuclear energy and any alternative source they deem unhealthy to the environment –whether there is true altruism in their motivation or whether it is for political base-building—the fact is, oil is depleting by the hour. There lies ahead a point of critical mass for the explosion that is coming.
That critical mass will come; I’m convinced God’s prophetic Word says, when that petroleum magnet draws all nations who will meet in one spot on the planet where the rapidly dwindling reserves will still be pooled beneath the surface. From this point in time, at least, it seems God will use man’s greed as a catalyst and instrument of judgment: “And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon” (Rev. 16:16).
Developments in the oil-rich Middle East, at whose heart, of course, sits Israel, the No. 1 signal of where we are on God’s prophetic timeline, are things to closely watch as 2008 unfolds.
--Terry
