Knowledge

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.