Aug 1

The Big One

When it comes to setting goals for Rapture Ready, my main priority has always been projects that will have the greatest potential for drawing people to the truth. As the site has grown in size and complexity, it has become very important for me to have in place a long-term strategy.

One goal that has been at the top of my checklist for several years is what I call the "big one." No, it's not getting all numbers from some mega-bucks lottery. This goal involves the site being in a position to witness to the people who find themselves left behind.

If you visited the site in July 2003, you might remember my tame reaction to the media coverage we received from a Time Magazine article. Even with dozens of radio interviews, the surge in traffic, and a resulting book deal, I still firmly believe a much bigger day is in Rapture Ready's future.

In the hours that follow the rapture, I believe there will be a huge crush of traffic directed at all websites related to the subject of prophecy. With nearly two billion people having access to the internet, the shocking rapture event will trigger hundreds of millions of end-time related searches.

If our family of servers is able to handle the tidal wave of hits, the number of people visiting RR in just the first few minutes that follow the rapture could quickly surpass the total traffic volume that has occurred in the 18-year history of this site.   

It's not just the volume of people coming to RR that needs to be considered. Another important factor will be the intense focus the post-rapture world will have on the site. Currently, the average visitor spends less than 15 seconds on each page. After the great event, people will likely be riveted to its content.

The shock of being caught on the wrong side of the rapture will have people surfing the net with white-knuckled desperation. The only way I can describe the hunger for information might be a situation in which someone would wake up to the disturbing news that his or her home had been broken into, and then find a note that reads, "If you ever want to see your loved one again, go to the following website...."

To accommodate this golden opportunity for witnessing, we've set up a series of mirror sites. If one should go down, people will be able to visit the other ones in the chain. We've also written several web pages to speak directly to people who miss the "blessed hope." The post-rapture surge is one of the primary reasons I decided to invest in getting several pages translated into other languages.

Most Christian ministries show no interest in accommodating the tribulation world. With such a huge potential demand for service, it would be helpful if there were 10 other sites like Rapture Ready. To be honest, even today there are hardly any good Christian websites on the internet that seek to provide free information to the public. I've located a few resources that address the left-behind folks, but these are mostly books and tapes being offered for sale. After the rapture, I have to wonder whether anyone will be around to handle the order requests. 

The "big one" has only been a consideration for the past few years. When I started my little internet ministry, it was far beyond the technology of that day to ever think that RR could reach a large audience. For the first seven years, there was no website for people to visit. I was limited to posting my updates in the old Newsgroups networks. In 1995, when I set up my first web account, my bandwidth limit was a meager 500 megabytes per month. Today, our total capacity is around 2,000 gigabytes, which is a growth rate of 4,000 fold.

The current bandwidth of RR can handle about 20 million visitors. With the capacity of the average server continuing to grow at an exponential rate, the day may soon come when bandwidth concerns become a non-issue.

Because the leading search engines cache the content of all web pages they index, it is possible for a large number of people to access RR without having to draw upon the bandwidth resources of our main servers. Flash drives and CD/DVD optical drives are other means of sharing the site's content.

Because RR has become such a vast resource, pumping out information 24 hours a day, I am confident that God will richly bless everyone who has helped the site in any way. The prospects of the "Big One" will obviously compound the magnitude of these rewards. The key to the site being a praiseworthy success is that we believe the prophetic truth and, most importantly, have made preparations based on the end-time warnings.  

"Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing" (2 Tim. 4:8).

"And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be" (Rev. 22:12).

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Good Judges of Character

  Considering the President’s placing John Roberts’ name in the process for Supreme Court Justice, thoughts went back to my career in public relations and advertising. Specifically, I remember one elderly career judge who wanted to run for an office that was a higher judgeship than the one he had served for all of those years.

As part of his campaign, he wanted a brochure created that might help him get elected. This, I began to let roll around in the advertising corner of my brain for a time, until I realized that I must know more about this gentleman before I could let the creative process go further.

My investigation of the judge –a man whose jurisdiction was in a county far-flung from my own—uncovered time after time that he was a man of excellent character. He had always been wise, fair, and honest. Can’t ask much more of a judge than that, I surmised, then proceeded to switch on again the creative light.

The headline I came up with for the brochure’s cover was (I’ll use a fictitious name here) “Judge John Smith, a Good Judge, of Character.”

The variations of that began rolling in my mind–over and over, and round and round, with many transpositions of the various elements of the thought.

Judge Smith was indeed a judge of “good character." His record was apparently impeccable in that position.

But, the thought insinuated itself… Judge Smith, in his capacity of dealing with both the good citizenry and the riffraff of the jurisdiction he served, had to be a good judge of others’ character, as well as a man of personally good character. Where to best place the comma came to mind.

It was true, the election and the office he sought was about him, but more importantly, the position he sought (a higher judgeship) was about the people who, potentially, would come before his judicial bench for decisions that would affect their lives and livelihoods. I settled, finally, on “Judge John Smith, a good judge of character.”

Both essential elements of the equation now were properly headed to reflect the text within the brochure that would extol the virtues of Judge John Smith. He was a man of personally good character, but he was also a man with a proven record of being able to fairly judge others because he recognized the quality of character within the folks he must judge.

Now I’m not trying to conduct a class here on good political advertising or election engineering. The point to be made is where to put the comma when voting to approve a presidential US Supreme Court nominee.

A Supreme Court candidate selected for advise and consent of the Congress should be not just a man or woman of good personal character, but must be a judge of good character, for that is exactly what the founding fathers of America built into the Constitution of the United States–good character.

  The French author and statesman, Alexis de Tocqueville, stood in admiration and awe of the republic the framers of the Constitution had built, and after a tour of the budding nation said: “America is great because America is good. If America ever ceases to be good, she will also cease from being great."

What on earth could the Constitution’s framers have built into this nation’s basic structure that would make America “good?”

Nothing is inherently “good” about America’s people because God’s Word, the Bible, says about all people ever born except Christ: “…none… doeth good, no not one”(Rom. 3:12). Yet de Tocqueville could see the “good” in the American character. What was it he saw that led him to such a grandiloquent assessment?

The answer lies within the words of the Lord Jesus Christ, who said: “…[there is] none good but one, [that is], God“ (Mark 10:18).

The words “under God” are implicit throughout the hundreds of founding documents of this nation. The founding fathers –even those who were not “Christians”--demonstrably had a profound respect, even awe, for the God of Heaven. They penned their reverence for the Deity into this nation’s heart. They intended that America have at its core being the greatness that comes from the goodness of God.

A Supreme Court justice today should have the same reverence as did the founding fathers, whether they name the name of Christ or not. Of course, it must be recognized and acknowledged by those among us who wish it were so that this is neither likely nor even possible. The mind of man is fallen –twisted by the sin-illogic of the father of all lies. The further history takes us from those founding principles, at whose center was the goodness of God, the more reprobate the Court’s thinking has become. And, might I add, has, too, the thinking of the rest of the nation and the whole world.

We must pray that future justices be men and women who look deeply into that Constitution and see the good in it. The "good” being God, the object of the founders’ intended quest for an unshakable foundation stone. Instead, the fallen minds of men down through America’s history have attempted to remove that foundation and replace it with a fluid, “organic” mishmash of relativism and situational ethics-type rulings that flow easily into the cracks created by the cultural depravity with which such willful foolishness has infected this nation.

  America has been given tremendous light from the Creator of all things. Her judgment is sure, if she continues to choose to remove the only “good” that is in her. America’s greatness will be lost to the tomb of history long past, if there isn’t a return to the faith of our fathers.

Let us lift our prayers to the Father of Lights, for He is merciful, and the Judge we must all one day stand before in the highest of all courts.
--Terry