I don't know if anyone really can be prepared to die, even Jesus had his moments in the Garden. But if we are focussed on the tasks in front of us, then we would not have time to think about it.
Have you ever been in a situation where you had to react quickly, and only later realized what a close call it was? I think that as we get nearer to our Lord's return, events will have us in that frame of mind. We must stay focussed every day like athletes and not worry about the end.
This is part of it: I know that non-Catholics have so much disdain (and often rightly so) for all the Marian apparitions etc that they might not notice the change that has taken place in recent years.
There has been a veritable explosion of extremely questionable apparitions, witnessed by too many people to be considered fraudulent, yet clearly not of God. This began after Vatican II, another source of confusion for non-Catholics who might have only a passing glance of awareness of what happened.
The Catholic Church of the past forty years is not the same Church of old times. I don't mean to suggest that vibrant living Christians outside the Catholic Church should concern themselves too much with it, because the important thing is to be true to the teachings of Christ, but don't be too quick to buy into the stereotypes that divide us, because when it comes to Jesus the divisions are but shallow ones. Many Catholics do have to be treated the same as New Age Pagans but sticking compassionately to the common ground of Jesus while prayerfully addressing the problem of false apparitions and the prophecies of our times is probably the way to go.
Concerning Marian devotions and apparitions, none of that appears in Apostle's Creed that we still recite faithfully. Acceptance of the devotions of Mary are voluntary, not doctrinal, and a big problem we have between independent Christians and Catholics is that the more modern independent Christians ("Protestant" seems too narrow a term)tend to treat eternal life as a great sleep of death instead of as a continuation of earthly life, whereas Catholics truly do not recognize such a firm separation between this life and the afterlife, and so we treat Mary as a beloved Mother still living, first among all our Saints in Heaven. She really should not be treated as a divinity but unfortunately that has happened.
Just the same, to really look at what is happening today: the Marian apparitions seem to be occuring in conjunction with genocides. Medugorje with Bosnia, Kibeho with Rwanda, etc. and even Fatima, with its focus on Russia, connected to the Gulag millions of deaths. There has also been an explosion of people claiming the "stigmata" experience, which are often witnessed to be genuine if inexplicable, and it is simply an overwhelming fulfillment of
Matthew 24:24 .
These things are speeding up and although many protestants and independent Christians have a lot of animosity for the Catholic Church, that Church has been responsible for sheltering and keeping the Word of God available to all Christians and has always held a place central to God's plan even while falling into deep sin just like the various split-off sects that eventually ran into completely non-Christian directions.
If there is anything to Calvinist predestination, it is simply that souls will always find their way to Christ the Shepherd even when the churches falter, and the Jesus-Christians are one such group, which may not have any individual prophets in any Biblical sense but which fulfill a prophetic role as a group showing people the way to eternal survival as the Tribulation deepens.
I have noticed that all the protestant end-times scenarios include the Catholic Pope, they have never been able to really stand apart and claim the Catholic Church is irrelevant to the Divine Plan.
Catholics know that the Pope may or may not be worthy. We have lived through times when there were three popes at once! We know there can be an "anti-pope" and we know that the abuse of the relationship between the human office of pope and the divine presence of Christ, a complete perversion of who Christ is in relation to us all, would be an abomination.
These things usually cannot be mentioned outside Catholic circles because of the violent hatred so many Protestants feel for Catholics, and these things are not easy to explain to "Sola Scriptura" believers, so they become debate-fodder to no one's benefit.
But if you are still reading this post, and wondering if I will ever get to the point:
The point is that in the last days, in the Book of Revelation, there is not just one church. There are seven, only one of which is spit out, a "luke-warm" one. I think that the book Listening captures that sense that somehow we will be acting together through this Tribulation as one body of believers without losing our distinct characteristics.
The witness of the Jesus Christians, as presented in Survivors, is the perfect illustration of "just do it!" Christianity that is so important in these times because few people have the time and resources to really study everything we should already know and more people must act quickly. Simplicity is key. Jesus made that clear over and over. He told some to drop all and follow him, but he told others to stay put in their jobs. I think of the Centurion who was ready to drop all when he asked "what must I do?" and Jesus said, "just do your job and don't abuse it" (my paraphrase) and then there is Martha, whom Jesus rebuked for attempting to distract her sister from forsaking housework, but he did not tell Martha to also forsake her work. Everywhere the disciples went, they found "stay put" disciples waiting. Even Paul, after the Damascus meeting with Jesus, spent three years in convalescence with a "stay put" believer whose resources were available to the Lord's calling.
