Before
we get into the seven cardinal rules of the prophetic I want to discuss the topic of date setting for a bit, because, well, it has been at the forefront
of many a Christian conversation of late. That's right, we're at it again, and like a bad sequel that tries to outdo its predecessor the prognosticators are prognosticating far worse this year than they did last year.
It
seems every year around this time there is something that’s supposed to happen.
Whether a planet killer, an extinction event, or a catastrophe of untold
proportions, September seems to be the month when it’s supposed to go down, and
every time, September comes and goes and we’re still here trying to explain to
our families why we quit our job, sold off our belongings, and spent the last few
weeks windsurfing in Hawaii.
I
was still in Romania around this time last year when people started contacting
me about September, and whether I had gone back there to avoid what was coming
here. Did I know something I wasn’t saying? Was September really the end of all
of it? I even had someone say they would be selling their home and donating the
proceeds thereof to the ministry if we promised to spend it all by September,
because after that it would be worthless. I told him to hold off, and that we’d
talk in January, and if he still felt the same way we would put his money to
good use feeding widows and orphans and such.
Now
another September has rolled around and the big hubbub, judging from all the
e-mails I’ve been getting is an asteroid that will collide with our blue planet
by the end of September, and that will be the end of that.
Herein
we have two possible options, and a teachable moment. Either what is being said
is true, and we are on a collision course with a giant space boulder, or we are
not. If it were true, there is absolutely nothing we could do about it anyway,
so we should live each day as though it were our last because that’s how we are
supposed to be living anyway. If it’s not true, then not only did we give
ourselves coronaries by fretting over something we couldn’t control anyway, we
told it to other people causing them to have coronaries as well.
Just as a side note, to put this entire matter to rest, we might kind of maybe want to crack open our Bibles and read about all the things that are supposed to take place preceding the eventual stars falling from the sky and the sun losing its light, before we set fire to everything we own and kiss our families goodbye. Just a thought.
I
realize full well we love the notion of specificity. We want to know the when,
the how, the who, the why, the where, and if possible, be given detailed
instructions as to how to avoid it all.
The
only problem with this is that is not how God works. Only once in the Bible did
God set a specific time frame, and even then He put it off by 100 years because
Nineveh repented. That is not such a good track record, but Christians far and
wide seem to ignore the facts and continue trying to set dates ever so often.
By
now we should have learned our lesson. Seriously, haven’t we learned our lesson
by now? Starting with 88 reasons why Christ was supposed to be returning in
1988, to the sequel, 89 reasons why Christ was supposed to be returning in
1989, to a bunch of other date setters in between, to Harold’s 2011 big fail,
to September, to November, to likely next year, and so on.
When will we realize
that looking for dates is a fool’s quest?
When will we realize that knowing a
specific date takes away from the drive to have an ongoing, protracted,
lifelong relationship with God?
If
our quest and goal is simply to avoid judgment, then our heart is not in the
right place to begin with. If we’re looking for a date so we can get out of the
stock market a few weeks before it all comes crumbling to the ground, or to
hedge our bets somehow, then we are simply attempting to use God toward our own
nefarious ends, and there is nothing Spiritual about that.
The
plain truth is that I do not know these people who gave the words about
September, but I know what they said did not materialize when they said it
would materialize last September, so color me skeptical. That is the essence of
this entire thing, and it should be a cautionary tale for every single
individual who believes themselves to have been called of God to deliver a
message.
Measure
every word, confirm every message, make sure that you’re not giving words just
for the sake of giving words, or because you feel as though it has been too
long between messages.
With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea Jr.
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