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"They will come"
by Phil Maxwell September 3, 2005
Scatteredsheep.com,
went online in June, 2004, in place of its predecessor at www.planetkc.com/stm,
which began around October, 1996, simply as a test drive of the free personal
website included with my dialup account. The name 'Simple Truth Ministries'
originated by the unanticipated spontaneous need to name my website presented by
the setup routine, and quickly gained notice by a small niche amongst people
with similar views and experiences. An avid student of the Bible, intellectual
thinker (at least in style), and prolific writer since my youth, this was a
welcome outlet for my passions, as well as an exciting opportunity to find other
"scattered sheep" Christians.
As the website and corresponding message board which followed shortly thereafter
gained more notice, so also came the enemies -- a steady parade of them bringing
one challenge after another against our thoughts, views, and, most of all, our
character. Yet, after nearly a decade, the ministry has done nothing but grow in
influence, apparently fulfilling a long pondered, mysterious message we believed
to be from God in 1983 -- "they will come".
While the old website never generated much interest and message board activity
has long lingered between little and very little, I've kept writing and building
the website, a project done in conjunction with two other websites I manage for
business purposes (www.standard-gasket.com
and www.metrogasket.com),
with knowledge and skills developed on one generally carrying over to the
others. I've always been weary of self-promotion, so I've endeavored to leave
that to Yahshua rather than spend a bunch of time and money chasing after
numbers. My part has always been to write as moved by the Spirit and make it
available to those He would want to hear, concluding that He could bring the two
together without a whole lot of help from me.
Nevertheless, a large part of my work in recent years has involved promoting my
company websites and the tools and knowledge acquired in that has carried over
to this work, also, though I'm yet to spend a dime beyond the modest web hosting
and URL registration fees. That hasn't hindered the growth of our readership,
though, now having logged over 125,000 views of the articles and studies by some
40,000 different visitors in the last 15 months. Many click and run or spend
very little time here (like DISA and other government/military agencies), but
there's still been some 12,000 hours spent on the site not counting whatever
downloads, printouts, and other reproductions have been made. Growing steadily,
a third of this has been in the last month and over half in the last three
months alone. Around 40 articles average over a 100 views per month, another 50
or so attract over 20, and approximately 200 more split a couple thousand more
monthly views. About half the visitors come back at least once, and it appears
that nearly two thousand regularly check in more than once a month.
Obviously 'they are coming' in ways that we couldn't have forecasted in 1983,
and not only that, but they're coming from the most remote corners of the world
-- 151 different countries since January. That's around 80% of the roughly 190
recognized nations of the world, with the remaining 20% being amongst the most
remote and obscure countries and islands.
The top 10 include 65% from the U.S., followed by Canada (5.0%), Great Britain
(3.8%), Germany (2.4%), Australia (1.9%), Mexico (1.2%), France (1.2%), the
Netherlands (0.9%), India (0.8%), and Italy (0.7%). Rounding out the top 25 with
year-to-date visitor counts between 100 - 300 are Austria, Sweden, Brazil,
Spain, Saudi Arabia, Philippines, Belgium, Poland, Iran, Switzerland, Japan,
Argentina, Malaysia, Finland, and Singapore.
By region, North America represents a declining 70%, while European interest
continues to rise at 16% for the year presently, followed by Asia (6%),
Australia/Oceania (2.5%), and Africa (1%). (The remaining 4.5% are unknown.)
Although I get a regular array of emails, mostly positive, most come and go
anonymously, as I would prefer in most cases. I didn't write anything with much
concern for how others would receive it, so neither flattery nor condemnation
really means much, either. That's why I also refuse followers, members,
financial contributions, and the like, too -- I don't want to be beholden to any
man except my one true Master, the Lord Yahshua, for what I say and how I say
it.
All that said, I'm ambivalent about the growing parade of people who stop in
unseen beyond the traffic counters. I see some of them on the blogs and message
boards that spawn discussions about the things written here (and the authors),
but don't pay much attention to them, especially when locked behind registration
requirements. Its enough to both see the fulfillment of a personal prophecy and
to fear the ultimate end of getting too much notice, especially considering the
way my words tend to enrage so many. In other words, even though I know "they
will come", there's no reason to consider that message anything more than a
warning; He didn't say they would come with olive branches in hand.
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