Donation Drive September to November
I have pushed back the quarterly donation drive back three weeks because I wanted to be sure the last donation drive of the year won’t conflict with the upcoming election. It is such a lose/lose proposition, expect trouble. If Trump is reelected, there is likely to be a record amount of rioting. If Biden wins, true believers in Jesus Christ will find themselves in an incredibly hostile world.
I think every end-time believing Christian needs to be mindful that the world has become so insane that it is facing imminent calamity. I would like to point out two examples that show how close we are to our nation exploding into chaos.
New Yorker writer James Altucher recently wrote why he believes “New York City is Dead Forever.” His same observation can be applied to a dozen other cities. Altucher said that the reaction to the COVID-19 virus has taught businesses that they don’t need massive buildings to house their workers. Most of them can work out of their homes or an office in a distant city.
Midtown Manhattan, the center of business in NYC, now looks like a ghost town. Even though people can go back to work, famous office buildings like the Time Life skyscraper are still 90% empty.
The businesses that need customers to survive are being wiped out in massive numbers. Nearly half of the restaurants in New York have closed for good. I saw a YouTube video of 5th Avenue that showed block after block of boarded up high-end retail stores. All major Broadway shows are closed until 2021, and it’s doubtful this industry could ever get back on its feet.
As people flee the city to escape the growing crime and lack of jobs, the city’s tax base is rapidly drying up. For 2020, NYC had a $9 billion deficit. The shortfalls in the coming years will be equally large. New York’s subway and bus system is staring down a $10 billion deficit in the short-term and is begging Congress for billions more after it burned through the last $4 billion it got from Washington. It’s now running a deficit of $200 million a week.
As bad as it is for main street America, things seem to be the exact opposite for Wall Street. While 20 million people are out of work, most indexes are at or near all-time record highs. The reason for this conflict of logic is that a handful of stocks have reached nosebleed valuations.
The value of Apple stock now stands at $2.15 trillion, which is equal to 11.2% of the total US GDP. On Friday the 21st, the rise in the price of Apple’s stock was the single reason why nearly all indexes were up that day:
87% of DJIA point gain came from Apple: (index +191pts vs AAPL’s contribution 167pts)
103% of S&P 500 increase (11.7 vs 12.0)
148% of Nasdaq Composite (46.9 vs 69.7)
105% of Nasdaq 100 (78.1 vs 81.8)
The smart-phone maker did not double in the last year because of rapid earnings growth. The company has been losing market share in key nations, and its net sales have been flat. Apple’s best strategy for a rising stock price is to simply increase the cost of an iPhone every year. The stock also rose because of stock buybacks, stock splits, and the ability of this cash-rich company to issue debt in the form of long-term bonds.
Apple might as well be considered a bargain when compared to Telsa’s stock price. During the peak of the Dot.com bubble, Cisco System’s had earnings per share of 128, with a market cap of $500 billion. Tesla Motors has an EPS of 1,360 on the same valuation of $500 billion. I would never have dreamed that a car company could rise 12-fold in a 12-month period.
Tesla stock is rising because there are more buyers than sellers. What is driving this action is that we live in a world gone completely mad. I think a spiritual mindset is the only way to make sense of how irrational things have become. Demonic blindness is why New York is such a mess and why stocks are at all-time high valuations.
The importance of Bible prophecy has already been shown with the Covid-19 pandemic, the California fires, the Midwest Derecho, and the race riots. Just to make 2020 all the more apocalyptic, I’m currently watching Louisiana getting absolutely chewed up by Hurricane Laura.
I am so grateful to everyone who has helped support Rapture Ready. Because we don’t know when the rapture is going to take place, it is wise for us to continue to plan for the future. But still, I’ve never had a greater feeling that our mission is about to come to a sudden glorious end.
There are three ways you can contribute to Rapture Ready: You can send a financial gift via our P.O. Box address, you can make a one-time donation, or there is a frequent option that allows you to make monthly donations. If you’re interested in signing up, find the input links on the Donation page. Donations can be sent to our P.O. Box at:
Rapture Ready
P.O. Box 969
Benton, AR 72018
—Todd
Geometric Progression in Prophecy
Computer technology that took Neil Armstrong and crew to the moon and back, it is reported, involved less computing power than that of the first desktop sold commercially.
This was a stunning revelation to me when I first heard it. When the moon mission was being planned, the technological wonders flashing upon some of the control monitors they showed us looked phenomenally complex.
They were, in fact, phenomenally complex at that primitive moment in the progression of the space program. Now, I’m told, the average teenager holds in his or her hand a device that can perform functions exponentially beyond those available to the launch scientists of Apollo 11.
The laptop I’m using to type this piece, I’m told, is as far advanced from the computer power available in the year my beloved wife and I were married—1969—as today’s Air Force One 747 is from the model T.
I’m not sure that’s true. I’m such a back number when it comes to such technology that I’ll just have to take the word of others who are savvy about such things.
One thing is sure, though. I can see the developments literally exploding around me and know that everything, including technology, is expanding in unbridled, geometric progression.
One recent report explains:
The fastest internet speed in the world has been clocked at an incredible 178 terabits per second (Tb/s)—fast enough to download the entire Netflix library in under a second. Engineers in the UK and Japan have developed new ways to modulate light before it’s beamed down optical fibers, allowing for much wider bandwidths than usual.
That new top speed is an insane feat. It’s 17,800 times faster than the current fastest internet connections available to consumers—10 Gb/s in parts of places like Japan, the US and New Zealand. Even NASA can’t compete, with its 400 Gb/s ESnet.
It also leaves other experimental devices in the dust, including a photonic chip developed in Australia that clocked a still-impressive 44 Tb/s just a few months ago, and beats the previous record holder—a Japanese team with 150 Tb/s—by almost 20 percent.
“While current state-of-the-art cloud data-centre interconnections are capable of transporting up to 35 terabits a second, we are working with new technologies that utilize more efficiently the existing infrastructure, making better use of optical fiber bandwidth and enabling a world record transmission rate of 178 terabits a second,” says Lidia Galdino, lead researcher on the study. (Michael Irving, “Internet Speed Record Shattered at 178 Terabits Per Second,” New Atlas, raptureready.com, August 22, 2020)
Precisely what this means, I haven’t a clue, being that back number I mentioned. However, this advancement, as I understand it, is capable of squeezing far more information through the fiber-optic systems than possible before advent of the technology. It’s not just a breakthrough, but a phenomenal game-changer in moving information, thus in all aspects of all other applications. It will allow technology to progress geometrically far beyond even what we have experienced to this point.
The prophet Daniel almost certainly prophesied this development along with predicting the swift movement of things to come.
But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased. (Daniel 12:4)
Most who observe Bible prophecy today—at least in the Pre-Trib view—are in agreement. This is the time of the end about which the angel spoke to Daniel.
We are seeing an increase in knowledge within the physical and biological world—within the technological and societal spheres of human movement toward unknown destiny. That is, unknown to those who aren’t spiritually attuned to God’s prophetic truth.
That’s why it is vital for the nation’s pastors—those who deliver God’s whole Word—to include Bible prophecy in their study and delivery from the pulpits.
There is a geometrical progression that will mark a certain generation. The angel of the Lord clearly foretold through Daniel that it will take place at the end time.
We are at that profound moment, I and many others believe. It is incumbent upon pastors to teach prophetic truth. And it’s incumbent upon Christians to read, heed, and believe just how near Christ’s call to the Church is to this generation.
And when you see all these things begin to come to pass, then look up and lift up your head, for your redemption draweth nigh. (Luke 21:28)
***New TV program for Terry’s new book***
The second of four Skywatch TV programs for Terry’s new book “Antichrist and The Final Solution” will begin airing on networks across the nation today.
Here is the link to the program.
–Terry