Rapture Ready is an Evangelical Christian website, originally a Usenet forum, founded by Todd Strandberg [1] in 1987, that promotes the belief that the rapture will occur in the near future, with true Christians being taken up to Heaven. [2] The site tracks the real-world occurrence of events that Strandberg believes are prophesied in the Bible, [3] and uses these to calculate what Strandberg sees as the approach of the rapture. [4]
Originally, Rapture Ready (then called "Rapture Index") consisted of threads in Usenet newsgroups such as alt.bible.prophecy and alt.christnet.second-coming.real-soon-now. In 1995, Rapture Index became a website. In 1997, it was renamed "Rapture Ready". [5]
The "Rapture Index" keeps track of activities which Strandberg believes could be indicators of a time when the Rapture might occur. [6] [7] The index includes Strandberg's numerical measurement of world events [8] [9] and trends in light of conservative Christian views on Bible prophecy regarding the end times.
Christian eschatology is a minor branch of study within Christian theology which deals with the doctrine of the "last things", especially the Second Coming of Christ, or Parousia. The word eschatology derives from two Greek roots meaning "last" (ἔσχατος) and "study" (-λογία) – involves the study of "end things", whether of the end of an individual life, of the end of the age, of the end of the world, or of the nature of the Kingdom of God. Broadly speaking, Christian eschatology focuses on the ultimate destiny of individual souls and of the entire created order, based primarily upon biblical texts within the Old and New Testaments. Christian eschatology looks to study and discuss matters such as death and the afterlife, Heaven and Hell, the Second Coming of Jesus, the resurrection of the dead, the rapture, the tribulation, millennialism, the end of the world, the Last Judgment, and the New Heaven and New Earth in the world to come.
Left Behind is a multimedia franchise of apocalyptic fiction written by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, released by Tyndale House Publishers from 1995 to 2007.
In Christian eschatology, the Great Tribulation is a period mentioned by Jesus in the Olivet Discourse as a sign that would occur in the time of the end.
The Rapture is an eschatological position held by some Christians, particularly those of American evangelicalism, consisting of an end-time event when all dead Christian believers will be resurrected and, joined with Christians who are still alive, together will rise "in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air."
The Olivet Discourse or Olivet prophecy is a biblical passage found in the Synoptic Gospels in Matthew 24 and 25, Mark 13, and Luke 21. It is also known as the Little Apocalypse because it includes the use of apocalyptic language, and it includes Jesus's warning to his followers that they will suffer tribulation and persecution before the ultimate triumph of the Kingdom of God. The Olivet discourse is the last of the Five Discourses of Matthew and occurs just before the narrative of Jesus's passion beginning with the anointing of Jesus.
Dispensationalism is a theological framework for interpreting the Bible which maintains that history is divided into multiple ages called "dispensations" in which God interacts with his chosen people in different ways. It is often distinguished from covenant theology. These are two competing frameworks of Biblical Theology that attempt to explain overall continuity in the Bible. Coining of the term "dispensationalism" has been attributed to Philip Mauro, a critic of the system's teachings, in his 1928 book The Gospel of the Kingdom.
Harold Lee Lindsey is an American evangelical writer and television host. He wrote a series of popular apocalyptic books – beginning with The Late Great Planet Earth (1970) – asserting that the Apocalypse or end time was imminent because current events were fulfilling Bible prophecy. He is a Christian Zionist and dispensationalist.
The Late Great Planet Earth is a 1970 book by Hal Lindsey, with contributions by Carole C. Carlson, first published by Zondervan. The New York Times declared it to be the bestselling "nonfiction" book of the 1970s. The book was first featured on a primetime television special featuring Hal Lindsey in 1974 and 1975 with an audience of 17 million and produced by Alan Hauge of GMT Productions. It was adapted by Rolf Forsberg and Robert Amram into a 1978 film narrated by Orson Welles and released by Pacific International Enterprises.
Edward Hindson was an American Christian evangelist and host of The King Is Coming, a syndicated television broadcast shown across the United States. A dispensationalist, Hindson wrote more than twenty books that deal with Bible prophecy and the imminent return of Jesus. He was a professor of Old Testament studies and eschatology at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, and a frequent speaker on prophecy.
Timothy Francis LaHaye was an American Baptist evangelical Christian minister who wrote more than 85 books, both fiction and non-fiction, including the Left Behind series of apocalyptic fiction, which he co-authored with Jerry B. Jenkins.
The post-tribulation rapture doctrine is the belief in a combined resurrection and rapture, or gathering of the saints, after the Great Tribulation.
Futurism is a Christian eschatological view that interprets portions of the Book of Revelation, the Book of Ezekiel, and the Book of Daniel as future events in a literal, physical, apocalyptic, and global context.
In Christian eschatology, historicism is a method of interpretation of biblical prophecies which associates symbols with historical persons, nations or events. The main primary texts of interest to Christian historicists include apocalyptic literature, such as the Book of Daniel and the Book of Revelation. It sees the prophecies of Daniel as being fulfilled throughout history, extending from the past through the present to the future. It is sometimes called the continuous historical view. Commentators have also applied historicist methods to ancient Jewish history, to the Roman Empire, to Islam, to the Papacy, to the Modern era, and to the end time.
Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth's Last Days is a best-selling novel by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins that starts the Left Behind series. This book and others in the series give narrative form to a specific eschatological reading of the Christian Bible, particularly the Book of Revelation inspired by dispensationalism and premillennialism. It was released on Sunday, December 31, 1995. The events take place the day of the Rapture and the two weeks following.
Noah Webster Hutchings was the former president of Southwest Radio Church Ministries, a Christian broadcasting company based in Oklahoma City. For six decades, he was the host of their nationally syndicated radio show Your Watchman On The Wall, which is broadcast daily on stations across the USA.
American Christian radio host Harold Camping stated that the rapture and Judgment Day would take place on May 21, 2011, and that the end of the world would take place five months later on October 21, 2011.
The Second Coming is a Christian and Islamic concept regarding the return of Jesus to Earth after his first coming and his ascension to heaven about two thousand years ago. The belief is based on messianic prophecies found in the canonical gospels and is part of most Christian eschatologies. Views about the nature of Jesus' Second Coming vary among Christian denominations and among individual Christians.
Historicism is a method of interpretation in Christian eschatology which associates biblical prophecies with actual historical events and identifies symbolic beings with historical persons or societies; it has been applied to the Book of Revelation by many writers. The Historicist view follows a straight line of continuous fulfillment of prophecy which starts in Daniel's time and goes through John of Patmos' writing of the Book of Revelation all the way to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
David Meade is the pen name of an American end-times conspiracy theorist and book author who has yet to disclose his real name. Meade, who describes himself as a "Christian numerologist", claims to have attended the University of Louisville, where he "studied astronomy, among other subjects"; because his real name is unknown, The Washington Post reported that the university could not confirm whether he had ever been a student there. He is also a writer, researcher and investigator who has written and self-published at least 13 books. He made appearances and interviews on Coast to Coast AM, The Washington Post, Glenn Beck Program, YouTube with pastor Paul Begley, and the Daily Express. He is best known for making numerous failed predictions, which have passed, regarding the end times, including that a hidden planet named Nibiru would destroy the Earth.
On Nov. 5, Todd Strandberg was at his desk, fielding E-mails from around the world. As the editor and founder of RaptureReady.com, his job is to track current events and link them to biblical prophecy in hopes of maintaining his status as "the eBay of prophecy," the best source online for predictions and calculations concerning the end of the world.
One of the clearest examples of this can be found in a popular, fundamentalist, evangelical Web site known as Rapture Ready
Rapture Ready, a Web site that tracks current events and compares them with biblical prophecies to calculate the proximity of the rapture.
That is how Todd Strandberg reads his paper. ... he's the webmaster at raptureready.com and the inventor of the Rapture Index, which ... tracks prophecies: earthquakes, floods, plagues, crime, false prophets and economic measurements like unemployment that add to instability and civil unrest, thereby easing the way for the Antichrist. In other words, how close are we to the end of the world?
Mr Strandberg began the Rapture Index in the 1980s as an attempt to standardise signs that the end-time was a-coming. In 1997, he renamed his site Rapture Ready, but it still features the Rapture Index, adjusted weekly.
The total, a number between 45 and 225, is that week's Rapture Index. Anything over 145 means we're in the 'alert zone,' and signals that the Rapture may be imminent.
The Rapture Index, a meticulously categorized barometer of end-times activity posted at the popular Web site Rapture Ready, hovers around the mid-150s.
When Israel and Hezbollah began trading blows last month, the community at RaptureReady.com, a fundamentalist Christian site dedicated to the proposition that the end times are near, was atwitter, taking the conflict as another sign of an impending judgment day.
Take a look at the Rapture Index on the World Wide Web. It assigns numerical values to wars, earthquakes and disasters. And tonight, it's at 156, which is in the 'fasten your seat belt' category.
The Rapture Index attempts to quantify the likelihood that the Rapture is about to take place, based on the observations of index creator Todd Strandberg, a 31-year-old Air Force sergeant stationed at Offutt Air Force base near Omaha, Nebraska.
The Rapture Index this week: 158. The spike reflects many U.S. evangelicals' view that growing conflict in the Middle East signals the start of a global struggle leading to Christ's return.
The site's creators generate what they call 'the Rapture Index' by assigning a numerical value to dozens of end-times indicators, such as Inflation, Liberalism, False Christs, Beast Government, Satanism, Interest Rates, Oil Price, Earthquakes, Famine, Plagues, and Globalism.
Strandberg ... created a Rapture Index, modeled after the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which consists of 45 categories of prophetic indicators from the occult to inflation and the crime rate. Each is assigned a value of one to five depending on the level of activity in that category. The numbers are adjusted weekly, and the higher the number, the faster the world is moving toward its end.