Here's my response:
So how many of you saying to "just trust God to take care of you, there's no need to prepare" have home insurance or auto insurance? Why? Shouldn't you just trust God to take care of you and to protect you? Do you also have health insurance? Why? Don't you trust God to heal you?
What you don't realize is that it takes a greater amount of faith to follow what you hear God telling you to do in preparing, especially in the face of friends and family that poo-poo, laugh at you, and basically attack your faith, than to close your eyes and just "trust God to provide".
It takes more faith to stand on what you see in the Word, especially if it doesn't line up with the accepted teaching of the any-day, pie-in-the-sky, beam-me-up-Scotty pre-trib rapture theory.
Instead of closing their eyes and proudly expecting (falsely) to be "taken out" before the mark of the beast and the tribulation, those who prepare stand on the Word. Foregoing vacations, new cars, and mega-screen TVs, they instead use their funds to acquire those things they might need in a time when they won't be able to buy or sell without swearing allegiance to a "beast" government.
They learn those skills necessary to grow and raise their own food, how to live without power, how to preserve the food they grow...and in necessary how to defend their families. All the while they are praying that what they see coming doesn't happen for at least another week, month, or year...because there's still so much to do.
Then they have to have the faith to know that if what's coming happens before they get that extra week, month or year, that God will provide.
That is true faith.
