What Price Freedom?

I woke up this morning with a thought I’ve not been able to shake, and since I consider you my brothers and friends I thought I’d bounce it off you, let it rattle around your heads for a while and see if my reasoning makes sense.

It’s strange to me that people who have never had freedom, men and women who grew up in oppressed environments and know what it is to live under the thumb of totalitarianism, will often risk their lives to attain it, while those who have had freedom for all of their lives neither treasure it, appreciate it, nor defend it.

Never mind the fact that those who’ve always had freedom do not treasure or defend it, many despise it, and desire to do away with it.

If you want to know how precious freedom is, if you want to know how priceless being free is, you need look no further than Christ’s own words who said that the truth was the only thing that could make us free.

“And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

Odd choice of wording don’t you think? He could have said the truth would make us wealthy, he could have said the truth would make us popular, he could have said the truth would make us famous, he could have said the truth would make us successful, but Jesus said the truth would make us free.

To be free! There is nothing more precious in this world than to be free, to possess the truth which is Christ, and thereby be made free.

And yet, here we are, all but ready to sacrifice our freedom for healthcare or college tuition, or whatever else the politicians are promising the foolish and gullible nowadays.

Anything that men promise you, no matter how attractive, is not worth the price of your freedom. Don’t you see that? Doesn’t that register somewhere deep down? Does it not resonate on a very basic and fundamental level?

I’m watching what is transpiring in this nation as well as the world and I am in awe of man’s self-destructive tendencies and his willingness to voluntarily enslave himself. We have been so dumbed down, we have been so desensitized in our modern age that many consider that if they have their twitter, their Facebook and their YouTube, then they have all they’ll ever need.

Men of past generations sacrificed all they had up to and including their lives in order to taste freedom but for a breath before they died, and here we are throwing it all away as though it were some worthless thing, some inconvenience, something to be ashamed or embarrassed of.

Do we still deserve to be free given our lethargy? 

Do we still deserve to be free given our indifference? 

Do we still deserve to be free given our betrayal of all that is true and just and wholesome?

Does a nation that despises the principles which brought it to its place of prominence in the world deserve to retain its prominence while shunning the principles?

These are questions with which we must contend as sober individuals. These are questions with which we must contend as fathers and mothers, grandmothers and grandfathers because the issue isn’t so much about us, but rather what we leave behind for those who are yet to understand the beauty that is freedom, and the ability to earn one’s way through this present life with hard work and determination.

I don’t know, I’m just frustrated. All things considered I’ll likely be dead in thirty years if the Lord terries, but I have a daughter to think about, I have her future to consider, and this is why I do what I can just so I can say I didn’t sit on my hands, just so I could say I didn’t bury my head in the sand, just so other men’s blood will not be on my conscience when the end comes.

Freedom is a fickle thing. It is something very difficult to truly acquire, and something very easy to relinquish. I for one take no comfort in the ‘whatever will be will be’ attitude, because the Word of God confirms our long held beliefs that the prayer of the saints does sway the heart of God, that we are able to intercede and stand in the gap and be an instrument of change whether in our families, in our communities, and yes, even in our nation.

I will not surrender to the darkness because of the inevitability of its progress. I will resist it with every fiber of my being, I will fight against it, I will rage against it, because although we were called to be humble we were never called to be timid. We were called to do right, to defend righteousness, to stand for holiness, and to savor the gift of freedom while we still have it in abundance.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr.   

All The Worse and None The Better

Every time a nation suffers a catastrophic event it cannot, by definition, remain the same as it was before. Whether the event is an unprecedented storm that devastates an entire region, or eleven men who decided it was a good day to fly some planes into buildings, kill thousands of people, and confirm how dark and wicked the human heart can be, change is inevitable. Something must change. Something will change. There is no going forward the same as it was before because whatever happened marked you, changed, you transformed you, and so you must choose to go either left or right.

Whether it wakes you up or just opens your eyes, when something happens that so marks us that we remember where we were and what we were doing the moment it happened, it is transformative.

I remember plenty of events that happened to me throughout my life, but there are only two things I remember as having happened outside my sphere of influence, and what I was doing at that moment. The first is what I was doing on 9-11-2001 when the first plane hit the twin towers, the second is what I was doing when I got the call from overseas that my mother had passed.

Both events marked me in different ways, and I will remember exactly what I was doing on both of these occasions for as long as I live.

When something so overwhelming occurs, especially on a national level, there are certain choices you must make that up until that time you may have skirted or avoided. You must choose to either seek a closer walk with God and in repentance and humility return to the path of righteousness, or rebel against Him, shake your fist at Him, denounce Him, and scream from the top of your lungs to whoever will listen how your god would never allow such a thing to happen, and how your god would never allow something like that to occur.

Granted, your god may not allow it, but the God of the Bible does, because He is a righteous God and a just God, and He knows that without true repentance and a turning from darkness He will have to judge, and in judgment there will be no mercy.

A question has been posed to me recently, and although the answer seems glaringly obvious, I will attempt to also give you the reasons why I believe what I believe.

The question is this: Do you believe the church has gotten better or worse since 9-11-2001?

Even the blind aren’t that blind, and the answer to this question is an obvious one, but since it was asked, and I believe it was asked sincerely, I will answer.

I believe the church is far worse off today than it was pre September 11, 2001, and these are the reasons why:

1    The godless realized that if they threw enough of a hissy fit, they could cause the children of God to reverse course, apologize for their comments, retract, and otherwise make excuses for the truth.

We no longer pray for boldness as the apostles of old did, because we have come to believe giving the devil what he wants and being altogether silent on matters of eternal import is just easier on our jangled nerves.

We had the opportunity to speak the truth in a time when the world was hungry to hear it, and instead of saying that God judges sin, we gave into the screams of the peanut gallery who insisted that God just doesn’t do that, and if He does, He’s not a God they want to serve anyway.

On and on it went, trying to explain away the righteousness of God, and when the devil saw how easy it was to silence the church, he’s been on a never ending quest to pervert, destroy, and otherwise bring shame to God’s creation.

2    In talking themselves into believing that God had nothing to do with anything that occurred – that it was not God having removed His protection from this nation that allowed the frightful events of 911 – the church lost the fear of God, which is an integral part of true worship.

The Book tells us the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. It is not something cumbersome, it is not something heavy on the soul, it is wisdom. Granted, it seems like more and more people seem to have an aversion to wisdom and run from it as though their hair was on fire, but as children of God wisdom ought to be a goal. It ought to be something we desire and aspire toward.

3    The wolves realized there was far more wool for the taking if you bent the Word of God the right way than there is in preaching the truth.

We’ve always had these weasely, mealy mouthed, outright lying mongrels roaming about Christendom, but they have multiplied exponentially in the last dozen years or so. Not only that, the old school con men are now revered as the forefathers of a movement, looked up to, and treated as demi-gods rather than the loathsome bottom dwellers they are. They are applauded and lauded, they are revered by the new class of wolves as visionaries, and no one seems to be pointing these individuals out. No one seems to be calling a flag on the play.

We’re all just turning a blind eye as two multi-millionaires sit there talking about how God wants them to have private jets, and how it would be unimaginable to fly with all those demons in economy class on a commercial airline.

It would be downright hellish! Can you imagine flying commercial? My oh my, my heart goes pitter patter just thinking about it. And no one says a thing. It seems perfectly reasonable and logical.

“Yep, yep, brother Jesse does needs him a private jet to fly his decaying carcass around from place to place to beg for more money to buy a bigger jet.” Yes, sir, he does indeed.

Every day I just want to throw my hands up in anger, in frustration, perhaps both, and just walk away from ministry altogether. It’s getting lumped in with these con men that gets my goad. It’s being lumped in with these kind of lying thieves that makes me want to disassociate myself from ministry.

4     We started chasing more after prophecy than we did after Jesus.

That’s right, I said it, and no, you won’t hear an apology from me tomorrow. Yes, I am the chairman of what is considered a prophetic ministry. I traveled with a man I considered, and still consider a true prophet. Yes, I operate in prophetic gifting, and I’m telling you it is a dangerous, dangerous thing to chase after prophecy rather than after Christ.

      We got into the habit of holding our breaths from one event to the next rather than redeeming the time and living our lives wholly sold out for Christ.

The only way to still be effective for Jesus is to live for Him with abandon! Seize every opportunity to do all that you can for the kingdom of God, not because you think the world might end tomorrow, or because you believe the dollar is going to collapse, but because you know it is the right thing to do, the noble thing to do, the godly thing to do.

We need to stop holding our breaths for the next big thing just to be let down when nothing happens and focus on living every day for Christ.

6     We have replaced absolute truth with relative opinions.

"Because I don’t feel something is a sin, then it isn’t. If I feel the notion of sin is not in tune with my personal understanding of God, then God must bend to my will and do away with His notion of sin as well."

We’ve allowed Joel Osteen to talk us into believing we’re so special we can make God dance on a dime, and do what we say whenever we so desire. We have allowed fools and liars, heretics and deceivers, demons in fancy suits and Jezebels in fancy dresses to twist our hearts and cause us to doubt the very Word of God, and even God Himself.

We will go to war with anyone who disagrees with our idol, but will do nothing to defend Jesus.

As far as the nation is concerned, I think it goes without saying that we lost the moral high ground if ever we had it because let’s face it, when you start parting out babies like they were chicken at KFC and selling the pieces, you don’t have a moral foot to stand on.

Those are my reasons. They are why I believe we are markedly worse, spiritually speaking than we were fifteen years ago, and the next thing to befall this nation will not be a warning, it will be judgment. 

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr. 

The End of Plenty

Youth is wasted on the young, and wealth is wasted on the fool. Whether that applies to a case by case basis or can be declared as a general statement, I have yet to deduce. What I have deduced, what every fiber of my being is screaming with the clarity of a siren, is that the end of plenty is nigh, and scarcity is about to descend like an unwelcomed and unwanted visitor.

It is a well-established fact that much of what goes on in the world, including the ups and downs of economies, have a cyclical component to them. What goes up must come down, and the higher up we are, the farther we have to fall. Sure, for a season we can keep ourselves afloat by artificial means, but eventually the law of gravity will have its say and bring everything crashing back to the earth from whence it rose.

What is of concern to me is not so much the end of plenty. As Paul once said, I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound. Since my goal was never to attain earthly things, the absence thereof is of no affect to me. If one takes no joy in possessions, then the absence of possessions will cause him no sorrow. It is when we allow things to define who we are, or give us worth, that even the thought of losing them becomes more than we can bear.

What is of concern, and I believe it is a well-founded concern, is that this present generation, overflowing with the entitled and the coddled have not a clue what true scarcity really means. Not being able to afford a new I Phone every six months is not scarcity; not having had anything to eat for three days, is.

Everything is relative until it isn’t. One man’s need may be another man’s want, but eventually, no matter how you slice it, hungry is still hungry.

If now, in the midst of excess and opportunity, during a season wherein any man who desires it to be so and applies himself can keep food on the table and a roof over his family’s head thanklessness abounds and violence is spiking, imagine how it will be on the day the store shelves are bare, the infrastructure has collapsed in on itself, and everyone is left to survive on their own.

No, I am not trying to scare you or make you squirm in your chair this morning, I am just laying out a very possible, and yes, unfortunately probable reality of what the future holds not only for this nation but for the world as a whole.

The difference between this nation and much of the world is that much of the world knows what it is to do without. For a disproportionate number of the citizens of planet earth poverty is a way of life. It is something they have learned to adapt to and live with. They know what it is to go hungry, they know what it is to need, they know what it is to portion out the bag of rice so it lasts for a week, or continue adding water to the pot of soup wherein it sustains the family for days and days.

These are realities much of the world contends with on a daily basis, but realities we have yet to contend with here, at least for the last few decades. No, I am not saying that there are no poor people in America. What I am saying is that even the poor among us are considered affluent in many corners of the world.

I’ve said all that to say this: we do not build up our faith and trust in our heavenly Father in the midst of chaos and tumult. We build up our faith and trust in our heavenly Father before the chaos and tumult ensue, so that when it is unleashed we will be even keeled, unwavering, unaffected, and at peace.

It is in the midst of uncertainty that men look for something solid, and true, and immutable. It is in the midst of hardship that men seek comfort and relief. It is in the near future that your light must so shine, and your hope be so evident that men will seek you out desiring to know the source of your solace, and is then that you will be able to share Christ with more souls than you ever imagined. 

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr. 

Where I've Been!

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything on the blog and for this I apologize. What I’ve been doing, at least the condensed, short story version is I’ve been writing. The long version is a bit more complicated, but in order for you to understand that I have not been neglecting the blog, I need to get into a bit of the long version of the story.

Some two months ago, shortly after arriving back in Romania, I was working on the outline of yet another book when I got this overwhelming urge to stop and pray. This happens to me often enough, but never when I’m writing or when I am attempting to put thoughts on paper.

I knew this was different somehow, I knew there was something to this, so I closed my notebook, put my pen down, knelt at the side of my bed and started to pray. I spent a solid thirty minutes praying, knowing there had to be something more than just the urge to pray but not knowing what that something might be.

Another thirty minutes in and all I received were four words that at the time didn’t make much sense: Finish What You’ve Started!

That was it. That was the extent of the message, and after waiting a few minutes to see if there was anything more to be had, I got up off my knees, went back to my desk, and got ready to return to the book outline when once again the urge to go and pray was almost unbearable.

Thirty minutes later I receive the same four-word message as before, but this time rather than go back to my desk I knelt there pondering what exactly this message meant. As I thought about it, the meaning of this short yet personally profound message became crystal clear, and I realized God was taking me to the woodshed, albeit in a very loving fashion.

I have eight books in various stages of completion, all over half done as far as I can tell by going over them during the last few weeks. Every time I get near the end of one book I get sidetracked by another project or another outline, and there it sits, almost done but not quite there.

If I were to be brutally honest with myself, I would have to say I am horrible at finishing projects, although I am apparently very good at starting.

As such, I have made it a priority to finish what I’ve started, and have resolved to start no new projects, outline no new books, or do pretty much nothing else until I am done with what I set out to do in the first place. Some of these manuscripts go back five, six, even ten years, and as I read back through them I realize how timely they are for today, and even necessary.

I am happy to report that The Battle-Ready Believer is complete, and is currently being laid out. I am perhaps two weeks away from completing the first volume on the book of Revelation, which is in essence a verse by verse commentary, the third installment of When Ye Pray is almost complete, and if all goes according to plan 31 Days to Rediscovering Christ, Fearless Christianity, and the Battle-Tested Believer will be ready by the end of the year, or at the latest the beginning of 2017.

So as you can see I have not been sitting idle, but as I’ve tried to carve out some time to spend with my wife and daughter, keep a roof over our heads, and still write as though I was on a deadline, I will forthwith endeavor to post here consistently because there is just too much going on in the world, and I get many questions that I would rather just answer in a public forum so I don’t have to repeat the answer time and again. Oddly enough, I get asked the same questions multiple times, so this may be a good way to remedy that situation.

Someone has also offered to transcribe the radio program, and if anyone is interested in reading the transcripts of the program, leave a comment, and I will start posting those as well.

Time is short and growing shorter by the day. It is one of those nagging realities that we can never really escape, just push to the back of our minds ever so often hoping it does not resurface.

Because we believe the Bible we know that the shorter the time, the greater the deception, and reason itself would dictate that the greater the deception, the greater the need for truth.

If my absence from this blog has been a source of sadness for anyone, I apologize, and all I can do is endeavor to do better. Please keep myself and my family in your prayers, and thank you for your understanding.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr.  

Prophetic Times

I am not one to pile on. If ten people have already said the same thing I would have, why add my voice to the chorus only to be drowned out? There are more productive ways for me to spend my time than to wag my finger, or start screaming “told you so” from the top of my lungs hoping that someone will listen. When we are called into ministry, especially the kind of ministry I’ve been called to, self-promotion, self-aggrandizement, and self-adulation are among the first to die painful deaths, followed by any notion that I as a person had anything to do with the substance of the revelatory words God chose to impart.

Those who were called to prophetic ministries ought to know that they are merely vessels, used by the Master in the capacity He sees fit, at least if they possess the requisite level of maturity.

That said, there are certain things taking place both in America, and in the world as a whole that echo certain prophetic utterances given through this ministry as far back as thirty years ago. 

There are events unfolding that are undeniably prophetic in nature, and what they will inevitably lead to has been foretold by many a vessel, within many a context, to many a deaf ear who scoffed at the messengers, and waved them off with a look of pity in their eyes.

What we must acknowledge –  and this is one thing that I haven’t heard anyone touch upon and so I feel I must – is that the recent uptick in violence against police is not a racial issue, it is not a black and white issue, it is an issue of men despising authority, just as it was foretold by Peter.

2 Peter 2:9-10, “The Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptations and to reserve the unjust under punishment for the day of judgment, and especially those who walk according to the flesh in the lust of uncleanness and despise authority. They are presumptuous, self-willed; they are not afraid to speak evil of dignitaries, whereas angels, who are greater in power and might, do not bring a reviling accusation against them before the Lord.”

The issue we are facing as a nation is a spiritual one. The longer it takes us to realize this the worse it’s going to get because sin is a progressive disease, one that metastasizes and continues in its corruption until it consumes the host in its entirety.

Trying to solve a spiritual problem in any other manner but spiritually is like trying to put out a fire with gasoline. When we tackle spiritual issues in the physical, when we tackle spiritual matters in the flesh, the problem always morphs into something far worse than the initial flashpoint.

We can see this playing out before our eyes, wherein protests have morphed into the murder of police officers, from there into certain individuals actually trying to validate and justify it, and it will morph again into something more hideous still.

As unpopular as the following might be even among believers, the only remedy for this nation is repentance. No man, no woman, no political party, no law, no amendment, no ban or lack thereof can replace national repentance, and absent said repentance, the writing is on the wall for anyone willing to see it.

Throughout all these machinations the children of God must never lose sight of the blessed assurance that He knows how to deliver the godly. Not only does the Lord know how to deliver the godly, He has promised that He would, no matter the circumstance or situation.

May our hope rest in Him, may our eyes be set upon Him, and may we strive to live godly amidst this ungodly generation.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr.  

As We Knew It Would

We all knew it was bound to happen but it’s the speed with which it happened that has taken even those not easily shaken aback. I even warned in my last post that someone somewhere would find a way to blame Christians and Christianity for something a Muslim man and an adherent to Islam did, and lo and behold, within the span of hours, even before the bodies were cold, the narrative began to shift and Christians were in the cross-hairs once more.

How insidious a soul do you have to be, how corrupt of mind and heart, how utterly removed from any semblance of reality to blame Christians for the death of 50 individuals when the person pulling the trigger over and over and over again was a Muslim man just shy of thirty?

How deprived of common sense and devoid of reason must an individual become to repeatedly insist that it’s Christians’ fault that this tragedy occurred, and if blame need be laid at anyone’s doorstep it’s the Christian church, and of course, white males.

Let’s just make this as simple as possible for those who insist upon intellectual gymnastics and machinations. A Muslim man walked into a club and killed 50 people. The gun did not walk into the club by itself, the man was not a closet Christian, the man was not inspired by messages of loving one’s enemies and loving one’s neighbor as oneself.

It seems as though to many in the mainstream media the narrative is all there is, truth be damned. If it doesn’t fit the narrative of hateful Christian bigots and the need for gun control, well then they’re just going to have to make it fit even if they have to start telling out and out lies.

“Even if we get called out for telling the lies we tell, we’ll just keep telling them, because especially in this culled and intellectually stunted generation, if you tell a lie long enough with enough conviction eventually a majority will believe it.”

As I said in my previous post, try as they might to make this heinous act seem as something different than what it was, Christians just don’t go on killing sprees, nor do they target homosexuals, atheists, or Buddhists.

The reason for this is because Christianity is fundamentally different from Islam, and once more, shame on every two-bit preacher and evangelist who continues to insist that these two religions are different branches of the same tree, or that we serve the same God just by different names.

Unfortunately, some do not see any middle ground between not validating and embracing their lifestyle and actively seeking to murder them for their lifestyle. Some have been so indoctrinated for so long that they truly believe a Christian’s stance on the homosexual lifestyle and a Muslim’s stance are no different, even though Islam says without equivocation that homosexuals should be put to death.

At this juncture the worst thing we can do is allow the talking heads to redefine Christianity as a religion of hatred, pretty much projecting the beliefs of Islam onto Christianity without saying anything to the contrary. When you hear a lie spoken about your faith make sure you let them know it is a lie, and know the Word of God well enough to be able to point out the truth if you are called upon to do it.

It’s long past time we called out the crazy, we called out the liars, and we made it known that we will not sit idly by and be lumped in with the deranged and homicidal.

These insidious attacks on Christianity will neither lessen nor become more mild, and though in recent years almost every large profile act of senseless mass murder was perpetrated by individuals of Muslim leanings, somehow it’s still Christians that are left holding the bag and being made to apologize for something they neither encouraged, had a hand in, nor ever even contemplated.

Hate blinds men to truth. Hate blinds men to the reality that surrounds them. When this occurs all we can do is repetitively point out the baselessness of their hatred, and insist upon the notion that facts do matter, facts are relevant, and facts are what we should base our ultimate conclusions upon. 

With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea Jr. 

What a Hate Crime Looks Like

For the longest time we have been redefining what words mean. We have been watering down and nullifying words that anger, challenge, or irritate us, and we have been twisting others to make them suit our preconceived notions or ideas.

It’s gotten so bad that if anyone, perchance a baker refused to make a cake depicting two men holding hands while a astride phallic shaped rocket, it was labeled a hate crime; something heretofore unseen and unheard of.

Unfortunately, less than a day ago we saw the true definition of a hate crime, and it had nothing to do with refusing to validate a certain lifestyle, or insisting that certain practices are sinful in the sight of God.

Fifty people are dead. They will never see another sunrise, they will never watch another sunset, and every hope and dream they had died along with them. A man of Muslim persuasion walked into a place where these individuals congregated and simply opened fire. It wasn’t a Methodist, it wasn’t a Southern Baptist, it wasn’t even one of those intolerant Pentecostals that did this heinous thing. It was a twenty-nine-year-old Muslim man.

I need to point this out because once the spinners get to spinning one is apt to believe that he was influenced by Christian intolerance, and if not for Christianity this nice Muslim boy would never have thought of doing such a thing.

Let’s be honest here. Cards on the table, nothing up our sleeve sort of honest. Christians simply don’t do this, and even the world knows it. The worst you can expect of any Christian, a true Christian regardless of their denomination, is telling someone that their lifestyle is sinful and that they need to repent. I cannot embrace, validate, or champion your lifestyle, but never once have I wished death upon anybody for it. Christians don’t want to see sinners dead. Christians want to see sinners saved. That is one of the marked differences between the Christian faith and Islam.

You can keep calling it a religion of peace if you like, you can keep insisting that all Muslims are peace loving peoples who embrace diversity and allow for differing viewpoints, but the bodies are starting to pile up, and eventually there will be so many that even the most ardent defender and proponent of the ‘religion of peace’ narrative will have to backpedal just a smidgen.

To those who thought that someone refusing to bake a cake, or cater a wedding amounted to a hate crime, may I humbly submit that this is what a hate crime really looks like, and it’s evil and insidious and cruel and final. Hurt feelings does not a hate crime make. Dead people does.

Loss of life is always a painful thing to witness, especially loss of life on such a grand scale. If I were to say this was an outlier, an exception to the rule and something that will not repeat, I would simply be paying you lip service when all evidence pointed to the contrary.

The evident truth is that such things will continue to occur, and chances are better than good that they will increase in frequency. Next time it may not be a club, but it will be something public, and populated, and frequented by a large swath of people, because in the minds of those who decide they will take as many lives as they possibly can on any given day a dead infidel is a dead infidel whether they are young or old, educated or simpleminded, an individual of means or the lowliest of paupers. 

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr.