Weary

There are good fakes, and there are bad fakes. If someone’s trying to pass off a Rolex as real, and the face reads Polex, you know there’s a good chance someone’s trying to play you. Those are the bottom feeders, the ones trying to get their come-up and use you to achieve it. They’re the ones that can’t afford to pay five bucks for a passable fake, so they spend a dime for Polex, hoping they find someone dumb enough to fall for it.

Suppose you were to compare those hustlers to what is deemed the prophetic eco-system of today. In that case, they’re comparable to the entry-level soothsayers you find on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or any other platform that gives them access to the gullible and easily fooled.

These are the ones that use the shotgun approach. They know they have an inferior product, so they’re trying to run the small con. We’re not talking millions here; we’re just talking pocket money until you can level up to bigger and better.

I’m sure you’ve seen some version of it; we all have. For me, at least, the biggest telltale sign is that whatever the message is, it’s always delivered in the King James vernacular. “I sayeth unto thee, my child, thou shalt prosper, surely thou shalt prosper if only thouest giveth heed to my anointed.”

Vague, general, ambiguous, uplifting, upbeat, hope-filled, you can do it sort of word that inevitably loops back around to the person giving the word, extolling their virtues somehow.

If the key to your prosperity and good fortune is to give heed to the anointed stranger messaging you out of nowhere, well, heed you shall give, indeed.

The conditionality of you being blessed, prospered, healed, or delivered, is always based on whether or not you give heed to the individual delivering the message. Never once are repentance or the will of God mentioned because, for their purposes, those things are irrelevant.

This is called setting the stage or baiting the hook. It hangs out in the interwebs until some gullible guppy swims along and starts to nibble.

It’s the modern-day version of the old Bobby Tilton play. And let me tell you, Bobby was a professional. He wasn’t selling Polex; he was selling fakes so good only a discerning eye could see that the movement on the second hand wasn’t quite right.

His shtick was also a shotgun approach but a highly specialized one. If you’ve ever bought television time, you know you can pick the hour when your program will air. What Bobby did, and this was brilliant, was incorporate both the time and what people were likely to be doing at that time in his prophetic utterances.

“I’m speaking to you, yes you, sitting in your Laz-Boy at two in the morning wondering what you should be doing with your life.” It didn’t all have to be right, just parts of it, because people are predisposed to cling to the positives and dismiss the negatives.

It may not have been a Laz-Boy; most people watching Bobby at that hour likely couldn’t afford the name brand, but it was two in the morning, which was good enough.

“Tell me what to do, Bob!” a certain percentage would be screaming at their television sets, “You’re right, it’s two in the morning, and I’m sitting here eating Cheetos. Tell me what to do.”

And Bob, as if by telekinesis, ends his pregnant pause and says, “Now I want you to go and pick up your phone and dial the number on your screen. You make a pledge, but not just any pledge; you make a pledge big enough that it will activate supernatural prosperity in your life.”

And you know how it goes from there.

I get that I sound cynical, but I’ve been around the good, the bad, and the incoherent since I was twelve, and I’m pushing fifty shortly. I’ve seen a lot in thirty-five years of ministry, and if not for the warning that false teachers, prophets, and even Christs would multiply the closer we get to the last chapter, I would have let sleeping dogs lie.

The fakes are getting better and deceiving many. The only way to keep from buying a fake is to know what the real is supposed to look like. As is the case with most things, you will find out that what you bought into was fake at the most inopportune time. It will fail you when you need it most. Consider this a public service on my part.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.