May 16, 2005
Well, I'm Back
I've finally returned from my four-month deployment in
the desert. For 117 days I was the guest of Uncle Sam
at a military base in the southern region of
Persian Gulf. Hopefully, I won't have to go on another
deployment until the fall of 2006.
I'd give you folks the name of the country and the
base, but the Air Force is of the delusion that the
base is a big secret. Regardless of the fact that U.S.
jets can easily be seen coming and going for miles
away, we were told in a briefing not to disclose the
location of the installation.
During my deployment, I took hundreds of photos. In the
next few weeks, I will have them posted on the site in the
new "features" section.
My Middle East adventure has given me a deeper
understanding of how important it is to be active in
doing the Lord's work. While deployed, my productivity
level suffered from the longer work hours and the
lack of connection to my team back here in the States.
Having to struggle against various obstacles has helped
me realize that time is a very precious commodity.
The hindrances to my work on the site have reached
a rather intriguing level. Their frequency has made it
clear in my mind that some supernatural entity is
working against the site. Here a few examples:
In 2003, Terry, Angie, our editor, and myself all
developed synchronized computer problems. I remember, for example, that
Terry's computer was done in by a lightning strike.
In 2004, that situation was repeated when all three of my computers abruptly stopped working due to unrelated malfunctions.
Last year was also the time when Angie and I lost the ability to email each other. We had tried different accounts, switch internet providers, but despite our efforts, we could not directly email each other. It was so spooky that their was this barrier prevent us from communicating with each other, particular at key moments. The problem was made all the more baffling when it suddenly stop.
This weekend I saw yet another strange anomaly. When I returned home, I noticed that a crackling noise in the phone line had developed. It was possible for me to make calls, but I couldn't use the line to access the internet. The next day, my high-speed cable modem suddenly stopped working. It amazed me that two separate information systems would fail at the same time.
The worst interference has nothing to do with the physical realm. There are days when I find it extremely hard to focus on projects. It just seems like
some force is actively seeking to cloud or distract my mind. During these moments, I have to struggle to get tasks accomplished.
Because Rapture Ready has become widely recognized as a wealth of end-time information, it is only logical for the devil to do everything in his power to hinder our efforts.
If Satan is monkeying with our site, it's important to
have saints praying for RR's protection. Paul said in
Ephesians 6:12: "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood,
but against principalities, against powers, against
the rulers of the darkness of this world, against
spiritual wickedness in high [places]."
When I got back, I ran a survey of the internet and
found that many prophecy sites have greatly slacked off in
the updating of their content. Our focus will never be
based the excitement factor of daily news events.
Jesus has already promised that His return will be on
a slow news day.
Despite my military commitments, the odd snafus, and
the perceived commonality of world news, our plan is
to keep building up the site. My personal motivation
is based on the simple fact that nothing is more
noble for a believer to be doing at this late hour.
Once the rapture occurs, the world is going to find
itself starving for information. The reason
Rapture Ready will be there for people is because we
heeded the Bible's warning.
-- Todd
Scratching Where It Itches – The End-Time Rash
A last-days disease infects the Christian world. It began developing centuries ago, not long after John was given the Revelation on Patmos. Paul the apostle forewarned his spiritual son, Timothy, and through Timothy, Christians who would come on the scene through the centuries, that this end-time rash of spiritually infectious maladies will spread, especially at the very end of the Church Age.
He commissioned, and prophesied:
“I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom; Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables. But watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry.” (2 Tim. 4:1-5).
The great apostle who, after Jesus, himself, probably was the most powerful teacher of God’s Word for mankind, was clearly exhorting Timothy to stay absolutely true to the Scriptures, no matter what. Paul knew how difficult this task would be, having experienced such murderous opposition to the message himself everywhere he preached and taught it. He minced no words that the message to be presented was anything less than that of God’s ultimate judgment on the sin that separated His creation called man from himself.
Paul knew this would always be an extremely unpopular message, and he was absolutely right. Lost men and women do not want to be reminded of their rebellion against the Creator-God. However, it is in preaching to the choir, so to speak, that Paul seemed to be alluding. He prophesied in these Scriptures that Timothy and all who would follow Timothy in teaching and preaching truth from the mind of God, would experience particularly egregious opposition by those who claim the name of Jesus Christ.
The infectious rash of opposition manifest itself quite early in the Church. Disagreements arose that divided the early Church fathers at the very heart of the Body of Christ –a schism over just exactly upon what foundation the edifice called the Church was being built.
Although it absolutely boggles my mind how such conclusions could have been reached that Peter was the foundation for constructing the Church, that was nonetheless the conclusion reached by what grew to become the majority of Christianity during the first 15 or 16 centuries following Jesus’ ascension. The Bible came under attack, its truth for a time being kept under the nefarious thumbs of the Catholic hierarchy,which purposely kept the masses in the Luciferian darkness of illiteracy. Only the ecclesiastically robed ones were privileged to read and understand the Latin for centuries. The masses, if they got anything from the preachments at all, were made to understand they were in total servitude to a harsh God, who kept them at arm’s length.
Christ Jesus wasn’t the only mediator between God and men, as Paul taught so clearly (1 Timothy 2:5). The Semiramis-Tammuz woman-child system of worship was revived from ancient Babylon, and melded with the cross of Christ to create a system of convoluted liturgical tradition. Only the elite priesthood –proclaimed to have replaced the Christ-rejecting priesthood of Judaism—was then capable of decoding the Scriptures, and thus was exclusively worthy of partnering with God in “saving” the hapless flocks.
The Reformation, with Martin Luther and all the rest of the early reformers, empowered by the Holy Spirit and the miracle of Gutenberg’s printing press, tore the ignorant people loose from the Nicolaity, to somewhat begin putting the Body of Christ on the track God intended for Christ’s Church.
Still, the infection remained within the Body, manifest most prominently in the fact that the Reformers incorporated their former masters’ anti-Semitism. They liked the presumptuous notion that God had now passed to the Church all covenants and promises He had made with the Jew –with the nation Israel, which, after all, was no longer a nation and had no prospects for ever becoming one again. And, the nations of the world were bent on making sure they would never become a nation again, persecuting the Jews and murdering them on a genocidal level in some cases, from the 1200s through Hitler’s holocaust of the mid-20th century.
The great revivals of the independent Protestant movements of the 1800s and 1900s seemed to move the Church toward a cleansing from the infection of scriptural contamination. The doctrinal disciplines of Christology, soteriology, and the others were joined by eschatology –the biblical study of end-time things. No longer was Jesus’ return considered as a spiritual concept, or an allegory, or as something already accomplished in A.D. 70. First Corinthians 15:51-55, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, and even John 14:1-3 were, in those earliest days of the Church, viewed as meant to be taken literally, as was the entire Word of God. The Rapture was considered imminent, even then! This was a return to God’s original path for the Church of Jesus Christ.
The Catholic scholars and the staunch Reform Church academics will say it is these independent movements of the Christian faith that have moved from the central truth presented in God’s Word. But in fact, a careful study of the early Church fathers and their adherence to scriptural literalism will lead one to understand that it is the others of the contrary positions of that day who defected from truth, even adding books not authorized by God, the Holy Spirit, to the canon of Scripture.
The rash of infectious departure from true faith is back. It is back in a pandemic that is causing the itching of the spiritual ears as never before, just as Paul foretold. In these perilous times, there are more than enough teachers of the “feel-good” and “do-good” sermonettes the great numbers of their flocks have “heaped to themselves.” Sound doctrines are out the window. The message that God’s love demands that He judge sin will not build mega-churches, because that convicting truth won’t placate those whose itch to be entertained rather than endure boring worship must be scratched.
Neither do they want to hear prophecy taught. They totally ignore what they see going on all around them, and declare by their lack of caring and inability to discern truth that they have inherited the promises given to the nation of Israel, which was miraculously returned to its own land of promise, and given again its language. Replacement theology must not be tampered with. It’s just too comfortable to believe that all is well, and God obviously smiles down on the great, swelling numbers that are added to the entertainment centers the sanctuaries have become.
The teachers of corporation-theology, interspersed with psychological mumbo-jumbo, and sprinkled with New Age voodoo, scratch, and scratch, and scratch. And, the infection spreads, and spreads, and spreads.
The message of the Living God that there must be separation from the world –that sin must be dealt with-- is as unpopular as ever, and the preachers and teachers who suppress the message that judgment is coming upon all who will not repent of their sins seem to be stamped from the cookie-cutter seminary machinery at an ever-quickening pace.
Timothy and we who determine to hold firmly to sound doctrine in these closing hours of the age, were both forewarned and commissioned in Paul’s prophecy: “But watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry.”
To evangelize is to tell all those who will listen that Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life. That apart from belief in Him, the lost soul is headed down the broad way that leads to destruction. Not a pleasant message to the itching ears of today’s end-time world. But, in the reality of eternity every person faces, it is the most soothing salve possible, and the only cure for the terminal infection God calls sin.
--Terry
