Eugene was born in Inglewood, California, at about the midpoint of American involvement in the Second World War, in 1943. At the time, Eugene’s father was working to produce fighters and bombers to battle the aggressors in both Europe and the Pacific battle zones.
After a stint in the USMC as a cryptographer and communicator, Eugene went to work in California aerospace. After working full-time and going to night school, Eugene became a design engineer.
Eugene was agnostic and had little interest in the Bible throughout his twenties and early thirties. After his wife, Theresa, committed fully to Christ, Eugene saw a change in her. Eugene’s new life began in the late seventies with a single heart-changing encounter with Christ. Driven by a curiosity and passion to know God and his Son, Theresa and Eugene began to fill blank pages with daily biblical research driven by prayer.
Inspiration for Kingdom Messengers
The first twenty years of my faith and study brought an understanding of what salvation means for believers. In the past twenty years, the focus of Bible research has been driven by a desire to understand what God has in store for man’s future on earth. The Bible has much to say about that as we compare prophecies with the events of our present time. These observations are startling.
In Matthew 24:14, just before his execution, Jesus instructs his four loyal fishermen: “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” This prophesied end of man’s rule will be followed by Christ’s kingdom of peace. In the Olivet discourse, Jesus describes the signs that would be visible in the world just before his return as Messiah to save the world from destruction and become all creation’s ruler as king. At the time of my birth, many of the signs Christ predicted were not seen by the church and Israel.
However, today as we consider Christ’s prophesies along with those detailed in the book of Revelation, most of these signs are now in place: The results of the invention and proliferation of atomic weapons and the advent of satellite communication and the breakdown of the family structure were all predicted. The outcomes of these prophesied events are the substance of this book.
Kingdom Messengers is a work of fiction built on biblical prophecy that highlights a brave group of souls who, in a world of severe persecution, heralded Christ’s message: the gospel of the kingdom.
– Eugene Ricketts