Reality Check

We are about to get a firsthand, front-row demonstration of what Nineveh would have suffered had they not repented. I spent the better part of thirty minutes trying to soften the blow, trying to make it seem less dire than it is, but there's no getting around the truth of where we are, where we are headed, and what we are sure to see along the way.

The parallels are eerily similar until they're not. The point where the similarities between American and Nineveh diverge is the most essential of all, and that is repentance. Whether a nation took the path of repentance or continued down the path of rebellion is the determining factor for judgment or the postponement thereof.

Just as with Nineveh, men were sent to this nation to plead, implore, and even beg anyone who would hear to repent and turn their hearts back to God again. In large part, they were summarily mocked, labeled legalists, and called delusional because if God were going to speak to anyone, it wouldn't be some migrant farmer or some lowly street preacher. It would be a hipster pastor with skinny jeans and fake dark-rimmed glasses. Perhaps even a human caricature with face tattoos and lip piercings that identified as non-binary, but surely not some run-of-the-mill non-intellectual whose only noteworthy attribute was enduring persecution and torture for his faith. I mean, come on, if you want the message to penetrate, you have to choose the right messenger.

We pulled out every excuse in the book and even invented a few just so we wouldn't have to humble ourselves, just so we wouldn't have to turn from our wicked ways, just so we wouldn't have to repent. Repentance is a choice. It is an intentional, actionable, determinative choice! God can't make you do it; He won't twist your arm, or beat you over the head because then it wouldn't be genuine, heartfelt, heart-changing repentance.

The proposition was simple: If you repent, I will restore you. If you persist in your rebellion, I will destroy you. It doesn't get much simpler than that, but then again, it's hard to fill a three-hundred-page book with what you could declare in one breath, so most of the spiritual elites were uninterested. They'd rather twist themselves into pretzels trying to justify the lukewarm farce modern-day Christianity has become.

So, yes, we're headed toward some choppy seas, and the best we can do is make certain we are firmly affixed to the ship, so we don't get thrown overboard. Knowing what is about to be unleashed upon an unsuspecting public has less to do with prophecy or the prophetic and more to do with understanding how the world works and how predators react to weakness. All it takes is a modicum of honesty, even if being honest about it challenges our preconceived beliefs regarding this country's greatness. Sin has a corrosive effect, and even greatness can be eaten away at by it if it's allowed to fester. Not only has sin been allowed to fester, but it is also being celebrated, validated, and embraced by what were to be the antibodies to sin, the church.

As I've thought about this on and off for the past few days, the one thing I think very few are prepared for, even within the circles I run in, is the speed with which everything goes to ruin once God removes His protection from a nation. We're not talking about a slow two-century decline akin to the Roman Empire before finally being put out of its misery. That is something you should prepare for psychologically because it will shipwreck a lot of people.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr.