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Maybe you noticed that Prophecy Central disappeared over the week-end. This was the second shocking problem we have experienced in the last two months. The first was a hacking incident, with our home page replaced by a death-focused game message. In that case we were able to just reload our home page and continue our mission of bringing you “A world of information about Bible prophecy.”
Something more serious happened last Saturday. Our domain registration for Bible-prophecy.com expired, but we did not know it because we were under the impression that our domain was given free registration with our new hosting company.
Technically, it was our fault, and someone snapped up the expired domain, surely knowing that it was a very valuable site. For many years Prophecy Central has been listed in the number one spot when one searches for “Bible Prophecy” on Google and other search engines. Depending on what is happening in the world, we may have more than 100,000 visitors per month. Most visitors are Bible students, teachers, and pastors.
Suddenly the whole Prophecy Central site, including 14 years of accumulated news stories in over 100 sub-categories of Bible prophecy. This blog was also unavailable. In our place visitors found a religious advertising site with an Islamic Crescent, Jewish Star of David, and a Cross.
This was a great disappointment to us, and even though we could put the same information on a new domain, it would take years to rebuild all the links and good will that has been established. People would not be able to find us on search engines for a long time, and thousands of Bible students and pastors would no longer have this trusted resource at their fingertips.
On Sunday morning I explained this to our wonderful church family at Solid Ground Church in Alta Loma. I asked them to pray that our all-powerful Lord would reverse this tragedy, or in some other way prove once again that, “In all things God works for the good of those who love him” (Romans 8:28). That was at about 10:45 a.m. At 11:05 a.m. an email message was sent to me by the domain registry company. I didn’t access it until mid-day, but was exuberant when I read that the person who bought the domain had experienced a change of heart and was willing to return it to us for a reasonable fee to cover his costs!
Thus, we are back, and have learned a valuable lesson. But we want to solicit all of your ongoing prayers for us because Prophecy Central may suffer other attacks as we remain faithful to God’s Word in several controversial matters.
