The Last Days Of The Church XI

 The proud are usually boastful, and the boastful are generally proud. Some things just go together and complement each other, like peanut butter and jelly or pineapple on pizza. You’ll never find a humble man boasting of his humility, nor will you hear a proud man waxing poetic about his modesty unless they’re self-deluded enough to ignore the paradox they’ve created in their own minds.

That pride comes before the fall has been wholly ignored in the contemporary church lately. The pervasive materialism has led to an ongoing competition among those deemed our spiritual betters to try and one-up each other, or as the kids call it nowadays, flex. If one sheep shearer gets a jet, the next one has to get two. If another comes along and gets two, his two must be bigger and more luxurious than the others; otherwise, what’s the point?

You can turn on what passes for Christian television on any given day and find someone talking about how they’ve just acquired some material thing, whether a new car, plane, or mansion, all the while brow-beating their followers into yet another round of sacrificial giving. Your prioritizing feeding your kids over sending Brother Jesse a fat check is what’s keeping Jesus from returning!

We’ve come a long way, but not in the right direction. Once upon a time, it was common knowledge that in and of ourselves, we have nothing to boast in, for all good things come from God, and nothing that we have is of ourselves but a gift from Him. Men used to walk humbly with their Lord, and if God chose to use them in any measure, they gave Him the glory and the honor due Him, not taking for themselves that which was rightly His. This humility and gratitude were the standard for all believers, inspiring them to live a life of service and worship.

Ephesians 2:8-9, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.”

That used to be the standard for all believers, something that compelled gratitude and thankfulness of heart because they knew the magnitude of the gift they’d received. Fast forward some two thousand years, and you have self-titled pastors denouncing the words of Jesus, calling Him an obtuse, misogynistic racist to whom the current culture couldn’t possibly relate. Keep in mind that these are individuals who shepherd other individuals, are fully ordained in their chosen denominations, and claim to be of the Kingdom. How does it work exactly, vilifying the one you claim to serve and worship?

Due to men’s pride, many have come to believe that they are on equal footing with Jesus. They’ve convinced themselves that if they don’t like something He said, they can insist He was wrong and go about their lives as they will without a moment’s hesitation. The narcissism is off the charts, and it’s only made possible by the influx of pride the church has allowed and accepted. Pride warps reality. It makes people see what isn’t there and gives them a false sense of authority when they have none.

Well, yes, Jesus said to go and sin no more, but I don’t count my preferred perversion as a sin. Therefore, I don’t have to cease indulging in it! I wish I were exaggerating, but I’m not, and a few minutes worth of research will confirm that it’s even worse than that.

The image many have in their minds as to what they believe the church is and the reality of what it has become are markedly different, and what it is, in reality, is akin to a carbon copy of what Paul warned the last days of the church would look like. Somehow, there’s still that disconnect wherein although we are seeing the heresy, deception, and turning away from the truth obliterating denomination after denomination, we’re still fully expecting the sweeping revivals men promised us.

Why are you so dour? Why can’t you be more optimistic? Because I cannot ignore what the Bible says about the last days just because I want to see them play out differently than how the Bible says they will.  

The only ones who don't see the perilous times of which Paul spoke coming to pass in real time are those who choose not to. Just because we ignore the uncomfortable things doesn’t mean they cease to exist. On the contrary, ignoring them only precipitates their dissemination.

The spiritual condition of the church during the last days explains how so many will be deceived and why the love of many will grow cold. It also explains why there will be so little resistance to the darkness and to those preaching another Christ. If churches are too busy churning out NDAs and hiring crisis management firms to keep the shockwaves of certain revelations localized, how can they also be expected to preach against sin and be a light? Priorities are priorities, after all! Business first, then if we have time for Jesus and if His words aren’t overly offensive, we might mention Him in passing.

The Word of God has much to teach us if we are willing to learn. Among the things it teaches us is that as servants of God, we must walk uprightly and, rather than boasting in our accomplishments, boast in our infirmities so that the power of Christ may rest upon us. They are not our accomplishments to begin with. If you are a vessel of honor in the Master’s house, acknowledge that it was the Master’s good pleasure to choose you and use you rather than insist that He would have never accomplished His will without you.

That’s also where pride plants its seed to give birth to its hideously destructive harvest. When men begin to think that they are too valuable for the Kingdom, that God couldn’t do one thing or another without them specifically, they allow themselves liberties, which the Bible never does, and ever so slowly wander from the truth. They justify their unconfessed sin because, as yet, God has not punished them for it, not realizing that one day, sooner or later, the bill will come due, and it will be hefty indeed. God doesn’t play games with us, but we’ve gotten it into our heads that we can play games with Him. Eternity is not a game; it is everything, and if you are willing to place your soul in jeopardy over momentary pleasures or to pacify your flesh, you are not worthy of Him to begin with.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

The Last Days Of The Church X

 Paul then proceeds to single out the love of money as another sign of the last days. Not money, but the love of money. Men will be lovers of money willing to compromise their principles, betray their Lord and King, omit the truth, and preach outright lies, all because the love of money has taken root in their hearts and has become their idol.

If you compromise the truth for the sake of money, then you love money over God. If you teach lies contrary to scripture because your bottom line would suffer if you started to preach the truth, you love money over men’s souls. If you compromise your ethics, morals, and values for the sake of money, money has become your defacto god, one for which you are willing to go to any lengths to obtain.

1 Timothy 6:10, “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.”

It’s not as though the love of money was new or unheard of even as early as Paul’s ministry. In his first letter to Timothy, Paul mentions some who have strayed from the faith in their greediness, but what was once the exception, a handful of souls who gave in to their love of money, will become standard practice in the last days and something that will a bane upon the church, and so prevalent as to become a danger for the household of faith.

When your convictions are for sale, and the doctrine you present can be decided by the highest bidder rather than the Word of God, what follows is disaster on a grand scale, culminating in despair for the individual and bitterness toward God Himself.

When the love of money is the driving force of your convictions and not love for the truth, you’ll say anything, do anything, hock anything, co-sign anything as long as it turns a profit, and as long there are a few extra shekels in your change purse at the end of the day. The lovers of money prey upon the sheep like starving wolves, and the sheep seem not to notice, or if they do, they ignore it because the promise of a lump sum on the back end is just too enticing to pass up.

Supposed men of God are selling their souls one piece at a time until they wake up one day, utterly soulless, trying to talk their congregations into some pyramid scheme, or the little old ladies into a reverse mortgage from which he gets a kickback. The underlying cause of all these schemes and scams, the root of every twisted thing that leaves a bad taste in a church’s mouth once the dust settles, is the love of money.

Usually, the love of self and love of money are fast friends, even bosom buddies, because the one facilitates the comfort and material well-being of the other. If you love yourself, you treat yourself to the finest the world has to offer, and in order to treat yourself, you must have the financial wherewithal to do so. It’s not as though people love money for the sake of money; they love money for all the things it can buy and the illusory security it provides.

Since we had to distract from the void in our hearts, we told ourselves that he who dies with the most toys wins in the end, not realizing the utter foolishness of that particular rationalization. Whether rich or poor, dead is dead, then judgment. There is only one God, one throne of judgment, and no man can buy themselves an exemption from it. The prince will stand in the same spot as the beggar, and God will not show deference to someone because of their net worth.

It’s funny how those who serve a God who judges without partiality show it in the most blatant of ways when it comes to people they think can help further their ministries, whether by proximal influence or an injection of funds. We’ve all seen the pictures of prominent pastors posing for photos with individuals whom they know to be antagonistic toward the Gospel just because they’re famous. Eventually, it comes back to bite them when they least expect it, but in the moment, they revel in the idea of rubbing elbows with the influential.

Because they are used to being treated differently, whether having a front-row seat reserved for them at church, being led out through the side exit when the service is over, being pointed to and named by the pastor and told that their mere presence is an unequaled honor, such people have taken to believe that God will likewise treat them with the same deference, show them undeserved respect, and tweak His standard to accommodate them. He won’t. He never has and never will because God is no respecter of persons. 

You can buy a lot of things with money. I’d be lying if I said you couldn’t, but there are things money can’t buy, and they happen to be the most important things in life. Whether love, health, or more time, the things that truly matter cannot be purchased, no matter how much someone is willing to spend. We’ve seen it time and again wherein men with seemingly endless resources couldn’t buy their way out of a terminal diagnosis or add a minute to their existence on earth, even though they were willing to trade all they had just to see another sunrise. Every other day, we hear of people who deem themselves wealthy and in need of nothing spiral into depression because the love they thought they had turned out to be a well-orchestrated deception, and the person they believed loved them shatters their heart and takes half their stuff in the process.

Standing head and shoulders above all else when it comes to things men can’t buy is salvation. Were you to have the wealth of Solomon himself, you still couldn’t buy your way into heaven. It is exclusive, members only, and the only way to get in is through Christ Jesus. Anyone who tells you that writing a check will square you with God is lying in the most contemptible of ways. Repentance, surrender, rebirth, continually walking in His way, denying yourself, and picking up your cross daily are the only means by which we can attain that which money cannot buy. That salvation is free does not make it cheap; it is free because it’s priceless, and no man could ever buy himself entrance therein, though he might gain the whole world.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Intermission

 You call a man, any man, Hitler, worse than Hitler, the Antichrist, the spawn of Lucifer’s loins, a walking plague, the end of all things, the personification of evil long enough, and someone will eventually get it into their head that they could be the hero and slay the villain. Who knows, there might even be a damsel in distress at the end of the story who will recognize the bravery required in trying to remove the worst human ever to walk the earth from the chessboard.

If propaganda were not effective, there wouldn’t be multi-national corporations spending billions of dollars trying to convince you that an amalgam of chemicals and red dye 40 pressed into some gelatinous form with the appearance of a week-old severed limb is not only good for you, or something you want to have, but something you have to have!

As recently as two months ago, women were braining each other with overlarge purses to get their hands on a sweet, sweet Stanley tumbler in which they could fit a toddler and still have room left over for their chosen beverage. It was all a result of marketing, word of mouth, and people being convinced that they couldn’t live without one.

For those of you who listen to the radio program regularly, what happened last night should come as no surprise. We’ve been discussing this scenario for going on six months now, and I’ve warned repeatedly that, in all likelihood, this was bound to happen. Those insisting that this is the worst man the world has ever seen, putting Genghis Kahn, Stalin, Pol Pot, and Hitler combined to shame, knew exactly what they were doing even though their backpedaling has already commenced.

Currently, there are more answers than questions, especially when it comes to the security detail that seems to have ignored warnings from people who had seen the shooter climbing the building from which he fired.

Is this the event I’ve been warning about? No, I do not believe it is. If this had been a professional shooter, we’d be having a very different type of conversation this morning. It’s also too early in the election cycle for it to be what I foresee playing out. This is the second viable attempt on the man’s life and the second time someone got close enough to do the job but failed for one reason or another.

Those who thought it would spook him into quitting haven’t taken his tenacity into account, and as such, more pressure will be brought to bear on the planners to come up with a surefire solution to the threat he poses to this nation's permanent ruling class, which has been pulling the strings from the shadows for decades on end.

Although I’ve already made my position clear on the matter, no, I do not believe this man is the antichrist, and anyone who does needs to spend a bit more time in the Word so that they might gain a deeper understanding of who this man is going to be. Conversely, I do not believe he is some sort of savior of the republic because the republic cannot be saved by any man.

That said, those who keep going on about him being the aforementioned antichrist haven’t come up with a good answer for why he didn’t antichrist the first go-round. Why wait? Why put it off for four years and go through it all over again? I know; logic hurts.

A flawed man? Most assuredly. The antichrist? Hardly.

I do not believe this is over, not by a country mile. If enough balls are kicked at a goalie, no matter how good he is, one of them is bound to get through the net. If you figure that a number of your defenders have some ulterior motive for letting the striker get closer than he should, then getting one through the net becomes almost certain. For those of you scratching your heads in frustration, it’s a soccer analogy. Yes, it’s a sport. It's quite popular in much of the world, actually, but I digress.

It’s only a matter of time before this nation is plunged into unprecedented chaos. It is as unavoidable as death and taxes. And for those hard at work posting, “if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray” memes, do the world a favor and finish the verse.

Many may pray, some may humble themselves, but as far as turning from their wicked ways, that answer has already been given, and it’s a resounding no.

There are four prerequisites to God hearing from heaven, forgiving sin, and healing the land: the first is for His people to humble themselves. The second is for them to pray. The third is to seek His face, and the fourth is to turn from their wicked ways. Two or three out of four just won’t do, and that last one always seems to trip nations up.

2 Peter 3:11-13, “Therefore, since all these things will be dissolved, what manner of persons ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be dissolved, being on fire, and the elements will melt with fervent heat? Nevertheless, we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.”

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

The Last Days Of The Church IX

 The church was never called to heal the world. It was never its mission. Yes, God loved the world, but He sent Jesus so that whosoever believes in Him would not perish. There was a conditionality placed on not sharing the same fate as the world, and that was believing in Christ.  The whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one. We are strangers in a strange land, behind enemy lines, and on the enemy’s soil. Our mission is and always has been to preach the gospel and point the way to Christ in the hope that some who are in the world might come out of the world and some who are in darkness might come to the light.

That we could somehow restore the world by sheer will alone or by the power of our words is an enticing fable, but a fable nonetheless. The world isn’t getting any better, and those waiting for it to do so will be waiting a very long time. The times will grow all the more perilous, the love of many will wane, and those things once embraced, practiced, and celebrated by the godless exclusively will become standard fare within the household of faith as well.

Anyone could have told you that! We’ve been seeing it for years now. Yes, but Paul told you two thousand years ago, so you must give credit where credit is due.

2 Timothy 3:2-5, “For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away!”

There is not one thing on that entire list that was not evident in society when Paul penned these words. It’s not as though being lovers of self, lovers of money, boasters, proud blasphemers, and the rest of it is something new to this generation or something that materialized only with the invention of the radio.

Men have always loved themselves, loved money, boasted of one thing or another, and were proud even when they had no reason to, but none of these things were as yet evident in the early church.

Their entire framework was such that selflessness was essential for their continuity. New believers sold what they had in terms of possessions and then pooled the money with the other believers to continue to preach the good news of the gospel.

If Paul’s warning had been meant to alert us that the world would be blasphemous, proud, unholy, unloving, and unforgiving, it would have been anticlimactic and not very revelatory. The world wasn’t brimming with holy people even back then. We’ve known for long and long that all these things existed in the world. We’ve been witness to it throughout history, but if the warning is specific to the last days, and the peril will be something other than what has been common, then it’s safe to assume that all the things Paul lists will be evident within the household of faith, the house of God, and among those who claim to belong to Him.

That’s the stark difference between then and now. What was once primarily on the outside is now ever present on the inside. More often than not, you can no longer tell the difference between the two, whether in words, actions, or appearance. Those who dare to point out the need for sober-mindedness and pursuit of righteousness within the church are summarily labeled a legalist. Because men refuse to acknowledge the need to walk in the light and pursue those things pleasing to God, they accuse those who would insist it must be thus as being judgmental, ignoring the reality that they are quoting scripture and pointing to the Word when doing so.  

Paul confirms that what he is itemizing is not something we will have to contend with in the world but rather within the house of God because he names a form of godliness among the things that will bring about great peril, something that the world never possessed or will ever possess.

The first thing Paul warns us is that men will be lovers of themselves. He’s not talking about looking in the mirror and liking what you see. He is referring to men of the household of faith placing the self, the flesh, and this present life above all else, including the will and Word of God. When a man loves himself, there is no room for the love of God in his heart. When he prioritizes something other than God in his life, it shows, and what flows out of it is neither noble nor divine. He will always defer to and seek after what is more pleasurable, comforting, exalting, and beneficial to his flesh rather than the will of God.

An entire cottage industry has been built around the concept of loving yourself. There are tutorials on how to love yourself, stickers you can put on the back bumper of your car, and hand-stenciled signs you can hang in your bedroom, all with the singular message that all you need to do is love yourself. Just love yourself! In order to find your bliss, your purpose, your joy, and your peace, all you have to do is love yourself.

I’ve even heard it said from pulpits by men who should know better, and each time, it makes me cringe. We’re not supposed to love ourselves or this life; we are supposed to love God. When you tell someone to love themselves, you are encouraging them to do something contrary to what Jesus commanded, which is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. Jesus called this the first and great commandment.

Yet, Paul said that one of the most evident characteristics of the last days, and one that would bring about peril among the children of God, is that men will be lovers of themselves. Those unwilling to see the undeniable truth that his prophetic utterance is playing out in real-time can readily chalk it up to chance, but how many times does someone have to hit the nail on the head before we can no longer dismiss it as accidental or a fluke?

One surefire sign that we are living in the last days and that we have entered into the perilous times the Bible warns us about is that men will be lovers of themselves. Love of self has become a de facto doctrine for many, and we have molded, twisted, and butchered the Word of God to suit the self rather than insist upon the self submitting to the Word of God.

We make excuses for sins and justify rebellion, all because men have become lovers of themselves rather than lovers of God and have placed themselves at the pinnacle of the hierarchy of their existence. They sit on the thrones of their own hearts, worshipping themselves, and have left no room for God therein, all while claiming that they are His.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

The Last Days Of The Church VIII

2 Timothy 3:1, “But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come.”

There’s danger, then there’s danger. There’s a danger you can see coming, the danger you can anticipate, the danger for which you can prepare, and the danger against which you can defend. Then there’s the danger you can’t see coming, the kind of danger that blindsides you, like getting t-boned by a car while going through a green light or having your boat propeller fall off and sink into the deep while you’re putting around in the middle of a lake. Although I’m no seafaring aficionado, I’ve heard stories.

As Paul wrote his second letter to Timothy, he sat in a dungeon in Rome. It wasn’t the first time; it was the second time this had happened to him, and he was so close to the finish line that he could taste it. This was to be his last epistle. Soon, he would be martyred and go to his reward. His words, penned in the shadow of death, carry a profound significance.

By some grace and divine providence, Paul was allowed some parchment and a quill and made use of his time in prison by tying up loose ends and edifying Timothy, whom he’d mentored and trusted to continue the ministry once he was gone. True men of God never retire. Even when their flesh grows weak, and they are no longer the tip of the spear in the ministry to which they were called, they spend their time mentoring those who will take up the charge once they are gone, for the Kingdom and the work thereof remains paramount in their lives to the very end. Ministry is not a career. It is a calling, a vocation, a purpose to which one devotes one's life in its entirety throughout.

The timing of this writing matters lest anyone insist that the early church had as yet not seen any peril of which they should be aware or that Paul was referring to persecution or the godless waxing worse as the danger to which he was referring. That he would not consider the times he lived in perilous is illogical and fraught with cognitive dissonance. He was sitting in a Roman prison waiting to be executed, so if the perilous times he was referring to had anything to do with persecution or the godless, it would have been redundant.

Paul was an educated man with a specific background and a certain pedigree that would prohibit him from stating the obvious or being needlessly repetitive. This was a man who, before his conversion, was a Pharisee of Pharisees, taught the law by Gamaliel, a man who, in his own right, was held in great esteem by all the learned men of his time.

Paul used words both sparingly and judiciously, and if he contends that in the last days, perilous times will come, we must determine the source of the peril and what the peril will entail. This is not a matter of casual observation, but a call for deep understanding and discernment.

Jesus warned regarding the last days of the world with a purpose in mind, and now Paul warns of the last days of the church with a similar purpose and intent.

Ignorance is bliss only to the ignorant and indifferent. It raises my hackles any time those whose singular purpose is to rightly divide the Word shrug their shoulders and gloss over a passage they don’t want to examine because they deem it trivial. It’s in the Book; therefore, it’s not trivial. There is a purpose for every dot and tittle contained in the Bible. If we dare to dismiss large swaths of God’s word because we think there is more fertile or less dense soil we can till that will demand less exertion on our part, especially when those swaths have to do with the last days, we are being unfaithful to the calling to which we have been called.

Given that the early church was already living in perilous times and was already being persecuted, rejected, martyred, and denounced by the powers of the day, the nature of the peril Paul warns will come during the last days must be something altogether different than what they were already used to.

That’s not to say the current peril would be done away with, just that another layer of peril would present itself during the last days, from a different source, in a different iteration, and those with eyes to see have already witnessed it take shape and form before their eyes.

The second reality we must contend with is that the perilous times Paul speaks of are a certainty. There was no addendum or caveat. It was a declarative statement: But know this: in the last days, perilous times will come.

He didn’t say perilous times would come if you didn’t vote Republican or Democrat, nor did he say that perilous times would come unless your church had a fully funded building fund or you belonged to a particular denomination. That perilous times would come was a prophetic certainty, with no possibility of redress or correction.

I’m often asked what the church could have done to save the world, and the answer is nothing. There is nothing the church could have done to save the world as a whole, but there are plenty of things it could have done to be more effective at helping to save individuals out of the world by clearly pointing the way to Jesus. The two are not the same thing, but since conflating ideas has become the banner most churches are flying nowadays, we make it out to be so.

What the contemporary church could have done that it has failed to do is live according to Scripture and be desperate for the presence and power of God in its midst. Had that occurred, though the world would not be saved, the world would likely look different than it does because at least there would have been some pushback against the darkness.

Could have, should have, spilled milk and bitter regrets. We chose apathy, indifference, lukewarmness, and duplicity because these things did not infringe upon our flesh to any discernable degree. We chose the form of godliness, thinking it would suffice, and honored God with our lips while our hearts were far from Him, thinking He’d have to make due.

The modern-day church isn’t dealing with some rogue mole on its scalp from too much sun that the doctor can excise in five seconds flat with a scalpel and some numbing agent. We’re talking stage four metastatic cancer that has spread to most organs. Dark? Perhaps. True? Just look at all the prominent dominoes that have fallen over the past few months, and you tell me.

As an aside, I think the kids call it foreshadowing, Paul foresaw the downfall of man-made religious fiefs and those who lorded over them during the last days as well. Everything you need to know is in the Book. You just have to be diligent in studying it.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

The Last Days Of The Church VII

 It’s not that God’s hand is short; it’s that men’s hearts are cold. It is one of the signs of the time Jesus warned of, but we deny reality because it does not support our personal vision of the last days and the things we’re hoping to see before the end. We’ve grown so conceited and arrogant in our self-assessment and think so highly of ourselves that many in the Western church have concluded that God can’t be moving in power, nor can His servants be walking in authority if it’s not happening at the local Hillsong affiliate.

If God’s not using me in that manner, then He can’t be using anybody else in the world because why would He if He could use me? Doesn’t He know how great I am? Is He not well versed enough in social media to intuit that if I were to have the gift of healing or prophecy, my outreach could be so much bigger than some member of an underground church in China or some preacher in sub-Saharan Africa? It’s that sort of circular logic that always places the individual in a class by themselves, giving way to hedonism and pride to the point of denying the work and power of the Holy Spirit. Men would rather deny the reality of the power of God than feel slighted that they weren’t being used in such a manner.

They dismiss the reality that in order to have spiritual capital, one must purchase from Christ gold refined in the fire because the notion of feeling the heat of persecution or material lack upon their tender skin is in itself anathema. Never mind that it’s the selfsame thing Jesus admonished the Laodicean church to do; we’ll get a reverse mortgage or a payday loan instead. We’ll get some fog machines and flashing lights, a hipster band that sings quasi-spiritual songs, and a hype man or two, and we’ll circumvent the need for true obedience and faithfulness.

It doesn’t work that way; it never has, and the reason we’re not seeing the manifest power of God in the American church is because the American church has never been through the fire, so it might be refined and purified. It’s not as though people aren’t hungry for the power of God; it’s that they’re not hungry enough to surrender and humble themselves at the foot of the cross in order to experience it. It’s like a child insisting that they’re starving, but they refuse to eat anything other than what they want, and it usually isn’t broccoli.

Men want God on their terms. God wants men on His terms. Men are unwilling to humble themselves, therefore they make do with what’s available while not having to wholly surrender their lives to Him. As long as you can promise the experience without needing to live according to the scripture, so what if it’s momentary and fleeting? So what if it’s just sleight of hand or illusion? They got something out of it, didn’t they? So what if the moment the church lets out, the experience is forgotten, and they return to the world like a dog to its vomit?

Although Jesus outlined what would take place, citing many being deceived and the love of many growing cold, Paul goes into far greater detail about what the church of the last days will look like, enumerating the various symptoms that will have their origins in the same perennial malady. The underlying disease will not be anything new. If we must identify a patient zero, the Laodicean church comes as close to it as we can verify biblically. The conclusion we come to when we delve into the Word and do so objectively is that what was once deemed the exception, the outlier, the oddity, and the cautionary tale will become the norm and standard.

Although the contagion of compromise and lukewarmness has existed since the early church, there will be an unprecedented explosion of faithlessness in the last days, to the point that Paul calls them perilous times. It makes sense in hindsight, as most things do, but taking into account that Paul’s prophetic glimpse into the last days took place at a time when you were either of Christ or weren’t, committed to Him or in full denial, it seemed just as unlikely as much of what Jesus said the world would look like before His return.

In order to understand the significance of a prophecy, you must contextualize it to the time it was given and how odd and strange the things that were prophesied must have seemed to those of that time.

When Paul wrote to Timothy describing the last days, he wasn’t guessing at it or needlessly trying to cause alarm. His message was revelatory concerning something he had no way of knowing when he penned it except through prophetic revelation. What Paul wrote was given by the inspiration of God to serve as a roadmap and a warning for what the spiritual condition of the church would look like during the last days.

When we begin to ponder the intricacies of the gospel, how finitely interlaced the prophecies of the Old and New Testament are, and how many countless words came to pass centuries after they were uttered, we can’t help but be humbled to our core.

Having the assurance that God knows the end from the beginning is also reassuring and a source of strength. It cements our conviction that being in His will, obeying His word, and faithfully following after Him is not misplaced hope or a fruitless endeavor but the only way by which we can navigate the coming days and do so victoriously.

We don’t have to wonder whether God got it right because He’s always gotten it right. There is undeniable evidence of His foreknowledge, providence, and awareness of the minutest of details of man’s history, and the presence of His invisible hand is evident time and again.

Believe God at His word. That’s all you have to do. He’s proven Himself. He’s proven His faithfulness, He’s proven His love, He’s proven His mercy, He’s proven His power, He’s proven His omniscience and omnipotence, all to such an extent that only the willfully blind cannot see His greatness.

And yet, despite all His proofs and demonstrations of divine power, some still choose not to believe. They turn a blind eye to the miracles, the wonders, the very essence of God’s presence in their lives. But for those who have seen His hand at work, who have felt His grace wash over them and make them clean by the power of the blood of Christ, there is no room for doubt. Their faith stands unshaken, anchored in the unyielding truth of His word. And so they continue to walk in His light, guided by the unwavering promise of His presence and protection.

Walking by faith and not by sight is a choice we must make as individuals. Believing what God says in His word about the times we are living in is likewise a choice we make as individuals. Amid uncertainty and chaos, we cling to faith like a lifeline. In the midst of a myriad of voices proffering opinions, we cling to the Word of God as the one and true plumbline.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

The Last Days Of The Church VI

 A dead thing cannot revive another dead thing. It is impossible. Recently, my brother Daniel and his wife were in Romania for a few weeks, and being the ever-gracious big brother that I am, I dropped them off at the airport and planned on picking them up when they returned.

After returning from the airport, I parked his car and thought nothing of it until a few days before I was to pick them up. I drove over to his place to check and see that all four tires were still inflated and that his car would start because, if something were amiss, I’d have to clean out my own car to pick them up. My vehicle has car seats and the residue of many a snack consumed by my daughters, whose hunger seems to be triggered the moment we go anywhere, even though I ask them if they’re hungry beforehand so I don’t have to play ‘what’s that smell?’ a few days later when the salami slices they couldn’t live without somehow ended up under their seat.

I knew something was wrong the moment I pressed the fob to unlock the doors, and nothing happened. Since I didn’t want to admit it to myself, I used the key to unlock the door, jumped in, and tried to start it, but no lights came on, no chirping telling me I should fasten my seatbelt; it was dead. Not even a whimper or an attempt for the engine to turn over.

Being ill-prepared for such eventualities, I drove my car to the nearest gas station, bought a set of jumper cables, and connected the two cars via the cable. For his battery to recharge, mine had to be viable. It had to have life, or as the kids say, it had to have juice. It was, and it did. Fifteen minutes later, and wouldn’t you know it, his car started, and after driving it around for a few minutes, it was as though it had never been dead.

What’s the point of this story other than highlighting my ability to connect jumper cables to a battery, all without a beard and a lumberjack shirt? The point is as simple as it is sobering: a lethargic church cannot revive a dead world because it doesn’t have enough life, enough charge, enough power to spark life into it. We’re waiting for revival to sweep the world when the household of faith needs revival first and foremost.

Death cannot produce life. Lethargy cannot produce endurance. Duplicity cannot produce faithfulness. There is a reason judgment begins in the house of God, and it’s not because it is unwarranted.

But what about Joel’s prophecy about God pouring out His Spirit on all flesh and our sons and daughters prophesying, our old men dreaming dreams, and our young men seeing visions? Surely, that would lead to revival! It did two thousand years ago.

I know that seemed needlessly brutal since every preacher pumping the notion of sweeping revival uses Joel chapter 2 as their explanation as to why revival is both imminent and unavoidable. But as we know, Scripture must be interpreted with Scripture, and whether due to ignorance of the Word or willful omission, they are twisting the gospel to fit their narrative.

Yes, God promised that His Spirit would be poured out on all flesh, and He delivered on that promise.

Acts 2:14-18, “But Peter, standing up with the eleven, raised his voice and said to them, “Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and heed my words. For these are not drunk as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day. But this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God, that I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh; Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall see visions, your old men shall dream dreams. And on My menservants and on My maidservants I will pour out My Spirit in those days; they shall prophesy.”

The thing the modern-day church is hanging its hopes upon as being the trigger for the end-times revival they’ve been promised was fulfilled two thousand years ago and brought about the genesis of the early church.

If we try to fit an eternal God into a finite box, we will always have a skewed view of prophecy and prophetic timelines. That the perspective between someone who’s lucky to see a century and the One to whom a day is as a thousand years might differ a tad is a foregone conclusion. One’s entire existence is no more than a breath to God, so when we read of the last days, we must consider that reality.

Does this mean the Holy Spirit or the gifts thereof are no longer available to us? No, that’s not what it means; it just means that Joel’s prophecy was fulfilled during the times of the Apostles. I am not a cessationist, nor do I subscribe to the notion of cessationism. We need the power, presence, and gifts of the Holy Spirit today as much as the early church did, and God would not be so cruel as to take away our means of defense, as well as our means of offense.

Imagine all the heartache that could have been avoided if the modern-day church possessed the gift of discerning spirits in its midst and could see beyond the fake smiles and cheery dispositions of their fallen leaders. Conversely, imagine how many pulpits would be empty if the gift of discernment was active in the church, but that’s a discussion for another time.

As long as false prophecies, false signs, and false teachers exist, there will be true prophecies, signs, and teachers because the entire purpose of falsifying something is to take an original and attempt to forge it. It may look close, but it’s not the real deal, no matter how hard they might try. The devil cannot create; he can only imitate. If he is attempting to imitate something, then that something must be real and genuine. Otherwise, he would be a creator in his own right, which is an impossibility.

That said, the underlying reality of this discourse is that while much of today’s church is waiting for an influx of spiritual power and gifting, they’re drifting further into apostasy and lukewarmness, giving heed to deceiving spirits and being convinced that they can appease the enemy by compromising the truth.

Perhaps we’ve been sitting idle so long waiting for something to happen rather than being in fellowship with God and spending time in His presence that all the life has leeched out of us and we need someone or something to come along and jumpstart us. Persecution would do the trick, and knowing that it’s coming, perhaps there’s hope for the church to be revived anew and set its mind on the things above. Before that could happen, however, there must be a sifting, a separation, and a delineation between those who say they belong to Him and those who are truly His in word and deed.

Understand that within Joel’s prophecy of the last days, where God promises the outpouring of His Spirit, He also foreshadows Christ’s Olivet discourse describing the events preceding His return.

Joel 2:30-31, “And I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth: Blood and fire and pillars of smoke. The sun will be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord.”

To us, the span of time between the two fulfillments of this prophecy, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord might seem unimaginable. To God, who is infinite, it’s just a couple of days.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.