Rapture Ready

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]

Features
The Rapture Ready's Rapture Index from 1997-2018, showing the annual lowest and highest values.

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.

gollark: If people can somehow be convinced to add ABR to one...
gollark: Or it would have to be in the same server as Warship somehow.
gollark: This is not, I believe, possible.
gollark: reCAPTCHA v3 is actually HIGHLY apiaristic.
gollark: Interesting! We would need to track its offlineness, however.

See also

References
  1. Miller, Lisa (2008-11-14). "Belief Watch: Is Obama the Antichrist?". Newsweek. 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.
  2. Knowles, Steven (2013). "Rapture Ready and the World Wide Web: Religious Authority on the Internet". Journal of Media and Religion. 12 (3): 128–143. doi:10.1080/15348423.2013.820527. ISSN 1534-8423. One of the clearest examples of this can be found in a popular, fundamentalist, evangelical Web site known as Rapture Ready
  3. Chapman, Jennie (2013-09-12). Plotting Apocalypse: Reading, Agency, and Identity in the Left Behind Series. University Press of Mississippi. p. 65. ISBN 9781617039041. Rapture Ready, a Web site that tracks current events and compares them with biblical prophecies to calculate the proximity of the rapture.
  4. Gibbs, Nancy (2002-07-01). "Apocalypse Now". Time. Archived from the original on 2013-01-12. Retrieved 2015-03-14. 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?
  5. Howse, Christopher (2006-08-12). "Sacred mysteries". The Telegraph. London. 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.
  6. Strandberg, Todd (September–October 1998). "That's the News and I Am Outta Here". Politics. Mother Jones (Interview). Interviewed by Paul Tough. Retrieved 2015-03-15. 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.
  7. Boyett, Jason (2006-08-07). "Apocalypse soon". Salon. The Rapture Index, a meticulously categorized barometer of end-times activity posted at the popular Web site Rapture Ready, hovers around the mid-150s.
  8. Zeller, Tom Jr. (2006-08-14). "A Christian Site Grapples With Muslim Mysteries". Technology. The New York Times. 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.
  9. Zahn, Paula (2006-07-24). "Paula Zahn Now" (transcript). CNN. 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.

Further reading
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