Generations

 By the time you wake up tomorrow, another year will have come and gone. Some say it’s a new chapter, a fresh start, a way of marking the end and the beginning with much fanfare and pomp. Realistically, it’s just another day, a means by which we keep track of time as it marches to the beat of the great Conductor.

There is nothing magical about a new year, but who am I to stand in the way of a good time? Some people make resolutions, others reflect, and more yet still hope that the new year will be better than the one they just traversed because although they dare not speak of it to anyone, they don’t know if they can handle another year like the one that just made its final bow.

As far as yours truly is concerned, I’ll likely be counting sheep by eight o’clock, up by three, with no discernable difference between today, tomorrow, or what will be the day after tomorrow. I’m a creature of habit. It works for me. Throw any change in my day-to-day as far as travel, bedtime, or new experiences, and I get downright discombobulated for a few days.

I didn’t use to be this way. From the age of twelve to the age of twenty-two, I was on the road with my grandpa some nine months out of the year, never knowing whether the next bed we’d sleep in was lumpy, smelly, or had preexisting tenants in the form of bedbugs. If I were to psychoanalyze myself, I’d say it’s likely the reason I’m so hung up on habitual practices today. I like not having to wonder if I’ll find a place to sleep once I get to my destination. I like not having to roll the dice on whether or not the chicken wings I just ate at a rundown truck stop will make me violently sick.

Yes, times have changed; it’s gotten easier to travel, to confirm reservations, to see whether other people have gotten sick from the place you planned to eat and left a review. Still, there’s no place like home, and I traveled long enough in my younger years to know this to be a factual statement.

 If the whole resolution thing works for you, godspeed. It’s not like I’m a gym rat or anything, far from it, but I try to avoid going the first two weeks of every year like the plague because I know it will be overstuffed with husky people smelling of cabbage and bologna trying to work up a sweat. Two weeks is usually all it takes; then everything gets back to normal; those who were going to the gym before the new year continue to go, and those who started because of a date find other things to occupy their time besides stretching spandex beyond decency, and all reasonable allowances.

One thing that stood out this morning as I was well into my first cup of coffee is that come next year it will have been forty years since my grandfather received his message for America. It doesn’t seem like that much time has passed, I even did the finger math for a minute, but sure enough, 2024 will be an entire generation since the message for America was first delivered.

Although I am not into numerology because I think that’s a rabbit hole that can lead to seeing messages in everything from the discounted price of spaghetti sauce to the mileage on your car, there is significant evidence that God has a preference for the number forty when it comes to dealing with nations.

The big one everyone knows about is that Israel wandered in the desert for 40 years. Saul, David, and Solomon also ruled Israel for forty years each, the interesting thing about that being that each of their reigns was visibly divided between twenty years of abundance and twenty years of lack.

I won’t even go into all the times 40 days was significant in the Bible, such as God destroying every living thing on earth by flooding it for forty days or that both Moses, Elijah, and Jesus fasted in the desert for forty days each because that would be stretching, and I don’t like doing that for obvious reasons.

I don’t know. It’s just something that stood out this morning that I thought I’d share because it seems significant, even though I’m uncertain as to why.

What I do know is that this nation was given an entire generation to repent. Nineveh got forty days to sort itself out. When judgment does come, no man will be able to fault God for not granting enough time for repentance. No man will be able to say this nation was not given enough time to repent, turn from its wicked ways, and reconcile itself unto God.

Could it still happen? Could repentance still sweep the land, and as a nation, we fall on our faces in sackcloth and ash? Theoretically, it could. Anything is possible, but we sure are cutting it close.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Eyes

 We are all aware of the adage that seeing is believing. We’ve likely all used it at some point in our day-to-day lives, with Thomas being the epitome of needing to see something before he believed it to be true.

If I can see something, then I believe it to be real. Granted, with deep fakes and doctored videos, even seeing something doesn’t necessarily guarantee that it’s true, but for the most part, one has an easier time believing what they can see.

When it comes to the promises of God, however, the process is inverted in that we no longer see that we might believe. Rather, we believe that we might see. The reward of those who believe is to see.

It requires faith to stand on the promises of God. You must believe without seeing that you might see that which you believe. I’m not trying to make it needlessly complicated, but too many today are confused about the order of things, and because they expect it to be different, they lose heart, patience, and faith along the way.

Hebrews 10:36-38, “For you have need of endurance, so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise: For yet a little while, and He who is coming will come and will not tarry. Now the just shall live by faith; But if anyone draws back, My soul has no pleasure in him.”

Is the promise received before or after one does the will of God? Can someone who has not surrendered, repented, or been sanctified hope to receive the promises of God?

These are worthwhile questions to ponder because there is a difference between doing the will of God that you may receive the promise and sending a check in to your preferred televangelist to have all your dreams come true.

I believe in giving. I believe in being generous. I believe in using the resources we’ve been given to further the kingdom of God, but I do not believe that my giving any amount of money will cause the promises of God to be manifested in my life. That was never one of the prerequisites.

If that’s the reason you are giving to a ministry or a preacher, you’re giving for the wrong reason. God’s not running a Ponzi scheme. You don’t put in five bucks to get ten back. You cast your bread upon the waters that you might find it after many days.  

We have the promises, we have specific directions as to how we can access the promises, and even a reminder that after we have done the will of God, we must be patient, have endurance, and not draw back. As much as we would like to deny it, God’s promises are conditional. I understand this is a thorny issue, but ignoring it won’t make it any less thorny.  

We can never forget who God is. If something He has promised has not come to pass, it isn’t because He is incapable of carrying it out or unable to make it so. He is God! Nothing is impossible to Him.

Job 42:2, “I know that You can do everything, and that no purpose of Yours can be withheld from You.”

Not only is God all-powerful, but He is also unchanging. It’s not as though He will change His mind on a whim or decide not to honor His promises to His children because He’s having a bad day. From everlasting to everlasting, He is God, and the promises He made are as valid today as they were the day He made them.

The promises God makes to His children are as big as the God who makes them. That’s saying something and should give you both comfort and joy. The promises of God are no small thing. They are not paltry or irrelevant; they are not something you would find elsewhere if you were to grow impatient while you waited. The promises God makes are exclusive to God because there is none other in heaven or on earth that can make good on such promises.  

That’s the thing; men can make promises all day long, but they’re not promises they have the wherewithal to keep. The devil, likewise, makes promises that he never intends to keep but seduces the gullible nonetheless. The promise of sin is pleasure, not despair. Yet, once sin has taken root, the momentary pleasure vanishes, and all that remains is despair, self-loathing, and regret.

Only God is able to keep His promises fully, with the intent of doing so in the manner in which His promises were presented.

What wondrous things you will behold after you have done the will of God.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Action

 I don’t like mail-in rebates. I never have. By the time I get around to it, or remember I need to mail in the slip of paper with proof of purchase to get my $3.99 back, it’s disappeared into that mysterious place where unmatched socks and winter gloves end up. I think that’s why they make you jump through the hoops because they know half the people will never bother. Why not just give me the discount at checkout? The same goes for the credit card companies that insist you have to activate that particular quarter’s extra special cash-back offer.

The technology is there; you know it is; just make it happen!

On the other hand, it’s not their fault I did not avail myself of their offer. It’s not their fault I’m scatterbrained and lose receipts like the CDC loses credibility. I may call it hoops, but they call it steps.

My little brother seems to do perfectly fine with mailing in his rebates; he’s also great at remembering where he put the gift cards he bought for Outback a year ago.

Maybe it’s me. If I’d been a bit more organized, I too could have enjoyed a free vanilla custard at Culver’s. They were handing out coupons when they first opened. I took one. It disappeared along with the others—no free custard for me.

Countless believers are wondering why the promises of God have not manifested in their lives, even though they read of them in the Bible. It’s not as though you can miss them. There are a lot of promises in the Book.

It’s been said by those who keep count that there are 30,000 promises peppered throughout the Word of God, about one for every verse. I know, that’s a lot. The New Testament alone has eight hundred promises that God makes directly to His beloved, those who are called by His name.

The Bible begins with a promise and ends with a promise. It begins with the promise of salvation and ends with the promise of reward. In between those two promises, there are countless others that we would do well to heed, believe, and stand on because only then will they become a reality in our lives.

Believers today do not see the promises of God in their lives because they do not avail themselves of them. They do not put in the minimum effort required to access them, then grow bitter because those around them are while they are not. I can’t fault my little brother for getting his rebate check in the mail. The onus is on me for not having done what was required of me to likewise get my rebate check.

Even though there is no shortage of promises in the Book, many believers fail to see His promises come to pass in their own lives. The question we must contend with today is why? We know that God is not a man that He should lie. This was established in the book of Numbers, and it is a declarative statement He made that He has not withdrawn or altered.

The choice is binary. One must be at fault, and the option is between God and man. It’s not circumstance, environment, or situation that have dammed up the promises of God in most people’s lives; it’s the lack of follow through on their part and doing what the Word insists we must do to avail ourselves of them.

Every year I buy a season pass to the local zoo for the whole family. I keep promising myself we will go more often and spend more time looking at the monkeys and the penguins, but somehow, we only manage to eke out two or three visits per season. It covers the cost of the season pass, but we could have gone so many more times if only we’d purposed to do so.

The passes are in my wallet, they will not turn me away if I show up at the gate, but I have to make an effort to get there. I have to put myself in a position where I can use my pass, and if I don’t, I can’t blame the zoo.

2 Corinthians 7:1, “Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.”

It is well known that the Corinthians weren’t the picture of purity. A lot was going on in the Corinthian church that was contrary to the dictates of God, and in his second letter, Paul impresses upon them that if only they’d perfect holiness in the fear of God if only they’d cleanse themselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, there are mountains of promises waiting for them.

Paul even includes himself in the mix and says, let us cleanse ourselves, let us perfect holiness in the fear of the Lord because we have all these wonderful promises that are just sitting there gathering dust, promises we are not availing ourselves of because we are not willing to do what is required to access them.

Even though it should be enough, there are more reasons to pursue holiness and perfect it in the fear of God than just because He said so.

What we are witnessing in real-time is scores of people being told of all the promises God has made, yet never being told what they need to do to access those promises.

I have the recipe for the best carrot cake you’ve ever tasted. And? That’s it! I have it. How would that help anyone with a sweet tooth?

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

The Pruning Knife

 Arborists. That’s what people who specialize in the care of trees are called. They’re different from horticulturists because a horticulturist is more focused on fruits, vegetables, or flowers, not necessarily trees. Horticulturists are also more study-oriented than actively trying to prune trees for optimal health and growth. I don’t know if it’s so much that those who can’t do teach, then it is the choice of a different specialty, but that’s the difference between the two, regardless.

Some even call arborists tree surgeons. If a tree needs a surgeon, it’s not because it’s doing so well but because it’s sick and needs immediate intervention in order to return to fruitfulness. A fruit tree’s singular function is to produce fruit. To that end, whatever stands in the way of its producing fruit must be done away with, eliminated, or cut away.

An arborist’s goal is to save the tree. It’s not to make the tree feel good about itself; it’s not to validate the tree’s feelings nor to justify the tree’s life choices. The arborist’s job is to make the tree fruitful. As such, a malady will be identified; branches will get pruned, and bark will get taken off, all so that the tree itself retains life and has what is needed to produce the fruit it was planted to produce.

An arborist will also know whether or not a tree is mature enough to produce the fruit it is expected to produce. They will not resort to pruning needlessly if the tree needs more time to grow and, having grown, would begin to produce the much sought-after fruit on its own.

When pruning occurs, be certain that it is necessary. When pruning occurs, it is because it is required in order to produce a favorable outcome.

If you’ve never seen a pruning knife, it’s a wicked-looking thing. Let’s just say no one will ever mistake one for a feather duster. Most of the time, it’s a hooked blade with a sharp point made in such a way wherein the work can be delicate or medieval. You can trim surgically, or you can cut savagely. The only other knife that elicits a visceral response, at least from me, is a skinner. For some reason, a pruning knife or a well-worn skinner is more menacing than a simple fixed-blade hunting knife.

I knew my way around a butterfly knife well enough when I was younger. I even have some scars on my fingers to prove it. It’s flashier than your skinner or pruning knife, but there’s still something about those two that gets the imagination pumping.

To use either of those two efficiently, one needs considerable practice, which will eventually give way to skill. You need to know what you’re doing both with a pruning knife and with a skinner, and it’s one of those things you can’t pretend at for very long. Both are tools. A tool is only as good as the individual wielding it.

An arborist will not cut at a tree indiscriminately. He will not hack away branches for the sake of esthetics, nor will he remove a healthy and fruitful branch. He will do everything he can to maintain life flowing through the branch because the alternative is to remove the branch altogether and toss it into the fire.

It is the last resort but one that remains an option if the branch refuses to bear fruit after all options have been exhausted. It may sound mean, cold, heartless even, but it is a necessary course of action taking into account the rest of the tree. Death spreads. Death devours. Death does not remain stagnant. It seeks new life to consume, snuff out and extinguish.

We cannot treat malignancies as pets. We cannot have affection for things that are killing us. Sin is a malignancy. Sin kills. Sin will keep you from being fruitful, and given enough time, it will drain away any semblance of life.

John 15:5-6, “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned.”

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Voices

 There’s something off-kilter if you care more about what strangers say about you than what God says about you or how they perceive you rather than how your Father does. It’s a valid observation given that all it takes for many believers to shrink back into their shells like some skittish turtle is being called a name, usually, one that ends in phobic. Either that or one that ends in the dreaded three letters IST. At some point, some intrepid heathen will come up with a combination of the two, maybe phobeist, and that will be that. Everyone will be silent for fear of being labeled, even though they know that they are not what they’re being called.

The devil doesn’t want what’s best for you, and his minions don’t have your best interests at heart. It may seem obvious to most, but some within Christendom, especially some in leadership, fall for the trick time and again. Some smug talking head keeps on about how Christians need to be less confrontational and have empathy for those struggling with their vices and perversions; then maybe we could find some common ground. The next thing you know, men in dresses are bouncing toddlers on their knees and reading books like why Bobby has two mommies and you should too in the church sanctuary!

That’s the trick. That’s the lie. That’s the bait and switch: the insistence that they are struggling with their sin. They’re not struggling with their sin, are they? They’re celebrating it, they’re proud of it, it has become their identity, and nothing else matters in this world than the proliferation of their particular perversion.

Suppose I’m remorseful, repentant, or regretful. In that case, if I no longer want to practice what I know to have been harmful to my well-being, I don’t flaunt it, nor do I insist that others do as I did, or else they’re a hateful bigot, worse than Hitler, worthy of execution, and not fit to dwell among mankind.

It’s funny how the church always has to concede, give up territory, be silent, and retreat. It’s funny how with each new push toward deeper darkness, it’s parents that are in the wrong for trying to protect their children from perverts, and shepherds that are in the wrong for trying to protect their sheep from the wolves.

Look back to ten years ago and list all the things you were told you would never see, things that would never happen, things the enemy would not have the brazenness to attempt, that have already happened. Every single one has come to pass, and then some.

We’ve come to the point where academics and university professors are trying to float the idea that sexual attraction to children by adults isn’t always immoral. They’re slowly pushing the narrative that it’s a preference, no more sinister than if you like chocolate or vanilla custard.

They’ve succeeded in pushing the Overton window so far in such a short time that we’re looking in the mirror and recognizing a sleazier, more debased version of Sodom staring back at us.

This could not have occurred without the direct aid of the supposed generals of God’s army. Not all, but most, whether through omission or full-throated support, have aided in the corruption and decay of decency and morality.

When even the godless are starting to insist that society starts pumping the breaks on this experiment in debauchery yet, pastors and leaders of denominations are waving them off, saying let’s give it a minute and see where it goes; you know your nation is in trouble. That’s putting it mildly. Dire straits is a more apt description as to where we are but wait until next June when pastors will have their churches wrapped in rainbow flags and show up to deliver their Sunday sermon in drag in honor and support of the movement.

See, there you go again, exaggerating. I’m with you up until the point where you jump the shark. You’ve only got six months to wait to see whether I’m right. What’re six months in the grand scheme of things?

No, this is not revelation; it’s a conclusion based on the knowledge of the enemy. The devil always tries to outdo himself. He is not content with the status quo as most churches are. If yesterday he took a finger, you can bet tomorrow he’ll try to take a hand. This is why compromising ourselves to a consensus was never going to work. Last year’s compromise was the starting point for this year’s negotiations. You can never give enough to satisfy the devil until he has the whole. Yet, somehow, we’ve talked ourselves into believing that God will be satisfied with anything less than your all. If the devil won’t take anything less than your all, what makes you think God will?

Say what you will, but the devil’s kids are committed. They cut off pieces of themselves, sow new parts on, take experimental drugs that will likely cause them to spiral into uncontrollable depression, stunt their maturation, thereby having the bone density of an eel, suffer hair loss, hormonal imbalances, all so they can hate the new version of themselves as thoroughly as they hated the old. That’s dedication. It’s a dedication to self-destruction, but dedication nonetheless.

Most Christians won’t even kneel when they pray because they have sensitive skin, and it’s a tad uncomfortable. They’ll keep quiet for fear of words yet have convinced themselves they will stand stoically in the face of persecution. I know, buzzkill. Maybe if I could muster up some pep, perhaps an acapella version of Enemy’s Camp followed by stomping around my office for a few minutes.

I can tell you what encourages me without clinging to delusion or fantasy: Salvation is not collective! God doesn’t grade on a curve! The soul that sins will die, and he who endures to the end will be saved! Beating dead horses isn’t as fun as I hoped, but sometimes it’s necessary to get the point across.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Reflections

 This morning I woke up thinking about sonship. I’ve been going through the book of Hebrews for my morning devotional, and since I’m in the twelfth chapter, it was only fitting, I guess. There is no denying that sonship comes with some exceptional privileges. I’m sure you know what they are because they’re endlessly highlighted by preachers the world over. What many fail to discuss, however, is that sonship also comes with certain responsibilities.

Boo! You’re wrong! All bennies, no accountability is what we want! All privilege, no responsibility! That’s legalism, man! You’re oppressing the sons of God by saying God has a standard.

What a son does reflects on his father. No matter how you separate the two intellectually, in practical terms, when a son does something honorable, it reflects well on his dad. When he’s a crack addict, that seduces his dead brother’s widow, not so much.

A son will also be associated with his father, his exploits or lack thereof, a direct reflection of everything that brought him to that point, including his upbringing, his father’s influence, his father’s example, his father’s mentorship, his father’s direction, and even his father’s failures.

A noble son brings glory to his father’s name. An unprincipled son brings shame.

Anyone who’s met my father before they met me always remarks on how I look so much like my dad. Even my other brothers who aren’t such carbon copies of him either have his voice, his eyes, his mannerisms, or some characteristic that makes them undeniably his sons.

I didn’t try really hard to look like my dad, and I didn’t practice his mannerisms in the mirror. As I grew, I began to resemble him due to his DNA flowing through my veins. As I began to resemble him and people recognized the family name, I also became cognizant of the fact that whatever I did in my day-to-day life reflected on him.

It would reflect on him if I were to show kindness, gentleness, wisdom, or honesty. It likewise reflected on him if I showed imprudence, impudence, foolhardiness, selfishness, or indifference.

It was not enough for me to resemble my father physically; I had to live in such a way that my action, choices, and decisions brought honor to his name rather than shame. Had I chosen to pursue a life that was not virtuous and honorable, having his name and features would only accentuate my failures and how short I’d fallen of the example he set. There’s a reason Peter says that it is better for those who, having escaped the pollutions of the world, entangle themselves anew and are overcome to have never known the way of righteousness.

It’s not just that one individual that’s affected anymore; it’s everyone that knew that they called themselves a son or daughter of the Most High God. With all the requisite caveats, such as men shouldn’t idolize men in the first place, it shakes the resolve of many in their orbit whenever a big name falls. Some even question their own ability to finish the race since they look at the individual and erroneously conclude that they were stronger in the Lord because they had a bigger church or a larger ministry.

There’s a difference between looking and acting like your father. Being principled and noble of character like your father, wise and faithful like your father, making the right choices, and navigating every situation with purposeful wisdom, are all much harder than having a particular pigment.

Those are the things we must actively be cognizant of, the things we must strive to get right, and the reason we need the active presence of God in our lives, and not just a passive participant who offers no input and is impassive whether you strive for righteousness, or do pirouettes on the edge of the abyss.

1 Peter 1:13-16, “Therefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; as obedient children, not conforming yourselves to the former lusts, as in your ignorance; but as He who is called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, ‘Be holy, for I am holy.’”

It’s up to you to gird up the loins of your mind. It’s up to you to be sober. It’s up to you to choose obedience. It’s up to you to deny yourself and pick up your cross, striving for holiness in all your conduct. Your participation is required. It is mandatory, in fact.

If more people who claimed that God is their father acted like it, perhaps today’s church would look a lot different than it currently does. Perhaps if we acknowledged not just the goodness but also the severity of God, we would walk circumspectly, redeeming the time. Wouldn’t that be something?

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Unto Us

 When you lay all the pettiness and back and forth aside, what remains is wondrous and glorious. It gives hope and brings light and joy, and all those things without which mankind’s darkened hearts grow exceedingly darker still.

Was Jesus born on December 25^th? I don’t know, and neither do you. The question isn’t whether He was or He wasn’t; the question is whether it matters in the larger context of what we do know with certainty and conviction.

It’s like being on the battlefield, ready to engage the enemy and a fight breaks out over whether the helmet should have a plume or not. But the enemy’s right there! It’s lined up, swords drawn, beating their chests, pumping themselves up, ready to attack, and we’re over here screaming at each other over some tertiary thing that doesn’t matter in the heat of battle.

Plume or no plume, swords will still cut if you don’t know how to parry and defend, and arrows will still pierce flesh if you don’t have your breastplate strapped on and your shield in the up-and-ready position.

Stop arguing about the plume and recognize that there are others standing on the battlefield with you, ready to take on the enemy, ready to defend the Kingdom and defend you, and maybe even take a blow or two that was meant for you.

We’re doing a far better job of dividing ourselves than the devil ever could, and it’s over things that stem from pretend intellectuals trying to hypothesize something that will remain a hypothesis no matter how many mental machinations occur.

For unto us a Child is born, and you shall argue over the date of that birth incessantly until His return. Unto us, a Son is given that we might fight what to call the day of remembrance of that wondrous gift to the point of disavowing those who fought alongside us.

It’s all great and good that an angel and a multitude of the heavenly host praised God and said, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace, goodwill toward men!” but that can’t happen until you agree with me about everything! Every little thing! Was Jesus wrapped in cotton, linen, or lambswool? What were the swaddling clothes made of? You go first. That way, I’ll know if you’re telling the truth or just agreeing with me.

What was on the floor of the manger? Was it dirt, straw, or sawdust? It’s important, man! Why?

The birth of the Son of God was prophesied by Isaiah seven hundred years before it came to pass. Let that sink in for a second. That’s almost three times as long as America has been a country. Seven hundred years and every box was checked off, yet we’re still arguing about fabric content and dates?

Peace and goodwill can take a backseat; I have to be right!

Evidently, Shakespeare was wrong, and a rose by any other name wouldn’t smell as sweet! Nope, we can’t call it what it’s been called for centuries because someone found a dusty copy of Myths of the Persians or Myths of the Babylonians and because, obviously, correlation means causation; it’s all about Tammuz and Mithra and not about Jesus.

My wife’s in the kitchen making breakfast. My girls are singing Peace on Earth for the fifteenth time this morning. The house is warm and inviting, and I have a few moments to reflect on the gift of God to mankind in the form of the baby Jesus being born in a manger, whose name would be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace. I have no desire to argue with anyone about anything this morning. It is a perfect moment.

Philippians 4:8, “Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy-meditate on these things.”

With love in Christ, 

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Clowns

 If given a choice between ice cream and a spanking, it’s a good bet the ice cream would win over by a wide margin. Sure, there might be one weird kid who wears black lipstick and eyeliner that thinks ice cream is evil and he deserves the spanking, but for the most part, it’ll be the ice cream.

Those who have crept into the household of faith and made merchandise of you aren’t doing anything more complicated than offering you the spiritualized version of ice cream, pretending the spanking isn’t even an option.

Ice cream’s great. I’m partial to rum raisin myself, but some pistachio or cookie dough hits the spot once in a while as well. The situation becomes problematic when knowing that we deserve a spanking, someone offers us ice cream, telling us that spankings were something only mean men in powdered wigs did once upon a time.

We are given license to live recklessly by clowns who don’t know enough of God’s word not to claim that they stood eye to eye with God after being teleported to heaven from a sitting position in a port-a-potty.

I mean, Moses, sure, he was a thing back then, got to see the back of God or whatever, but it’s 2022, and now it’s either face to face one on ones or nothing at all. Moses surely wasn’t as special as some random harpy who would have you believe she gave God a good talking down to because He dared to teleport her to heaven, interrupting her while having her ablutions.

Apparently, God needed advice. He needed to have a confab asap regarding the nations because all these delusional people need to be prophets to the nations, speaking to leaders, movers, shakers, and gingerbread makers.

Color me surprised when I discovered that the message to the nations had nothing to do with repentance or turning back to God but about how you, too, can achieve your full potential and get that work promotion you’ve been craving if you learn to unlock the secret chamber within the secret chamber that holds the wishing well of heaven.

If you can’t believe a lady that insists she rode a toilet to heaven, I don’t know what to tell you. Maybe you should check yourself o ye of little faith. It’s because you don’t believe that you’ll never receive what she promised you would, had you been one of the chosen who would amplify the message to the nations by your selfless giving!

If all you eat is ice cream, you’ll get a tummy ache. I repeat those exact words at least twice a week, but they’re to adolescent girls with a sweet tooth. Adults should know better. Adults shouldn’t need to be told that something that sounds like a fantasy novel dreamed up while tripping on mushrooms likely isn’t Biblical.

Between pet dinosaurs, enneagrams, third eyes, and teleporting toilets, there isn’t much oxygen left in the room for doctrine, discipleship, submission, or obedience.  I mean, given a choice between discipleship and pet dinosaurs, well, you know the rest of it.

There are consequences to the things we choose to believe. There are consequences to the things we choose to allow to take root in our hearts. We’ve done a good job of pretending as though it were not so. That’s how the Yolo generation was spawned. Now that generation has discovered that you Yolo in your twenties, you weep-o in your thirties, and you wail-o in your forties because you look like you’re pushing seventy from of all the Yoloing you did in your twenties.

Hebrews 12:7-8, If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom a father does not chasten? But if you are without chastening, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons.”

But ice cream, and pet dinosaurs, sunshine, and unicorns. You just don’t understand the love of God, man. That’s your problem! God’s not about all that chastening stuff; He just wants to love on you!

I love my girls, but sometimes correction is necessary. I love my girls, but sometimes they need to be disciplined. I don’t go around chastening and disciplining other people’s kids. I don’t walk the neighborhood with a sign around my neck stating that I will spank people’s kids for free; that would just be weird.

My kids, though, I disciple and correct because I love them, and I want the best for them in the moment and for the future, as far as that future might extend.

If God isn’t chastening you, it’s not because you’re perfect, you’re not, and you know you’re not. If He is not chastening you, it’s because you’re not His, and He doesn’t go around spanking other people’s kids.

I know, it hurts. Take a minute, breathe through your nose, deep breaths, there you go, then realize that you can still be His child. Not illegitimate, crossing your fingers hoping the paternity test goes your way, but truly His, yes, enduring chastening, but also assured of your inheritance.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Cheerleader

 When did we relegate God to the cheerleader position in our lives? Was it when we realized that Him being Lord of all meant we needed to crucify the flesh? Was it when what He required of His own interfered with what the flesh wanted? Or was it when we realized that His being on the throne meant we couldn’t be?

It’s a good question to ponder since that’s the duty many modern-day Christians have assigned to Him. When you think about it, the cheerleader’s role is irrelevant save for the fact that once in a while, they scream, ‘you can do it!’ but as far as having the ability to affect the outcome, there is none.

A cheerleader’s function is to cheer. Whether you’re doing horribly or marginally well, their sole purpose is to infuse you with a sense of exuberance, regardless of whether or not you have the requisite skill to defeat your opponent. Once you’re on the ground choking on your own teeth and wondering where you are, the cheerleader stops cheering, her purpose having reached its rightful end. The cheerleader did the job; the cheerleader cheered. What good did it do you in the heat of battle? None!

It should be evident that when we relegate God to the cheerleader role in our lives, we are diminishing Him, cheapening who He is, and underplaying what He can do. It’s like having the best coach in the history of coaching in your corner, and you confine him to janitorial duty, maybe clearing some messes you made when it gets too messy for you to contend with. You know what I’m talking about. There’s always one or two every other morning that insists they need a miracle because they managed to annihilate their lives so thoroughly by the choices they’ve made that only God could fix it.

Cheer me on even when I’m doing wrong, and when the wrong I’m doing gets to the point that it’s choking out everything in my life, lend a hand, and pull me out.

As I thought more about this, I realized that when you relegate God to the position of cheerleader, you also cut off His ability to command you, tell you what you must do, and give you instructions as to how you should proceed. He is no longer God at that point, at least not over your life, and you can do as you please. At that point, your only expectation is that He stands on the sideline and jumps up and down, giddy at the prospect of you finishing what you started even if you come in dead last.

I know; your god doesn’t judge. Coincidentally neither does the devil. Don’t get it twisted. He’ll shame you to the ends of the earth, and you’ll never go anywhere in public again without strangers whispering your name, shaking their heads, and pointing at you, but he doesn’t judge.

All those people clamoring to sell you an impotent god who’s good at nothing more than cheering you on excitedly as you first flirt with darkness and eventually get swallowed whole by it aren’t doing you any favors. They’re selling you a Yugo, knowing it’s Yugo, but trying to pass it off as a Ferrari, hoping your offering check clears before you tell the difference. The thing you thought would be the answer turned out to be cancer, and it’s eating away methodically until nothing but some skin and bones remain.

You did this one thing, and your god remained silent, then this other, and still more silence, then again, and again, and the silence stretched into the abyss you descended into.

Psalm 50:15, “Call upon me in your day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify Me.”

The God of the Bible is not a cheerleader. He is a present help in times of trouble. Call on Him, and He will deliver you, but for you to call on Him, you must first know Him. Not as contemporary Christianity has made Him out to be, but as He is, as He self-identifies in the Book, as He is known from generation to generation, from the beginning of all things to the end.

If you know Him, the real Him, when you call upon Him in your day of trouble, He will deliver you. He doesn’t say He’ll try or do His best; it is a certainty as immutable as the sun in the sky. He will deliver you, and you will glorify Him, but He can only be glorified in spirit and truth from a pure heart and a contrite spirit.

He is glorified and will be forevermore not for what men hope He’ll do for them but for what He has already done and what He has promised to do.

God doesn’t deal in half-measures. Anyone who insists He does is lying to your face. Any day now, the fence sitters will run out of fence, and they will have to choose between serving their flesh or the One True God.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Nope

 If the lies men tell us on behalf of God weren’t so appealing, maybe more people would point out that God never said what they said He said. Either that, or most people don’t take the time to go to the source, to go to the Word, and search out whether God said something someone else said He said, which would be just as bad but somehow sadder.

It’s not like we’re living in the 1900s, and after riding our horse home from church, we sit by candlelight and search out the Bible to see if what the preacher said is true. You can type one word into a search engine, and every time that word is mentioned in the Bible, it pops up big and bold in less time than it takes for you to blink. You can aggregate the word by testament, the book of the Bible, or who the author was. You can pull up the whole chapter to see the context, reference commentaries by denomination, and even search for similarities in the Apocrypha if that’s your bag, all from the comfort of your local coffee shop while sipping on sugared caffeine.

How can it be that with all the technology we have at our disposal, this generation is more ignorant of the Word of God than those who studied it by candlelight? There is no excuse for the ignorance plaguing the modern church, and a judicious, objective investigation would conclude that it is wholly willful.

We want to be told that our feelings matter more than the Word of God. We want to be told that God changed His mind about that whole sanctification thing, and He’s all in on prosperity and your earthly comfort. We don’t just want it or like it; we demand to be lied to because if anyone dares speak the truth of Scripture to us, we belittle, deride, and ridicule them to the point that their heart grows bitter, and the work they do is no longer with gladness.

It’s not a recent problem, either; this mindset has been around since the times of the Old Testament prophets, and it was so pervasive that God pointed it out in no unclear terms.

Isaiah 30:8-10, “Now go, write it before them on a tablet, and note it on a scroll, that it may be for time to come, forever and ever: that this is a rebellious people, lying children, children who will not hear the law of the Lord; Who say to the seers, “Do not see,” and to the prophets, “Do not prophesy to us right things; Speak to us smooth things, prophesy deceits.’”

The people demanded that they be lied to. The people demanded that the seers not see and the prophets not prophesy right things. They still wanted them to prophesy; they were still roaming the land, asking what the Lord was saying, then turning around and demanding that only smooth things be prophesied.

I’ve seen a version of this in modern times, where people don’t come out and demand someone change what they prophesied, but they go prophet shopping, from one to another, until they hear something they want to hear. Once that occurs, they are content in their heart that they are pursuing whatever avenue they intended to pursue with the full support and blessing of the Most High.

In love, God will say no once, twice, thrice, but eventually, He will leave you to the desire of your heart, seeing as you are unwilling to obey what He clearly stated time and again.

But what if what the Lord is saying is not smooth? What if what the Lord is saying doesn’t stroke your ego, gloss over your sin, or make you promises of riches beyond your imagining? Then lie, prophet! That’s right, lie! Indulge us in our fantasies, absolve us of our responsibilities, tell us it’s all going to be okay, and that there will be no consequences to the actions we have thus far undertaken. Prophesy deceits, and we will reward you handsomely for your betrayal of God. Tell us what we want to hear, and you will have a life of ease and earthly abundance.

Fail to supply what we demand, insist on prophesying the right things, the things God told you to prophesy, and you will know strife, alienation, and rejection by those you now call brothers and sisters.

And you wonder why so many give in to the madness of the crowds? Do you wonder why so many speak smooth things? That’s why. Because the offer they were made to betray the truth was too good for their flesh to pass up, at least in their estimation.

If you knew that, save for telling people they’d be riding pet dinosaurs in heaven, you’d probably be putting your dentures in some Polident and watching the sun go down over your penny-wise retirement community, and you never really knew the fear of the Lord, wouldn’t you keep up the clown show for as long as you could?

I think it’s early on that you have to decide what you’re in ministry for. It’s early on that you have to determine if you will stand for the truth, speak the truth, and follow after the truth, or be swayed every which way by the offer of something more than what you already possess.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Ability

 Our little one came home with a stomach bug. Because we’ve always taught her to be generous and share, she decided to spread the joy, and the whole family is now sharing in what can only be classified as a good old-fashioned purge. It’s been a minute for me, I can’t even remember the last time, but here we are, getting through it as a family and looking slimmer by the day.

A promise is only as good as the person making it. Not only must they be able to keep the promise they made, but they must also intend to do so and have the wherewithal to carry it through. Some people make promises they never plan on keeping. Politicians fall into this category, and they’ve been at it for so long that if one accidentally happens to keep a promise, it’s a shock and a surprise.

Another kind of promise is individuals promising things they have no way of making good on. Young men in love fall into this category most often, promising the moon and the stars to a young lady who hurries home and makes room on her dresser for them. It’s not that the young man has no intention of keeping the promise. Unlike the politician, he just has no way of keeping it. They haven’t built ladders tall enough to reach the stars, and the moon seems kind of heavy to carry through a young lady’s front door.

Then you have the problem of more than one young man promising the moon and stars to more than one young lady. Granted, as far as the stars are concerned, there are plenty in the heavens, but there’s just one moon. Are they going to fight over it? Will the last man standing be able to deliver the moon to his beloved while all the others sulk in the street, wondering how they will explain their failure to the girl who is fully expecting the moon to be delivered at any moment?

The thing about God is that He never promises something He can’t deliver. He will never try to bait and switch you, He will never promise you something only to show up empty-handed and make up some excuse as to why He couldn’t make it work. It doesn’t matter how improbable what He promised might seem to human intellect. The fact that it was He who promised it makes His ability to see it through a certainty.

Isaiah 43:2, “When you pass through the water, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned, nor shall the flame scorch you.”

But how could this be? Fire burns. It is an immutable absolute. Yet, God promised that you will not be burned when you walk through the fire, nor will the flame scorch you. It’s a promise made by the only One who can see it through, and that’s enough for me. I don’t need to know how the flames will not scorch me; I just know that they won’t. How can I be so sure of this? Because it was God who said as much, and He will never promise something beyond His ability to deliver.

Men do it all the time. They make promises they can’t deliver on. Whether they’re trying to impress somebody or seem like more of a big shot than they are, they’ll make promises so grandiose that one wonders if they are royalty and are living the life of a lowly grocery store cashier as an experiment of some sort.

God doesn’t need to impress you. He doesn’t need to impress me. He doesn’t need to make promises He can’t keep just to wow us or make us think more of Him. He is already God. There’s no next rung; there’s no greater. Thus the reason we can rest in the promises of God.

Not only will He never promise something He can’t deliver, God will never promise something He does not intend to make good on. Granted, some promises are conditional, and we will get into that at a later date, Lord willing, but whenever God makes a promise, He fully intends to keep it.

He is not double-minded, He is not double-tongued, and He means what He says without equivocation. Knowing this, all that remains is to determine what God didn’t promise and what He did promise so that we might walk boldly into tomorrow.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Promises

 What happens when we cling to promises God never made? This was the starting point of a sermon I preached a few weeks back that came to mind due to an incident with my youngest daughter.

I’ve been trying to teach my daughters to negotiate of late. It’s one of those skills I believe everyone needs to master to be competent in any endeavor. Some people call it haggling, I call it wisdom, and I would love for my daughters to be able to negotiate as well as their old man someday.

Since I was in charge of dinner and the consuming thereof the other day, the girls saw their opportunity to negotiate certain perks. They usually don’t haggle with their mother; she’s pretty strict when it comes to eating the green stuff on the dinner plate, but dad’s not so tough, so they thought they’d sweeten the pot a bit, literally.

There’s an outlet store for a chocolate outfit not far from where we live, so once in a while, when they’re having an especially tantalizing sale, I’ll stop by and buy some chocolates. If you ever want to brag about beating an addiction without suffering the indignity of Hunter Biden teeth, there are worse things than Lindt chocolates.

Since I’d made a chocolate run a few days prior, there was a bag with an impressive variety of Lindor truffles on the counter. Seeing as taste is subjective, my definition of good might not live up to yours, but in my estimation, they’re good. No, they’re not for the chocolate snobs who insist on calling it ganache and ask what region of France it was made in, but for mass-produced truffles, they’re yummy.

Once the plates were on the table and the green beans properly parsed out, the haggling began. It was the little one that decided to try her hand at it, and since I taught her well, she put out a feeler question to gauge where they stood.

“What do we get if we finish all the green beans, daddy?”

At this point, an amateur would make an offer, not realizing that the first rule of any successful negotiation is to let the other guy throw out a number first.

“What do you want?” I asked in a mock-serious tone.

“One chocolate each if we finish.”

“Deal,” I answered, smiling.

Chocolate is a good motivator for kids to eat their vegetables. I know; you don’t have to tell me. I should write a book on parenting. Maybe a book for new dads. Maybe call it Let Them Eat Cake!

 Even though my wife vehemently disagrees with bribing your children to eat their dinner, extraordinary measures must often be taken when she's not around. I get where she’s coming from, but I would have let them have chocolate anyway; I might as well get them to finish their food as well.

Both girls finished their vegetables; each got a high five for making it to the clean plate club, then the little one, with all the brazenness of a cat burglar at full dark, goes and grabs a handful of truffles and makes to slink off.

“Booger, what are you doing?” I asked. Booger is my nickname for her. I know; it should be princess, but what can you do? I called her that once when she was two, and it stuck.

“You promised, daddy!” she said in an innocent voice, still clinging to the handful of truffles. “You said!”

“What did I say, exactly, Malina Rose Boldea?”

She knows that when I use her full name, it’s no longer a joking matter.

“That we could have chocolates,” she said.

“How many?”

“One,” she answered, putting the chocolates back in the bowl, then taking one.

I get the feeling many believers will entreat God in like fashion. They will insist that God promised them something He never did, and when they get called on it, they will have no defense for their position.

Make certain that God actually promised the things you think He did and the things you cling to as your safety blanket concerning the season in which we are about to enter.

God will always keep the promises He makes to His children, but He is not obliged to, nor will He keep promises He never made. I think we’ll rustle up a few for next time. Suffice it to say, most of the things modern-day preachers insist God promised, God never did. Isn’t that a sticky wicket?

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

His Elect

 In our haste to believe something comforting to the flesh, we overlook glaring inconsistencies and gloss over things that don’t make sense. It does not just have to do with the end times or the return of Christ but with pretty much everything in life.

I can’t count the number of commercials I’ve seen over the years that promised me I could eat exactly what I wanted when I wanted, and just by taking one little pill per day, I would be a men’s bicycle shorts model in three months or less.

That’s a great deal. The bicycle shorts guys would pay something, so I’d be getting my pill for free after the first check cleared. They always said the secret to success was multiple income streams, and in three short months, my modeling stream will be up and running!

They even had before and after photos of guys, all sad and sullen with droopy bellies, then smiling and doing a double thumbs up at the screen, flat tummies, and new suntans to boot. It’s not that I was sad and sullen, but I wasn’t smiling from ear to ear doing the thumbs up to everyone I ran across either. They even had an extra special offer just for me if I acted within the hour, and the more the man talked, the better it got.

How could they do all this and still make money? Maybe they weren’t even trying to make money; they were just offering me a new body and modeling career out of the goodness of their hearts. What magnanimity!

I’d missed my hour-long window, but I knew someone that had ordered the package and decided to wait for their double thumbs up and beaming smile confirmation before I ponied up the sixty-odd dollars, including shipping and handling, that it would end up costing, even with the extra special offer. It was, after all, worth over $300 when all told, so you were getting a deal either way.

My friend got his package in the mail and followed the directions to the letter for the prescribed amount of time. Two weeks in, he was texting me asking if the stomach pains and oily discharge were normal and whether I thought it would happen gradually or overnight. I didn’t ask him what he planned to model at the end of his three-month shredding course, but I hoped it wasn’t bicycle shorts. That was my niche; he could find his own.

A month passed, then two, and my friend looked no different than when he’d begun his transformation journey, except for more puffiness around his eyes, but that was understandable since he said his sleep cycle was wrecked. He couldn’t manage more than three hours on a given night.

By the third month, he was getting the jitters even on a warm day and suspected he had stomach ulcers, but as far as the lean, muscular physique he was promised and believed he would have, it was still hiding behind years of bad nutrition and lack of exercise.

He was promised something, and he believed what he was promised, yet here he was, markedly worse off than when he started because what he was promised and what he believed were beyond the realm of reality. Sadly, my saving of sixty dollars came at the expense of his health, but I still saved sixty dollars.

Matthew 24:30-31, “Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And He will send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.”

Two questions: when’s then, and whom will the angels be dispatched to gather from the four winds?

I know I make it too easy sometimes, but this isn’t supposed to be complicated. You read the Book, and you believe the words it says, not what you would like them to say. It’s Occam’s razor all over again. It applies here as well. The simplest explanation is usually the best one.

We either take what Jesus said at face value or twist ourselves into knots, trying to force the Bible to say something it never said.

To answer the first question, when’s then, all we need to do is return to the words of Jesus and backtrack a verse or two.

Matthew 24:29, “Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.”

Are you saying you know better than the authors of the internationally bestselling Left Behind series? No, I’m saying Jesus does. If, on the other hand, you’re asserting that they know better than Jesus, then I’m all ears.

That’s the thing, though. We’re willing to believe the information we receive from some shady, questionable characters as long as they tell us what we want to hear. Tell me I can have the body of a twenty-year-old at fifty while doing nothing more than popping a pill every morning, and even if all anecdotal evidence points to the contrary, I may just be tempted to try it.

Tell a lukewarm Christian that God changed His mind about spewing them out of His mouth or that He reconsidered the elect having to endure to the end, and they’re on board, even though their claims have no definitive proof.

It must be nice having everyone like you because you always tell them what they want to hear, or as the contemporary Christian is fond of saying, because it bears witness to their spirit. What about His Spirit? Does it bear witness with His Spirit? Just asking.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Knowledge

 Knowledge is power. Depending on what the knowledge is, and if you can use it judiciously, you can sway nations to your cause, swing elections in your favor, and do it all in such a way that until some billionaire decides to purchase one of the means of your leverage and expose you for the ghouls you are, it’s all deemed conspiracy theory.

Funny how a lot of the things people who were labeled conspiracy theorists said are proving true in real-time. Even when what the individual proffered turns out to be God’s honest truth, there is never an apology or an admission of guilt, just a halfhearted attempt to call it all water under the bridge and start a new chapter of dialogue and discourse until the next time they call you a murderer, myopic granny killer, anti-science, or Hitler.

Not to be outdone, there are some within Christendom, more precisely the prophetic movement, who miss on dates and events repeatedly but never seem to find the courage to repent, apologize, or say that they were wrong. They just barrel through their date, and when whatever they said would happen fails to happen, they pretend as though they never said it and move on to the next thing, the next event, the next date, or the next powerful revelation. For some reason, the revelation is always powerful. There always needs to be an adjective before the word revelation; otherwise, it’s not special enough, I guess.

The uber-brazen ones even blame their followers when what they said doesn’t come to pass because if only they’d believed more, had more faith, and visualized the spaceship and the aliens giving him the goblet of destiny, then it really would have happened just the way he said it would.

What everyone without the requisite fear of God seems to guess at more than anything else is the return of Christ. People have been setting dates since shortly after His resurrection and ascension, and it hasn’t cooled down one bit.

If you were to aggregate all the dates people have thrown out just within the last decade, whether people with platforms or people sitting in their basements with a whiteboard and lots of markers, you’d likely conclude that someone said Jesus would return for every day of the calendar year, ten years straight.

As I’ve stated before and will do again since people get spooked at the rustling of a leaf nowadays, I believe Jesus will return! He said He would, and I believe He will! What I don’t believe is that any man can know the day or the hour of His return because He said no man would know the day or hour of His return!

Matthew 24:36, “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only.”

So if you show up on the interwebs and declare a definitive date as to when Christ will return, am I to assume you are God? That is the rightful conclusion one comes to after reading this verse, is it not?

Only the Father knows the day and hour; someone is insisting they know the day and hour; ergo, they are the Father because they claim to know the day and hour!

And if that is the case, and someone is claiming to be God, you’ve got bigger fish to fry than a date they throw out offhandedly.

It’s understandable. It’s like the forbidden fruit all over again. It’s the one thing we are not given to know, and so we want to know it more than anything else. The problem is Jesus said we can’t know, not even the angels in heaven, but the Father only.

How would it change our life if you knew the day and hour? Let’s start there. If you were to say that you wouldn’t guard your heart so fervently, or live your life so selflessly, or serve God so faithfully, then may I submit that you’re doing all those things for the wrong reasons already.

If you’re running a race, your first instinct shouldn’t be to find ways to cheat. If you’re running a race faithfully, your first and only priority is to build up your endurance so that you cross the finish line and receive your prize.

When your single-minded pursuit isn’t a relationship with Jesus but rather the day of His return, allow me my skepticism regarding your intent.

It’s enough for me to know that He is returning. The when of it is irrelevant because I would live my life in like manner if He were to return tomorrow or ten years from now.

How would the knowledge of the day of His return change the way you live your life, and why?

I’m not trying to be a jerk about it, but every other day I get bombarded with a new date and time, insisting that this is the one; it’s go time; we’re leaving this world behind and never looking back!

At some point, we must acknowledge what Jesus said and be direct with those who are throwing out dates like they’re trying to save family heirlooms from a house fire.

Whether or not some are well-meaning or well-intentioned is beside the point. As the old idiom goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The only question we should ask is, are these date-setting predictions Biblical? If yes, then by all means, predict away. If no, a divergent path lies before you: either you stop, repent, and cease doing that which is unbiblical, or you continue on your way with full knowledge that you are in rebellion.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Indoctrinated

 It was my fault. It was. I should have known better; I should have thought it through and reminded myself the last time I gave someone the benefit of the doubt, but my wife says I need friends, and the moms told her that the dads would approach me in conversation if I didn’t seem so standoffish all the time.

In a moment of weakness, I relented and agreed to carpool to the end-of-year celebration at my daughters’ school. I picked up the dad, whose daughter was in the same class as my oldest, cool, calm, and collected, thinking that nothing too crazy could happen in the ten minutes it would take us to get to the school.

Three minutes in, I was praying for Jesus to take the wheel because I’d need both hands to choke the stupid out of him. The conversation started innocently enough, him asking if Victoria had a solo and me saying I thought she did either during Silent Night or Home for the Holidays. Trying to be polite, I asked the same question back; he nodded and said yes, and that his daughter had been singing around the house for the better part of a week.

I don’t know how we got from that to my alarm about the constant pursuit to sexualize children, but he looks at me sideways and says, “I understand your concerns, but I think kids are smarter than we give them credit for.”

Really? Are they? Your daughter still eats her boogers! Granted, most kids her age still do, but when she’s done, she licks her fingers like they’re covered in chocolate. I thought it but didn’t say it because if I had, I don’t think we would’ve ended up best buds. Not that we did, but at least I could tell my wife I gave it the old college try.

I drove the rest of the way in silence, or as I have been labeled in my standoffish frame, kicking myself for not nipping this situation in the bud but also realizing how many people are indoctrinated nowadays, even if they don’t fully realize it.

For any parent to think that their eight-year-old is smart enough to traverse the minefield of propaganda and lunacy being hoisted upon the young safely, it’s shortsightedness to the point of blindness.

Last week I had the worst three days of my life when my eldest came home and said that in order to save the planet, she was swearing off meat. Thankfully it was only three days; then she realized she loved drumsticks more than the planet, but still, a scary three days. Even if your child is brilliant, there’s still no getting around the fact that a woman’s brain fully matures around the age of twenty-five.

You’re telling me we should let eight-year-olds decide that they want to irreparably transform their bodies because they woke up one morning thinking they were something they weren’t? Scarier still is that enough Dr. Frankensteins are willing to hack and saw and sow an adolescent child for a couple of bucks that there’s no backlog.  

Mark 13:12, “Now brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; and children will rise up against parents and cause them to be put to death.”

 

The Olivet Discourse is prominent in three of the four gospels. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all write of it, each from their unique perspective, with Matthew spending the most time on it. Whether wanting to confirm its authenticity by having three witnesses testify of it or because it was so important that repetition was warranted, three accounts of the Olivet Discourse exist in the Bible.

The slight differences in verbiage solidify my belief in their authenticity because each man wrote as they remembered rather than have a carbon copy inserted into all three gospels. What stood out to Mark was the level of betrayal we would witness in the last days, wherein a brother would betray his brother unto death and a father his child.

Then Mark goes on to say that children will rise up against their parents and cause them to be put to death. This is no small thing. This is not something to gloss over and fail to ponder.

Children, the selfsame children that were nurtured, raised, protected, and provided for, will eventually rise up against their parents and cause them to be put to death. Not fined, not jailed, not given a good talking to, but put to death. How void of human emotion and natural love must an offspring be to put their own parents to death?

The only thing that can explain that level of cold inhumanity is indoctrination. Fanatical zealotry is the one thing that can blind an individual to everything else and compel them to act out violently because, in their hearts, they believe there is no other way. Sacrifices must be made for the greater good! Anyone questioning my identity must be exterminated!

Remember a couple of years ago when Al Gore spoke directly to the children and insisted that their parents were ignorant rubes, knew nothing, and if need be, they must get militant in trying to save the planet from their gluttony? I do. It was just another thing that, seen through a prophetic prism, made one’s breath catch in their throat.

A ten-year-old boy shot and killed his mother a couple of weeks ago because she wouldn’t let him buy a virtual reality headset on Amazon. I know of the story because It happened here in Wisconsin. For now, it’s still the exception. Give it time.

You can’t have an entire generation of children raised by degenerates who tell them their parents know nothing on a daily, that they need to explore their sexuality and focus on being the gender they know themselves to be without repercussions.

You can’t have the only time families get together be at funerals and weddings, and the rest of the time merely cohabitate but never interact and think that’s healthy in any way, shape, or form.

All the pieces are there, the puzzle is forming, and what it’s shaping up to does not inspire optimism or hope for the future of mankind. That we are beginning to work out in the physical what Jesus foresaw in the supernatural should clue us in on how close we are.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.