When Gary W. Ritter turned to the Lord Jesus Christ in 2005 and was given the free gift of salvation through the shedding of His blood, he began reading the Word of God. Since that beginning of his new life in Christ, Gary has read completely through the Bible close to thirty times.
Gary has studied Bible prophecy during much of this period and is a strong believer and advocate of the pre-Tribulation Rapture. Because of his love of reading, the book that changed his heart and mind was Left Behind. Gary saw the truth behind the fiction, subsequently verified that truth, and knows that God won’t allow His people to suffer the same fate as unbelievers during the seven-year Tribulation. That awful soon-to-come period has two purposes: 1) is to bring the nation of Israel to the point of belief in Jesus Christ as her Messiah so that they declare, “Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord!” and 2) to bring God’s wrath and judgment upon an unbelieving world that has not been redeemed by the blood of Jesus. There is no purpose for God to make believers endure what is meant for those who choose to disbelieve.
Back in the early 90s after a rather unpleasant divorce, Gary got the notion to start writing. He took classes and went to seminars, even took the Writer’s Digest course. Gary discovered at that time that he wasn’t particularly clever and didn’t seem to have much knack for short stories, so he wrote a novel. It was heavily autobiographic of his situation and not very good, but he kept at it and ended up writing seven novels during that period. The publishing world is notoriously difficult to break into through normal channels, and none of his novels got published.
Although Gary continued to think about writing, he let it slip for a number of years until about 2013. He found a website called www.FaithWriters.com and discovered they had a weekly writing challenge. They provided a topic that participants had to write to and a word limitation of 750 words. Gary decided to just start doing it, and by writing a short story every week, he accumulated about 130 stories, a number of which were highly ranked ones in the FaithWriters’ Editors’ Top Ten. He’s turned those entries into the several books of short stories you can see on his website or at Amazon.
In that time period of writing short stories, Gary decided to tackle another novel. That turned into the Whirlwind Series with Sow The Wind, Reap The Whirlwind, and There is A Time. Since then Gary has released The Tattooed Cat and Alien Revelation (Sept. 2019). He is currently working on a novel that delves into eco-terrorism.
All of Gary’s books are written from a Christian worldview that highlight God’s grace—just as Gary was saved by that same grace. They also show the flip side of God’s character. The trouble today in our Christian culture is there’s such an emphasis on grace that we forget God must also judge the wicked and condemn them through His wrath.
Gary’s books are realistic and powerful. They demonstrate the struggles many have in coming to the Lord in true faith. Spiritual warfare in its many forms is integral to Gary’s stories. Jesus has already won the victory over sin, but we in real life must fight the battle every day, just as Gary’s characters must as well.
