Life is brutal that way...the loss of irrecoverable moments amid trivia and distraction. - Dan Simmons

Have you considered that these prophecies were not divine revelations, but merely manipulation from some secular power?

I was not surprised to wake up alive. I suppose one is surprised only when one awakens dead.

Perhaps our reservoir of spiritual faith has run out.
Perhaps it should have run out a long time ago, I said sternly. Superstition has taken a terrible toll on our species. Wars...pogroms...resistance to logic and science and medicine...not to mention gathering power in the hands of people like those who run the Pax.