Sanctimony has an unpleasant odor about it. Self-righteous,
self-aggrandizing sanctimony rooted in bitterness downright stinks. Once you
run across it, it is as difficult to wash the stench from your nostrils as that
of skunk, or putrid eggs, or some other hideous odor that causes one’s gag
reflex to kick in.
Tragically, I know this odor all too well having run across
it from time to time, and it is so off-putting that I felt compelled to write
the following. As a matter of full disclosure, as I know there will be whispers
to the contrary, I was not asked to write the following by anyone, at any time,
and if I would have been, I likely wouldn’t have.
This weekend I attended the Hear the Watchmen conference in
Dallas Texas. I was asked to speak, and even though I have a four month old and
an almost four-year-old at home, I made the effort to attend because the needs
of God’s people are more important than one’s own comfort. I knew it would be
difficult for my wife to be left alone with both children as I traveled, but
she understood the importance of this event, so she gave her consent with the
caveat that I be gone no more than two days.
As I write this I am sitting in Terminal C at Dallas Fort
Worth airport, waiting to catch a flight to Milwaukee, which will put me home
sometime after midnight. Contrary to popular belief, I am not flying on a
private jet as some like to picture all preachers, I’m flying coach, and my
seat is close enough to the lavatories to wish I were a little closer to the front
of the plane.
I will be missing roughly half of the speakers at the
conference, and for this I am sad. What I did hear while I was there, however,
was the testimony of a Messianic Jew who lost both possession and position for
the sake of Christ, and who was shunned by his family and ended up living in a
tent on the beach in Tel Aviv with his new wife because he refused to deny
Jesus. His name is Zev Porat. He is my brother in Christ.
I also got to hear a talk by Dr. Michael Lake, caught the
tail end of an enthusiastically delivered message by Carl Gallups, and was
present for every minute of Coach Dave Daubenmire’s infectious call to action
for the church. Somewhere in between getting fed I also delivered a message on
the importance of unity within the body, and how all the tribes of Israel came
together with one goal in mind: that of making David King. Without unity, we
are prey. Without unity, we have no hope of combatting the darkness
effectively.
I did not know why God had led me to preach this particular
message, and I delivered it a day before what I am about to discuss occurred.
To top off my short jaunt to Dallas, thirty minutes after
touching down, I was sitting at a table with a man who is 88 years young, and
still as on fire for God as he was in his youth. His name is Henry Gruver, and
although he remembers having been in our apartment in California and meeting my
grandfather, I was too young to have remembered the visit.
For the thirty years I’ve been doing ministry he is one of a
handful of men I’ve wanted to meet, but somehow never got a chance to. His
passion for Jesus is evident to one and all, and his desire to see souls saved
is what compelled him to drive from Phoenix Arizona to Dallas Texas on his own;
a trying feat for a man half his age.
Throughout these two days I also saw people getting
convicted, delivered, fed spiritually, challenged, and encouraged. I saw people
laugh, and cry, and revel in that sense of comradery that only being around
other like-minded believers can produce. I saw what the work of ministry ought
to be, wherein the family of God lay aside all pretense and simply fellowshipped
with each other.
On the morning of the day I was supposed to fly back home I
was surprised to discover that every speaker at this conference had been
branded a heretic. If I had been singled out personally, this post would not
exist because I have thick skin and I’ve been called worse. However, I was
there when Russ Dizdar spoke of the deliverance ministry and how much of a toll
it takes on him physically. I saw the pain in his eyes, and I remember having
seen the same kind of pain in my grandfather’s eyes when we traveled. I was
there as brother Zev detailed being spat upon by those of his own family, and
how he would have inherited a fortune had he simply signed a document stating
that Jesus is not Messiah. I was there when Coach Dave spoke of standing in front
of abortion clinics and having strangers hurl insults and worse. I was there
when Michael Lake spoke of the hardship of leaving one’s spouse at home in an
ill state so you can go minister to the people of God. I was there when Mike
talked about being at the lowest point of his life, barefoot and penniless, and
someone giving him a pair of sandals and a ten-dollar bill. I was there! If
these men be heretics, then all I can say is that heretics will be walking the streets of heaven one day.
But see, it’s easy to be a Pharisee nowadays, and playing at
being judge, jury and executioner is seductive. Rather than loving the people
of God, the people of God love drama and intrigue. They treat the family of God
like some cheesy soap opera more interested in unfounded gossip than in whether
or not what was spoken was Biblically sound or spiritually impacting to those
in attendance.
Rarely will anyone lift a finger to further the work of the
Kingdom, but they’ll type themselves down to nubs tearing down people who
have been preaching the message of the cross throughout the world for longer
than they’ve been alive. If you have to tear others down in order to build
yourself up, then all I have for you is pity. If, however, you begin to use
words like heretic, which you
obviously do not know the definition of since you used it about men who are
wholly sold out for Christ, then I would encourage you to give serious
consideration to the scripture passages dealing with how one is to approach a
brother whom they consider to be in error, as well as how God deals with those
who make His little ones to stumble.
The thing of it is we all know the problems. We can itemize
them, we can catalogue them, we can talk about them endlessly, but when it
comes to solutions, the handful of individuals who have enough heart and
boldness to present them are branded heretics.
If all we were meant to do as the Body of Christ was moan and
holler about how bad it’s gotten in the world without acknowledging that it is
incumbent upon us to do something about it, to stand in the gap, to stand on
the battlements, and to make war against the darkness, there would be no point
the Scripture regarding being light, fighting principalities, or having done
all to stand.
Most Christians are content with being thermometers. A
blessed few realize they have no choice but to be thermostats.
It’s not enough to wail about it being hot or being cold. As
a child of God you must do your utmost to change the atmosphere around you, to
be a thermostat, and draw those who are in the darkness toward the light.
Just as an aside, as I doubt it’s a juicy enough tidbit to
make the gossip mill, do you know what all these heretics did when they heard they had been branded as such? They
didn’t pray for the Lord to smite anyone, they didn’t pray for the Lord to
rebuke anyone, they didn’t pray against
anyone, they prayed for them.
For whatever it’s worth, from everything I was able to
witness, these men are either really bad at being the heretics they’ve been
accused of being, or really good at being servants of the Most High God who
desire to see souls saved, and the world changed for the glory of the Father. But
then again, Jesus was accused of being master to the demons He cast out of
those who were possessed, by the same sort of Pharisee whose line and seed seems
to have survived the millennia.
With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea Jr.
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