Oct 17

Rapture Ready's Most Important Mission

During the past couple of weeks, I've spent many hours updating several of our mirror sites. Because Rapture Ready is constantly adding new content, it's a challenge to keep the duplicate websites inline with the mother site. It is also a demanding task to keep them free from technical problems.

I strongly believe that these secondary domains will fulfill a vital purpose someday. In the days following the "blessed hope," it is a near certainty that more people will visit RR than in all the years since the site's conception. Because I realize the rapture will generate a tidal wave of hits, my top priority has been to build up a network of mirror sites to handle the coming demand.

When the rapture occurs, people will flock to the internet seeking answers to what will be one of the most shocking events in human history. With nearly 2 billion people having some form of access to the internet, the number of prophecy-related search requests will easily total into the hundreds of millions.

Because Rapture Ready has a stronghold on inquiries that relate directly to the word "rapture," a lot of traffic is going to be pointed our way. Considering that a common reaction to the rapture has always been one of pending calamity, it is easy to see why so many people will be desperate for information.

For several years, it was impossible for RR to accommodate a fraction of the post-rapture audience. The site's first internet provider only granted us around 200 megs of bandwidth. Over the years, the average bandwidth for web accounts has grown at an exponential rate. Today, we have 2 million megs, which is a 10,000-fold increase.

I'm thrilled that the growth rate in internet bandwidth shows no sign of slowing. In the next few years, we may reach the point that web hosts are able to handle nearly any amount of traffic.

This may be accomplished by storing files on more than one server. Instead of having a site on one computer, computer designers have realized that traffic loads can be more easily managed by locating websites on a series of servers. If one server is busy, a search request can go to another server containing the same information. Goggle has been a pioneer in this practice, and many web host companies have copied their lead.

I have no doubt that the press and the public will be able to find our mirror sites. Half of the media's job involves digging for information. One reporter working for "Inside Edition" was so good at research that he found a Rapture Ready contributing writer I hadn't heard from in 9 years.

Because we don't know when the rapture is going to take place, we need an ongoing commitment to maintaining the mirror sites. Over the years, several people have offered to host mirror files of RR on their existing accounts. Even though these sites only need to be updated once or twice a year, most people eventually lose interest in updating their version of the site.

The reason I stay focused on maintaining our mirror sites is the value they will manifest someday. If I knew the Lord was coming tomorrow, I'd open a dozen more accounts tonight. Because we have no guarantee of the rapture's timing, it is important for me to maintain a long-term view.

I do see indications that time is rapidly running out. The signs of the time have become incredibly numerous the past few months. We just had one more birth pang this past week: Spain was impacted for the first time ever by a tropical storm.

It is very important to have people who are willing to help us with the burden of maintaining our network of sites. These accounts may not seem important now, but I'm sure the poor folks who find themselves on the wrong side of the rapture will view them as priceless treasure troves. Your financial gifts allow me to keep these beacons of hope alight.

If you already have a web account with a monthly bandwidth greater than 50 gigabytes and file space of at least 200 megabytes, I would be happy to send you a CD containing a copy of the mirror site. You can reach me at: todds@raptureready.com

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Dress Rehearsal for Horsemen of Apocalypse

The dress rehearsal for the great end-time drama known as Daniel’s 70th week appears to be under way. There are just too many similarities between what the observer of Bible prophecy can see in the daily headlines and what God’s prophetic Word says will mark the last days to be coincidence.

Jesus’ words about the time of the tribulation, foretold in the Olivet Discourse, correspond closely to the vision given the Apostle John in Revelation, chapter 6. Let’s have a look at both of these fascinating prophetic passages and then look at some of today’s top news stories.

Jesus words are recorded as follows:

“And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many. And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows” (Matt. 24:4-8).

While they sat overlooking the Temple Mount that day, Jesus taught His closest disciples that deceivers would come on the scene at the end of the dispensation that immediately precedes His coming again. People will, He prophesied, come in His name and deceive many people.

Wars and rumors of wars will punctuate the troubling times. Significantly increased occurrences of famines, pestilence, and earthquakes will mark that end-time generation in a way that will cause the convulsions to seem like the birth pangs of a woman about to deliver. Jesus called it a time of “sorrows.”

John, the apostle, after he was called in his spirit into the Great throne room of God Almighty, saw, prophetically, the same time of sorrows the Lord described to those disciples while overlooking Mount Moriah. John was allowed to see Jesus –the Lamb of God-- open the seals of the judgments that will befall mankind during the last seven years, just before Christ’s return to earth.

I will let you read the precise prophecy for yourself in Revelation 6: 1-8. But we will look briefly at the similarities to the above Olivet Discourse prophecies for that end-time storm.

John saw Jesus break the first of the seven seals of the scroll. There rode forth a rider on a white horse. The rider is Antichrist –the “prince that shall come” of Daniel 9: 27. This man will be a great deceiver –the ultimate purveyor of deception. He will be the most fierce of all the deceivers present at that time.

The next horse to come forth with its rider is the red horse, representing wars and rumors of war. This comes on the heels of the Antichrist and his false promises of peace as foretold in Daniel 9:27. According to Isaiah 28: 15 and 18, the peace Antichrist promises will be a “covenant made with death and hell.” It will not stand, because God will destroy it. God’s Word says: “For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape” (1 Thes. 5:3). So, with this prophecy, we again see the prophetic analogy of those troubled times to a woman in pre-birth travail.

The third rider rides forth, then, on the black horse of famine, pestilence (disease), and earthquakes. These forewarnings also correlate to Jesus’ Olivet Discourse prophecies. Then, death and hell ride upon the back of the chloros, or sickly-green, horse. These dire results are the consequences of all the judgments that went before them.

The relevant question is: Are we seeing in today’s headlines the beginning of sorrows Jesus foretold in the Olivet discourse as recorded in Matthew, chapter 24, Mark, chapter 13, and Luke, chapter 21?

It does, in my view, look like we are presently seeing the things prophesied by Jesus and witnessed by John coming into focus in this generation.

False teachers are deceiving even true Christians with their feel-good and do-good messages that entertain rather than emphasize that man is a sinner, and the shed blood of Christ is the only redemption from Hell for eternity. The prosperity message that God owes great wealth and ecstatic healings and miracles, if we but follow the false teachers’ interpretations of God’s holy Word, is leading millions into darkness and spiritual poverty. The “falling away” or apostasy of 2 Thessalonians, chapter 2, seems well underway in our time.

Can Antichrist, the ultimate deceiver, be far behind in galloping onto the stage of end-time history?

False peace: The international community –led by America, tragically, continues to put pressure on the nation of Israel in the “Roadmap for Peace” process. While Israel’s enemies fire on departing Israeli settlers and military, Israel continues to disobey God, giving up His covenant land for a peace that will never come. The rider on the white horse seems almost upon us.

War: The “war on terror” is at the center of end-time machinations today. While Israel pulls out of the land God gave them, their enemies prepare for war. “Rumors of war” include Iran, Israel’s blood-vowed enemy—apparently moving as fast as possible toward developing nuclear weaponry and the means to deliver it to destinations both near and far. Hamas and a dozen other hate-filled Islamic terrorist organizations continue to train suicide bombers and war machinery that will be used against the Jews of the world. Russia makes pacts with Iran and other diabolists as China observably prepares for war while feigning good world citizenship and interest in cooperating in economic matters. The red horse of war is set to ride.

Famine, pestilence, earthquakes: Famines are with us as never before. This, despite the availability of the most productive agricultural technologies and capability to deliver foods to any point on the globe in history. Only the beastly regimes that control the populations, like in Somalia, prevent the peoples of those regions from getting the nutrition necessary for life. And, the international community seems to turn the proverbial blind eye to these dictators’ genocide through starvation.

All one has to do is read through the Rapture Ready News at any given hour to see the many reports of “pestilences” on the horizon. Bird flu reported in Romania and Turkey; encephalitis death toll hitting 1,038 in India; mystery illness identified as Legionnaire's disease, claiming its 17th victim in Toronto...these are but a few currently posted reports.

Earthquakes are shaking many different places around the world. We remember most recently and most vividly the 7.7 quake in Pakistan that killed more than 40,000. That tragedy follows on the heels of a true earth shocker –the huge quake in the Indian Ocean that produced the cataclysmic tsunami. The black horse appears to be about to make its tribulation run across the page of end-time history. The pale horse and its two riders are not far behind.

It seems the dress rehearsal for the riding of the four horsemen of apocalypse has begun. --Terry