About the author and his family
How to send your feedback and questions
Doctrinal statement
Site history
How to make a donation
Most popular pages

Our name


"The Moorings" is a metaphor, intended to suggest that Bible truth is an anchorage in trouble, a haven after long searching, and a place of escape from the storms of sin.

About the author and his family


Ed Rickard (full name: Stanley Edgar Rickard, Jr.) received a B.S. with highest honors from Wheaton College in 1963, graduating in three years with a major in chemistry, then a Ph.D. from Northwestern University in 1967. His field was social psychology with emphasis on statistics and research methodology, and his dissertation and two subsequent publications (one of which is viewable online) dealt with the causal analysis of correlations. In college he was a National Merit Scholar, and in graduate school he was a National Science Foundation Fellow.

He began his career teaching at the undergraduate and graduate levels in the field of his doctorate. His courses included a graduate seminar in education. Later he taught Bible courses at a Christian college. His subjects were the Book of Daniel, Christian evidences, and graduate apologetics. More recently, he has served as principal of a Christian academy.

For a leading publisher of Christian school curricula, he wrote a high school physics text that has been widely used. He is also the author of nearly all the papers on this website, which has been a source of Bible studies since the early days of the web.

His wife and high school sweetheart, Julie, received a B.A. with high honors from Wheaton College in 1964, graduating with a dual major in French and English, then an M.A. in French from Northwestern University in 1966. When her video classes in high school French were available, they were used by many Christian schools and homeschools. In all of her husband’s endeavors, she has been an indispensable adviser and helper.

Ed has two sons and seven grandchildren as well as great-grandchildren. His older son is a pastor, and his younger son is a minister of music. He counts all his family as a great blessing from God.

Feedback and Questions


You may send an e-mail to information@themoorings.org.

Doctrinal statement


We adhere to the doctrines known throughout the last century as the fundamentals of the faith. Anti-Christian bigotry has debased the term "fundamentalism" so that it now refers to religious fanaticism. But as recently as 1953, the only definition of fundamentalism offered by Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary was "a recent movement in American Protestantism reemphasizing as fundamental to Christianity belief in the inerrancy of the Scriptures, Biblical miracles, especially the virgin birth and physical resurrection of Christ, etc." The "etc." encompasses such doctrines as the following:

  • the Trinity
  • the deity of Christ
  • Christ's possession of all the divine attributes
  • the creation of the world in six literal days
  • the fall of man in Adam's sin
  • the redemption of man through the death and resurrection of Christ
  • the provision of salvation through faith alone
  • the literal Second Coming of Christ
  • the final judgment of man

As well as taking a stand for the historic doctrines of true Christianity, we hold the following positions, which we feel are necessary to recapture the purity and power of the apostolic church.

  • We renounce the worldliness of contemporary Christianity, especially its embrace of popular music and entertainment. We view television as a great threat to the moral and intellectual well-being of children.
  • We separate ourselves both from Sadducees (those who foster doubt in the supernatural) and from Pharisees (those who use a profession of orthodox faith to cover greed or other corrupt motives).
  • Following the apostles, we stress Christian evidences. We believe that in a secular society we must engage the mind as well as the heart if we are to reach the lost and safeguard our children.
  • We offer a renewed emphasis on Biblical prophecy. As the day approaches, we do not wish to be among those caught unawares and unwatchful.

Attaching the term "fundamentalist" to extremists in Islam and other religions suggests that they are essentially the same as authentic Bible Christians, but they are not. The Christian world view starts from the premise, "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth," and the cornerstone of Christian ethics is, "Love your enemies."

Site history


This site, Bible Studies at the Moorings, was formally inaugurated in either 1997 or 1998, although the first year for which a report of total activity still exists is 1999. In the early years, the Moorings was a highly visible source of Bible studies on the Web. Even after many competitive sites came online, the Moorings remained a top-ranking site on dozens of topics. Overall activity steadily grew until it reached a peak in 2011, when there were nearly 300,000 visits, 450,000 page views, and one and a half million hits.

In the spring of 2012, Google began to downgrade the Moorings in all search results, and total activity fell sharply to less than 100,000 visits in 2013. Afterward it moved upward again, reaching 140,000 visits in 2020.

Since November of 2020, there has, however, been a sharp downturn in activity as a result of Google providing few referrals in response to searches online.

The total number of visits since the site's inception now totals about 3,500,000.

How to make a donation


If you wish to help maintain this ministry providing a wealth of Bible study materials, you may make a donation. To find out how to provide support, write to information@themoorings.org.