Distractions

 We missed the rapture again. What is that, the fiftieth time? I gave it a few days just in case Jesus decided to hit the snooze button once or twice, but there are only so many excuses you can make for someone not arriving on time before you are forced to concede that maybe you got the wrong day.

I know, it’s possible He decided to come in a Tesla and forgot to charge the darn thing the night before, so maybe, who knows, today’s the day, and finally, the prognosticators of when Christ will return will be right at last. Eventually, they will, you know. Sure they would have missed it a thousand times by then, but at long last, they will have been right.

What about all the other times they were wrong? Well, we just won’t count those. Never mind all the people that sold all their worldly possessions and stood on a hill in the middle of nowhere waiting to be caught up. Never mind those who only budgeted until 2017 and now have to work into their late eighties to afford a crust of bread and a roof over their heads.

By the time the rapture takes place, even thieves won’t be what they used to be. Rather than sneak in in the middle of the night - if we are to take the analogy to its fitting conclusion and concede that there will be those who can pinpoint the day and hour of Christ’s return – the aforementioned thieves will send a text or a tweet informing you of their intent before they break in.

Jesus may come as a thief in the night, but nowadays, we have floodlights, ring cameras, motion detectors, and high-definition infrared lenses. No, sir, we aren’t going to get caught unaware if we can help it. We’ll detect His heat signature before He comes riding on the clouds and even have some milk and cookies ready just in case He’s up for a snack.

Perhaps because some people believed Joyce Meyer and her ilk when they insisted they were little gods, they feel the scripture explicitly stating that no man knows the day or hour doesn’t apply to them.

That whole thing about the timing of Christ’s return remaining a mystery is for the rubes, the peons, and the little people. Little gods get a free decoder ring with each donation to the mansion fund or the jet fund, and so they know more than those who are merely working out their salvation with fear and trembling.

I get it, though. For those who have cemented themselves into a specific eschatological position because they read the left behind series, the closer we get to all-out nuclear war, the less likely their position will hold. If I were holding out for a pre-tribulation rapture, I know I’d be somewhat verklempt right about now.

And so, rather than allow for the possibility that we will likely see truly horrid things before Christ returns, we run to and fro, giving credence to anyone who spits out a date, the closer, the better, then deflate like a punctured balloon each time the date comes and goes, and nothing happens except for getting the electric bill in the mail.

Knowing that it will be misconstrued, may your friendly neighborhood realist offer some advice? If you focus more on the being ready part than on the when part, the when part won’t matter in the least. Distractions serve to fuel procrastination, and procrastination will lead to you having to scramble for some oil because your lamp is fluttering, and you’re all out of reserves.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Curiosities

 It doesn’t say much for one’s confidence level if they go out and buy bandages, splints, painkillers, ice packs, and neck braces before picking a fight. Even if they happened to be delusional, overestimating both their skill and endurance, taking preemptive measures for the worst-case scenario would seem a curious thing.

The only logical conclusion one is apt to come to, seeing as you’re stocking up on medical supplies while seemingly in good health, is that first, you’re planning on getting into a tussle, and second, you’re thinking you’re not going to come out of it unscathed.

If recent reports are to be believed, and let’s face it, given the level of propaganda, taking everything with a grain of salt is a must, the US government has been stocking up on potassium iodide pills. For those who don’t know or are wholly unaware, potassium iodide pills are taken to help protect human beings from the effects of radiation.

Incompetent and wholly useless as this administration has proven itself to be, it’s worth noting that of all the things they could be focusing on, they chose to focus on the acquisition of potassium iodide. Couple that with the state of New York doing PSAs warning its citizens that in case of a nuclear attack, they should stay in their homes and put tin foil on their windows, and it may lead one to conclude that perhaps we are not as safe as some delude themselves into believing.  

Some still fail to grasp that we are no longer in the warning stages. The warning stages have come and gone, and we’ve graduated to fulfillment. Though many have warned that the storm was coming, few believed them because the sun was shining and birds were chirping. The present was all that mattered.

Life was too good to be weighed down by thoughts of what would be, and during those rare times when the warnings penetrated our slumber, there was always a snooze button close at hand and someone to insist that we wouldn’t be here for any of that anyway.

Ignore it, and it will go away. That was the church’s motto for the last few decades, and although that might work for a bruised shin, it doesn’t translate to other things. The one thing we could have done we chose not to do because the notion of repentance fell out of favor, only to be replaced by worldliness and compromise.

For fear of being labeled legalists, entire denominations forbade the word sin from being uttered in the pulpit. So, the truth became a subjective matter, something to be twisted and contorted to the point that it became unrecognizable. Getting stabbed in the back by overzealous lickspittles became just as likely as getting stabbed in the face by the enemy, and those willing to point to the atrocity taking place and calling it by name grew fewer and fewer still.

What does any of this have to do with potassium iodide tablets? Had we humbled ourselves, had we turned from our wicked ways, had we repented and sought the face of God, we wouldn’t need to be buying them. Sort of my path not taken morning musing.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr.  

Evil is Evil!

 It comes as neither shock nor surprise when the godless call evil good and good evil. It’s their natural state, devoid of morality or a sense of virtue. Light is dark, up is down, bitter is sweet, and though the cognitive dissonance is off the charts, aided by pharmaceuticals and no small amount of stiff drink, they manage to wake up in the morning, look in the mirror, and live with themselves without projectile vomiting the previous night’s dinner.

It takes a special kind of twisted logic to want to save the whales, the pandas, and the planet but kill the babies, all in the same breath. We want to save everything around us but leave no future generations of humans to enjoy that which God has created. That beating heart inside you must cease to exist for no other reason than it would impede attending spin class every other day.

The zealotry of those who would end the life of a helpless baby as they are being born is akin to the Jonestown residents who slurped up cup fulls of Kool-Aid proceeding to their eternal torment without so much as an objection or realization that it would be impossible to undo it once it was done.

What is beyond my ability to reason, however, is people calling themselves Christians, pastors of churches, and clergy from various denominations, insisting that being pro-life is a demonic agenda and furthermore, that God Himself is pro-choice. In case you’ve yet to be brought up to speed, pro-choice is a term often used to denote baby murder, but without the emotional impact of calling it what it is. It would be like saying someone with third-degree burns across their entire body caught a little too much sun, or a head-on collision with a semi at 70 miles per hour was a fender bender.

All platitudes aside, abortion ends a human life, regardless of the trimester it’s performed in. This is a fact! It’s not opinion; it’s not just something the ladies in church bonnets say; it is a scientific fact!

That you would have individuals purporting to be ambassadors of Christ insist that it’s nothing more than a procedure, a choice, some nuisance to be done away with just because you feel like it that day is not just immoral; it is evil.

We have come full circle. Those who have crept into the household of faith are now insisting that God, the giver of life, revels in the ending thereof, and if you stand for the innocent, you are the monster, you are the ghoul, you are the heartless, hollowed-out skin suit in which there is no decency or goodness.

I’m sure the ‘love everyone’ choir is warming up in the background with the ‘it’s just a difference of opinion’ quartet as backup, but the Word is clear as to what becomes of those who strengthen the wicked and dishearten the righteous with lies. May their judgment be swift that all may gaze upon them with righteous fear.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

More Than Words

 When one hears discussions about preferred pronouns or which of the myriad of genders one identifies with, the first and often uncontrollable reaction is to snicker, chortle, laugh, roll your eyes, wave your hands, and shake your head.

It’s absurd, ridiculous, worthy of endless mockery and disdain. It’s what pampered people do when they don’t have to worry about where their next meal is coming from or whether they’ll survive the night. I’ve often said that privation and scarcity will cure stupid for the most part, and though some might shrink away at the thought of bread lines, gas lines, ketchup soup, and mayonnaise sandwiches, the curative effects it will have on society at large makes it almost worth it.

My mind being what it is, as of late, I’ve been exploring a particular rabbit trail and wondering if there is something more sinister behind the push to do away with words like mother and father than just a hissy fit from a middle-aged obese woman with half a shaved head who smells like spoiled bologna. I know, I know, words like mom and dad are ancient, and so they must go. So is the wheel; want to do away with that too?

There has never been a generation in the history of humanity that has strived time and again to fix something that wasn’t broken, to begin with. The ideal of family, you know, mom, dad, daughter, son, grandma, grandpa, and aunt Judie who makes the fruit cake nobody eats on Christmas every year, has worked for millennia, but who cares about all that?

Proof of concept is so yesteryear; am I right? Let’s burn everything to the ground and have simpletons with no practical life skills build it back together again with nothing more than duct tape and rainbow flags.

So why the big push to get rid of mom and dad? The darker side of me tends to think that it has a lot to do with doing away with emotional attachment. It sets up what they envision as their utopia quite nicely if you don’t have to worry about pesky things like God, family, or patriotism.

Just think about it: it’s one thing to say I’m here to kill my mom because she’s becoming a burden. Quite another to say I’m here to schedule a procedure to euthanize my birthing person because she consumes more than she contributes to the collective.

I know, that’s a bridge too far, you’re thinking to yourself. Then again, the thought of being called homophobic because you refuse to let sexual deviants groom your children or let your toddler sit on the lap of a perverted man in a dress seemed like a bridge too far mere months ago too.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Life's Realities

 If at all possible, every situation is best assessed with a cool head, detached from emotion, and with brutal objectivity. It is nigh to impossible sometimes, but to rightly assess any given issue, detachment is a must.

Some things are easier said than done, especially when it involves children and the apparent systematic failure of the adults sworn to protect said children from mentally disturbed individuals whose only wish in life is to watch the world burn.

Objectivity and detachment become all the more difficult to master when before having a chance to process one gruesome, inhumane, and blood-curdling event, another comes in its wake, as a wave calls upon a wave.

I’m not going to sit here and try to make sense of it. All I can do is point to the reality that this is the world the godless have envisioned lo these many years. Congratulations! Your dreams have been made manifest.

What did you think would happen when you raised an entire generation on a steady diet of hopelessness and despair? What did you think would happen when you made idols out of the perverted, the wicked, and the immoral? What did you think would happen when the value you placed on human life was the cost of a biohazard bag you put the shattered remnants of an unborn baby in?

Did you not consider that the further one gets from the light, the darker it becomes? Surely you must have; you are, after all our betters, the intellectual elite, the people who mock us common folk for believing in God and family and decency.

Don’t look away now, you pompous windbags. Don’t shy away from the world you helped create with your constant condescension of all that was wholesome. Take credit for your handy work; you are, after all, the architects of the downfall of this present society. Come, come into the light, take a bow, let the masses behold your true face, that they might know the evil that has been living among them.

You can’t start your house on fire and then blame all your neighbors for not stopping you from doing it. You cannot create a society where human life has no value, then be shocked that no one values human life.

We inhabit the world we create, a world our rebellion has despoiled and desecrated to the point that scenes of horror have become commonplace, and ghouls and monsters feel at ease walking about in the daylight.

When the dust settles, or we’ve become so numb to horrors that they don’t even make the news anymore, two things will be made crystal clear: Those responsible will deflect, obfuscate, and blame others for what they have created, and looking back, we will realize we hadn’t seen the worst of it, not by a country mile.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Watching and Waiting

 It wasn’t that Jonah went out of Nineveh, found some shade, and waited to see what would happen to the city that was improper; it was getting angry at not seeing the destruction commence. Enough people are vying to be the next Marv Albert of end-time prophecy, so much so that my throwing my hat in the ring would seem pointless. Doubly so when I never wanted the job in the first place.

We have come to that point in the unfolding of end-time events where all we can do is wait, watch and pray. Those so inclined are still doing the play-by-play, announcing every war, rumor of war, plague, or pestilence breathlessly, and that’s their prerogative.

Rebellion comes with a price, and the bill’s coming due. That encapsulates what we are witnessing in real-time, but it’s not exciting or prophetic enough. It’s hard to monetize a one-liner like that, so you need filler; lots of it. When there’s nothing real or confirmed to pass along, there are always the often rinsed and repeated conspiracy theories of conspiracy theories to fill the time with, and when those are worn thin, we start playing the what-if game.

Some of you have reached out wondering what I have been up to, and I wish I could tell you it’s been something exciting and world-changing. I wish I could throw in pompous words like breaking the mold, or never before, but in truth, what I’ve been up to is unimpressively pedestrian.

In between watching and waiting, I’ve been cleaning out my basement and garage and hoping to see a ray of sunshine peeking through the clouds during what has been a gloomy spring.

Sure I could come up with a word salad every other morning while sipping my coffee, but life’s too short to say something just for the sake of saying something. We are a nation adrift. We are a people so thoroughly depraved that the thought of not being able to murder an unborn baby at will and just because is making almost half the country apoplectic.

Our morals and convictions are situational at best, and our cowardice is such that we would look upon Lot in Sodom as he offered up his daughter and call him brave.

You don’t need a prophecy to know that judgment is not only well deserved but a foregone conclusion. You don’t need me pointing out the festering boils and the rot, the maggots, and the decay; you see it, smell it, choke on the nausea it produces in your throat.

If we are being honest, many of you want assurance that I can’t give without becoming a liar. I can’t bring myself to say it will be all right because it’s not. You know it, and I know it, and me saying it would not alter the reality of where we are one iota.

So, rather than cause you undue stress and heart palpitations, like Jonah, I’ve been watching and waiting. Unlike Jonah, however, if God so chooses to relent, I will not be angry or petulant. However, before you start reaching for that particular olive branch, ask yourself if America will do what Nineveh did.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Inconsistencies

 We are living in the age of the know-it-all. Everyone’s an expert on everything, and if you try to get a word in edgewise, you become mortal enemies unto the seventh generation. It’s not so much that everyone has to pretend to know everything; it’s that what they think they know cannot be challenged in any way lest you initiate jihad.

Funny thing, though, even with all the knowledge we boast of possessing, the Word tells us that God’s own people perish for lack of knowledge. How could this be? Was God wrong in His assessment, or could it be that we don’t know everything we think we do?

Even me opening that door was likely enough for some to get flush in the cheeks and start to chew on their fingernails. Why though? If you’re so sure about your position, what would it matter if some loveable goofball in the middle of nowheresville Wisconsin, asked for clarification regarding inconsistencies in the narrative you so violently cling to?

Between waking up every morning and being thankful that the view from my window is not of a mushroom cloud, and making sure my kids get fed and bathed from time to time, I’ve been going through some of the more elaborate theories floating about regarding the current escalation in Ukraine.

It’s downright impressive how people who were experts in respiratory viruses seem to also be experts in Eastern European geopolitics. Double majors in virology and world history are no mean feat; they must be really good at multi-tasking.

It’s easy to blather on about things you have little knowledge of because if you have little understanding of it, chances are, so does the other guy, and if you’re first out of the gate, then it makes you look smarter even though you aren’t.

It’s like two teenage burger flippers going on and on about why they think Warren Buffet’s stock portfolio is lacking. He’s got the billions; you’re flipping burgers, maybe, just maybe, he knows a bit more when it comes to that particular field.

So, to unburden myself, allow me to make a few points for posterity if nothing else.

1. Not everything you read on the internet is the God’s honest truth.

2. First-hand accounts are always more credible than fourth-hand accounts.

3. Not everything’s a conspiracy; sometimes an apple’s just an apple.

And since it still sticks in my craw, Vladimir Putin did not invade Ukraine to save the children. Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine because the diaper wearer in chief roaming the halls of the White House calling for Jill projected weakness, and for the predators of the world, weakness is an irresistible pheromone.

Even Pudgy Kim is getting in on the act, because why not? What’s a feeble old man retelling stories of yore and reliving memories of children playing with his leg hair going to do about it?

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.