Why Is the Rapture Index Not Higher? – Todd Strandberg - https://www.raptureready.com/category/nearing-midnight/ One of the most common questions Terry and I get about the site is people wanting to know why the Rapture Index doesn’t go any higher. It has peaked in the upper 180s for several years. The general thinking is that as we get closer to the tribulation hour and end-time activity increases, the index should move higher and higher. Also, Jesus said His return for the Church would be proceeded by birth pangs that obviously increase with time. When I designed the Rapture Index, I had to deal with predicting an event of which the Lord said we would not know the exact date. I see the RI as more of a speedometer than an actual index. We are traveling 188, which means we will arrive at the rapture much faster than we would if it was at 100. The RI has become locked in a very tight range. It has not dropped below 175 for well over a decade. The record low of 58 on December 12, 1993, now seems like an impossible achievement. I don’t think the RI will ever be able to decline below 150. We just have too much activity to allow for such a move. The RI used to be a lot more complex. Each category had two readings. The one to five rating was based on the simple occurrence of news events that related to the category. The second one was based on the importance of each category and the significance of news events. After a few years, I realized there was no real difference between the two ratings, so I discontinued the one that was more complex. Most people don’t realize that certain events were once very uncommon. I lived most of my adult life not knowing how a Tsunami worked. There is one that hit in 1976, but as a kid, I wasn’t really into the news. Many people lived their whole life without reading about a tsunami. After a tsunami hit Japan in 1896 and killed 27,000 people, there was not another major tsunami for 80 years. The span between the great Lisbon and Krakatoa tsunami is 128 years. When the Boxer Day tsunami struck in 2004 and killed 240,000 people, it would be logical to assume that we would never live to see one of equal magnitude. Just six years later, Japan was hit by a massive tsunami that killed 27,000 people. The Japanese people thought they were safe behind their 30-foot sea walls, but the walls were no match for waves that reached as high as 100 feet. One factor that holds down the RI is that some of the categories conflict with each other. When we have more droughts, there tend to be less floods. In 2019 China had a huge drought. The next two years, China was hit by major floods. When we have a financial crash, the Economy and Financial Unrest categories will go up and the Oil Supply/Price and Inflation categories tend to go down. One thing I’ve learned from operating the RI is that there is no constant increase of end-time-related activity for every category. We could have a record number of events one year and be followed by a period of record low activity. In the year 2011, several records for tornadoes were broken in the US. The next year a record was set for the fewest number of tornadoes in North America. A few years back, we set a record for the longest period without having a hurricane hit the US. Lately, every year has had at least one major hurricane strike our nation. There are some categories that spend most of the time with low ratings. The devil doesn’t get much love because Satanism is usually rated a one or two. About four years ago, it did manage to pop up to a rating of four as Satanists had meetings and erected statues that generated headlines. Another factor limiting an increase in the RI is that the category is maxed out. It happened many, many times that I accessed the index to raise the rating of a category and it was already at a five rating. We have a few categories that will likely never drop down a four rating. Our nation’s debt and the crime rate seem set to be a problem all the way up to the rapture. It is possible that the RI will push into the 190s right before we are taken home. The biggest takeaway from the index is that it’s now at a constant high rating, which is a strong warning that the event we were told to watch for is drawing very near. “Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh” (Matthew 25:13).