The Last Days Of The Church XXIV

 And the hits just keep on coming. The next sign to be on the lookout for as evidence of the last days is that men will be traitors. Men without a firm foundation, without permanence and total submission to Christ, will abandon ship at the first sign of trouble. Fairweather Christianity only works in fair weather, and if the Bible makes anything about the last days crystal clear, it’s that fair weather will be in short supply.

If an individual or a congregation is duplicitous, lukewarm, and distracted during the best of times, when the worst of times descend upon the world, they will react just as those of the world to the changing times. If one’s singular pursuit is not obedience and faithfulness to Christ but rather hardship avoidance, their actions will complement their pursuit, and in order to save themselves momentary discomfort, they will betray their fellow man and even God Himself.

Betrayal by someone you once considered a brother or a sister in Christ is one of the hardest things to stomach and takes time to get over. Getting stabbed is never fun, but getting stabbed in the back brings a special kind of pain, especially when it’s done with such precision that you can’t reach the knife on your own and need someone else to pull it out for you.

It hurts, and I say this from personal experience, having felt such betrayal not once but twice. Not only does it erode your ability to trust, and yes, I know, cursed is the man who trusts in man, but you can’t lone wolf it through life or ministry; it also makes you suspicious of anyone new that comes into your life even when they gave you no reason. It’s one of those things you have to actively guard against and remind yourself that not everyone’s out to get you, just some people.

To get a clearer understanding of what it means when men are traitors, one need look no further than the days of Communist tyranny that blanketed Eastern Europe not so long ago and the lengths to which some supposed brothers and sisters in Christ went to that they might save their own skin, or keep from having to endure torture or imprisonment.

Since the first day that the Communist regime began cracking down on Christians, there was an incentive to becoming an informant, or letting the local party leaders know of unapproved practices such as distributing Bibles, or having fellowship in an unsanctioned meeting place. It wasn’t much, but when you have nothing, an extra loaf of bread or a kilogram of sugar seems like a fair exchange for sentencing a loved one or someone you know to years of hard labor or worse.

While many resisted turning in their fellow man for a little extra food, far fewer did so when it meant their own well-being. The way it worked is you brought someone suspected of distributing illicit materials, such as the Bible, or congregating with undesirables, such as Christians, in for interrogation, placed a sheet of paper and a pen in front of them, then informed them that the price of their freedom was no less than ten names.

Ten names, and you get to go back to your family—to your wife, your children, your husband, or your parents. For most, there was no need for violence since the threat of it and their own imagination as to what would occur if they failed to procure those ten names were enough to make them become traitors to their own.

When those ten were brought in and made the same offer, the ten would turn into a hundred, and so on. Those who resisted the instinct for self-preservation and placed their loyalty to Christ above all else were shown in brutal fashion that the threats leveled against them were by no means empty, and there are countless stories of faithful men and women who endured the most horrendous of things while remaining faithful.

If the overarching message of the modern-day gospel is prosperity and ease of life, how many do you think will remain faithful when confronted with hardship and prison? How many will take the easy way out, becoming traitors just to save their skin?

It’s not an issue of semantics; it’s a reality that some of us will have to contend with sooner rather than later. If today you are not rooted, anchored, and steadfast in Christ, and if you are not fully committed to denying yourself, picking up your cross, and following after Him, what makes you think you will stand in the storm? When Jesus instructed us to count the cost, it wasn’t regarding how many McMansions we’d own or how many supercars. He knew the world would hate those who would follow Him because the world hated Him first.

The only way someone becomes a traitor is if they were not fully committed to Christ in the first place. If the person of Jesus and His presence in your life alone does not satisfy you, but there’s something more you’re always seeking to make you complete, fulfill you, or give you purpose, then you are not fully committed to Him. Jesus is enough. He is more than enough, and once you’ve laid hold of the knowledge of His goodness, mercy, grace, and love, you will never want for anything more.

It is not coincidental that the old hardline communists targeted Christians who believed in the power and presence of God in their lives and for whom God was a present, everyday reality and not just some idea removed from the realm of their existence, far and distant, looking down, but doing nothing to comfort, strengthen, and embolden those who followed Him. They understood, whether intuitively or through lived experience, that it was far more difficult to break someone who was wholly sold out to God than someone who had a casual relationship with Him. It was through those who were unprepared or unwilling to endure hardship as good soldiers of Jesus Christ that they could get to those who were actively living out their faithfulness every day. They started at the edges and worked their way to the core group of a church body until they came upon those who would not yield, bend, or break and who endured untold horrors yet remained faithful to their calling and to their brothers in arms.

Although it’s not an exercise I would encourage anyone to undertake, I’ve often sat in a church service and wondered how many of the people clapping along to power in the blood would drop a dime the moment things went sideways or if the opportunity arose for them to spare themselves hardship. How many would follow where He leads rather than break away and blaze their own trail away from the purifying fires of persecution? In the moment when you’re standing on the anvil and the hammer is about to drop, eternal perspectives are difficult to consider. This is why our faith must be established beforehand and our commitment thoroughly cemented, so when the day comes, we will not have to think about it or debate it but walk boldly in obedience.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.

The Last Days Of The Church XXIII

 It’s no surprise that those who are lovers of themselves, proud, blasphemers, unholy, unloving, and without self-control are likewise brutal and despisers of good. Few people in the world can be more savage and vicious than a believer whose preconceived notions you’ve challenged in some form or fashion. It’s not that they attempt to debate the topic in question or present their side and allow for an opposing view; they believe what they believe, and if you dare say otherwise, even if you have the Biblical foundation to do so and their opinion is antithetical to scripture, Ichabod to you.

While we’re Ichaboding each other over wearing a wedding band is a salvific issue and the determining factor as to whether you will hear “well done” or “depart from Me,” the enemy is hard at work dismantling the church brick by brick from within.

I’ve always been a reader. Ever since I learned to read in English, I was constantly on the hunt for a book I could get my hands on. The only caveat is that it had to be cheap. There was a local run-down thrift store in our neighborhood, and although the things they had on offer looked like the contents of a homeless person’s garbage bag, they did have a bin of five-cent books that I’d riffle through every couple of weeks. It was on such an occasion that I picked up a book called The Manchurian Candidate for no other reason than it was the cleanest book in the bin, and none of the pages stuck together.

If you’ve never read it, it’s a novel about the highborn son of a political family who gets brainwashed by communists to be an unwitting assassin. What’s happening in many places passing for seminaries today is on par. The only difference is that it’s not Communists doing the brainwashing but individuals whose singular function is to muddy the waters, detract from the supremacy of Christ and use all manner of tertiary issues as wedges to divide and separate the household of faith.

It’s easy to spot those who are among us but not of us. When they can’t win the argument on the merits, when they can’t point to the Bible and say I believe what I believe because it says so in the Word, they revert to personal ad hominem attacks and pivot, shifting the discussion to something other than the original topic. They can’t defend their position biblically, so they resort to nitpicking the delivery or focusing on appearance, all to save face and not have to admit that they might have been wrong.

When you refuse to see it their way or challenge their perception of something, all the niceties evaporate, and the fake smiles disappear, only to be replaced with sneers and eye rolls. If you doubt that believers can be brutal, all one needs to do is look back on church history to see what some supposed believers did to other believers because they disagreed on some doctrinal point or another. If having someone burned at the stake isn’t considered brutal, then I don’t know what is.

Yes, believers, brothers, and sisters with whom you broke bread and had fellowship can become brutal to the point of calling for your demise if the truth of the gospel is no longer their ideal but rather some tertiary issue to which they’ve glommed on and are willing to defend at all costs.

If you think being shunned by a community or your own family is the pinnacle of brutality, you’re blessed because you’ve been spared the horror of some of the things that go on in certain churches. Nothing is off-limits when it comes to protecting the golden goose of a well-oiled money-generating machine the likes of which some churches have become, whether it’s character assassination, underhanded dealings, threats, lawsuits, smear campaigns, and even less savory things that men will resort to in their zeal.

Although Jesus said that no one is good but One, and that is God, and Paul echoed the statement by reminding the Romans that there is none righteous, this does not mean that we cannot define good or cannot discern the difference between good and evil.

Insisting that we cannot know what good is because no one is good is a copout and a justification for accepting and tolerating things we know to be demonstrably evil. Paul warns that those of the last days' church will be despisers of good, and as though the signs weren’t already plentiful, this would be another sign of the times.

The clearest example of this, and one that is objectively undeniable, is the push by leaders and pastors of various denominations to embrace the murder of the innocent via abortion and seeing nothing wrong or evil in the practice thereof. This is the very definition of men being despisers of good, and it’s not limited to this one thing either.

When men are unholy, they are predisposed to despise the good, making allowances for it, practicing it, encouraging it, validating it, and celebrating it. Their embracing of evil is always couched in some delusional notion of love, and they are quick to lash out against anyone who refuses to go along or agree with their ideology.

Ask anyone with a modicum of morals, ethics, values, or empathy, regardless of religious leaning, if it’s okay to murder a baby, and they will say no without delay or having to consider the question. The same cannot be said of many currently sitting in pulpits pretending to be ambassadors of Christ and teachers of the ways of God.

This isn’t some future event at some future time but something the household of faith is currently contending with. Though few might want to acknowledge it, the enemy is gaining ground, and more and more spiritual leaders acquiesce to such evils because their purpose is not the truth but rather their own material successes and earthly comforts.

Even though Jesus said we would be hated for His name’s sake, many today are doing their best to avoid being hated. If being a despiser of good is a prerequisite for being loved by the world, so be it. That countless thousands continue to follow these men’s teachings is just as troubling as the fact that such men have risen to such prominent positions within the church.

To make matters worse, these selfsame despisers of good attack those defending it with all the vitriol they can muster, whether it’s because they don’t want to be exposed for the vapid ghouls that they are or because they want to silence any opposition to their narrative.

Being aware that such individuals exist within the church prevents us from being surprised by their attacks or by what they say and do. Disheartening as it might be to be attacked by those you assumed would be on your side, it shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Jude 4, “For certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ.”

How they were able to creep in unnoticed is yet another vexing question we must ponder because this presupposes that those tasked with watching for the wolves that would come to tear the sheep asunder weren’t doing their duty and failed in their mission. By any metric, the modern-day church is a mess, yet this selfsame church insists they will be the means by which great revival will sweep the world from sea to shining sea. Make it make sense.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

The Last Days Of The Church XXII

 Although the notion of self-control flies in the face of modern-day dogma, wherein we are told that having it and practicing it is akin to legalism, men being without self-control within the church will be one of the signs heralding the last days. Either you have mastery over your urges, or your urges have mastery over you. Either you have control over your flesh, or your flesh controls you to the point that in the rare moments of lucidity, you wonder how you got where you are, so far away from anything resembling joy, peace, or fulfillment. There is no in-between, and the less one exercises self-control in their day-to-day life, the easier it becomes for the devil to set a snare and shackle the individual anew. It is eye-opening and somewhat terrifying to realize how much one’s own flesh despises the spiritual man and the lengths to which it will go to ensure its destruction, even if that likewise guarantees the destruction of the flesh itself.

It’s akin to the story of the tortoise and the scorpion, wherein, after hours of begging and reassurance, the tortoise finally relents and agrees to ferry the scorpion across the pond, only for the scorpion to sting the tortoise halfway through the journey.

“Why would you do such a thing,” the tortoise asks, “you’ve assured our mutual demise. Now we will both die.”

“Because it is my nature,” the scorpion says as they sink to the bottom. It is the nature of men’s flesh to be at enmity with the spiritual man. However much the flesh protests and insists that mutually assured destruction is not its purpose, the end result of sin always is. There is a reason we are commanded to crucify the flesh, and it’s not to cause ourselves undue pain; it is to ensure that the spiritual man survives and thrives.

We all know what sin is. The Bible makes it clear, and there is no ambiguity about it, but much of what the Bible calls sin is common practice in many churches, and we somehow always find a way to justify it, excuse it, or pretend as though it’s not sin. We either point to the changing times, the changing culture, changing appetites, or the one that gets my goad, an evolving understanding of what it is to be a believer, yet fail to contend with the reality that we serve a God who changes not. Just because men have decided a particular practice is no longer a sin does not mean that God agrees or that He likewise has gone back on His word and now celebrates that which He once found abhorrent.

Galatians 5:19-21, “Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in the past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”

Whenever men proceed to give license to practices that God has decreed as sinful, they are undermining the authority of God and diminishing His sovereignty. That only serves to embolden those without self-control, and because sin is corrosive and ever-growing, by the time it’s ferreted out, it’s done so because the pastor was on the news getting arrested for the gravest of crimes.

Self-control is a necessary virtue in the life of a believer, and the absence thereof will always have them making choices they will later regret, feel shame about, or draw them away from the light into the shadows where the sharpened claws and sharpened fangs await.

James 4:7, “Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”

Self-control is how we resist the devil. The sad reality is that many who fall into repeated habitual sin, however that sin might manifest, do so because they have not exercised self-control in a given situation and so gave in to the temptation that was proffered to them. The devil didn’t make you do it; he can’t make you do anything. What he can do is provide the opportunity. He can and does put out that piece of cheese, hoping to disguise the trap it’s trying to hide.

The master you love is the master you obey. The master you love is the master you follow. Your nature is revealed not in what you say but in what you do, the company you keep, the way you spend your time and resources, and on whom. Some people love their sin more than they love God, and it shows. They may profess love for Him, but words without actions are only words and nothing more.

If I told my wife I loved her every morning upon waking, then proceeded to spend the rest of the day with a stranger, buying her flowers and treating her to dinner, would my words hold any weight? Would my actions confirm my assertion that I loved her, or would they stand as a testimony against me?

When you love someone, whether God, your spouse, or your children, your heart’s desire is to spend as much time with them as you can. You prioritize them, you nurture the relationship, you are attentive to their needs, and you pursue an ever-deepening bond. When all that those who profess love for Jesus have ever done was raise a hand in church, then nevermore considered Him, desired Him, or sought to know Him in a deeper, more meaningful way, their profession, however boisterous, is demonstrably false.

When the modern-day church redefined salvation from a lifelong journey of submission to God and obedience to His Word to a one-time experience, a single prayer, or a walk down the aisle, it opened the floodgates to all the things Paul warns about as being the cause for the perilous times that would come.

The frivolous attitude with which many treat things of eternal import is disheartening and troubling. This isn’t just an American Christianity issue or an issue pertaining to a specific denomination. The attitude is cross-denominational and is readily observed in every Western nation, wherein there is no persecution of Christianity and no cost to calling oneself a Christian.

Paul makes it clear that there is a high cost to practicing such things. He reiterates that there are consequences to living in accordance with the desires of the flesh rather than in obedience to the Word of God, and it’s not a slap on the wrist or a disappointed look from the Almighty. There is no ambiguity in his declaration that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God, yet many ignore or brush off this dire warning as they do much of scripture that does not align with their compromised state.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

The Last Days Of The Church XXI

 How we weather the attacks of the enemy depends on how strong our spiritual man is. As is the case in the natural, wherein the strength of your immune system determines whether you will brush off some malady or another while the same has others bedridden for a week, coughing and wheezing, and fighting off night sweats, the stronger you are in Christ, the more likely you are to deflect the fiery arrows aimed your way, whether it’s unthankfulness, unforgiveness, pride, or the myriad of things we are constantly bombarded with.

What many fail to realize is that they are at war. Every day, all day, without fail, we are being attacked by the enemy, and those who’ve been in the trenches for longer than a minute have learned to identify the attacks and react accordingly rather than give in to the natural inclinations of the flesh to lash out, become combative, and escalate a given situation.

There is a clear and present mind shift between a weekend warrior and a soldier fighting for his life in an active war zone. While the Word tells us we are in the latter, many today live out their lives as though they were in the former. We do not choose the time, place, or manner in which we engage in spiritual warfare. This isn’t boxing; there’s no bell after three minutes, no sixty-second respite in between, and no referee to call the fight. This is war! We have an active, wily, determined enemy whose intent is clear and well-defined. When this reality is at the forefront of our minds, when the enemy attempts to engage, we are ready to defend against his attack.

To say that we react appropriately every time, without fail, would be a lie. Even when I don’t want to, when someone cuts me off in traffic, then pumps their brake for whatever reason, three times out of ten, my hackles get raised, but it’s a momentary, fleeting feeling that I brush off as soon as it arises. I’ve gotten better at it over time. It used to be ten out of ten times that I’d arch my eyebrows and wonder if the driver who just cut me off had to think about breathing or how they managed to get a license, but the older I get, the rarer those feelings become, especially when I know the girls are in the backseat just waiting for me to flail my arms at the car in front of me so they can point and laugh and say daddy’s getting mad.

The ups and downs of everyday life give us a better understanding of what Paul meant when he said what he willed to do, that he did not practice, but what he hated that he did. He was not referring to habitual sin or ongoing practices that are antithetical to the Word and will of God but rather to those moments when we react before we have the chance to process and think about what we are doing.

Those who harbor unforgiveness in their hearts toward someone are also likely to resort to slander in order to deflect from their complicity, guilt, or shortcomings. We see prime examples of this in politicians, although slandering another just to get the spotlight off you is not reserved for politicians alone.

When one individual points out the mental decrepitude of another, the individual who gets singled out attempts to one-up the other by accusing them of not only lacking in mental acuity but also smelling bad. It then becomes a mud-slinging session, going back and forth, each attempting to defame and damage the other’s reputation.

By its definition, slander is not slander if what someone says about you is the truth. In order for something to qualify as slander, it must be a false statement regarding that individual. This is worth noting because many resort to playing the victim and insisting that they’re being slandered when what is being brought to light about them is true, factual, demonstrable, and verifiable.

Slander is one of the enemy’s greatest tools for sowing division among the people of God, and that is why we must guard our hearts against it in perpetuity. Whether we speak slander, allow another to slander a third party, or become nothing more than de facto gossip queens, slander drives a wedge between believers and diminishes the bond of fellowship.

I’ve been in ministry long enough to see the pattern for what it is and have concluded that the first salvo in a future attempt at a hostile takeover of a church or a ministry is a slander campaign that is disseminated, whispered of in the shadows, and told in confidence, which really isn’t to as many as are willing to listen.

When you trace it back to its origins, you soon discover that the person who started it usually has a vested interest, whether dreams of replacing the current pastor or dividing the church and taking a chunk of it for themselves, starting their own thing, which in their words will be pure, and righteous, and free of the shadow of the slanderous innuendos they themselves dripped into the body like so much poison.

I’ve been hard on the contemporary church, and rightly so. It’s not because I’m mean or disagreeable by nature, but because they have wandered from the truth and the light, and the gospel they are presenting is not the Gospel of Christ. That said, we can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, and there are still faithful shepherds who rightly divide the Word and preach Christ and the cross with consistency and passion. There are still men who shepherd because they were called to it, not because they thought it was an easy way to have a career and a golden parachute after twenty years of potlucks and glad-handing. It’s those who remain faithful and true to the Word that are in the enemy’s crosshairs. It is they whom the enemy attempts to overthrow from within using slander as the cudgel with which to bludgeon them into silence or make the task of shepherding so grievous that they just give up.

If you hear slander about another whose character is contrary to what you heard, resist the urge to pass it on and go to the person in question, straight to the horse’s mouth, and ask whether it’s true or not. There will always be telltale signs of a reprobate mind or someone who is simply wearing a mask in public but is a different sort of person in private. Eventually, the mask slips, revealing them for who they truly are. If, however, what was said about them is proven to be a lie, it is your responsibility to rebuke the person spreading the lie because, as the saying goes, a lie will fly around the world before the truth can get its boots on.

Whenever you hear a slanderous remark about a third party, the questions that must be ever present in your mind are: Does this person have an ulterior motive for saying these things? Can they be demonstrably proven, or are they just opinions?

Just because you don’t like the way a message is delivered doesn’t make it heretical. What makes it heretical is the message's unbiblical nature. Know the difference, and make sure you are always on the side of the truth.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

The Last Days Of The Church XX

 As with all the other things Paul lists as the underlying causes of the peril of the end times, unforgiveness is not stagnant but an ever-expanding, metastatic blemish that eats away at one’s inner peace, joy, and fulfillment. When imperfect people expect everyone else around them to be perfect at all times, then refuse to forgive them when they do not meet their impossible standard, unforgiveness takes root, and bitterness is the fruit it produces. It doesn’t have to be some great offense. We’re experts at making mountains out of molehills and taking some small, offhand remark as targeted criticism tailored explicitly for us.

I remember someone writing a letter to the ministry informing us they’d held a grudge for five long years just because my grandfather didn’t shake their hand after a church service. Although usually affable and glad to shake people’s hands most of the time, my grandfather also had debilitating gout in his finger joints, and whenever he’d have a flare-up, he kept from shaking hands because the pain would cause him to tear up. The person didn’t know the details; they just felt they’d been slighted and held in their heart as such for half a decade.

A few years back, we decided to plant some mint in the backyard. My wife loves the smell of fresh mint, and the kiddos enjoy it in their lemonade when the weather gets hot, so it was a no-brainer; at least, we thought so at the time.

It was either buy a handful of withering mint leaves at the local supermarket for a few bucks or have your own for the cost of a pack of seeds and have it spring up every year. Mint is perennial, so you only have to plant it once, and every year after the ground thaws and spring has sprung, they come out of the earth anew. What no one told us, and since I’m no green thumb by any stretch, I had no way of knowing, is that mint is invasive and, if unchecked, spreads with the gusto of a wildfire in the desert. Okay, perhaps that’s a bad analogy since there’s nothing to burn in the desert, but a forest will do just as readily.

The first year went well enough. One mint bush grew where we had planted it, and we had enough for the whole summer. Two years in, it wasn’t just one, two, or five mint bushes, but everywhere there was an available patch of dirt, there would be mint, to the point that we could easily supply the entire neighborhood with fresh mint and have plenty left over.

We realized that unless we got serious about pulling some of the plants, all we’d have in the backyard was mint. It’s the same with unforgiveness and bitterness of the heart. If it’s allowed to go unchecked, one unforgiven sleight or offhand comment turns into nitpicking people to death, and that one act you deemed unforgivable turns into a dozen things you’re unwilling to forgive.

As with most things, the best time to address unforgiveness is when it first appears, before it has a chance to take root and deepen its hold on the heart. Anything given time to grow and extend becomes more challenging to remove. It is even better to prevent it from entering our hearts in the first place by remembering all that we’ve been forgiven and the grace we’ve received over the years.

I’ve been married to my wife for almost twenty-five years. At this point, I’ve been married for half as long as I’ve been alive. During this time, she’s learned not to ask questions she doesn’t want an honest answer to, not because I’m mean-spirited or because I intend on causing emotional distress, but because I’m honest and direct. If a question is preceded with “Tell me the truth” or “Give me your honest opinion,” then I will comply with the request and tell her what I think about the topic at hand honestly and truthfully.

Especially when it comes to spiritual matters, the truth of scripture must outweigh any regard for feelings or emotions. We can choose to pander to people and disregard the Word or speak the truth in love, accepting the possibility that it will be rejected, misconstrued, or interpreted as being a personal attack rather than loving correction and instruction.

Most people prefer an echo chamber to the truth of God’s word. They want to be validated in their choices and made to feel at ease in their compromises. Rather than course correct, seek repentance, and be reconciled to God, they prefer to make anyone speaking the truth into a villain and insist that they’ve been wronged.

While those who have succumbed to an unforgiving spirit refuse to allow for reconciliation or accept a heartfelt apology for a slight, whether real or imagined, they expect everyone else to forgive anything they do at the drop of a hat; otherwise, they’ll be the first to accuse them of unforgiveness. Throwing stones while living in a glass house doesn’t begin to cover their hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance, but those who harbor unforgiveness are not tethered in reality, nor do they take the time to consider the ramifications of choosing it.

I once heard a story of a church lady who harbored unforgiveness and resentment in her heart for decades just because no one complimented her potato salad during the church potluck. It was the last time she participated, the last time she brought anything, and she lived a life of disfellowship with the rest of the body, all because nobody took special notice of a dish she brought. It may sound absurd, but many within the body still cling to unforgiveness over trivial things years later, recalling the moment more vividly than they would any other positive aspect of being a member of the body of Christ.

An unforgiving person will always take any pushback, correction, instruction, warning, or criticism in the worst possible light. They will dissect every word to the utmost and magnify it to absurd proportions without ever considering whether what their now nemesis said was right, true, or scriptural.

Ultimately, it all comes down to love and whether we truly embody the love of God in our hearts. Love and forgiveness are not just virtues we can take or leave as we will; they are essential for our spiritual journey.

1 Corinthians 13:4-8, “Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

Those who are unloving will likewise be unforgiving, for if love is not present, neither will there be any rejoicing in the truth. When love is not present, one is easily provoked and prone to thinking evil of their fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, even though it is unwarranted.

As long as you agree with everything I believe, say, or think, we can be friends. Otherwise, Ichabod to you, sir, Ichabod to you. That’s a lonely, isolated type of life, which in turn makes the individual easy prey for the enemy with no one to lean on or turn to when he pounces.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

The Last Days Of The Church XIX

 The only type of love the church doesn’t seem to be in short supply of is eros, and that’s not really love; it’s more akin to lust. As far as agape, philia, or storge, those are getting hard to find, and harder still to find them with any type of consistency. It’s easy enough to drone on about how we love everybody, even about how we love love, but words are meaningless when there is no action undergirding them and when, if there are any to be had, the actions themselves do not spring forth out of love.

We’ve all seen the busybodies handing out bracelets to starving homeless people, thinking themselves magnanimous, and telling anyone within earshot how good and noble they are even though the root of their largely pointless act is to highlight their own goodness. Likely, we’ve also all had similar reactions to it. You gave someone who needs a meal a piece of string, and it was for no other reason than to emphasize your own graciousness. Three bracelets and six thousand photos later, they can tell the world how good of a person they are for the next decade.

If someone is hungry, feed them. If someone is thirsty, give them a drink, even if they happen to be your enemy. Sending warm thoughts and positive vibes, as has become the nomenclature of our modern day, will not fill someone’s belly or keep them warm in the cold nights of winter.

When we first arrived in America, we didn’t have much. Truth be known, we didn’t have anything other than the green shag carpet that came with the apartment we were brought to, but even in those early days when my grandfather and I would go dumpster diving for aluminum cans so we could turn them in to buy a loaf of bread and some milk, no one left our home without being fed. Somehow, there was always enough, even though, on occasion, the soup was more water than broth, or the crepe filling as nothing more than a dollop of honey or a bit of strawberry jam from a jar that was so thoroughly scraped one wondered if there were glass shards somewhere in the mix.

You know you’re poor when other immigrant families show up at your door with blocks of government cheese. We were that kind of poor, yet every time, without fail, if someone visited, they’d sit down for a meal.

Given all the other things that will be vying for supremacy within the church during the last days, why is men being unloving one of the saddest and most tragic ones? Because of how the Word defines love and what the absence of love implies.

1 Corinthians 13:1-3, “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.”

At the core of all we do, there must be love. The motivation, the driving force, the impetus, and the purpose must be tethered in love. Otherwise, it is all for naught. You can speak with tongues of men and angels, prophesy, have faith, and bestow all your goods to feed the poor, but if love is not the spring from where it flows, it is pointless and profits nothing.

Because the men of the last days will be unloving, using, abusing, and exploiting their fellow man will be par for the course, something so often practiced as to become normal and expected.

Titus 1:10-11, “For there are many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers, especially they of the circumcision: whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, for filthy lucre’s sake.”

The intent of the heart matters. Some men teach what they ought not for filthy lucre’s sake, thinking nothing of the souls they hurt, damage, or lead to perdition. All that matters is the bottom line, and they’re more than willing to use the notion of love as a foil in order to achieve their ends but never have a genuine and authentic love.

It’s not as though the early church didn’t have to deal with those who saw the household of faith as an opportunity for profit or the unloving in their midst, but what were once exceptions have now become commonplace and emblematic of the times we are living in. What Paul says regarding the unruly, vain talkers and deceivers isn’t that they should be ignored, placated, or otherwise allowed to continue in their deception but that they must be stopped.

On its face, Paul’s counsel doesn’t seem very loving. What do you mean they must be stopped? Can’t we all just get along, as Rodney King once famously queried? Can’t we just agree to disagree and leave it at that? The short answer is no. The answer is no because those who would teach something other than the truth of Scripture are not innocuous, harmless, or inoffensive. They subvert whole houses and teach things which they ought not for filthy lucre’s sake and so must be called out.

Since birds of a feather often flock together, these men whom Paul warns of have decided to capitalize on their shared penchant for fleecing the flock and use each other for what amounts to a peer review of their heretical teaching, getting two thumps up from their contemporaries and doing likewise for them. They preach each other’s pulpits, talking each other up to the heavens and beyond and telling the sheep of each respective church how blessed and lucky they are to have such a forward-thinking and visionary shepherd leading them. It’s all a big con, and the sheep are starting to notice.

It doesn’t matter if a thousand men approve of something if the Bible doesn’t. It doesn’t matter how many well-known names lend their support and validate something if the God of the universe stands against it.

We are living in an unprecedented time when many believers are suffering some sort of spiritual Stockholm syndrome, defending their abusers, and turning a blind eye to the inconsistency of their walk. As more stories come out of spiritual leaders who’ve been in sin and rebellion for decades yet somehow still retained their position within the body, one can’t help but wonder how many people turned a blind eye or aided and abated the practices because they deemed the individual more important than the truth.

It’s undeniable that celebrity culture is alive and well in the church, and those whose intent is not pure and who possess no love for the household of faith in their hearts have capitalized on the trend to the utmost.

But you don’t get it. He’s so special, so anointed, so mightily used of God that God Himself gave him a hall pass. Says who? Not God. God established the standard of what a servant who is called into leadership must live up to, and if today’s pastors, evangelists, and self-titled men of God were held to that standard, there would be many a church with empty pulpits. To say there would be a shortage of qualified pastors is an understatement. However, perhaps that’s what’s needed in order to salvage what remains of the modern-day church.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

The Last Days Of The Church XVIII

If a little leaven leavens the whole lump, then a bit of the profane bespoils the sacrosanct. We have been witness to the downward spiral of churches and denominations once they set upon the path of compromise, and unless a bold stand is made and there is a demand to return to the Biblical foundations they abandoned, their ruin is assured.

When you read Paul's detailed list of what many claiming to be believers will be like, it’s more akin to an open, festering wound than anything wholesome, resplendent, or beautiful. We’re not even halfway through the list, and if we look upon the contemporary church with a critical eye, we are able to check off every one of the things Paul has mentioned thus far, as not only being present therein but growing and flourishing.

One cannot overstate the metastatic nature of such things since they tend to spread throughout a body like a brushfire in a dry and arid climate. Unless stopped, they will consume everything in their path and utterly destroy the host because that is their singular intent. One act of disobedience and rebellion turns into five, then fifty, then a hundred, and before you know it, you have entire congregations denying the Lordship, supremacy, and inerrancy of Christ, forging idols that they then declare sacred and worthy of worship and subservience.

The further I get into this study, the less I want to write it because it causes me discomfort and is draining beyond anything I can verbalize. I take no pleasure in it nor write it with glee because it heralds a spiritual darkness that will blind countless souls to the reality of their rebellion and subsequent judgment.

Would I have preferred that Paul wrote about a sweeping revival that would turn nations toward the love of Jesus? Would I have preferred that he had said countless millions would fall on their faces in repentance? Of course, any of us would, but what is written is written, and we must abide by it, preparing for its eventuality. Our expectations of the future cannot be contrary to Scripture, nor can we discount the Word of God in lieu of pipe dreams and misplaced hopes. If for no other reason, I will finish this study for posterity’s sake. That, and because I want to stand before my God with clean hands, knowing that through my journey here on earth, I rightly divided the Word and deferred to Scripture as the final authority.

That men would be unloving during the last days is yet another sign that will become evident. Whether one takes it to mean that men would be without natural affection, as is one of the interpretations often subscribed to being unloving, or that they would not possess love for their fellow man in their hearts, both of these interpretations can be readily seen within what calls itself the church in our current age.

The main characteristic of one who is unloving within the body of Christ is that they will use the rest of the body as a means of achieving their own ends. Every bright smile and lupine sneer you see on your television screen insisting that the way to heaven is through your wallet and that the condition of your heart is of little consequence as long as you give and give until it hurts is, by definition, unloving. To know that someone is still shackled and a slave to sin, yet your singular purpose is to separate them from their money rather than point the way to Jesus, who can facilitate their freedom, is the epitome of being unloving.

A spiritual leader who is not concerned with your spiritual well-being is nothing more than a wolf pretending to be a shepherd. They can say they love you in ever more poetic and enigmatic ways, all the while sharpening their sheers and preparing to fleece you of your wool. You tell someone a painful truth because you love them enough to do it. You perpetuate a lie and coddle their sin, omitting what the Bible has to say about it because you have no love for them in your heart and are just using them as a walking ATM.

There is a nefarious purpose in our attempt to redefine the meaning of words, and in twisting them to mean something they were never intended to. We’ve come to the point where it is deemed loving to cheer on those who are hellbound and the heights of hatred and intolerance when you dare to point to the precipice they’re about to go over and warn them before it’s too late.

Love does not equal acceptance of sin or validation and celebration of perversion. Telling someone who is drowning that they’re doing it masterfully isn’t loving, but the polar opposite. Love, true love, is pointing the way to Jesus and telling people how they can be free of the soul rot that has consumed their being and to which they have become slaves.

During the last days, Paul tells us that men will likewise be without natural affection. Even among the godless, there used to be this unwritten rule that you defend the innocent, protect the helpless, and defend life whenever it is threatened. That you would have supposed pastors and spiritual leaders of certain denominations decrying any attempt at prioritizing the sanctity of life tells you all you need to know about the time you’re living.

When the murder of the unborn and unbidden access to it becomes the rallying cry for the church and animates them to a far greater degree than defending the gospel or the name of Jesus, there can be no denying the corruption, the decline, and the evil festering in the hearts of those claiming to be His own.

Are you saying the metric for being a believer is being pro-life? I’m saying the metric for being human and in possession of natural affection is being pro-life. Why this is a debate within the church is beyond me. Why entire denominations would be advocating for the murder of the helpless and innocent is downright diabolical and beyond my capacity to process. Unless you are the giver of life, you have no right or authority to determine when that life is snuffed out. That should be the end of the discussion, but here we are, living in perilous times, and the hearts of many have turned to stone.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

The Last Days Of The Church XVII

 Once the stain of unholiness makes its mark upon a heart, it tends to bring along friends. It doesn’t like being alone and fears that the individual in question might see the error of their rebellion and seek repentance, returning to the light. As such, it is often that the tendency of the unholy is to likewise be haughty, headstrong, unloving, and unforgiving. They are so certain of their truth and the deception they’ve allowed to take root in their heart that they will not hear any contrarian voice without growing exceedingly angry and bitter. They are quick to slander anyone who points to sin and calls it sin, calling them unloving, while they themselves exhibit the characteristics of the unloving.

It’s a trick that is also successfully implemented in modern-day politics, wherein those accusing the other side of the most treasonous crimes are usually guilty of them and worse. You don’t have to be obsessed with the day-to-day goings on of the power brokers of our day to see that the most vocal detractors of some individual or another are later found guilty of doing precisely what they railed against with such vehemence.

The church has followed suit, and there are certain practices, sins, and vices regarding which dissent is no longer allowed in certain denominations because those at the top are openly practicing them. If you are unwilling to toe the line and agree with the lunacy being peddled as normal, you are summarily shown the door and asked never to return. We don’t need your negativity, no sir. Who are you to judge? I’m nobody, but the God of the Bible is somebody, and He judges without regard for men’s opinions or how engrained their deception might have become. You can’t identify as a believer; you must be a believer in word and deed.

An unholy individual will always strive to satisfy the desires of his flesh. He is by all accounts a slave, shackled to the thing that has brought him low, always attempting to excuse and justify the vapid emptiness of their existence, pretending that a momentary, fleeting sin satisfies the deepest longing of their soul. It is a lie, for sin can never satisfy the overriding need for the presence of God in a man’s heart. The absence of God makes man less than a man, and that some are willing to turn their backs on Him in order to satisfy urges and desires, even among those who name the name of Christ, is the emblematic tragedy of the last days of the church.

The unholy feel no shame and lack decency. They seek pleasure in abnormal and unnatural pursuits, surrendering their hearts to them. Eventually, that perversion or unnatural pursuit becomes the core of their existence, and everything revolves around it. Their identity becomes synonymous with their proclivity, and they become subject to its whims. That’s not to say the unholy can’t feign religiosity when it suits them or even quote scripture out of context to bolster their arguments. They are well versed in appearing to be something they are not, and whenever they feel as though they are losing the argument, their fallback is always victimhood. It is neither hateful nor unloving to call sin what it is, nor is the individual practicing the sin being persecuted when they are called to repent of it.

When preachers, pastors, or evangelists go out of their way to mollycoddle sin, prioritizing feelings over men’s souls, they are not doing the lost any favors, nor are they exhibiting the love of God. To the world, it may seem thus. To God, it is a betrayal of one of the fundamental tenets of the faith, wherein an individual must repent and be born again into a new life in Christ.

An infection requires antibiotics to go away, and sin requires repentance to cease having sway over the individual. If repentance is not forthcoming, the person in question will eventually return to it and grow ever more in thrall to it because once it returns, it brings reinforcements. It’s no mystery why so many today return to bondage, sin, and ungodliness. There may have been an emotional response to God, but there was no repentance, and so the sin lingered, latent for a time but ever ready to resume its corruption.

That the unholy would not be outside the camp but within is the new wrinkle that will appear and become ever more evident during the last days. Again, because context matters, and when these things were written undergirds their prophetic nature, Paul wrote these words some two thousand years ago.

It used to be that the godless and reprobate remained so until stirred to repentance, but once repentance occurred, their lives were forever transformed. They walked in the light, pursued holiness, desired godliness, and grew in God. That has been turned on its ear in our modern age, wherein men want the security of the promise of heaven while remaining fully shackled and subservient to hell.

Matthew 6:24, “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”

When Jesus said no one could serve two masters, He did not intend it to be taken as a challenge to try and prove Him wrong. Evidently, that’s what much of the church took it as. We know what you said, but we think we can swing it. It’s not so much about having hate for one and love for the other; that’s so binary and minimalistic. Why can’t we view it more along the lines of joint custody? You get us on weekends; the world gets us the rest of the week; that way, everyone’s happy.

We’ve convinced ourselves God is willing to play such childish games when He clearly isn’t. When He declared in His word that attempting to serve two masters never turns out well, it was not because it wasn’t His best for you but because it was impossible. To put it into perspective, while one gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him would not perish but have everlasting life, the other walks about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. Who do you think has your best interests at heart? Who do you think wants the best for you? Is it the one who seeks your destruction or the one who seeks your salvation? Even so, the unholy will find a way to justify their rebellion because the singular desire of their heart is not to serve God but rather their flesh, and if disregarding the consequences of their actions is required in order to achieve their goal, so be it.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

The Last Days Of The Church XVI

 As we go down the list of the things we will see within the church during the last days, Paul points to men being unholy as one of the signs that will be evident. God never expected the godless to be holy, but He does expect His children to exhibit holiness. This is yet another one of those terms that have fallen out of favor with the contemporary church, accompanied by others such as repentance, sanctification, and righteousness, which, if spoken of or insisted upon, will have the pastor answering to the elder board for having hurt the feelings of one individual or another.

That the message of the cross, the gospel of Christ, and the Word of God were meant to be inoffensive, all-inclusive, permissive, and innocuous is yet another lie that has crept within the household of faith and declared to be the truth. God did not take my feelings or yours into account when He inspired the writing of the Bible via the Holy Spirit. He didn’t give a second thought about how it would make men feel when He called them wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked. God’s not looking for your affirmation, approval, or vote, so He doesn’t have to soften blows or try His best to make you feel warm and fuzzy.

He is God! The Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the omnipotent, omniscient Creator of all that is and who spoke the universe into being.

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

Given that God said to be holy and that the men of the last days claiming to be of God will be unholy, we would do well to define what unholy means before going any further. Some synonyms for unholy are profane, indecent, absent shame, blind to modesty, blind to decency, lacking purity, or absent of righteousness. The unholy of the last days won’t be one of these things but an amalgam, a mixture of all of them, whether profaning the Word of God by declaring it said something it didn’t while being shameless in doing so, living in open sin while calling themselves men of God, lacking decency, modesty or righteousness, or just working against the plan and will of God believing themselves to be above the Word.

What Paul declared as future tense is now present tense, and you don’t have to look far to find a handful of examples from any given denomination. You wouldn’t have to go back far. A few weeks would suffice, and if you counted on your fingers how many elders, children’s pastors, senior pastors, evangelists, and ministry leaders were arrested for bonafide crimes, you’d need more fingers.

Every new day seems to be another heartbreak, another black eye, another individual exposed for the unholy conduct in which they have engaged, thereby bringing shame to the household of faith.

If Paul were writing about the godless in his letter, there would have been nothing revelatory in saying that during the last days, they would be unholy. You don’t say! The godless will continue to be godless, and the unholy, unholy. Will water also continue to be wet, and fire continue to burn?

The tragedy of it is that he was writing about the church of the last days and all the festering boils, putrid wounds, and spreading stains that would be evident during the last days, not only from within but also from without. The godless are noticing the hypocrisy of those who beat their chests, insisting that they are godly. The godless are wrinkling their noses as pastor after pastor gets exposed for being an unrepentant pervert or gets arrested for doing things even most of the godless cringe away from. Tell me we’re living in the last days without telling me we’re living in the last days.

That the guy who kissed dating goodbye also ended up kissing Jesus goodbye, or that one of the lead singers for Hillsong, Hillsonged himself into the mud from which he’d claimed to have been set free are the tame ones. It gets worse, much worse, and it’s not hard to find the stories, confessions, half-hearted apologies, and outright renunciations of Christ as Lord.

Before the other denominations begin to point out that this is a charismatic problem, you would do well to do some research and see how many progenies of some of the most well-known names in your denomination are avowed atheists who are doing their utmost to turn the young and impressionable away from the light and the truth of Christ as the only way to the Father.

Whether Baptist, Methodist, Reformed, Pentecostal, Lutheran, or any other of the major denominations one could think of, the unholy aren’t just a negligible minority. There is a groundswell of godless people insisting that they serve God, even though the god they serve is of their own making. To such individuals, Jesus is whatever they want Him to be, and the deeper the depravity of their hearts, the more depraved their definition of Jesus. They are irreverent to the utmost, profane, and lacking righteousness or purity, yet there they stand, insisting that their Jesus is just as divine as the Christ who said, go and sin no more.

This is the natural decline and end result of a church, denomination, or generation whose singular pursuit is watering down the gospel and nullifying the need for repentance and the blood of Jesus to make one clean, whole, and regenerate.  

An unholy man or woman will always prioritize their wants, desires, and lusts over the will and Word of God. Their identity is not in Christ but in some other thing to which they have surrendered and are now ruled by their predilections in perpetuity. While the Word of God tells us that without holiness, no one will see the Lord, holiness is the furthest thing from their hearts and minds, and if anyone dares to point to Scripture, they mock, scoff, and obfuscate. They will always find others who will justify their rebellion and celebrate their sin because birds of a feather flock together, and those who have been given over seem to find each other readily enough.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

The Last Days Of The Church XV

 Many things had to go wrong for the contemporary church to find itself in the spiritual condition it finds itself in. Perhaps one of the most insidious of these was the idea that we can attract those of the world by becoming more relevant, seeker-friendly, and less biblical. If we can dilute it, water it down, remove the bits the world deems unsavory and intolerant, then we’d really leave our mark. The reason people weren’t coming to church was because there was too much Jesus there. That’s an easy fix, then, isn’t it? Put Jesus in an attic somewhere and only bring Him out on special occasions. Birthdays and special events only; other than that handful of times, we can focus on the ministry of tithing and hundredfold returns.

It worked, didn’t it? Mega churches started sprouting up all over the place, people were filling the seats and overflowing the offering buckets, and we thought we’d cracked the code. We’d finally done it! Paul must have been wrong in his first letter to the Corinthians after all. I guess it was a limiting belief when he said that the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God and not the way things really were.

1 Corinthians 2:14-15, “But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one.”

No, Paul wasn’t wrong. That’s the tragedy of it. The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God. However, there are countless souls who, still being in the flesh, believe the lie that they have become spiritual by osmosis while retaining the natural man fully intact and unregenerate. You cannot be of the light and of the dark simultaneously. You cannot testify the truth with your lips while your heart is full of evil and deceit. That thing about repenting, therefore, wasn’t an option or some extra credit you could earn; it is mandatory and non-negotiable.

One of the reasons for the great peril of the last days and the spiritual condition of the church during that time is that those who insisted they were preachers of the gospel really weren’t, and rather than doing the thing the Bible told them they needed to do, they took it upon themselves to jigger with the Word and insisted they were supposed to save the world. Men preach; God saves. If you preach the truth, those saved are being transformed, renewed, regenerated, and born again. If you preach a lie, those thinking they’re being saved really aren’t because you never told them what they needed to do to be saved.

John 3:1-3, “There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, “Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these things that You do unless God is with him.” Jesus answered and said to him, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”’

Nicodemus was a Pharisee. He knew the law, lived the law, and was even a ruler among the Jews. He acknowledged that Jesus was a teacher come from God, as had the other Pharisees. Nicodemus was a religious man, likely a moral man, a keeper of the law, and had ‘accepted’ Jesus as being sent from God, yet Jesus still said, you must be born again, for unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

It’s not my job to convert you; it’s my job to preach the gospel to you. The rest is between you and God. When we begin to poll test the gospel message and remove the things unspiritual people find uncomfortable, we are diluting the very essence of the gospel. It’s not as though we did it with God’s permission or consent. It’s not as though He changed His mind or lowered His standard, so why are we surprised at the lethargy sweeping the Western Church? The gospel is not a commodity to be tested but a divine message of salvation to be embraced.

This generation insisted on duplicity; don’t resent God for maintaining His standard of righteousness.

You can’t have God on your terms. No matter how special you might consider yourself to be or how entitled you might feel to a special exemption wherein God has to dance to your tune and accept you without being born again, it will not be so. You can have God on His terms, and His terms are clearly spelled out in the Word.

But that would mean that far fewer people than we thought are genuinely saved and sanctified. Isn’t that what the Bible says?

Matthew 7:13-14, “Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.”

Departure from the truth has facilitated all the things Paul lists as the source of peril within the church in our last days. Had we remained in truth and prioritized men’s souls over men’s wallets and quality over quantity, we would not be in the predicament we find ourselves in. We would not be on the threshold of the falling away or the shockwave of animosity and vitriol that will follow on its heels.

You cannot have a Christless gospel and still call it the gospel or have any expectation that it will save or lead you to life. There’s no such thing as a Christless truth, and any way that promises you life without Jesus is a lie and a deception. This is basic Christianity, yet pastors of all denominations and stripes are going out of their way to avoid this singularly crucial truth: Jesus is imperative! He’s not just some auxiliary figure in the Bible that we can ignore whenever it suits us. He is the gospel. Without Him, there would be no gospel, nor would there be a way to be reconciled with the Father.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

The Last Days Of The Church XIV

 If you’ve ever gone out of your way to help someone and did your best to do so, and the only feedback you received is that it wasn’t nearly enough, you know how disheartening unthankfulness can be. It’s also why I don’t subscribe to the mindset that whenever someone with means makes a sizeable contribution to some project, whether it’s to dig wells or build homes, the immediate reaction should be that they could have done more.

Coincidentally, that is always the narrative from the nosebleed section, no matter how unmatchable by us common folk the generosity of those they look their noses down upon happens to be. These are the same people who do absolutely nothing for that particular cause except wait feverishly beside their keyboard until someone does so they can belittle the size of their contribution. It’s not up to me to decide what another should do for the poor; it’s up to me to decide what I will do for them since they will always be among us.

A sense of entitlement is kryptonite to thankfulness and a debilitating poison for men’s souls. When an individual believes that whatever they receive from the hand of God is owed to them, that simply by raising a hand in church, they are entitled to all the riches of earth, however God chooses to bless them, it’s never enough, and they are never thankful.

Being unthankful in the little things will eventually lead to being unthankful in the big ones. If you are not thankful for everything, eventually, you will be thankful for nothing. We form patterns, and before we realize it, they become habits, and once that habit is formed, it takes some sort of event to snap us out of it and make us realize what we’ve been doing. Being unthankful can become habit forming, and when unthankfulness takes root in men’s hearts, their attitude is one of perpetual ingratitude.

Bless me, Lord. They cry aloud, and God answers, I have. To that, they arch their eyebrows and wonder aloud, how so?

Psalm 103:1-5, “Bless the Lord, O my soul; And all that is within me, bless His holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits: Who forgives all your iniquities, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from destruction, who crowns you with lovingkindness and tender mercies, who satisfies your mouth with good things, so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.”

That’s all well and good, but why does my neighbor have a newer car, a bigger house, fancier toys, and more money than me? That’s the answer of the unthankful heart whenever God reveals all that He has done. It’s never enough; it’s never sufficient because they’re always comparing their status with someone else’s, and it’s never with the individual who has less.

Of all the things David mentioned in his hymn of thanksgiving, not one was tethered to the material. You couldn’t buy any of the things he was thankful for, no matter how much you were willing to spend. That’s the thing the unthankful never seem to realize: that the benefits God reserves for His own are priceless and not within man’s ability to acquire by any other means. You can’t buy forgiveness or healing; you can’t purchase redemption from destruction; you can’t join a club, no matter how exclusive, to receive His lovingkindness and tender mercies. To access any of these things, you must be His, belong to Him, serve Him, and obey Him.

What many in the West define as poverty, the rest of the world deems unattainable luxuries. If you have running water, a roof over your head, a means of earning your daily bread, and a means of transport, you’re doing better than most people living in the world today. There are currently over one billion people living on less than a dollar a day, yet we still find reasons to be unthankful more often than many of them.

The reason for this is simple: men’s sense of entitlement has reached such monstrous proportions that the daily blessings others would weep in gratitude toward God over, they dismiss offhand. Being unthankful has always been a mark of the godless. Only within the last few decades has it become a staple within the church as well. Standing before God with our hands out, asking for more, even though we have more than enough, has become a mainstay of the modern-day church. If what we were asking for was more faith, more power, more virtue, more righteousness, more obedience, or faithfulness, it would be all well and good. We’re not, though. We’re not asking God for the refiner’s fire; we’re praying money down from heaven and flocking to anyone who would promise us life on easy street.

Being thankful is a choice. Being unthankful is likewise a choice. We choose to see the blessing and providence of God every day or to compare ourselves to others and feel as though we’ve been shortchanged somehow.

Not only are we to be thankful for God’s blessings, but we must also be thankful for the trials He allows in our lives. It’s a big ask when most people aren’t even thankful for their blessings, but when we realize that the trials He allows bring us closer to Him, teach us to be more dependent upon Him, and facilitate our seeing His mighty hand at work in our lives, we become thankful even for them.

An unthankful heart will always have a reason to grumble. It will always have some complaint or another because it is never satisfied. There will always be something more it desires, refusing to consider all it has received. The attitude of ‘what have you done for me lately’ defines the unthankful heart, as though Jesus and His sacrifice on the cross were not enough.

Being around unthankful believers is disheartening. Their attitude is akin to a perpetual dark cloud that saps your joy and your peace. Every day is a new misfortune, a fresh reason to gripe, to insist that they are unloved by God because there’s a pebble in their shoe, rather than being thankful that they have shoes and shaking out the pebble.

If we cannot be thankful in times such as these, how will we be thankful when times get hard? If we cannot be thankful in seasons of plenty, how will we be thankful in seasons of famine?

2 Corinthians 4:16-18, “Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.”

How many churches today can honestly say this is the standard they live by? How many believers can read these words and see their hearts mirrored therein? Never mind that Paul’s definition of light affliction was within the context of being hungry, thirsty, cold, naked, shipwrecked, beaten with rods, and stoned. An unthankful heart will always focus on the temporary, the things that are seen, the things they can touch, drive, wear, and brag about. The thankful heart understands that come what may in this life, including trials and momentary afflictions, are working for us an exceeding and eternal weight of glory.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.