Web Sites History

   The "Street Tracts International Net" ministry is a private non-profit project put together by a couple of Baptist Christians in the family of R. K. Street, Jr. There has been a miraculous growth and multiplication of our Street Tracts in the past 3 years, since October 2004, but this growth spurt came only after about 15 years of diligent work and undaunted prayer. The first seeds of the Street Tracts idea got planted in Mr. Street in 1989, during his 2nd or 3rd semester of seminary study, when God inspired him to write two tract messages that he initially called "The Biblical Scheme Of Earth's History And Direction" and "The Bible's New Lifeboat." This material was later revised somewhat to become the tracts currently titled as "Divine Selection: God's Developmental Program For Earth" and "A Logical Solar System-- For All The Interactive Elements," and a part of it was also expanded and revised later to become the tract currrently titled as "A Godlike Overview Of Cataclysm." Mr. Street got very excited about the prospects for the 2 initial tracts that he wrote, believing that in these 2 tracts he had received a special inspiration and a special illumination from the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ. He particularly thought that his 2 tracts might help to bring enlightenment to those persons who struggle with "intellectual" objections to a faith in Jesus. Within the next year or two he tried printing up a bunch of them himself, using an improvised system of computer print-outs and photocopies. He had to cut and paste together different strips of paper in order to make the first paper patterns for the photocopy duplications. In the early 1990's, he produced perhaps 200 or 300 copies of his little booklets for his personal use, creating 3 and then 4 of them, and adding variety by giving them a lot of alternate titles.

   During the years 1990 to 1995, when Mr. Street was continuing his seminary studies, he attempted to show his little tract booklets to several people at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, but no one besides himself seemed to get very excited about the prospects for use of his tracts. He found this extremely disheartening, and yet from 1995-1999, he continued writing additional tracts, which he started turning into computer slideshows in the format of WordPerfect Presentations. By 1999, he had completed about 15 of them and wanted to post them on the internet for free use. Not having any money to invest in the project, he still managed to establish 3 or 4 web sites, all of which he obtained through "free hosting" services that he found on the internet.

   The first one that he established was "Port Earthrise," which was created originally as a Netscape member's site with free hosting. That one got started in 1999. It's located over here, but with only 20 MB of storage space, we were never able to develop it much. This was followed by other "free hosting" sites with Truepath.com, Xoom.com (which was later absorbed by NBCi.com), and NBCi.com. All of these sites got no visible indexing in Google and other search engines. This was very discouraging for Mr. Street, who did not know how to fix the problem without the expenditure of a lot of money that he just didn't have to spend.

   Equally frustrating, perhaps, was the fact that 3 of his free-hosting providers eventually deprived him of all the space they had promised on their servers. Mr. Street one day found his entire 20 MB site at Truepath.com had been suddenly deleted by that provider, and they never even bothered to write an e-mail and say why they had done this. This from a Christian web-hosting service! Then his 100 MB site at Xoom.com was transferred to NBCi.com, which seemed okay at first, until a few months later-- when NBCi.com decided to eliminate all of their free-hosting sites!

   Tired of web site hassles and a lack of visibility on the internet, Mr. Street in the year 2002 tried printing up another 200 copies or so of his booklets for distribution in his own neighborhood, and also by a youth worker at a Baptist church in Collinsville, Virginia, where he was regularly in attendance. This was a revised version of "A Logical Solar System" which had an alternate title and a new Easter-related teaser: It was titled "The Secret Of The Cosmic Egg: Finding The Center Of The Universe." These were passed out just before Easter and on Easter Sunday. Then in 2003, he printed up perhaps 300-400 more copies for the Korean Presbyterian Church of Newport News, Virginia, where he and his wife were working as co-directors of the English Sunday School Department.

   The rapid growth and miraculous expansion of the Street Tracts ministry began only in late 2004. In 2004, Mr. Street began a correspondence with Rev. Dr. W. S. Vedha of India, which began with paper letters and was soon carried forward by e-mail. This led to a great blessing by God's Holy Spirit, and to a partnership that was clearly ordained by God. Rev. Dr. Vedha wanted Mr. Street to mail him some of his free paper tract-booklets, and he was eager to oblige. But he decided that he wanted to write some new material especially for India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka-- an area of the world that Mr. Street had visited for more than 4 months in 1979-1980. This had happened during his younger days, at age 27, when he was a single man and a globe-trotting backpacker. The 2 new tracts, originally written in English, were designed specifically for India and South Asia. The first 2 tracts seemed powerful and insightful to Rev. Dr. Vedha, who then determined that he would-- by the grace of God-- get them translated and published in at least 4 different languages of South Asia. This beginning grew into a South Asia series of 8 tracts (later growing to be 17), for which translation and publication is already underway in 5 different languages of India, Sri Lanka, and Nepal! It also made for a great improvement in a new line of tracts that we have called our "Earth-Trekker's Tracts" version, providing it with a wonderful embellishment.

   However, this was just the beginning of God's miraculous blessing upon the Street Tracts ministry, which now has plans underway to get a lot of tracts out to the people in Nigeria and Africa, and to the Native Americans here in the U.S. as well! We praise God and our great Lord Jesus Christ for all the great expansion of this ministry which we are suddenly beginning to see!

   Besides the recent expansion of our evangelism tracts as paper booklets that are being distributed worldwide, we are excited to announce that there is now also a considerable multiplication of our web sites and domain-names, which we prayerfully expect will help to increase our visibility on the internet. There are now more than 40 domain-names and a great many sites connected with the Street Tracts International Net. We hope to get a lot of digital e-tracts and printing patterns out to millions of people in the next few months!

   Our volunteer tract publishers and evangelists are some of the most dedicated that anyone could ever hope to see! However, we are in much need of donors who can help us pay for printing expenses in India, Africa, and elsewhere! So we sincerely request your assistance in providing for the works of our tracts ministry. Funding support can be sent directly to Rev. Dr. W. S. Vedha in India, or to Roddy Kenneth Street, Jr. in the U.S.

   We have long ago replaced in a new form three vanished sites that were produced at an earlier time: "Mountaintop Vistas of the Earth-Trekker" and "Higher Ground" and "Earthward Outreach" have found new servers, and new names as well. Below you will find the names of some of our earlier sites, long vanished, and of their replacements, which have already been around for quite a while now.

   "Mountaintop Vistas Of The Earth-Trekker," once located at Truepath.com, was transformed to become "Earth-Trekker's Mountaintop," and this site was located for a few months at AloofHosting.com. Then AloofHosting discovered it was going broke, so it terminated all of its free sites, including "Earth-Trekker's Mountaintop." A lot of its content has been retained at the newer Earth-Trekker's Mountaintop site, which was for a long time located at http://earth-trekker.angeltowns.net/index.html. Then AngelTowns.net let their server get wiped out by hackers, which wiped out all of our several ETM sites, so we've recently tried to reconstruct the old ETM sites in a new location at http://earth-trekker.tracts1.com/ and in its various subfolders. "Online Christian Tracts" was first designed as an outlet for all the materials of the Earth-Trekker's Mission ministry, and it long ago moved to its own lifetime-hosting account at AngelTowns.net. The old "Higher Ground" site, once located at Xoom.com and NBCi.com, was at one time our largest free-hosting site. . . with 100 MB of storage space. But it has since been replaced by the newer OCT site, which has a lifetime-hosting account at AngelTowns.net and more than twice as much web space. Typing the domain-name takes you quickly to the new home site of Online Christian Tracts... it's found at OnlineChristianTracts.org. These two are among the four that became our first four web sites at AngelTowns.net. Next came WorldwideChristianTracts.net and Christian-Tracts.net. All 4 were originally purchased as lifetime-hosting accounts, but (as said before) ETM got wiped out by hackers, and AngelTowns.com never got around to recreating our lifetime "100" account for it... so we lost that "lifetime" account when we moved everything ETM to Tracts1.com. Our 3 remaining "lifetime" accounts with AngelTowns.com are CTN, WCTN, and OCTO... which continue to be the primary source/focus of our sites network.

   The old "Earthward Outreach" site vanished for a while when we changed our ISP, but that site has been re-established, greatly enlarged, and revitalized as "Worldwide Christian Tracts." It has a lifetime-hosting account at AngelTowns.net. and we are very grateful for the promised stability. This time we have a lifetime-hosting arrangement with the service provider (AngelTowns.net), so it should be a permanent home for us. It is already accessible by just typing the domain-name WorldwideChristianTracts.net.

   The next major acquisition of the Street Tracts International Net was the domain-name Christian-Tracts.net, which we have already purchased in lease on a recurring basis. This addition was another great blessing, since it gave us an easy-to-remember name/location. A new site we created for this entity was labeled as "The Christian Tracts Network." At this one we hoped to also share links with a lot of other tract sites, and we also planned to use it to present and feature a third variation of our many tract series. This third format is that of the original titles in a form rather similar to the initial release, with the original titles and cover designs again visible. These new editions of the original tracts, however, were also specially customized for distribution through the CTN site. In 2006, we purchased 2 more domain-hosting accounts at AngelTowns.net. One of the 2 new accounts was for "Gospel Tracts Network," and it is accessible by typing the domain-name Gospel-Tracts.net. The second of the 2 new accounts was for "Bible Tracts Network," and it is accessible by typing the domain-name Bible-Tracts.net.

   Since then the Street Tracts International Net has grown to include even more than 40 domain-names and a very large number of web sites. This, with the grace of God and His continued blessing, will surely help to increase our visibility and will undoubtedly bring our network of interactive sites to a greater level of prominence on the World Wide Web. We'd like to see "the web" changed a bit, so that it becomes a lot less like a spider's trap that lures victims to a poison-struck doom. We hope that our little network can do a bit towards transforming "the World Wide Web" into more of a World Wide Net for Jesus Christ !

   Christians are supposed to become "fishers of men," so let's keep casting our nets into the cyberspace ocean... and into the everday life of our "real world" too. Let's keep on fishing the 'Net !

   We can keep casting nets into cyberspace, but we need to do some seedcasting on dry land as well. A lot of people just keep treading water in a deep ocean of woes where they may soon drown, and others are already mired in deadly quicksand.

   We're the only ones standing on "solid ground," and we need to throw them a life-line. We need to show them the way back to safety and to the only "solid ground" there is... the "solid rock" foundation of the Earth... and that's Jesus Christ. The people of Earth are still in dire need of our help, and they still require a better knowledge of the only route that can put them on the Road to Heaven.