A little about me:
Hi, my name is Randy Thomas
and I am the author and publisher of Prophecy
Update.
I was born in Bakersfield
California in 1957 but grew up in the small
farming community of Arvin about 20 miles east
of Bakersfield. From an early age I had a
voracious appetite for reading often devouring
several books a week and reading several daily
newspapers before I even started high school. I
was involved in Boy Scouts and obtained the
highest rank of Eagle Scout in 1974, later I
became a scout master and led my own local troop
for many years.
During high school I
excelled in writing, especially creative
writing. I loved playing football and wrestling
but I found drama to be my favorite activity
during my high school years often dreaming of
striking it rich and becoming a famous star.
After high school I attended Bakersfield College
for two years working towards the goal of
becoming wealthy.
In one last final attempt
to strike it rich I went on a weekend trip to
Las Vegas hoping to gamble my way to a big
fortune. It was this weekend in 1982 that
changed my life, I gambled all my money away and
drank myself into a lonely stupor. On the way
home all I could think about was how hopeless my
life had become and how I wasn’t getting
anywhere in life. I called my best friend and
drinking buddy when I got home to cry on his
shoulder but instead my friend said I have
something to tell you. He said he had been
invited to church and ended up accepting Jesus
Christ as his Lord and savior. My friend had
been afraid to tell me thinking that it would
end our friendship, but instead I thought it was
the greatest thing I had ever heard. Astonished,
he said would you like to go to church with me
tonight and I said yes!
I remembered going to
Sunday school when I was a young child and I had
been a few times to various churches over the
years, but I had never heard any pastor talk
about the book of Revelation and the End Times.
So that night in 1979 at Calvary Chapel
Bakersfield I went forward at the end of the
service and gave my life to Jesus Christ and my
life has never been the same since then. From
the very first day the Lord blessed me with an
unquenchable thirst and desire for His Word and
especially Bible prophecy. A few weeks after
getting saved, the Lord gave me the words for a
tract and I called it Good News For You. I
printed up thousands of them and gave them away
everywhere I went. Shortly thereafter I thought
I need to start a monthly newsletter and tell
people about the Lord and Bible prophecy. I
called it “The End Times” and started writing it
monthly and sending it out to friends and
family.
I read and studied
everything I could get my hands on concerning
Bible prophecy. I started ordering cassette
tapes from Hal Lindsey and Chuck Smith on
prophecy and I would listen to them over and
over and then one day a friend handed me a tape
by a guy called Chuck Missler. I could not get
enough of his teaching, I had soon amassed
hundreds of hours of tapes and a whole library
of books, most all of them on Bible prophecy. As
the years progressed my friends started to call
me the prophecy guy and any time there was a
question about prophecy people would send them
my direction.
When I first started
studying Bible prophecy there might be one or
two major prophetically related events a year,
but towards the latter parts of the 80’s and the
early 90’s things began to speed up, suddenly my
monthly newsletter was becoming old news before
it was even published. So I started an hour long
radio program called “Prophecy Watch” and every
Saturday right Hal Lindsey we aired the program
on a local Bakersfield Christian radio station.
My thought and prayer was to syndicate the
program nationally, but the cost and the time it
took to produce each show soon became more than
I could afford or handle and even though we had
a good response I just didn’t feel the Lord was
blessing it, so after a year we discontinued
“Prophecy Watch”.
When computers finally
became affordable for the home I immediately
fell in love with the technology and became
quite the computer enthusiast. My enthusiasm was
further enhanced when the internet came along
and it helped to fuel my appetite for news and
research. The computer and the internet soon
became my main tool for writing my newsletter
but still I thought there has to be a faster way
to get the news out.
In the year 1999 while
attending a Bible Prophecy Conference hosted by
Hal Lindsey, the last speaker was Chuck Missler.
At the end of Chuck’s presentation he asked
everyone to stand and bow their heads in prayer.
He then instructed everyone to pray and ask the
Lord to give each one of us attending a special
anointing to put the gifts and talents that we
all have for use for the Lord’s work and that we
were not sit down until the Lord spoke to us. I
prayed and said Lord I love to write and I love
computers, how can I put these two things to use
for your glory? The Lord instantly showed me in
my heart that I was to start a web site ministry
devoted to Bible prophecy. I said ok Lord, but I
have no idea on how to create a web site.
After getting back home I
went and bought some books on creating web sites
and purchased web site creation software. Soon
what came to be known as Prophecy Update was
online and visitors were starting to take
notice!
Prophecy Update currently
receives about 3,500,000 hits a month with over
180,000 unique visitors. Prophecy Update is
viewed in over 120 countries around the world
and the daily newsletter reaches hundreds of
thousands each month. I have authored several
commentaries on various books of the Bible
including Revelation, the Gospel of John and the
Gospel of Matthew, the Book of Daniel and the
Book of Acts and I have also authored the
following books, “The End of Times”, “Prophecy
Guide”, “Perilous Times” and “Angels, Aliens and
Armageddon”.
I am currently single after
having been married once in 1992 and then
divorced in 1999. I have never had any children
of my own but I have had the blessing of raising
many children who over the years that the Lord
has brought into my life, who still to this day
look up to me as their father and their children
are now my grandchildren.
In May of 2007 I quit my
secular job of 20 years as an Operations Manager
for a worldwide delivery company to devote my
full time to the ministry of Prophecy Update and
promoting the Gospel through Bible prophecy.
