July 4
Update Of Our Voluntary Drive
I received a large number of responses from my June 6th appeal to become
involved in producing content for the site. After getting buried alive by email
from people wishing to volunteer, it has been a struggle to keep up with all the
people who inquired about what they could do for the site.
To manage and track all the messages, I've been using the color coded flags
in Microsoft Outlook. If someone has a question, I mark the email with a red flag. The folks who send me a helpful idea or article are marked with blue flags, and I use a yellow flag to mark areas I've completed. As of this weekend, I still need to go back and address several blue- and red-flagged emails from the past three weeks.
The glossary pages have been our main focus. Using all the input from people who have
submitted to the site, Terry and I have created a master file of Christian-related terms. Now we're using it as a guide to help prevent active volunteers from duplicating each other's work.
I plan to add several home-grown terms to the glossary to liven it up. One
example is "Rosh Hosannaian: Someone who repeatedly looks for the rapture
to take place on the Jewish feast day of Rosh Hosanna." Here is a link to
the current list of terms: redesigned Glossary Page.
As a result of this latest volunteer drive, more than a dozen new pages have been
added to the site. Many of them can be found in the New Features section of
the main page and in the Soapbox section. The only articles we could not use
were a few that clearly lacked effort.
My plan for expanding the content of Rapture Ready fits the general idea of
wikis - one of the hottest online trends. A wiki is a piece of server software that allows users to freely create and edit web pages using any Web
browser. Visitors can create a vast information resource by electronically
pooling their knowledge.
During the past year, there has been an explosion in the number of wikis and
blogs. The volume of new pages added to the internet is measured in the
hundreds of millions. People's willingness to post information about every
subject under the sun has not spilled over into the field of prophecy. Very few sites with this new format are devoted to the end times.
I often think about how vital Rapture Ready will be to those people who find
themselves left behind. With the internet becoming a common feature of most
homes, on the day of the rapture a vast number of people will be using the web to find information on the end times. Because I believe that
fateful is day drawing very near, my goal is to provide a wealth of answers
ahead of time for people who suddenly find themselves confronted with
reality.
Satan's Servant On A Rampage
Generally, I am not someone who wishes for judgment to fall on our nation. I
believe we need all the time possible to get people ready for the end
times. In recent months, several cases of pedophilia and serial
killings in the news have made me wonder if God might be compelled to
get the tribulation ball rolling.
We've always had criminals who commit grievous crimes against society, but
not with such a callous nature as we are seeing today. Here are three examples
from the past week:
Dean Arthur Schwartzmiller was named by authorities as one of the most
prolific child molesters in history. Police investigators searched his San
Jose home and found spiral-bound notebooks with detailed records on more
than 36,000 children, in categories such as "Blond Boys," "Cute Boys" and
"Boys who say no" - together with codes appearing to indicate how he abused
them.
Another convicted sex offender, Joseph Duncan, was arrested with Shasta
Groene, 8, who had been missing for six weeks. The young girl's family had
been found murdered and Duncan is the prime suspect. His own diary provided
an insight to his evil nature, "My intent is to harm society as much as I
can, then die."
While being sentenced for 10 murders he committed as the BTK killer ("bind,
torture, kill") -- a name he created himself -- Dennis Rader launched into
cool dispassionate description of how he murdered each of his victims. The frank manner
with which he described the killings shocked the victim's families.
I don't know what will trigger judgment on America, but I think the lack of
justice could be the final straw that breaks the camel's back. We have
countless examples of slime ball criminals who are making a joke of the criminal
code.
Having been previously convicted of the ultimate sex crime, it's a
wonder why Duncan and Schwartzmiller would be given a second, third,
and fourth chance. Duncan served prison time for raping a 14-year-old boy. Duncan burned the boy with cigarettes and raped him while holding a gun to
his head. Last year he molested two boys at a playground. Schwartzmiller has
been arrested at least nine times for molesting boys.
Dennis Rader's monstrous deeds make him an ideal candidate for the death
penalty. Because capital punishment was not part of Kansas law when the
murders were committed, the most he will face is a string of life terms in
prison. Of course, with luck he could get them reduced to a 30-year term.
There is a Judge who does not punish crime with a simple slap on the hand. His rulings are by the Book and they make the devil himself shudder with fear. If the judges and legislators of today knew how strictly their actions would be evaluated, the legal revolving door for some our most heinous criminals would stop at the prison death chamber.
"But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it
were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and [that]
he were drowned in the depth of the sea" (Mat. 18:6).
--- Todd
Spirit of ’76/Spirit of Antichrist
Upon thinking about our great nation and the break the founding fathers of the United States made from England with the Declaration of Independence, an author I was listening to being interviewed brought home to me a profound fact. America, whose patriots fought, bled and died for freedom from the oppressive cradle of Roman authority, now has a significant element that seeks to reunite with the region of the world that Bible prophecy indicates will produce history’s last and most powerful dictator.
England, though not contiguously part of Europe, nonetheless held to the Roman system of religious incarceration, even if a watered-down version of Roman Catholicism. That Anglican system, which required that all clergy sign an oath that was almost worshipful of the King, was intolerable to the founders, who wanted liberty, not only to live under less restrictive government, taxation, etc., but liberty from a state-mandated religion. America’s founding fathers wanted freedom for all citizens to worship as they pleased, not separation of government from the mighty hand of God. The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and thousands of the country’s founding and earliest documents are saturated with references to the fact that the founders intended that the nation be one that looked to God for guidance.
James R. Beller, a pastor, and author of the book, America in Crimson Red, brought into focus the truth about America’s break from religious imprisonment. He pointed to the fact that it was a matter of people being born into the Anglican Church –much like people are born into Roman Catholicism--to which those desiring freedom of religious worship objected. That unscriptural act is done through infant baptism. This supposed means of beginning the salvation process was rejected by the Baptist movement, the people who believed God’s Word teaches that one must be “born again,” according to John 3: 3 –that is, be saved through the shed blood of Christ.
Baptism, those early Americans believed, then follows, not as an act for being born into the Church, or for salvation, but in obedience to Christ, and identification with Him, through immersion in water. Water baptism symbolizes the believer’s identification with Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection into new life –life that is eternal.
Accepting Christ, and the baptism that follows, must be the conscious, Holy Spirit-led decision by the person who is capable of understanding the necessity to follow Christ. Obviously, it is not a decision to be made by infants.
America’s War for Independence won for all citizens–among other things that had oppressed them-- the right to be free from the false system of salvation imposed upon the peoples of Europe. The false salvation institution of infant baptism was called “the badge of Antichrist,” according to Beller.
The author said: "With the establishment of this country, which had no ties to Rome whatsoever --no ties to Europe, to Britain, to Rome whatsoever, [the world was turned upside down, because nothing like this had happened since the time of ancient Rome]…” (James R. Beller, Southwest Radio Church interview, June 29, 2005).
Beller said further: “That is one of the reasons I believe why God has singularly blessed this nation. We have become the bastion of liberty for the entire world. We have sent out more missionaries than any country in the history of the New Testament Church…Our attitude toward Israel…just the way that God has blessed this nation…revivals broke out every 30 or 40 years [following the Revolutionary War]. And that is, I believe, because we became independent of this infant baptism, or what our forefathers called ‘the badge of Antichrist.’ In other words, this is the thing that initiated people into the church-state monstrosity.”
Beller then made the point that brings our nation to its present danger:
“So, from that point, from breaking away from Europe, I believe that the forces of Antichrist have been trying to put us back underneath that [infant] baptism. Back underneath that initiation. We seem to fight that everyday. You see everyday on the news how [our country is] becoming more and more integrated with Europe. [We are moving toward one world]."
The radio program’s interviewer interjected that our federal judges are looking to Europe, in some instances, for deciding on matters of cases within our system of law. “Even the Supreme Court’s decisions lately, for example, in Lawrence v. Texas, to legitimize homosexuality, the justices appealed to a European precedent, which is outrageous” (Dr. Larry Spargimino, host of Southwest Radio Church, June 29, 2005).
All during the last presidential campaign, we heard the cry for the Bush Administration to seek European input to conduct war strategy and conduct. The cry is one likely to grow over the coming months. Europe is destined to once again host a Caesar who will be absolute master over a Roman governmental, economic, and religious system.
Antichrist will be the final fuehrer, the world’s last tyrant. It is troubling to consider that this magnificent experiment in liberty called America will one day be forced into his system –one exponentially more virulent than was the system out of which the spirit of 1776 led those seeking freedom under Almighty God.
--Terry
