Appointed!

Words mean things! Yes, I know, earth-shattering revelation, but there it is. This is doubly true for Scripture since we know that not one jot, not one tittle, not one period, comma, or exclamation mark is out of place, unwarranted, or insignificant. We either believe the Word of God is absolute, or we make up our own version of Scripture, believing only what we want to believe and blotting everything else out.

Suppose you choose to go the scrapbooking route when it comes to the Bible. In that case, there isn’t much I can do for you other than offer my sympathies, knowing you’ll be in for a rough slog when your self-published version of the good book runs out of answers, and those Joel Osteen style mantras you have highlighted fall short of giving you hope or peace. It’s kind of hard speaking abundance into being with an empty pantry or looking at yourself in the mirror talking about being bold as a lion when your face diaper is permanently attached.

Yes, I woke up in a mood and seeing that Pat Robertson hasn’t taken the hint and gone off to live out the rest of his days with a modicum of dignity just made it worse. Yes, the spiritual paragon who famously counseled a man whose wife had Alzheimer’s to leave her, because, you know, that’s what Jesus would do, is now offering unsolicited opinions about the elections, but I digress.

Back to the reason I started pecking at my keyboard in the first place.

Yesterday I was driving by a church, and as most churches do nowadays, it had one of those signs out front with a short quip. No, it wasn’t about Jesus being the reason for the season, or about Mary and her little baby boy; it simply said, “For the good of all, we are staying apart, together!”. Then it went on to give a link where you can watch a bored elder give a zoom talk at a predetermined time, but after I’d read the headline, the rest of the text seemed trivial if not outright irrelevant.

Although I fully understand that pastors reading their Bibles has fallen out of fashion, one would think that given the severity of the situation, they’d dust off the old leather-bound and try to find some direction therein. Other than deaths from the flu, which have magically dropped to zero, there is an across-the-board spike in everything else. From alcohol abuse to child abuse to spousal abuse, overdoses, suicides, and depression, the epidemic is real, and it’s not just the non-churchgoing folks either.

Humans were created to need human contact, and when you allow fear to dictate your actions vis-a-vis said contact, you are opening a Pandora’s box of pain you’ll never be able to close again. All because you were afraid of something you have absolutely no control over, to begin with.

If the people in charge of your spiritual wellbeing actually believed the book they profess to follow, they would understand that it is appointed unto men once to die! For those who slept through their English class, the definition of ‘appointed’ is a time or place decided on beforehand or predetermined.

The whole notion of dying before one’s time is lunacy because the time of one’s passing is appointed, therefore predetermined. Whether you wear one face diaper or six, you will not live a second past your appointed time.

You will not stand before the throne of judgment one day and watch God shaking His head and saying, “Oh, the plans I had for you, if only you hadn’t prematurely died of the sniffles.”

That goes to something else I’ve been chewing on lately: why would men who see their god as impotent serve an impotent god with abandon? It is because so many see God as less than what He is that they can live dispassionate lukewarm lives of duplicity and compromise.

Then again, what do I know? I’m not Pat Robertson.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr. 

The Stakes

 

We cheated fair and square, so shut up, sit down, and get over it. This seems to be the growing sentiment by many on both sides, including paragons of virtue such as Pierre Delecto, otherwise known as Mitt Romney, who never misses an opportunity to prove that being a backstabbing weasel is hereditary. If you don’t know the history of the Romney family, well, mayhap you should look into it before sanctimoniously declaring that if only we’d had a president with the demeanor of Mitt, we’d have gotten a lot more done, but I digress. Perhaps it’s because I’ve had to deal with betrayal in my life that I find the likes of Mitt Romney so off-putting, but this isn’t about that; this is about something bigger.

I’ve been mulling this entire drama over for the past few weeks, as surely everyone else has. Because everything that was done was so amateurish, because there seems to have been no illuminated brain trust planning the rigging of the presidential elections, I think the directive was simply to make sure every pion does their level best to tip the scales in one direction. Some took it too far, and it became apparent, but that’s beside the point. The entire thing was too haphazard to be organized in a central location, but what the power brokers giving the directives never figured into the equation were the stakes of this particular gambit.

You’d have to be naïve to think that this was the first time this has been attempted. It’s just the first time it was so egregious that even the normies couldn’t ignore it.

One need look no further than the state I currently reside in to see that it’s a well-worn playbook they used. In 2018, Scott Walker lost the Wisconsin gubernatorial election due to a 40,000 ballot dump in the middle of the night, you guessed it, in the same county, 130,000 votes for Senior Dementia magically appeared, also in the dead of night.

Even back then, when it was obvious, people shrugged their shoulders and decided they would keep their powder dry and live to fight another day. This time around, the stakes are much bigger than who’s the governor of Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania, or a handful of other states where shenanigans are baked into the cake. The stakes are no less than whether this nation continues as the constitutional republic it was founded as or becomes some grotesque imitation of a failed ideology known as Marxism. The stakes are whether lesser men will rule you, your children, and your grandchildren and whether freedom will be but a memory, something whispered and spoken of fondly, as something that once was.

So pardon me, Beth Moore, and every other pretend prophet exploiting lonely middle-aged women, but your hatred for a man has blinded you to where this train is headed. Or, perhaps it hasn’t blinded you at all, and you just think you’ll be in the dining car as it chugs along towards the cliff.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr. 

Precarious Perches

 It used to be that in more literal times, the actions of current day politicians aspiring to the highest office in the land would get them tried for treason or worse. When everyone you've ever met peddles your name like currency, getting jobs they never qualified for and money they never earned, and by the look of it, you get a taste of everything their grubby little hands can hold, we've got a serious problem. It's a problem because you hold public office, and rather than represent the people of your city, state, or nation, you are enriching yourself, your family, and your friends to the detriment of the average citizen.

It is a demonstrable fact that our politicians have sold us out, and while doing so, have made themselves exceedingly wealthy. People who would otherwise be hard-pressed to qualify for a janitor at the local greasy spoon live in mansions, ride in chauffeured limos, and spend the average mortgage on a dinner for two. If anyone dares to point out these things, the attack dogs in the media are quick to demand who you think you are in questioning public servants in such a manner.

Nothing will get fixed because everyone's on the take. The one guy who wasn't, the one guy who even donated his salary while in office, seems to be suffering the death of a thousand cuts, and even those once thought loyal are quick to unsheathe their long knives and take a swipe or two. They have political careers to protect, and in their minds, that's the only way to do it. They're not as yet understanding that the 80 odd million people who voted for this president are watching their actions and taking notes. They'll have a better chance to be the first astronaut on Mars than for them to be reelected by those they now condescend to and belittle.

The world is also watching, and those adversaries who've been sharpening their teeth on stones and biding their time are seeing an opportunity they wouldn't have dared to dream of manifesting itself. While we've been busy pandering to the mentally ill and going back and forth on which bathrooms to use, enemies great and small stayed hungry. None dared imagine that as a citizenry, we were self-destructive to the point of suicidal. None dared to dream that within the halls of power, this nation harbored individuals who hated both the nation and its founding to the point that they would rather see their children subjugated to Communism's shackles than continue as a Constitutional Republic.

Perhaps it's the hubris that's blinding people to the reality of what around the bend. We're like that aging boxer who's won a few bouts, stayed out of the game for a decade or so, and now want to mount a comeback to show the world we still have it only to get our clocks cleaned by the younger generation. You think you've got it well in hand until the first punch shatters your orbital bone. By the time the reality of the predicament you've placed yourself in takes hold, it's too late, and all you can do is wait for someone to ring the bell. In our case, however, there are no referees, there are no bell ringers, and even those who now pretend at friendship and alliances will be quick to take a swipe if they perceive weakness. With corrupt, dementia addled individuals bumbling about the levers of power, how could they not?

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr. 

Fallout

What have you done? These were the four words that formed the question God asked Cain while still covered in his brother Abel's blood and gore. It's not as though God didn't know what Cain had done, but I dismiss the idea that the question was rhetorical in nature, offhand. God doesn't play word games, He doesn't do gotcha moments, so when the question was posed, I believe it had more to do with the full extent of the consequences of what Cain had done rather than the initial act itself.

Granted, it would be a while until Newton came along to put into words what most of us knew instinctually, namely that there is an equal and opposite reaction for every action. Nothing gets done in a vacuum. Nothing gets done without there being tertiary effects. A guy in a lab in the middle of China picked his nose after touching an infected bat, and a year and change later, here we are, forced to become mole people, living beneath the earth and squinting at the sun whenever we dare to step outdoors.

Just so we're clear, I'd sooner believe that the abominable snowman and bigfoot are real, are happily married, and whenever bored, get on their spaceship and abduct drunk people in Arizona to play operation on them, than the narrative being peddled wherein Joe Biden got more votes than any presidential candidate in United States electoral history. Sorry, not sorry, that's just where I am with this.

You know how some things just don't make sense? This is one of them. We've been told for the longest time that if something is too good to be true, it probably is. That every hiccup, error, and glitch, all favored one candidate without them being intentionally instigated, is just absurd on its face, but the other side doesn't care how they win as long as they win.

The goal is power; the goal is control; the goal is getting back on the teat of the government gravy train, which they were denied for four years. Every degenerate, every weasel, every immoral leech you wouldn't trust alone with your children is dusting off the ole' pinstripe and licking their lips. The dark days are over! The promised land awaits once more! But what that means for the average Joe, for the taxpaying rube funding the thousand-dollar plate dinners and first-class accommodations, is that they'll get to keep less of the money they earn and be told they're still not paying their fair share, by puss bags wearing silk Hermes ascots.

And this is where I wanted to get to this morning. As I watch this clown show unfolding day in and day out, I marvel at how little thought is given to the guaranteed fallout of what they are attempting to engineer. Let's be honest; they could have waited another four years and would have had a decent chance of winning the election outright if they found the right candidate. However, for various reasons I won't go into at this juncture, they couldn't afford to do it. And so, they opened up this Pandora's box, never thinking through the reality that whichever way this election swings, you will have at least half the country deem it as illegitimate and fraudulent.

It's been a tough year for most folks, and for many, the one thing they left had to cling to was the notion of one man, one vote. It was the idea that they were living in a country that would never lower itself to pulling Banana Republic shenanigans. It was beneath us as a nation, at least until this new crop of the power-mad came on the scene. Now, this too has been taken from them, and the dirty, disgusting, heinous, and monstrous underbelly of American politics has been exposed for all to see.

You have hard-working, law-abiding, taxpaying citizens feeling as though they no longer have a voice. They feel as though kids have no future, and the country they love, the country their parents, grandparents, sons, and daughters fought and often died for, is being undermined by individuals who despise its history as well as its current iteration. How long before those people get fed up, and once they do, what happens then?

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr.  

Compliance

 I have not absconded in the dead of night, I have not taken my family and jetted off to parts unknown, nor have I been hiding in a bunker in some undisclosed location learning to like the taste of Spam and dehydrated autumn squash. I’ve been doing what most people who have a rough outline of how many good days they have left do, which is spending more time with my kids, enjoying the mild Wisconsin weather before the cold snap makes an entrance, and praying. I’ve been doing a lot of praying lately.

If the last year has taught us anything, it’s that everything can change in an instant and in ways nobody foresaw. Sure, we had an idea, the broad strokes of it, a framework of what the days leading up to the end times would look like, but the theoretical knowledge of a thing doesn’t do the flesh and bone manifestation of it justice.

What’s most disturbing is that no matter the newest horror, we’ve become so desensitized that we just shrug our shoulders and accept it without a requisite reaction. We’ve grown numb to the absurdity of it all, and when we’re told we have to do away with family dinners or human contact because of a malady that has a 99.7% survivability rate, we just go along as though it was the most normal thing in the world.

But that’s okay; big pharma is here to save us. Even though every drug or vaccine ever produced has some side effect, from the serious ones like the children of thalidomide in the sixties to explosive diarrhea, slurred speech, and heart palpitations you may get if you want to be free of your tinnitus, they promise this one’s different. Keep in mind that these are drugs that went through rigorous testing, and still, side effects are wide-ranging and exceedingly common. Sorry, but here’s no such thing as a free ride or a magic cure.

Do I believe the vaccine is the mark of the beast? No, I do not, but it is a blueprint, and it’s easy to make the corollary of how one thing can be used to usher in the other. With the vaccine, it will be businesses refusing service if you aren’t vaccinated like a good little sheep. When it comes to the mark, it will be government-enforced.

The linchpin here is that they realized they could get away with it, and easily so. Fear has always been used to manipulate, but with this generation of mostly dazed and confused unmoored souls whose only real concern is whether or not they’ve legalized pot, it’s become embarrassingly easy to get a vast majority to comply with any ridiculous idea some paper pusher can come up with.

If ever there was a moment most analogous to a slow-motion train wreck, this, my friends, is it. As yet, we’ve gotten only glimpses of the consequences of our actions, but it will accelerate with time. Compliance will lead to more people out of work, more businesses shut down, leading to more dependence on the government. That, in turn, will lead to more power for the government, which will allow them to strip more of your freedoms without thought or fear of reprisal.

We are witness to a circuitous loop that will bring endless misery and throw more of the middle class into poverty. It will grow the power and influence of bureaucrats and paper pushers to the point that serfdom will become inevitable, and government of the people, by the people, for the people will cease to exist.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr. 

Intermission

 There’s a video that’s been making its way around the internet for the longest time of a woman getting caught shoplifting in a store. The funny thing about it is that once the security guard started making her take out what she’d secreted in her intimates and other places, the volume of what she managed to steal was unfathomable.

Everything from ham steak to sausage, to turkey legs, to chicken thighs, to what looked like two-pound porterhouses appeared as if out of nowhere. By the time she was done, she’d likely removed a good twenty pounds of meat from her clothing.

I’m sure this was not her first time doing this. She seemed too calm and collected, plus the layered clothing, extra pockets on the inside, and other such details would lead one to conclude that she was a professional crook. So how did she get caught this time? Well, there were two factors involved as to why she got caught. First, she was just too brazen about it, and second, someone was actually watching and noticed the anomaly.

If someone takes a pencil out of a Walmart, chances are they’ll get away with it. It’s a pencil, small enough to go unnoticed, and not the high-value item security is on the lookout for. If, however, someone tries to walk out with an entire aisle, well, let’s just say it would be hard for someone not to notice.

Because they did not account for the increased voter turnout, they were forced to be brazen about the attempted pilfering. This wasn’t just a pencil or just a paperclip, it was the whole aisle, in multiple states, and it was so in your face, so massive, that even those who were only watching out of boredom saw what was happening.

For the longest time, we’ve heard that fraud, cheating, and invalid ballots are baked into the cake, can’t be helped, will happen no matter what, and we’d just have to deal with it. This is why there are dueling narratives, where one side wants all votes counted, while the other wants all legal ballots counted. It may be a small distinction, but it has massive implications, and if the election process is ever to be trusted again in this country, transparency is paramount.

As it sits, we are currently in the intermission. Lawsuits are flying, demonstrable sidestepping, and breaking of the law has occurred in various places, and we’re just starting to see what all will be unpacked as the days march on.

As it sits, the dead have spoken, and evidently, they outnumber the living, but the living have yet to reply. What is beyond debate is that it’s never a good idea to stop on the two-yard line and do a celebratory dance before you’ve locked in your win. From what I’m seeing, this is far from over, and the man currently occupying the white house is not known for throwing in the towel, no matter how much they’d like him to.

Al Gore thought he was president too until he wasn’t. I’m not saying this is the way it will go down, but if it does, anything we’ve seen thus far as, far as outbursts of mindless violence, will pale in comparison. Be wise, be watchful, and pray!

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr. 

Speak Now!

 

Depending on how you look at it, at least sheep have the fortune or misfortune of not knowing that the slaughter awaits them. Reason and logic escape them; therefore, they do not bleat as they are herded into the squeeze chute, they do not protest, they do not put up a fight, or try to stop the inevitable from happening.

The only time panic sets in is when they start to smell blood, and you can see realization dawning in their terrified eyes that this will not be a day like any other. By then, they are resigned to their fate, and though some bleat weakly, there is nothing much they can do to avoid the butcher’s knife.

Anyone with an ounce of sense and a gram of objectivity can see what’s coming. It doesn’t take revelation, prophecy, or tea leaves to see which way the wind is blowing or what will become of us if what has been dubbed the silent majority continues to cower in its silence.

We sat silent as overreaching tin pot governors stripped us of our constitutional rights. We shut down our churches, shuddered our businesses, and closed down the schools, which was only the beginning. We’ve endured the indecency of limp wristed effeminates with lisps telling us that we can’t go into an establishment because we’re not wearing a face diaper. We obliged when they insisted that it has to cover your nose as well as your mouth thoroughly, or you’ll be killing everyone in the Walmart, believing it was but for a season that would surely pass. We rationalized our silence; we justified our lack of opposition, thinking there wasn’t anything more they could take from us.

We were naïve enough to believe that the draconian instincts of power-mad intellectual inferiors would only go so far. We thought there were bridges they wouldn’t cross, and not only did they cross them, but they also dynamited them in their wake. Nuance has long since bled out and expired, and now everything is a nail in need of a hammer. Shut down everything forever! But what about businesses and jobs, and school, and children playing with other children? What about the tsunami of misery and anguish that will surely follow as a consequence of shuttering ourselves in our basements because of a malady that has a less than 1% mortality rate?

These are all questions we can no longer ask, even though they are crucial. Shut up and obey, or else! It doesn’t matter that you’ve run out of savings or that your kids are getting dangerously close to Lord of the Flies territory. Nope, all that is irrelevant because the people who have been getting paid all this time, the people who have waivers for every rule they foist upon you, said so. What’s more, they’ve been getting paid with your tax dollars! How do you like them apples?

At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, this coming Tuesday may be your last chance to speak up for yourself before you are no longer allowed to have a voice. There is no gentler way I can put it, and if you’ve got half the sense God gave you, you already know this to be the truth.

You’re a grown adult with a functioning brain, so I won’t presume to tell you how to think or what to do, but I will leave you with some food for thought to masticate upon through the weekend. You don’t send ducklings to fight off wolves, and you don’t hire hyenas to protect you from them either.

A sheepdog may be loud, unkempt, boisterous, and unsophisticated, but when it comes to it, he will defend the sheep from the wolves with his dying breath. The wolf and the hyena will always demonize and vilify the sheepdog because he stands between them and their prey. The ducklings will go along with whoever they think will get the upper hand because they just want to be eaten last.

We have seen the warp speed at which tyranny can be normalized, dissenting voices silenced, and opposing views suffocated. We have seen that silence emboldens the self-styled revolutionaries, and lack of pushback from the other three hundred-odd million is viewed as tacit agreement.

Ask anyone who’s lived under the jackboot of socialism or communism how it feels, and they’ll tell you. They will tell you the truth, not some utopian fantasy of what could be, but what it inevitably descends into every time. And before you break out your ‘that could never happen here’ drum, take a second to ponder all that has already happened.  

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr.

Worse Than Death

 For some in this world, death is the most horrifying thing this side of life. Especially for the atheistically minded, the great unknown of the great beyond is an ever-growing terror the older they get. The best they can hope for is nothingness, oblivion, or permanent fade-out absent awareness or sentience. That's the best! That's their ideal! That's the hope they cling to with white knuckle terror. And you wonder why they're always so somber, downtrodden, and sullen?

If the best possible outcome for one's future is nothingness, then the gloominess is understandable and warranted. People with no hope are rarely optimistic, jovial, and good-humored. This is why I'm always skeptical of sullen Christians or those who seem to fetishize the Apocalypse to the point of browbeating anyone who dares hope for a delay or postponement in its inevitable arrival.

Sorry, not sorry, there's nothing wrong in enjoying this present life, in wanting to see your kids grow up, or in hoping to see another summer. Apparently, anyone who doesn't want to relive the Communist era's nasty bits is now part of the New World Order. If you dare point to the fact that one candidate is demonstrably better than another, well, you're a sellout, and somehow the boogeymen in the shadows got to you.

How dare you encourage people to be practical in times such as these? You must tell them to hope in the return of John Kennedy Jr., look to the sky for the imminent alien invasion, and blame everything on the Rothschilds and Rockefellers because that way they'll be absolved of any personal responsibility. It's all pointless, hopeless, dark, and bleak! There's no point in coming out of your basement anymore. Maybe some bricks and mortar, and you can wall yourself in your basement. That way, you'll be sure to ride out the possibility of contracting mild flu-like symptoms.

Okay, rant over. I had to get it off my chest because it was bugging me, like a small stone in one's shoe or a hangnail that keeps snagging on your clothes.

As I said, for some, death is the worst thing ever, but for others, there is a fate worse than death. You can tell who these people are by how hard they try to remain relevant, whatever that means nowadays. These are the people who will go to any lengths to remain part of a conversation that passed them by eons ago, not realizing that all they're really doing is opening themselves up for ridicule and disdain.

For people such as these, death is not so much of a bother, but irrelevance and obscurity are. They would rather die a thousand deaths than be irrelevant or have the notion that they are somehow influential or shapers of conversation be irreparably shattered. The reason they despise this president to the point of madness is that his election ion 2016 proved what they had suspected all along: that people really don't care about their opinion and don't take them seriously when they insist you're supposed to stay in your home for the foreseeable future from their multi-million dollar estates.

Every pathetic, needy, attention-grabbing pseudo-celebrity is out in full force, trying to tell you what to think, what to do, how to vote, and who to vote for, and seeing them be proven irrelevant once more is something I look forward to with childlike glee.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr. 

The Principled One

 Say what you will about Donald Trump, but at least, somewhere along the way, he had the presence of mind to teach his children that crack is whack. It may seem like a small thing, something to wave off and dismiss because he’s just so direct and unapologetic when it comes to his positions, but the way a man’s children turn out and what they are like as adults tells you a lot about his character.

Apples don’t fall far from trees, chips don’t fly far from the old block, and children, more often than not, are a reflection of their parents, their upbringing, and the values instilled in them along the way.

Maybe, just maybe, if parents were parents and parented the way parents used to, we wouldn’t be talking about eight-year-old transgender children and how brave it is to allow kids who are unsure of what morning cereal they want to decide something that will alter their life permanently.

We’re not talking about getting pink hair for the summer here; we’re talking about irreparably altering one’s body through testosterone blockers and surgery, the effects of which are proven to spike suicidal tendencies and outright suicide through the roof.

It’s okay little Jimmy, as long as mommy’s bloated carcass can be on television for a few seconds, and strangers with agendas can call her brave, you can call yourself Jenny and end up overdosing on pills or hanging yourself in your teenage years.

For the longest time, we’ve been told that slow Joe is the principled one of the two men running for the highest office in the land. Every talking head has insisted that Joe has the moral convictions required of a great leader, that he is a man beyond reproach, and he wouldn’t dare to lower himself to the level of his opponent. Why there’s barely a mean tweet to be had, and other than sniffing little girls’ hair and being overly affectionate to the point of inappropriate with the fairer sex, he’s a paragon of virtue.

I can only speak for myself, but what made me want to be a man of character and principle was consistently seeing these virtues displayed in my grandfather and father. I wanted to aspire to goodness and decency because I saw the example in those who raised me. They never once sat me down and insisted that I be principled; they were principled. They lived it, and it made me want to live it as well.

If the e-mails clawing their way to the surface are to be believed, and there is no reason they shouldn’t be, they shed copious light on why crack, corruption, and loose women were the main staple of one Hunter Biden’s diet for the longest time.

I’m not even going to delve into the demonstrable truth that he started an intimate relationship with his brother’s wife upon his passing because I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he was following Yibbum. Laying that little tidbit aside, the rest of the picture coming into focus is stomach-churning, to say the least.

So, what do we know this far of this virtuous man, this good Catholic, this moral rock of Gibraltar? He is pro-abortion, insists that eight-year-olds should be able to pick their gender, demanded a taste from any profits his extended family made from peddling his name, has been credibly accused of rape, has a predilection for sniffing young ladies’ hair, and believes anyone who adheres to biblical doctrine is primitive. Not my words, his!

Maintaining the narrative that a run of the mill dirty politician is a virtuous man is so crucial that major internet platforms are willing to risk their survival to keep the public from seeing otherwise. Try as they might, they can’t keep a lid on the stories coming out about the level of corruption. I won’t go so far as to say I’m shocked because I grew up in a Communist country, so corrupt politicians were a given. However, I am saddened to realize that politicians are politicians the world over whether they’re siphoning millions from third world countries or first world countries.

Say what you will about the angry tweeter with the orange hair; call him angry, crass, blunt, direct, tactless, undiplomatic, but at least he’s not a politician. As an added bonus, all evidence points to the fact that he genuinely loves this country.  

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr. 

Between The Lines

Ever wonder why people who express a white-hot hatred for a nation and despise everything about its founding would want to rule it? It’s not so they can maintain it in the form in which it was conceived, and it’s not so they can govern judiciously for the good of its citizenry. To borrow a phrase from a now has-been dreamer, it’s to transform it fundamentally.

No sane individual puts forth the effort to sustain and build up something they detest, something they believe in the deep dark recesses of their heart is illegitimate, or in the infants' parlance pretending to be adults, unfair. Since when was the world fair? Since when was fairness for a handful of souls who chose their lot in life the ideal to be achieved at the expense of everyone else who toils, labors, and puts in the necessary effort to survive?

Since when is it fair to penalize someone who is responsible with their finances and who actively worked to pay off the debt they’d accrued? Am I missing something here? Why are the rest of us expected to go along with the notion of writing off the student debt of countless ne’er-do-wells who spent four years doing bong hits and going to keggers? Why should I be responsible for their poor choices?

Forced charity isn’t charity. If someone puts a gun to your head and insists that you donate to their cause, it’s not done out of the kindness of one’s heart; it’s done because of fear of the gun. Heartless and cruel as it may sound to some, we can’t save everyone from the consequences of the bad choices they’ve made in life. Sorry, that’s just the reality of it.  

I am more apt to show empathy toward someone who, through no fault of their own, just lost the business they’ve been building up for a decade than I am toward someone who wasted gobs and gobs of money getting a degree in the synchronized lesbian water dancers of the Paisa Region.

Should’ve listened to the old-timers who insisted that you’d get twice the bang for half the buck going to a trade school, but what do those salty old fellas know anyway? I mean, plumbing, electrical work, so passé. It may be passé, but it puts food on the table, something most degrees today can’t do.

So what’s the point of this morning’s rant? Well, dumb people are being promised things that those hoping to seize power have no way of delivering. Every time the word free is thrown around, as though slow Joe will just take a sponge and do away with trillions of dollars’ worth of debt if he gets elected, it’s an outright lie. There’s no such thing as free. Someone always ends up paying for it, and more often than not, it’s us, the little people.

When you have an entire generation being motivated to remain unmotivated and just sail through life on government handouts, you have a recipe for a disaster in the making. When you have disingenuous politicians promise things they can’t deliver just to get elected, people will no longer vote based on what’s right for the country in the long term but what’s suitable for their personal interest in the short term. What this means is that if enough people fall for the lies, sooner than you might imagine, we will no longer have a country to decimate or a constitutional republic to dismantle. The task will already have been done.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr. 

An Innocent Man

I’ve always been a reader. Once I learned to read in English and discovered the public library, I was a teenager at peace, with no worry in the world. The books didn’t care that I was awkward, chubby, or that I wore pinstripe polyester slacks my grandmother sowed for me. The books accepted me for who I was, as I was, without the need for pretense or disguise.

If memory serves, somewhere around the sixth grade, I discovered The Count of Monte Cristo, a book written by Alexandre Dumas. Think what you will of the man, but he could spin a yarn. I can still remember the feeling of revulsion I felt at the thought of an innocent man being framed for a crime he did not commit just because someone felt like it, or because they had something to gain from it.

I believe this sense of revulsion is universal in anyone with a working moral compass, irrespective of who the individual in question might be. An innocent man is an innocent man, whether you like their attitude or not. An innocent man is an innocent man, whether you like the way they come across or not.

It becomes all the more repulsive when you discover that the innocent man in question was not only plotted against, but just how deep and intricate the plot was, and who was involved in it. A false story was fabricated out of whole cloth; it was run up the flagpole for approval to the highest echelons of power. It was then incessantly pumped by a compliant media until people accused an innocent man of treason and demanded he be hung in the streets.

Then, when this innocent man, knowing that he is innocent, knowing that he is being framed reacted, everyone rolled their eyes and chortled about how he comes off as mean and overly animated. For all the pearl clutchers, benchwarmers, armchair quarterbacks, and faux-prophets who were endlessly going on about how this president would be impeached for the Russian collusion, we now know was wholly fabricated, how would you react if you were falsely accused of betraying your country and conspiring with the enemy?

In case you’re not a news hawk, and have not kept abreast of what has just occurred, in a nutshell, Hillary Clinton came up with a plan to tie Donald Trump to Russia, former CIA chief Brennan briefed one Barack Hussein Obama on the idea, and once it got the green light, well, we know the rest.

An innocent man has not had a day or peace or rest for the last three and half years, because of a story concocted by a sore loser and approved by the sitting president of the most powerful country in the world. A story wholly fabricated, with not a tittle of truth therein. Let that sink in for a spell. Let that marinate, then ask yourself one simple but all-important question.

If they were willing to destroy an innocent man, his family, his acquaintances, and anyone close to him just because they thought they could, what depths of depravity are such people capable of? How far would they go to ensure that power was theirs in perpetuity once they got it?

As an aside, just so you get a glimpse of how incestuous and swampy the swamp is, the individual who first proposed vilifying Donald Trump by claiming Russian interference is now a top aide to one Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.

Once done, some things cannot be undone, and even if they could, it’s very painful. Ask anyone who once thought it was a swimming idea to get a face tattoo before realizing that ‘loser for life’ etched across their forehead limited their employment opportunities. You’ll get the gist of what I’m saying.

They have fought like rabid dogs to destroy an innocent man for the high crime of beating them in an election. His innocence is undeniable, yet I feel this is a story that will die a quick death because it does not fit the narrative. He’s unhinged; he comes off as abrasive; he despises the media; he goes on about fake news; wouldn’t you if they’d done to you what they’ve done to him for the past few years?

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr. 

The Decent Folks

Some mornings I wake up feeling as though I’m in some poorly written telenovela. Just when you thought Ignacio and Isabel would live happily ever after, here comes the dramatic music, and a wrench is thrown into the works that tests their love, devotion, and commitment. What do you mean you are not Ignacio, but rather Ignacio’s twin brother Fernando?

While the self-titled good people are trying to stuff the corks back into their champagne bottles and feel as though they wasted the weekend practicing sorrowful looks in the mirror while inwardly gleeful, evidence continues to mount that you can be seventy-four, chunky, and averse to physical exertion, and still survive the dreaded virus we’ve been told will kill us all if we don’t lock ourselves in our basements, and breathe through a face diaper.

Think what you will of this current president, but he has a way of upending a narrative like nobody else. A cough, some shortness of breath, and three days, and a declarative statement, that it’s counterproductive to let fear control your life and dominate you.

These past few days have been very telling. The folks who insist that they bleed empathy and belch magnanimity were the first ones to wish death upon a man, his wife, and anyone else in his sphere that dared not fall in line with their demented ramblings of gender spectrums or disagreed that milking a cow is tantamount to rape.

The mask has slipped, and what we got a glimpse of was grotesque and unnerving. No, these are not nice people. They are not empathetic or magnanimous. They are ghouls who pretend otherwise and put on a show to fool the gullible. They know that if anyone did see their true nature if anyone did get a glimpse of who they really are, they would naturally recoil in horror, but they couldn’t help themselves.

It was too rich, too juicy, to rife with possibilities. They could not contain their glee, and though many a botoxed mouth uttered the requisite thoughts and prayers, the glimmer in their eyes spoke immeasurably more. Reporters were already asking Nancy Pelosi if she’d measured for new drapes in the oval office, somehow skipping over the fact that there was still a Vice President who would take up the reins if anything were to incapacitate the president.

So why talk about this? Because you need to understand the depravity of those who would take the reins of power in this country if the decent folks sit on the sidelines. You need to understand the hollowness and inhumanity that they have devolved into, and once you do, maybe ask yourself what they would be willing to let you endure to achieve their goal.

Do not be indifferent to the present in the hope of a better future. Do not sit idly by because someone you know did the math, and this is it, rapture’s coming, and there’s no point to anything anymore anyway. This is why I’m not a fan of setting dates. If it causes you to be inactive, inert, complacent, or indifferent, it is counterproductive, and dare I say, antithetical to biblical teaching. Work, fight, run, pursue, take hold. Do that which you would do if Christ’s return were a thousand years away, that He might find you laboring, engaged, active, and productive when He does show.

Maybe I’m missing something, but the thought of His return ought to make us more active, not less. When the finish line is within sight, you don’t slow down; you speed up.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr. 

Little gods

I’ve always hated that feeling that I’m missing something. It never fails to gnaw at me, to cause me to toss and turn at night, and make me so singularly focused until I figure out the riddle that I could be mistaken for an autist.

It’s been happening for the past few months, and I wasn’t seeing whatever it was that I was supposed to be seeing. You know that feeling, when something registers in your subconscious, some defining event of paramount importance but you can’t put it into words, that’s what I’ve been living since about mid-March. It’s frustrating, annoying, and for someone who doesn’t like mysteries or cliffhangers, insufferable.

Yesterday my wife decided to make soup, so she sent me to the store for some ingredients she was missing. Being the dutiful husband I am, I jumped into my car without delay, and it was while driving to the store that something happened that allowed me to see what I hadn’t been able to for the longest time.

It’s less than a five-minute drive from our home to the store, but since they say most accidents happen within five miles of home, I’m more cautious running errands around town than I am on the open highway. I was signaling to turn into the store parking lot, with no oncoming traffic to speak of, when just out of habit, I threw a glance at my side mirror just in time to see a car swing to my left and pass me at breakneck speed. If I hadn’t glanced in the mirror, it would have likely been a pretty bad wreck, but that’s not the point of the story.

As the car passed me, I had a fraction of a second to take in the driver, and that’s when it all made sense. The clouds parted, the sky shone, an epiphany was had. It was a young girl, alone in the car, wearing a mask, one hand on the steering wheel, one hand holding up a cell phone.

It was in that instant that I realized what was gnawing at me, and also the underlying reason it was so jarring. Ever since the entire mask nonsense began, I’ve been noticing something that hadn’t registered. It’s mostly young people wearing the face diapers, or at least as far as I’ve seen, and that just didn’t make sense since they are the least likely to develop any serious complications.

From the young girls with the neck tattoos to the bearded hipsters with the man buns, they are the ones I see wiping down gallon bottles of booze with baby wipes and loading their carts with potato chips and despair after the requisite sanitization. Those my age and older seem to be going on about their lives just fine, not overly fearful or concerned, but not the young whose lifestyle choices are more likely to do them in than this virus.

It’s the ‘why’ of it that was gnawing at me, and all of a sudden, seeing that girl wearing her mask while trying to face time, so distracted that she almost rear-ended me, I finally got it. It’s about the illusion of control over one’s existence. It’s about trying to play god and insist that the simple act of putting on a soiled paper mask will keep you protected, safe, healthy, and immune. It’s about trying to tell God that he was wrong when He said that no man could add a day to his life by worrying.

No matter how you slice it, in the end, it’s always about rebellion. Men would rather live in terror and pretend they are in control than submit to God and know that no matter what, their lives won’t be over until He says they are over.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr. 

Fears Great and Small

I once had the opportunity to interview a former Securitate interrogator while researching a book I was working on. To those unaware who the Securitate was in the olden days, they were a version of the KGB in Romania. To say the least, it was illuminating, not only because it gave me an insight I had never before considered, but because this man had recently converted to Christianity.

It was an odd thing attempting to crawl into the mind of a man whose profession had been to break other men. That’s really the only way you can get someone to turn, or to inform on their closest friends, wives, husbands, brothers, and fathers. It’s not something anyone does willingly, joyfully, or without difficulty, that is, unless you’re George Soros. Had to slip that in there. If you don’t know the man’s story, you should.

Of the few hours I spent with this man, the biggest takeaway, for me at least, was that there were two kinds of interrogators. As he put it, there were the bone breakers, and then there were those who were gifted at their job. The gifted ones would always attempt to ascertain your fear before they laid one hand on you. The not so gifted ones would make mincemeat out of someone’s face and still get nowhere.

As he put it, “why must I beat a man for eight hours when he will tell me everything I need to know in less than a minute, by letting a rat crawl over his bare feet, and up his pant leg?”

“The good interrogators would discover your weakness before they started to interrogate you. The good suspects wouldn’t volunteer any information. It was like a game. Sometimes I won, sometimes I lost, but I always learned something. Everyone has a fear. If you pay close enough attention, you will discover what that is, and exploit it to your benefit.”

Upon seeing the reactions to the death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, I couldn’t help but be reminded of that conversation many years ago. The other side is not nearly wise enough to mask their fear. It is evident in their words, their actions, their denunciations, and their impotent threats.

In order to understand how important it is to fill the seat before the next elections, one need only look at how some are reacting to the possibility thereof. No more, no less.

We are all aware that, for the most part, politicians are spineless, malleable creatures who go whichever way the wind blows. We are also mindful that for the next few weeks, every senator will be inundated with calls, letters, pleas, and petitions to keep the seat vacant by those who insist that legally murdering a baby in the womb is the preeminent issue of our day.

In order to counteract their lunacy, the letters, calls, pleas, and petitions to fill the seat must be as thunderous, if not more so. This is your chance to do your part. This is your opportunity to act to defend the defenseless and protect the sanctity of life. If for no other reason, this is a noble enough cause for you to take an hour out of your day and call your senator, write a letter, and make your voice heard because if the other side gets its way, your voice will be silenced forever.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr. 

Foreshadowing

 There isn’t very much that is redeemable about Voltaire, but you’ve got to hand it to the old powdered wig wearing curmudgeon, he did come up with some doozies. There is one quote of his that I’ve been mulling over the past few days, and that is, those who can make you believe absurdities can also make you commit atrocities.

Some things don’t ring true until they do. It’s as simple as that, once you get past all the fluff. I remember reading this quote in my youth, and it rang hollow for some reason, but no more. The reason it no longer rings hollow is because the evidence that this statement was factual is all around us. Torched out buildings, torched out cars, dead cops, and harassed citizens are a testament to the veracity of Voltaire’s statement, that yes, those who can make someone believe absurdities can also make those selfsame individuals commit atrocities.

As is often the case, I tend to dip my toe into the pool before anyone else because that’s just my nature. I am not given to cowardice, nor am I given to biting my tongue, especially when I know the fundamental truth of what I am espousing. I think that waiting to see which way the wind is blowing before you make your position known is tantamount to spinelessness, and since I never plan on running for public office, I can say what I believe rather than what polled the right percentage.

If more people don’t start doing this, a very vocal, feral, and altogether irrational minority will run roughshod over the silent majority, increasing and intensifying the level of violence, because once one level is normalized and it no longer garners a response, it must escalate.

While the other side is waging guerilla warfare attempting to dismantle everything civil society is built upon, from family to the church, to the rule of law, they demand that we abide by Marquees of Queensberry rules. So it’s okay for you to go onto someone’s property, attempt to torch their place of business, physically assault them, and attempt to murder them, but if the judge sets your bail at a million dollars, then that’s egregious and beyond the pale. Got it!

What we have seen thus far is only a foreshadowing of what is to come, especially now that a new wrinkle has been added to this entire drama with the vacancy of a supreme court seat. As an aside, when the other side rages and is beside itself regarding something that may happen, that thing needs to happen, and happen posthaste.

If we insist on fighting like gentlemen, then we shall perish like gentlemen, because when you bring fists to a gunfight, the battle is over before it’s begun. This is what the rabid minority is counting on. This is what the deranged are hoping for. That while we are insisting on honest discourse and debate, they can bludgeon people to death in broad daylight and get away with it.

In case you haven’t noticed, this is no pugilistic exhibition we’re talking about; it is literally the future of this nation, so please, for the sake of your kids’ future, contextualize the importance of the hour, and do something commensurate.

There is a segment of the population that has been radicalized. There is a segment of the population that has been made to believe absurdities, and the puppet masters are doing their best to make them commit atrocities while remaining in the shadows. Some of the halfwits and semi-literates are coming right out and saying it, but the real power brokers, those who aren’t idealistic but merely use the rage of the masses to their benefit, are keeping well-hidden and out of view. This tells me they are uncertain of the outcome of their gambit. This tells me there is still time to stop the insanity and keep the nation from going over the edge.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr.  

Say When Part Deux

Remember way back when a small number of individuals sounded the alarm insisting that the next frontier in human depravity was pedophilia? I do, I was among that small number, and I still remember the mocking, the revision, the eye-rolling. I remember the letters middle-aged church ladies fresh off consuming the literary tour de force trilogy known as Fifty Shades of Gray, wrote to their pastors admonishing them for opening their pulpits up to alarmists who didn’t understand modernity or love for that matter.

There is no slippery slope, they insisted. There is no next thing! These are just people with nothing better to do than to work everyone else up into a lather about something that will never happen. Pedophilia? That’s ridiculous. No one will attempt to normalize or mainstream something as off-putting as that.

Welcome to the year of our Lord 2020, and believe me when I tell you that the last thing I ever wanted to do is to say I told you so. However, I told you so!

The latest foray into normalizing the depraved and aberrant has been getting some well-deserved push back, but oddly enough, not from the aforementioned middle-aged church ladies with a penchant for saucy bodice rippers. Netflix has decided to mainstream child pornography and pedophilia, and if you dare say anything about it, well, you’re just a prude obsessed with the sexualizing of children. This is the spin they attempted to put on the indefensible, because, well, they think you’re stupid, and if enough self-styled journalists repeat the same lunacy, then you have to believe it. You just have to!

If you find yourself wondering if you’re in the Twilight Zone, you are not alone. You have closet pedophiles pretending to be journalists who are browbeating people for noticing the perversion being peddled as bubble gum, coming of age cinema.

Not to be outdone, the state of California recently passed a bill, which was subsequently signed by the governor reducing penalties for sodomy with minors, you know, because pedophiles were getting a bad rap and had to be placed on the sex offender registry.

If you don’t believe me, do some research for yourself, but yes, it’s the people who are opposed to pedophilia which are in the wrong, behind the times, and unwilling to embrace love. Remember when it was anything goes as long as it’s between two consenting adults? That was so last year! If you really want to be inclusive, loving, and tolerant, as long as there’s mutual consent, age shouldn’t even enter the equation.

This is so blatant, so in your face, that even those largely indifferent to the goings-on of the world are noticing and taking action. Average, everyday folks are canceling their Netflix subscriptions in droves, and as a direct result, Netflix has shed some 9 Billion Dollars in market value over the past few days. This may just be the proverbial straw, but only time will tell, the world being in flux the way it is and all. 

Let’s be clear about this: If you can’t understand why pedophilia is wrong, then maybe you need to be placed in a soundproof room with an angry dad, a handful of kebab skewers, a ball-peen hammer, and a pair of needle-nose pliers for a couple of hours.

And just because I can’t help myself, to all those brave souls who were sitting on the sidelines judiciously waiting to pick their battle, watching as the culture, society, and even the church disintegrated before their eyes - the selfsame souls now breathing a sigh of relief thinking that it can’t get any worse and they’ve successfully run out the clock - you are mistaken. It will get worse, because that is the nature of evil, and eventually, you will either stand and fight or be exposed for the cowards you are.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr.

Say When

 I’m angry, and I will not pretend otherwise. I’m angry, and I won’t try to bite my tongue, hold back, or sugar coat anything for the sake of anyone’s feelings, real or otherwise. I know, heartless of me. How dare I not place the feelings of every emotional, bipolar psychotic before the truth, but here I go, because no one seems to want to be first through the door after the breach.

Granted, the first guy through risks catching a bullet to the face more often than the guy bringing up the rear, but we can’t all be bringing up the rear, now can we? Someone’s got to take the lead; otherwise, we’re just spinning our wheels and hyping each other up just so we don’t have to face the reality of our own cowardice.

Yesterday, a Biden voter and Democrat party devotee in California walked up to two cops sitting in their cruiser and opened fire without so much as a warning. I know, I know, how dare I make such assumptions? Well, let’s just say that if the shooter turns out to be a Trump supporter or a registered Republican, I’ll sign a waiver allowing a cross-eyed alcoholic with the jitters to harvest my organs without anesthesia. We all good? Past the faux outrage? Because let me just tell you that if that got your goad, you should stop reading. It’s only going to get worse.

Now, if you thought this was the end of the story, and I’d make some plea to stop the violence, then you don’t have a clue as to the level of depravity that passes for normalcy nowadays. While the two cops were being transported to the hospital, fighting for their lives, a group of people who are simply misunderstood, who just want peace, love, and a wee slice of the American pie, were blocking the hospital, trying to break into the emergency room, and screaming ‘kill the police,’ and ‘we hope they die.’ I removed the expletives from the chants because gratuitous language is just that, but I’m sure you can piece the puzzle together if you were so inclined.

For the longest time, I’ve been asked by various people what it is they can do. My answer has always been it depends how committed you are. If, after all that’s been happening over the past few weeks you’re still sitting in your recliner watching multi-millionaires in tights try to tackle each other over a pigskin, congratulations, you are part of the problem. In the least, at a bare minimum, you are inadvertently consenting to the murder of cops, retirees, children, or anyone who stands in the way of the mostly peaceful but not quite rioters, looters, criminals, thieves, and now attempted murderers.

Let me make this as clear as I can. If you are still watching any major sports franchise, whether the NFL, NBA, NHL, or MLB, then you’re okay with everything that’s going on, and not only that, you’re helping fund it. Congratulations!

There is only one way this will stop, and that is when the other 329 million tell the few hundred thousand that it must. It’s up to you to say when it stops. You have the power to say when!

As long as there is no financial loss to those corporations, institutions, or franchises financing the overthrow of this nation, financing the murder of cops, and the destruction of private property, they’ll just keep doing it. As long as you keep giving them your money, watching their drivel, and cheering on their ability to bounce a ball, then this will keep happening because there’s no downside.

Make your voice heard! Whether it’s writing a letter to Nike, informing them why you will no longer be purchasing their apparel, or to the sponsors of any one of these franchises that seem to be perfectly fine with cops being executed for no other reason than for being cops. Channel your outrage. Channel your anger. Be explicitly, unambiguously direct in your denunciation of the destruction of your nation. Stop being genteel and just taking it. Stop making the people branding you a bigot, rich beyond their wildest dreams.

I could go on, but if this isn’t bad enough to make you turn off your television for a couple of hours, then nothing I say will motivate you to do anything about anything anyway. I know, I know, it makes no nevermind since we’re all rapture bound, and any minute now we’ll all be caught away. Maybe so, but fight is an action verb, and the way I read it, we’re not supposed to stop fighting until the fighting’s done.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr. 

Dirt

 It must be horrifically exhausting knowing that someone has dirt on you. Not only that but having that dirt used as leverage to make you perform like a puppet on a string must be downright soul-crushing.

Just imagine having the proverbial sword of Damocles swinging over your exposed neck nonchalantly, knowing that it can drop at any minute. It must be psychological torture, but that said, likely not unwarranted.

In the hopes of garnering sympathy, those on whom dirt is being had are quick to insist that they are being blackmailed, but if you’d never gone and done things worthy of blackmail, well, then no one would have anything to blackmail you with, now would they?

There are certain statements in Scripture that we take as possibilities or probabilities when they are presented to us as absolutes. From the infrequently mentioned, the soul that sins shall die, or the even less frequently declared without holiness no man will see the Lord, there are a handful of declarative statements that men tend to avoid altogether due to their implications.

We would rather skirt, circumvent, or altogether ignore broad swaths of the gospel than have to contend with the reality that this walk is challenging, and costly, and brutal, and fierce, and not something to be set upon halfheartedly, indifferently, or duplicitously. Count the cost, Jesus said, and He meant it.

Among the many declarative scriptures that imply inevitability rather than probability is the warning that if you sin against the Lord, be sure your sin will find you out. Sounds ominous. Sounds like something preachers, evangelists, and those self-titled or otherwise who chase after the spotlight and insist on being spiritual leaders, ought to have taken more seriously. Given that one after the other they are crying foul, claiming blackmail, and decrying the frailty of the flesh, maybe they ought to have spent more time in the Word than trying to live like rock stars.

It may just be that I’m growing more cynical with age, but of late, every time I hear of someone going off the reservation, doing a complete 180, and supporting things wholly antithetical to Scripture, my first thought is I wonder what kind of dirt they have on him? Yes, it has become that prevalent.

If this morning’s scribbles serve as anything, I hope they serve as a public service announcement to anyone toying with the idea of compromise, of living a duplicitous life, or believing they’re really good at hiding whatever it is they should have repented of. Be sure your sin will find you out!

If you’re lucky, you’ll just be exposed, shamed, mocked, and ridiculed into obscurity. If you’re not so lucky, corrupt people who care not a whit about anything other than their own power will hold your sin over your head and force you to do their bidding until you are a shell of your former self, waiting to die, perhaps even hoping for it.

It’s not as though we’re short on cautionary tales. I’m sure you can find a handful by doing a google search. To name them here would just be kicking a dead horse, and I’m not that much of a sadist.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr. 

Timing and Rhythm

 Sometimes I wonder if God is a musician. No, that is not sacrilegious; it’s just one of those things that I find myself contemplating when the reality that the universe moves to a rhythm all its own, and the hand that guides the timing of everything is flawless in its execution becomes undeniably apparent.

Everything is about timing. Everything is about rhythm. From that clump of muscles beating in your chest like a metronome to the changing of the seasons to the migration of cranes, hummingbirds, geese, and all manner of fauna, we are witness to the greatest symphony the world has ever known, composed and conducted flawlessly by God’s unseen hand.

Although God has been conducting this particular symphony since before time began, in recent decades, everyone from the tuba player, to the violin player, to the goofy guy with the cymbals that sits there for most of the show only to clang them together once or twice, have gotten it into their heads that not only would they do a better job conducting, they would also create a superior composition.

They started out changing a note here or there, then tried to mess with the rhythm now and then. Since the audience never cringed, or hissed, or walked out in protest, and because their ears are so dulled that they can’t discern nuance anymore, they kept on keeping on, tinkering and fiddling with what was flawless, to begin with. It’s nothing less than hubris to believe man can improve upon perfection, but that isn’t stopping this generation because they think they know better, and the adults in the room never sat them down and gave them a talking to to the contrary.

When I was younger, before the kids came along, I used to travel a lot and visited more than my share of churches. Although most things about the congregations were so similar that they didn’t register, what I remember vividly, even after all these years, were the people that either sang out of tune or clapped out of rhythm. While their artistic expression came from a good place and is therefore forgivable, those who are actively trying to reinterpret everything from scripture to gender, to what passes for normal today, aren’t well-intentioned or harmless.

There is a concerted effort afoot to not only rewrite the symphony and replace the conductor but force everyone else to sing along with what amounts to toddlers randomly beating on pots with wooden spoons. Not only that, but we are also supposed to pretend it’s better than the original composition.

The inflection point is soon approaching, and we will realize what we have done to ourselves, with our own two hands, and the natural reaction to skirt responsibility for the damage we’ve done will be to lay the blame at the feet of another. Even though we’ve thrown out the sheet music, created our own symphony, and have allowed feelings to be our conductor, when it all goes to naught, and the only constant is mindless noise, we will attempt to blame God for the choices we made that led us here.

Before you join the ranks of the many whose love will grow cold, remember it’s not God’s fault that humanity decided to write its own symphony rather than abide by the one He composed. Conversely, neither is it God’s fault that He is not keeping promises He never made, but that others insisted He did.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr.

Pretexts

 The problem with pretexts is that they don’t have to be rational, logical, or even make sense. It’s not as though you’re trying to convince the guy who worked half his life to build a business that you are justified in looting it and burning down the remnants of whatever you didn’t steal because someone three states over got shot by the cops. It’s a ludicrous premise. You know it, I know it, they know it, and the entire country knows it by now.

To those who try to use pretexts to justify their actions, whether those actions are keeping churches shuttered, schools boarded up, or businesses closed, never take into account the irreparable damage they may be causing, directly or indirectly. Your feelings, wellbeing, livelihood, mental health, or quality of life never enter into the equation, and even if they did, they would be dismissed outright. The perverse out that the greater good theory gives to every despotic mini-tyrant is that they are hurting the individual for the sake of the greater good, and that makes them good and noble.

Even when the science they so orgasmically touted as being the alpha and omega of their decision-making process began to chip away at their narrative, they surmised that science just hadn’t caught up. We’re saving lives, man, and even if we save one life, then that’s one life saved! Strangely, that’s not the same attitude they have towards something like I don’t know, abortion.

This is not so much a warning as it is a statement after the fact. This is not a prescription for betterment; it is an obituary. This is how nations die, and we are witnessing a slow-motion disaster in the making. The horse is out of the barn, and it likes the freedom it has to roam wild, do as it wills, and answer to no one.

What freedoms or constitutional rights will evaporate into the ether via the use of some pretext or another? Understand that those who have discovered this mechanism of control will attempt to use it again, and again, as often as they can, until they are stopped or run out of office.

Evidently, we the people are not so quick on the uptake, since it took almost six months for even the household of faith to realize that the two weeks of lockdowns we were told were necessary to flatten the curve have turned into twenty weeks of lockdowns.

Now that people are beginning to shake off the slumber and take an objective look at what their nation has become, threats, fines, and possible prison time have become the cudgels the power structure will use to beat the citizen into submission. Since resistance is inevitable, the more the citizen resists, the more draconian the tyrants will become, because power is the most addictive drug in the world, and giving it up is not an option if one can avoid it.

Whatever the pretext, however, convoluted the logic, as a child of God, you must understand that you’ve always been the target, and eventually, the crosshairs will settle on the church. Thus far, it’s only fines and nuisance actions, like not allowing congregants to use city parking spaces, but everything must have a beginning, and this is just that. Even baby steps in the wrong direction are worrisome, and what we are seeing is by no means baby steps.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr.