(I have been having an amazingly productive tour through Louisiana and Texas. I can’t wait to write about it – but it has been a very busy tour. I am assured that I have two solid days off later this week where I can spend some serious time working online. To those whose emails I haven’t answered – and there are a lot of you – hang in there. I will spend both days working not so much to catch up as to get a little less buried. For now, I reprint this piece from a year ago.-CJ)
Be Not Afraid
Posted on October 14, 2015 by charliej373
By Charlie Johnston
My goal since I began writing this has not been to tell you precisely what is going to happen and when (with the exception of the Rescue late in 2017), for those are the wrong questions, questions that can only give you a false sense of security.
If one is a captain charged with preparing his troops on the eve of a great battle, he does them a great disservice if he tries to choreograph the battle to come in precise detail for them. Once it commences in full, battle takes on a life of its own. It is filled with unexpected twists and turns. The soldier who thinks he knows every detail that will unfold will probably not survive the battle for he is basing his hope on his own expectations. Rather, the effective commander is honest with his troops, giving them a general overview of what to expect and, most importantly, how to act and react with honor whatever turns the battle takes…how to be effective in the moment as the battle unfolds. The soldier who seeks out sure knowledge rather than proper preparation deceives himself. His unease about the unknown ahead leads him to trade off hard knowledge of the habits of mind and heart to endure later for a false sense of security and superiority now. This foolish trade, however much it may soothe him, dramatically cuts his odds of enduring the battle.
I had thought – and still hope – that the striking failure of the Locutions to the World (LttW) a few weeks ago, would gently lead people to quit worrying so restlessly about precisely what and when various events will happen. I had hoped that it would lead them to examine their own expectations and shift their focus to how to behave whatever happens. But vanity dies hard – and many would rather convince themselves that they have the inside scoop rather than merely trust in God by living each moment with extraordinary love and faith. God is raising up a people who trust in Him by loving their fellows and taking the next right step. Please put yourself radically into God’s hands that you might live. Say with me my constant prayer: “Lord, do not show me a single thing I don’t need to complete my work. Give me the strength to bear those things You must show me to do the work You have for me. Jesus, I trust in You.”
Some outlets have taken to calling me the prophet of the Storm. That is not unfair, but largely misses the point. Since I first began writing for my priests nearly 21 years ago, I described the Storm that is now unfolding around and engulfing us in no little detail. But if that was all I was shown or had to say, I would never have publicly said anything. You have plenty of people, secular and religious, who can and are accurately describing the Storm that gathers force around us. Anyone who has eyes to see can see where we are headed. If I had just been called to do color commentary for Armageddon, I would have declined the invitation and stayed home. The main reason I was called to describe the Storm with such accuracy decades ago, when it scared me, was to lend credibility to what my central prophetic message is: “Be not afraid. God calls all men to salvation.” I was sent to proclaim the Rescue – and to teach you how to participate with God in reclaiming His children, just as I have been taught to participate with Him in the same. That is a calling worth sacrificing much and even dying for. Even more, it is a calling worth living for.
I promised the Lord from childhood that if these things, this Storm I saw in such detail, should indeed come upon the world, I would speak in His behalf to assure people that He was calling them back to Him, not crafting their destruction. As the Storm slowly took shape, painting the cultural sky first with an eerie, then ghastly shade of sickly yellow, I tried to find a way out of my calling. And then the dreadful, ominous darkness. While I was in the process of conversion, I first heard the magnificent song, “Here I Am, Lord.” It was – and is – a reminder to me of the promise I made and have renewed over and over since childhood…that if the darkness I was shown should come, I would speak – not to describe the darkness, but to assure people of God’s light…to bring it to them. Every time I hear or sing it, I choke back tears. To me, it is a renewal of a promise I made long ago, to assure you that God’s plans for you are for a future and a hope…for your rescue, not your destruction.
Many continue to think that the Storm is God’s punishment of us. IT IS NOT. Get that out of your head. The Storm is what we have brought on ourselves. It is an evil that is entirely wrought by our hands. God has nothing to do with it. If you don’t firmly get that right, you will get almost everything else wrong. The great evil is that we have convinced ourselves that we are sufficient to ourselves, that we are masters of our destiny with no need for God, whatsoever. This hubris has caused souls to be lost to eternity at an unprecedented rate for the last century. For a time, God restrained some of the consequences of that hubris, to give us a chance to come back to Him of our own
accord. That would have been best. But we would not. So God has lifted the hand of His restraint for a time, that we may see what WE have wrought without Him. Once again, God is using the evil we have wrought to bring about good – to let us see some of the consequences of our rebellion, that we will lose our confidence in our mastery of events without reference to Him. When our confidence in our own supremacy is dashed, we must either despair or turn to Him. Already, the rate of the loss of souls to eternity has slowed as people see what we have wrought.
Some pray for mitigation of the Storm. They think they do well, but what they are actually praying for is mitigation of the consequences of what we have wrought. Over the last century, that sort of mitigation has been given – and the result has been the continued loss of masses of souls to eternity because of our stubborn, stiff-necked rebellion. For the last century, every time God has shielded us from the consequences of our stupid vanity, we have simply doubled down, thinking the mitigation proof that we are in control and do not need God. Our preening arrogance has formed a deadly cancer on the Mystical Body of Christ. All we ever had to do to rid ourselves of the cancer was to embrace humility and our need for God. Every time the Lord has mitigated the symptoms, we have doubled down on our arrogance, making the cancer worse. God is not using the Storm we have wrought to destroy us, but as a form of Divine Chemotherapy guaranteed to rid us of the cancer and leave us healthier than ever. The Storm, used as God is now using it, IS an act of Divine Mercy. It is an act of supreme folly to pray for delivery from the cure rather than from the cancer.
Begin to contemplate prophecy from the perspective of rescue and Divine Mercy. Downplay or drop entirely interpretations grounded in disaster scenarios. Authentic visions often come from the perspective of eternity, rather than a crabbed earthly perspective, so they can look very apocalyptic. Because of this, someone might see true, but interpret badly. Authentic visions, though they rarely result in the temporal disaster scenarios we usually imagine, nonetheless reflect the eternal reality. From heaven’s standpoint, a soul lost to eternity is a catastrophe. From an earthly standpoint, if such a soul nearly dies, then lives past their final state of grace, we think they have been rescued, when they have actually perished. Look at all private revelation through the filter of how it relates to Rescue. Let me give you two examples of what I think are likely authentic prophecies that have been misunderstood because of our childish insistence on temporal special effects.
First, when I was on the West Coast of the U.S., many asked me what I thought of the “prophecy” some had heard of a great tidal wave swallowing up most of the West Coast, bringing water all the way up to the Colorado border. I usually told people I thought it might be authentic, but not as they thought. Water represents Baptism. Baptism washes away sin. The West Coast is terribly disordered. If this prophecy is authentic, I interpret it from the standpoint of Rescue – that God is going to send a tidal wave of repentance and mercy over the west coast, washing away the hideously disordered sin that mutilates our culture from there.
Second, there is a prophecy that has gained some currency that the earth is going to shift on its axis. I started hearing about this a lot while I was in the Northeastern U.S. I told everyone that I couldn’t say about the disaster scenario most envisioned, but whether that happened or not, that prophecy had already been fulfilled. I pointed out that 1,600 years ago the Emperor Constantine had made Christianity an officially favored religion…and that ever since, the cultural axis around which western beliefs revolved were fundamentally Christian. Oh, we have lived it poorly many times…but if asked what the good was, serious educated people would always point to the Judeo-Christian values that were our heritage and gave the world a slow-motion blossoming of freedom, prosperity and meaning. That axis has been besieged the last few decades. The vote in Ireland to legalize and impose same-sex “marriage” ensured that it would soon be imposed in much of the rest of the Western World. We do not just sin any more, we call sin “the good” and Christian values “the bad.” For the first time in 1,600 years, our foundational cultural assumptions are fundamentally pagan rather than Christian. The axis of our cultural assumptions has shifted dramatically. God is not giving you inside info on the end, but calling you to participate in shifting the culture back to the foundation that gives life, rather than one that has always given death.
Don’t interpret things in a way that makes you a pitiful spectator in the stands, but as a recipient of God’s mercy who is called to participate in His Rescue. Big disasters may come. Sometimes they do. But prophecy is far more often missed because its fulfillment is subtler than expected rather than more dramatic. If something big comes, you cannot stop it. Do not let worry over it distract you from the little you can do – for it is in the little, ordinary things that you find God…the little whisper rather than the great thunderclap.
Worry less about outrageous external events. I frequently get asked about the possibility of the imposition of Martial Law in the U.S., the imposition of One World Government by U.N. and European Statists, and the evil designs of shadowy groups. Here’s the deal: they lose. None of them are stronger than God. All of them put together do not amount to a clipping from the Master’s fingernail. They lose. The only reason to contemplate these things at all is when it helps you to discern what God calls YOU to do. None of us can do great things: all any of us can do is the little right in front of us. When we offer that little to God, He transforms it and feeds multitudes. When we worry about it to the point it distracts us from what we can do, we toss away God’s promise in pursuit of delusions of grandeur and intrigue. God wins. There is no suspense or doubt about the outcome. Those who are with God are those who DO His will, not those who only talk about it. Each soul is the battleground. If you get caught up in things bigger than you, the satan has seduced you to the losing side by distracting you from what you are called to. If you relentlessly stick to the little things right in front of you, always acknowledging God, you hold fast to Christ and will share in His victory.
Think of a few things. Two years ago, had you been told that by mid-2015, if you refused in conscience to actively participate in an homosexual “marriage” ceremony, you could (and some would) be stripped of your property, heavily fined, bankrupted, fired, and even jailed, would you have believed that? Yet that is the reality in this new world. If you had been told that the “reasonable accommodations” to the abortion provisions the president spoke of would turn out to be forcing the Little Sisters of the Poor to participate in abortion coverage, would you have believed it? Yet that is the new reality in this world. But what has been the result of this arbitrary exercise of coercive power contrary to law and traditional American values? Even as their egos and malicious contempt for dissenters has inflated, actual power has collapsed around the offenders without them knowing it.
Twenty or 30 years ago, if a president had declared Martial Law in response to a grave crisis, I would have gone along with it, whether it was a Democrat or Republican and whether I objectively agreed or disagreed. At that time I had a base level of confidence in presidents that, particularly in crisis, they genuinely loved both their country and their countrymen – and would not do such a thing merely to cement their power. A year ago, many would probably have gone along with such a thing. What would happen now, though, if the federal government declared Martial Law? At a minimum, there would be large pockets of active resistance among groups and entire states. It would likely trigger actual revolution. By abusing their authority, officials have not enhanced their power, but have forfeited all but a pale shadow of its form.
The European Union was supposed to both unite Europeans and subject them to the iron rule of an unelected bureaucracy. We are watching it burst its seams as it comes apart before our eyes. The statist dreams of narcissistic elites who would subject free peoples are ever doomed to ultimate failure, though the unraveling can be violent and ugly.
Do not worry much over big things you cannot change. Rather, stick to the little things you can do for those right around you and God will take care of the big things. Know that when you take firm hold of Christ, no one on earth has any power over you whatsoever save that which God allows…and once you hold fast to Him nothing is allowed save that which will help bring more souls to Him. All the attacks and bile of the most powerful will fall harmlessly at your feet when you hold fast to Christ. If your trust in the Lord is deep enough, He may let you be taken for a bit by malefactors, not that they may destroy you, but that their power might be broken in the effort.
God has a plan to carry us to safety. Jesus Christ is, Himself, the safe harbor to which we are aimed. His Holy Church is the vessel which will carry us safely to Him through the violent ragings of the Storm. Our Lady, Holy Mary, is our Stella Maris – the Star of the Sea – the sure navigational guide which will ever keep the ship of His Church pointed steadily towards the Harbor which is her Holy Son. Stay safely berthed in the Church with your eyes on Our Lady who will ever point you to her Son. Do not be distracted by the violence of the winds or the waves. The Lord is Master of the Storm.
Even in the midst of stormy tribulations, joy will rise. People will know that God has not abandoned them. They will know that life DOES have meaning – and that the Lord calls them to participate with Him by caring tenderly for their neighbors. People will watch as, even in the midst of the Storm, God knits together a people resolved to build each other up rather than tear each other down…and see a culture which was in tatters become strong, noble and true again. I saw the Storm truly from my earliest days. I saw the Rescue just as truly…and I have seen the sublime joy that rises even in the midst of the Storm. How I wish I could convey it to you now! But I guess it is better that God lets you see it later, when you need it, so you will know I have told you true. It will fill you with a joyful resolve to press on and endure for those you love. There is rejoicing in your future if you hold fast to God and just do the little things right in front of you.
Be not afraid. God calls all men to salvation.