I echo what others are posting. I believe this forum's role is primarily to prepare people...spiritually more than physically. After the warning, is will be to help people who are lost. But until then, it is like a boot camp for Mary's apostles. At least that is what is has been for me. As for physical preps...I'm not getting that vibe right now. Although, there is a lot of space to store stuff, so I probably will be doing some prepping down the road. I don't think I will be fleeing right away. My Lord just planted me in a new place with a little waterfall type of rock arrangement that even my sister calls a grotto. Two retired nuns/sisters live next door. Like Padraig, I've not money to lose and live week to week working 6 days a week. Not much extra time for much of anything other than continuing to unpack. Well, I also play in a Sunday night basketball league of pick-up with my friends. That is the stuff that I will miss when the world hits the fan and goes mad. And I as well don't think the youth and many adults will be able to cope. This generation is not geared for suffering. We are very soft and have whatever we need on our fingertips. But suffer we will and it will be absolutely ugly. The US is going down fast it seems. I haven't had a tv for almost 2 weeks but I can just feel it in my bones. It is sad, but for the better. Let us all prepare spiritually, ponder in our hearts what we are being called to do, and lean on one another here on the forum.
We will loose a lot, but in the end I suspect we will gain a lot too. I remember when I was young how many people used to stop and talk to me as I walked up the street. Now, a few still do, but not very many. We rush so much . I would like to think we will soon have more time to talk, for if we have time to talk we will have time to pray. Perhaps the time is coming when we will all be excited and happy to be Catholic. I think this is what the forum is for too. TO remind us of the joy and excitement and adventure of the Faith...
Can't help but think of this Kathy: Mathew 24: [20] But pray that your flight be not in the winter, or on the sabbath. [21] For there shall be then great tribulation, such as hath not been from the beginning of the world until now, neither shall be. [22] And unless those days had been shortened, no flesh should be saved: but for the sake of the elect those days shall be shortened.
The latest from Charlie- The World Enters it's Passion "As many of you have probably surmised, I have had quite the struggle the last month. It has run the gamut from physical illness to family issues to spiritual matters and more. It did not trouble me much. I rather expected that would be the case as we reached the end of the beginning. I hope I am genuinely out of the woods now, but that is in God’s hands. If so, I will write regularly, for there is much to be said. I am going to be starkly candid about some things today in a way I have not been before. I fear often I mean one thing and people hear another. I speak of the blessings that come from taking the next right step, the participation in redemption that suffering can be, the peace that comes from truly turning it all over to God. Alas, all too often, I find that people think if they can just get the right formula from me of doing the right things, they will be exempt from the consequences of the Storm. We will not prevail in the battle that unfolds before us. Things will continue to deteriorate with a few false dawns tossed in – and then when all have lost hope, we will be miraculously and visibly rescued by Our Lady the Immaculate Conception. Things are NOT going to get better in a temporal way. If you have lost your money, you are not going to get it back for any length of time – you have only beaten the rush before all money is worthless. If your doctor or medicines have been taken from you because of changes in health care, it is NOT going to get better. The destruction of national borders is NOT going to resolve itself, war will NOT be avoided and vast civil strife can NOT be averted. There is no place of safety except in God as the darkness surrounds us – and that does not guarantee temporal safety, only spiritual safety. If you have gotten anything other than that as what lies ahead temporally from anything I have said, you have misunderstood me or I have not been clear enough. The rain from this Storm comes and, as it is written, falls on the just and the unjust alike. On two occasions, while fully conscious, I have been moments from death. That does not count the several times I was lost and revived on the operating table during my complex spinal cord surgery 11 years ago. I was unconscious throughout and only learned of it later. (Ha! During that near-death episode I did NOT see a light or have a conversation with my heavenly friends. Given my history, you might think I would have. I figure God just told my angels, “Ah, let Charlie rest through this. We’ll talk to him when he’s awake again.”) I have been in a handful of genuinely life-or-death situations. In none of these was I ever confident that God would spare me temporally because I was His instrument. People often ask me how many times during my pilgrimage I thought of giving up and turning back – and are generally surprised when I rather emphatically say never. Some assume that it must have been easier than they had expected. It was not. I got to know hunger at times in a way I never did before or since in civilization – and got sick of trail mix, I might add. I was threatened with knives and a gun and spent a lot of quality time with wild and often dangerous animals – cougars, wolves, bears, foxes, bobcats. I did not persist because I thought I was exempt from death or serious injury – but because I was willing, if that is what was required, to be obedient until death. I literally would rather have died than fail in what I had promised God on the matter. This gets to the heart of the matter. The change I am speaking of, the transformation does not come because you find a special in with God that exempts you from temporal suffering – God did not even give Himself that exemption (another way of saying His Only Son). Rather, it is seeing that everything here, all the greatest accomplishments in history, have all the meaning of getting the first spot in line at the bus stop on the 43rd day of fourth grade. The ONLY things that have meaning here are trusting God and helping others to do the same. Trusting God does NOT mean that He will do what you want or think is good; but that once you embrace Him fully, whatever He allows to befall you is for your good and will help bring more people home to heaven. I do not say accept your cross; I say embrace it and rejoice in it. That is not to say you should seek suffering. That, too, is a vanity. Rather, accept what God sends and what He asks of you. I have received great temporal honor and acclaim at times and suffered terrible humiliation at others. While the former is as pleasant as a bowl of ice cream and the latter as nasty as a bowl of castor oil, both have their purposes. I regard temporal triumph and disaster as the same fraud wearing different clothes. Both are just efforts to distract you from the meaning of life, the former by deluding you that you are greater than you are and the latter by deceiving you that God has left you. Both have the same meaning as winning or losing the first place in line at that bus stop I spoke of. I often think people just keep playing the wrong game, bringing a football to a basketball court or a basketball to the baseball diamond. You can’t achieve victory if you don’t even know what game you are playing. God instructs us to do His will and to help our neighbor, so why do so many spend so much time trying to dominate their neighbor or aggrandize themselves? Even if you completely succeed, you lose. Once you truly abandon yourself to God, what wonderful peace and freedom there is in it! You don’t spend your time worrying what people think of you; you chuckle at the two frauds of triumph and disaster and you find real joy – even in the midst of the most terrible of trials. To have real confidence in God and in heaven as your rightful home, that is real peace and joy. Once you do, God can make use of you – and if He does, He will put you in what are, temporally, some godawful situations (if you’ll pardon the pun). He’s not looking for a bunch of teacher’s pets, but for people who will go out and do the work, be a sign of hope to those around them. Any temporal prestige is only useful to the extent that it helps you do His will and bring hope to others. I say we have reached the end of the beginning and so we have. What we are going through is in the image of Christ’s passion. Collapse has come: the monetary system throughout the world is all smoke and mirrors now; the rule of law in the western world is a mere shadow, a chimera. Like the harbinger of a great earthquake, the threat of war rumbles throughout the world. The world is on the cross right now, though death has not yet come for the way things were. It will. We lack the power and ability to recover now. With the death of the old order, there will be darkness for a time, darkness and despair. If you put your hope in the restoration of the old order, your hope is in vain, for the old order is in its death throes. Put your hope in resurrection knowing, as I have told you many times, this is NOT the end. Rather, it is prelude to resurrection. Resurrection is not the last-minute escape from death to return to the way things were. The prelude to resurrection IS death. And from the seeds of what was, God raises up something new and true. The old order is almost completely dead, then there is darkness and despair for a time, then the miraculous sprouting of something new, a glorious rebirth of society as God intends it, reborn by His command. But like the resurrected Jesus, even those closest to Him will not, at first, recognize it for a continuation of what was. We are only a few years away from that resurrection of society. As I have said, if you keep faith and act as a sign of hope, your children, your grandchildren and generations untold will call you blessed and give thanks for the glorious world you participated with God in bequeathing them. But…the Storm is upon us. Many will be swept away by it. All will suffer, many will die. No family will be left untouched by the Storm – NO family. Everyone who gets their primary sense of security from anything other than God will have it taken from them. EVERYONE. And deceiving yourself that you are God’s special pet is not trusting in God for your security – it is just a more subtle way of trusting to your own cleverness. I was told – and reported to my priests back in the 90′s – that if I gave my final acceptance to the work God had laid out for me, I would almost immediately enter into a prolonged period of intense suffering. It was part of why I procrastinated about it so long. When I did undergo consecration, it came as promised, culminating in the life-threatening neurological event that, in the best case, was supposed to leave me paralyzed on my right side. What a blessing it was! When you are stripped of nearly everything – including confidence in your own health; when your mortality becomes your boon companion, you realize God is enough in a way you had not previously imagined – and you become free to work on His behalf unburdened by fear. When I embarked upon my year-and-a-half pilgrimage walking 3,200 miles across America with my disability, I was by no means certain I would not be badly injured or killed. But when disaster befalls you, that is when you have the greatest opportunity to build your trust in God.
Continued I know, that if I keep faith, I will not die before the Storm is broken. That is because of the work appointed me. I do NOT know that I won’t be maimed, mutilated or seriously injured and further crippled. But God willing, I will endure to the end, trusting that whatever befalls me is for my good and that of others. What I most passionately want is heaven – and to help bring along as many I meet as I can. If suffering, being maimed or mutilated, helps accomplish that, then I say with Our Lady, “Let it be done to me according to your word.” God help me if I should EVER covet the first place in line at the bus stop. This is what I mean when I tell you how blessed and joyful you will be if you embrace God and His will: that you will participate with Him in the resurrection of our poor, bleeding, wounded world; not that you will get a better place in line at the bus stop.
Thank you Charity! This is the most powerful spiritual advice I've ever received, just at the hour when I need it the most. May God bless dear Charlie a thousand-fold for his fiat and his willingness to be a blessing to all who have ears to hear.
He more or less says everything that needs said. Sometimes you just stop and stare and wonder where some people get all their wisdom from. It doesn't happen so often , but it just did for me.
This is so true!!! One of my favorite images ever is this. We must be willing and fearless to embrace our cross too with joy or like my patron Saint Andrew once said: “O most beautiful cross that was glorified by carrying the body of Christ! Glorious cross, sweetly desired, ardently loved, always sought, and finally prepared for my heart that has so long awaited you. Take me, o cross! Embrace me. Release me from my life among men. Bring me quickly and diligently to the Master. Through you He will receive me, He, Who through you has saved me.”
I read all of Charlie Johnston's blogs all in one sitting yesterday evening. What a treat! At the bottom of the page there is a category drop down menu that allows you to read thematically. Well worth dipping into. http://charliej373.wordpress.com/
Here is a wonderful reply Charlie gave to a question on his website blog today 15 July. Hi Stephen. I am not in the wilderness now. From Feb. 11, 2011 to Aug. 21, 2012, I did walk across the country, making camp in the woods as I went, meeting people and enjoying. Funny, as it began, I agreed with you. I did not understand why this was the thing to do. I did some heavy political work and I thought it made much more sense as things began to darken for me to direct a regional pro-life group or something like that. I changed my mind as I went. I saw the goodness of people – and how almost everyone knew we were in trouble – and needed a sign of hope. I still can’t explain it, but it was exactly the right thing to do. I used to put little blurbs up on my Abraham’s Journey Page on Facebook to let people participate vicariously in my pilgrimage. I would stop at libraries to enter things. To my astonishment, during the heart of my pilgrimage, I was getting 25,000 to 50,000 hits per week. I started it off praying that I not be injured in a way that would prevent me from completing it. As I saw with astonishment what joy and hope it spread to people I met on the way and those who started following on Facebook, after about a month and a half I began praying that I survive the full journey so as not to disappoint anyone who was heartened by what I was doing. Here is the thing, Stephen…we often think we know what God wants of us, or what we conventionally think is good. But God is always fresh and new – and He has something tender, unique and intimate for each of us. So when He starts stripping things away from you that you think are good and true, just wait on Him. He may have something else for you. He may be proving you, finding if your love is really for Him and your fellows or for the validation you receive for doing what the world sees as conventionally good. It is why I constantly say, “Take the next, right step.” We are little. We can’t see the fullness of God’s plan. But that is no excuse for inaction. Just do what is right ahead of you and do it as well as you can. Trust God – and He will show you – in His time, not yours. I appreciate your frustration. I am 58 and have had heavenly visitors pretty steadily since the early 60s. You would think I would have this down. But I still get frustrated, go up blind alleys, misunderstand, and sometimes think that something is a dumb plan. See the good in people whenever you can – seeing the good in them often nourishes that good and helps it flourish. Don’t worry much about what you don’t know. Just do the work right ahead of you.
He must have suffered terribly, such Wisdom is only bought with the coin of many tears. He must have paid a huge price.
Yes, he was offered the chalice of suffering and prayed for over a year before accepting. His life then became like that of Job.
One thing that stands out to me in these writings is the very definite time frame. As garabandal quoted in the 'Thrown for a loop' thread, Christmas of 2013 was the last of the old order, and he expects that all will be complete by 2017/18. I know this falls in line with much of what has been speculated before, but this is very definite, no ifs, buts or maybes. Tomorrow morning I will be enrolled in the Brown Scapular, on the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and also, as I lately discovered, the anniversary of my baptism. I suppose if we are going into battle then we will need to be suitably attired...
found this from Charlie. October 13 2017 will be 100 years since Our Lady of Fatima's last appearance to the children: "The sequence of ever-deepening chaos will continue until mid-October of 2017," he asserts he was told by the Blessed Mother. "Despair will reign throughout the world. Then, between October 13-17 of 2017, the world will be miraculously, utterly, and visibly delivered from the terror by the Intercession of Our Lady the Immaculate Conception. Christianity will be reunified, Satan will be shackled, and the world shall enter a glorious period of peace and harmony under the rule and protection of the one, triune God."
Yes, Adoremus, I'll be wearing the Scapular tomorrow, also. And after reading Charlie's blog I've made an interior promise . Not only will I continue the responsibilities of husband, father, employee and studies, but more specifically, I'm going to ask Our Lady what God's unique Will for each day is. If a special act of preparation is called for, I'll do it. If there is an individual from whom I need to ask forgiveness, I'll seek it. If a person needs assistance, I'll give it my best. If someone needs to hear the Gospel, I'll preach it! No more delay. No more procrastination. The Storm has already started and time is short. Come Holy Spirit! As the Gospel says: if anyone refuses to take up and carry his cross, he can't be a disciple of Jesus! Forward in the Hearts of Jesus and Mary!
For anyone interested in reading more of Charlie Johnston's posts or for those who only read those at Next Right Step site, he also has a Facebook page with many more posts from earlier years- I thought I had read them all but was surprised to find any now I am perusing from 2011-2013- I do not have a FB account but am still able to read them all at Abrahams Journey Facebook
