Rapture Ready is an Evangelical Christian site founded by Todd Strandberg in 1995, dedicated to the idea that the Rapture will soon occur, and that non-Christians should be warned.[1] The site tracks the real-world occurrence of events prophesied in the Bible, and uses these to calculate what it sees as the approach of the Rapture.[2]
The site began as an index of weekly updates posted in newsgroups such as alt.bible.prophecy and alt.christnet.second-coming.real-soon-now. In 1995, the newsletter moved to its first web format, and it was known as the "Rapture Index" until 1997. At the time of its launch, the site only had seven articles - later it would have over 18,000.
In 2003, prophecy author Terry James joined the Rapture Ready staff. Rapture Ready has been featured by the news media, both in the United States and in Europe, in print, such as in Rolling Stone, Newsweek, New York Times, Playboy, on television news channels including CNN, and in Robert Lanham's book The Sinner's Guide to the Evangelical Right.
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Rapture Ready's stated purposes include warning those non-Christians who, according to the Pre-tribulation system of Evangelical Christian eschatology, will be left behind after the rapture to repent of their sins and turn to God. It also attempts to explain what will happen during the period of time after the rapture including the seven-year period commonly known as "Daniel's 70th Week", "Jacob's Time of Trouble" or The Tribulation Period which terminates with the Second Coming of Jesus.
Rapture Ready is mainly written in English; however, it also contains articles in Spanish, German, French, and Japanese.
The "Rapture Index" keeps track of activities which could be indicators of a time when the Rapture might occur. The index includes a numerical measurement of world events and trends in light of conservative Christian views on Bible prophecy regarding the end times. This index lists a number of events and subjects, comments thereon, their influence (in points) and statistics of highs and lows by years and records.
"Nearing Midnight" is a weekly commentary on world events.
To help the site survive the crush of traffic that the staff assumes will follow the Rapture, it has a number of mirror sites.