Apr 29, 2013
From the "Rapture Ready" blog
www.raptureready.com 

Real Terror Threatening America
The recent massive police action in Boston has caused many people to assess what are the true dangers that we face. The same time that 10,000 law enforcement officials where looking for the second bombing suspect, eleven more people were murdered in other cities. In the past twenty years 3,300 people have been killed by terrorism in America, with most of those deaths related to the 9/11 attacks. During the same period nearly one million people have died from violent crime.
Many of our nations largest cities are rotting from the inside out. Blogger, Michael Snyder of the site, “The Economic Collapse” has been one of the best online trackers of the social and economic decline of urban America. Here are twelve examples he sited from a much longer list:

1. According to The New York Times there are now approximately 70,000 abandoned buildings in Detroit.

2. Back during the housing bubble, an acre of land in downtown Phoenix, Arizona sold for about $90 a square foot. Today, an acre in downtown Phoenix sells for about $9 a square foot.

3. The number of murders in Chicago last year was roughly equivalent to the number of murders in the entire country of Japan during 2012.

4. The city of Baltimore is already facing unfunded liabilities of more than 3.2 billion dollars, but the city government continues to pile up more debt as if it was going out of style. USA Today, the “share of jobs located in or near a downtown declined in 91 of the nation's 100 largest metropolitan areas” between 2000 and 2010.

6. There are more than 85,000 streetlights in Detroit, but thieves have stripped so much copper wiring out of the lights that more than half of them are not working.

7. It has been estimated that there are more than 1,000 homeless people living in the massive network of flood tunnels under the city of Las Vegas.

8. If you can believe it, more than 11,000 homes, cars and businesses were burglarized in Oakland during 2012. That breaks down to approximately 33 burglaries a day.

9. The murder rate in Flint, Michigan is higher than the murder rate in Baghdad.

10. If New Orleans were considered to be a separate nation, it would have the second highest murder rate on the entire planet.

11. According to the Justice Department’s, National Drug Intelligence Center, Mexican drug cartels were actively operating in 50 different U.S. cities in 2006. By 2010, that number had skyrocketed to 1,286.

12. Back in 2007, the number of New York City residents on food stamps was about one million. It is now being projected that the number of New York City residents on food stamps will pass the two million mark this summer.

Once upon a time, Detroit was one of the greatest cities in the entire world. The city was once so wealthy from manufacturing; its splendor made it a Mecca for tourism. Today, Detroit has become a tourist stop for all the wrong reasons. Here is a sad excerpt from an article in The New York Times:
“But in Detroit, the tours go on, in an unofficial capacity. One afternoon at the ruins of the 3.5-million-square-foot Packard Plant, I ran into a family from Paris. The daughter said she read about the building in “Lonely Planet.” Her father had a camcorder hanging around his neck. Another time, while conducting my own tour for a guest, a group of German college students drove up. When queried as to the appeal of Detroit, one of them gleefully exclaimed, “I came to see the end of the world!”
The key problem with Detroit and other cities is a collapse in the moral fabric of our nation. The welfare state has enslaved a huge portion of our population into a life of dependency. The number of Americans on food stamps and disability has climbed steadily over the past several years. We now have over a 100 million Americans enrolled in at least one welfare program run by the federal government.
State and local governments have become addicted to federal welfare money. For cash-strapped Florida, increasing food-stamp enrollment is seen as a key means of economic growth, bringing almost $6 billion each year into the state. Florida and other states have hired agents to find and enroll people into these programs. Many of them have monthly quotas that they need to meet.
The question that has crossed my mind many times is, “What will happen to these welfare dependant cites when the money runs out?” Detroit is already at the point where people are calling it a war zone. There would total chaos if half the people in the city suddenly lost their government handouts.
There is no doubt in my mind that the breakdown of the debt-based monetary system would force governments around the world to declare martial law. What we just witnessed in Boston would be the perfect template.
The occurrence of the Pre-Tribulation Rapture will only makes matter worse. Since believers are part of the financial backbone of America, our sudden removal would destroy what remains of the economy. Because the negative consequences of being left behind are so high, I ask everyone with any doubt to rethink where you stand with God.
“Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man” (Luke 21:36).
--Todd

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