Just Like Jesus!

 You know something has gone horribly awry if you have to double-check to see if something you’ve read online wasn’t put out by the Onion. Sometimes people say stupid things in gest, and I tend to give them a pass for the most part. I’m not some hyper-sensitive boob looking to feign outrage and accuse someone of the worst sort of atrocity even though I know what they said was not intended in the way it was interpreted.

We used to extend people grace. We used to give people the benefit of the doubt. We used to allow for foibles, imperfections, flubs, slips of the tongue, and other such things, but no more. Selective outrage and unquestioning subservience have become our new drugs of choice. Like any cult, if you reject, denounce, or otherwise refuse to join the clique, well, then you should just be dispensed with. If not outright killed, then put in a deep dark hole and fed tofu and soy for the rest of your life.

Maybe it’s the testosterone making you so disagreeable to the idea of Communism. Perhaps it’s misplaced machismo, or masculinity, making you question the ever-changing science, but they have ways of dealing with that too. They’ll just put you in a dress, pump you full of estrogen, and play videos of people asking why you want to kill grandma with your selfishness on an endless loop. You’ll be moisturizing, wearing a face diaper, and singing the praises of Socialism in no time flat.

On a serious note, however, I received the same message from three different people yesterday, and I actually had to do a bit of digging to make sure it was not satire. I needed to make sure it wasn’t someone trying to pull a prank.

To be fair, just so we understand the context, I found it a wee bit cringe when Christians would go on and on about Donald Trump being King Cyrus reborn. If you are unaware of who King Cyrus was, he was an ancient king used by God as an instrument, although not a worshipper of the one true God. There was no talk of him being a saint, no talk of him being divine, just a type and shadow of a long-ago individual who did good despite himself.

Fast forward to the year 2021, and we have the following nugget from someone on Twitter: “Jesus fell three times carrying the Cross while on the way to Calvary to save us. Biden also fell three times carrying the hardship America is going through on his way to deliver Hope. Today God looked upon Biden and said, ‘this is my Son, the beloved, in whom I am well pleased.’”

I’ll just let that marinate for a minute, like a fart in an elevator. The Beth Moores of the world were all aflutter, up in arms, and beside themselves, because Donald Trump was compared to a godless king of the ancient world, but are perfectly fine with a man whose most profound thought of late was why does the pudding in his diaper have chunks being compared with Jesus!

So, to clarify, no, Joe Biden is not like Jesus; in fact, far from it. Joe Biden is a corrupt, addled, aging, power-drunk septuagenarian, perfectly fine with partial-birth abortion, late-term abortion, in fact, abortion of any kind, among other things. I’m confident that on the list of what Jesus would do, supporting the murder of the innocent is not among them.

I could go on because the list is long, but what would be the point? We must all now sleep in the bed that a man who can’t make it up a flight of stairs has made, and even at the risk of angering some of you, we deserve nothing less.  

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr. 

Not A Dream

 

If you've felt like the world has turned upside down and inside out, you are not alone. It's not a dream, it's not a nightmare, it's not an Ambien-induced episode, and there's no waking up from it. Unlike the cat ladies on Facebook who insist on posting the "hang in there memes," I'm honest enough with you to tell you how it is. Not how I hoped it would be, or what the best-case scenario will look like if a thousand things happen in sequential order, akin to winning the lottery thirty times in a row, but how it is.

This is where we are! We are at a point where more and more it seems that the governing class is daring God to judge this nation, almost thumbing their noses at Him. At this juncture, can any intellectually honest person say we are undeserving of judgment? Can any intellectually honest person say that the steps we've taken over the past couple of months are in harmony with the Gospel or bring honor to God? Maybe Beth Moore, but she's far from intellectually honest. I'll just leave it there because I don't want to make this a rant about Beth Moore.

I've never been a big fan of just saying something for the sake of saying it. I don't have to put out content to appease my Patreon members, nor am I interested in clickbait to somehow stroke my ego at the thought of how many eyes perused what I've written.

For the most part, truth be known, I write for posterity because continuing to yell at the top of my lungs to bar the stable door even though the horse has already bolted is wasted breath at best. Sure, some realized there is a cottage industry in feeding people morsels of false hope, but I'd rather you know the truth and prepare your heart for what is to come.

The sad reality is that we are beyond the point of peaceful redress. We are witnessing the current administration do nothing more odious than keeping their word, and for every so-called spiritual leader, pastor, teacher, evangelist, or angst peddler feigning outrage, too little, too late.

Because the other side isn't interested in dialogue, diplomacy, coming together, crossing the aisle, or some other such pabulum, they're all gas no break when it comes to destroying this nation. Because no boogeymen existed, they've had to conjure them, and in the process, have broad-brushed half of this nation's citizens as being bloodthirsty savages.

They're hoping calling people Nazis will keep enough of them quiet for long enough so they can ensure permanent control. What they have not as yet realized is that at some point, those they've demonized will become what they've been accused of being for the simple reason that they will have no other choice. When you vilify law-abiding citizens, deify criminals, strip a nation of its freedoms, give preferential treatment to illegals, and call your tax base selfish for wanting to keep more of what they earn, you have all the necessary components for combustibility.

At some point, you can't not trust your lying eyes anymore. At some point, even the most indifferent among us will have to acknowledge the horrors these caricatures have wrought upon this nation. At some point, fathers will look upon their sons and daughters' faces and realize their futures have been squandered. They will also acknowledge that if those who have grown rich by selling out their countrymen have their way, they will be subjects rather than citizens in short order. At some point, they will mourn the death of their nation, the loss of their freedom, the raping of their dignity, the destruction of their families, the perversion of their morality, the rejection of their God, and that sense of loss will turn to anger, then rage. When that sentiment reaches critical mass, no amount of gated compounds, barbed wire, or free money will hold back the tide.

What is coming is inevitable. It always has been. I was just hoping we'd get a little more time.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr. 

Reality Check

We are about to get a firsthand, front-row demonstration of what Nineveh would have suffered had they not repented. I spent the better part of thirty minutes trying to soften the blow, trying to make it seem less dire than it is, but there's no getting around the truth of where we are, where we are headed, and what we are sure to see along the way.

The parallels are eerily similar until they're not. The point where the similarities between American and Nineveh diverge is the most essential of all, and that is repentance. Whether a nation took the path of repentance or continued down the path of rebellion is the determining factor for judgment or the postponement thereof.

Just as with Nineveh, men were sent to this nation to plead, implore, and even beg anyone who would hear to repent and turn their hearts back to God again. In large part, they were summarily mocked, labeled legalists, and called delusional because if God were going to speak to anyone, it wouldn't be some migrant farmer or some lowly street preacher. It would be a hipster pastor with skinny jeans and fake dark-rimmed glasses. Perhaps even a human caricature with face tattoos and lip piercings that identified as non-binary, but surely not some run-of-the-mill non-intellectual whose only noteworthy attribute was enduring persecution and torture for his faith. I mean, come on, if you want the message to penetrate, you have to choose the right messenger.

We pulled out every excuse in the book and even invented a few just so we wouldn't have to humble ourselves, just so we wouldn't have to turn from our wicked ways, just so we wouldn't have to repent. Repentance is a choice. It is an intentional, actionable, determinative choice! God can't make you do it; He won't twist your arm, or beat you over the head because then it wouldn't be genuine, heartfelt, heart-changing repentance.

The proposition was simple: If you repent, I will restore you. If you persist in your rebellion, I will destroy you. It doesn't get much simpler than that, but then again, it's hard to fill a three-hundred-page book with what you could declare in one breath, so most of the spiritual elites were uninterested. They'd rather twist themselves into pretzels trying to justify the lukewarm farce modern-day Christianity has become.

So, yes, we're headed toward some choppy seas, and the best we can do is make certain we are firmly affixed to the ship, so we don't get thrown overboard. Knowing what is about to be unleashed upon an unsuspecting public has less to do with prophecy or the prophetic and more to do with understanding how the world works and how predators react to weakness. All it takes is a modicum of honesty, even if being honest about it challenges our preconceived beliefs regarding this country's greatness. Sin has a corrosive effect, and even greatness can be eaten away at by it if it's allowed to fester. Not only has sin been allowed to fester, but it is also being celebrated, validated, and embraced by what were to be the antibodies to sin, the church.

As I've thought about this on and off for the past few days, the one thing I think very few are prepared for, even within the circles I run in, is the speed with which everything goes to ruin once God removes His protection from a nation. We're not talking about a slow two-century decline akin to the Roman Empire before finally being put out of its misery. That is something you should prepare for psychologically because it will shipwreck a lot of people.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr.  

Big Plans

 Whenever anyone in government says they have big plans for you, it should terrify you to no end. It should give you the shivers, send chills down your spine, and make you physically nauseous all at once.

If anything, Ronald Regan was understating it when he said the English language's scariest words are I'm from the government, and I'm here to help. He was not exaggerating for effect, nor was he being hyperbolic. If it's any consolation, it's not just this government; it's all governments. Imagine if these bumbling buffoons who couldn't find their ears with both hands and a flashlight weren't just incompetent by their very existence but harbored ill will toward the average taxpayer who keeps them employed for doing nothing more than inhaling and exhaling.

To those who have big plans for everyone else, both in government and without, everyone falls into one of two categories: you are either a subservient, obedient subject, or you are an obstacle in the way of progress. Funny how the people who spent the last four years calling everyone else Nazis are acting like them all of a sudden.

There is this misconception that paper pushers, bureaucrats, and loosely defined public servants are the best this nation had to offer insofar as intelligence, ability, and competence are concerned. Likewise, there is an oft regurgitated fallacy that public servants are good, decent, honest, upstanding people. Granted, at least half are. I was at three quarters, but the number is decreasing rapidly. However, that leaves the other half, who are bitter, vindictive, and outright evil in some cases.

I'm getting to something because I'd rather you know it sooner rather than later so you don't live under the illusion that the public servant is your last line of defense. If that is what you were counting on, then you have no line of defense.

I watched a video this morning of a woman who did a happy dance after shutting down a brewery on super bowl Sunday. Of all the things I've seen public servants do to average citizens over the past year in the name of protecting them from themselves, it shouldn't have gotten to me the way it did, but for some reason, it seemed grotesque and cruel the way few things do. Perhaps it was the gratuitousness and needlessness of it all that struck a chord. Whatever it was, it stayed with me for the rest of the day.

Regardless of how you feel about beer, or microbreweries for that matter, the business in question was legally allowed to operate. Still, this busybody of a health inspector decided she would take it upon herself to make right the world's wrongs and shut down a business for whom that particular day was likely the biggest day of the year. She had the power; it was her's to wield, and by golly if she wouldn't do just that. If shutting down the business is all that would have happened, if the video had cut to black and we wouldn't have gotten a glimpse of her dancing the jig, perhaps we could excuse her actions as overly cautious or well-intentioned. Having seen her reaction to crippling individuals who are just trying to scrape by, this woman's pettiness and vindictiveness are beyond dispute.

So what's the point this morning? It's a simple one. By his nature, man is neither good nor noble, selfless nor magnanimous. It is God who imbues nobility and virtue in man. The less of God there is in any given society, the less goodness, mercy, nobility, or virtue you will see. Couple that with individuals who see you as nothing more than the egg that needs breaking in order to make the omelet, and you will begin to understand where we are headed.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr. 

Malicious Intent

 I almost got frostbite shoveling my driveway the other day from all the global warming. Yes, I shovel. I’m still young enough to do it by hand, and to be honest, it’s the only actual exercise I get in the winter. It’s not like I used to exercise more during the winter months before everyone started wearing a face diaper, but it’s a good excuse nevertheless. What, am I going to walk at a brisk pace on a treadmill with a mask on?

That’s the thing, though. We always find excuses for the things we fail to do. To us, the excuses seem reasonable and well thought out, and as long as you’re the only one your excuses are affecting, then no harm, no foul. However, it becomes problematic when we begin to excuse the behavior of others and twist ourselves into pretzels trying to find a reason other than malicious intent for what they are doing.

Now, before you schedule a stoning of yours truly in the public square, my wife was once a school teacher. I have the utmost respect for the profession, but not so much for the current standard-bearers of said profession. I get it. It must be fun pounding back Cosmos first thing in the morning and still getting paid, but like every free ride, it must end at some point.

The kids aren’t all right. They’re not adjusting to the new normal, and every study brave enough to do a deep dive into the secondary effects of keeping kids in front of a screen for a few hours a day and calling it education has drawn the same conclusion. If the data coming in is only half right, and the damage caused by children not being in class coming up on a year now is only half as bad as the numbers are hinting, it’s still catastrophic.

Would that I could spend my days in my pajamas making vision boards on Pinterest and still pay my mortgage, I wouldn’t want to go back to regularly scheduled showers either. Again, if the refusal to go back to work only affected the now borderline alcoholics calling themselves heroes for no apparent reason, I wouldn’t mind it so much. Their decisions, however, are affecting children, and the ripple effects are unquantifiable.

We will see the wreckage their selfishness has wrought only a decade down the road, but by then, we’ll likely be living in spider holes, eating earthworms, and trapping squirrels for their fur, so I don’t know how many people will have the energy to be incensed about what they’ve done.

There is a certain kind of malevolence, an open disdain of the average citizen, and yes, malicious intent to every other edict and proclamation coming from the so-called experts, as well as the ruling class. That’s okay, though. You’re not smart enough to see the bigger picture, nor selfless enough to sacrifice for the greater good. Just ask John Kerry as he disembarks his private jet how you not wanting to freeze to death in your own home is selfish on your part, and he’ll dazzle you with an in-depth explanation.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr. 

Retrospective Wisdom

 I recently started re-reading the first draft of my third book on prayer and came across a passage that, although written some five years ago, is packed with a retrospective wisdom of sorts. I found this passage within the context of Solomon’s prayer to God, and it struck me so profoundly that I had to re-read it a few times to make sure it said what I thought it said.

When it comes to book writing, I’m like a kid who was gifted a trunkload of Legos and wants to build them simultaneously. I have about eight books in various stages of completion sitting on my laptop. Since we are almost out of the diaper changing watch the kids every waking minute so they don’t tumble down the stairs stage, I’ve decided it would be an excellent time to roll a few of them out since I believe they are relevant for the body of Christ.

This was the oldest of the manuscripts sitting idle, so I decided to begin with the oldest and work my way to the present.

I believe that these short paragraphs written well over five years ago will do much to clarify the situation we are currently living through. I know some will not receive it in the spirit with which it was intended, but I would rather contend with the reality before me than fool myself into believing something that is counter to Scripture.

Solomon realized instinctively what Paul would later verbalize in his letter to the Romans, that there is no authority except God, and God appoints the authorities that exist. Whether to bless a nation or judge a nation, God appoints its authorities, rulers, and kings. As creatures limited in understanding, oftentimes, we do not perceive or understand God's plan in the appointment of a particular leader or a specific authority. One of the most common reasons we cannot see God's plan is due to the underlying assumption that the leader or authority was appointed for our blessing rather than our judgment. We want to believe that God will bless us despite ourselves, but His word confirms the contrary.

When we open our eyes to the reality that God establishes rulers to both bless and judge, we come to understand why certain men are in power in certain nations.

In a nutshell, this is what the church must now wrestle with. We must come to terms with the reality that just because we happen to reside in America, we are no more special than those in Uganda, Romania, or Poland. God judges sin in the land, and no nation, people, or tongue has ever received a reprieve from judgment without repentance. It’s not as though we weren’t given time to repent. Instead of humbling ourselves, we squandered the time we were given. Even if a game goes into overtime, it doesn’t mean it will go on indefinitely.

The real tragedy in all of this is that the Church didn’t even bother to get off the bench as the clock was ticking down. They much preferred to mock and look down on those that though outnumbered, still tried their best to eke out a tie hoping to go into double overtime.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr.

Tug-of-War

It’s funny how some Christians still believe that the people who are basically advocating for the legalization of bow hunting toddlers up until they’re old enough to dial 911 for themselves have any limits on the depths of depravity to which they will sink. They are naïve enough to hope that individuals who have no qualms about dissecting a human baby and selling it for parts as though it were some wrecked car left on the side of the road have any moral compass or self-awareness.

What you defend in your day to day says a lot more about you than what denomination you belong to or what theological bend you represent. If you defend darkness and death, you align yourself with them, becoming them. If you uphold light and righteousness, likewise, you align yourself with them. You cannot defend the darkness while being a servant of the light, just as you can’t defend the light being a servant of darkness. Truth is stubbornly consistent, and though men might try to twist it, fragment it, or interpret it, it reverts to its original state.

The truth is that the servants of darkness today are, as Peter calls them, natural brute beasts, who only have one goal, and that is power. It’s not as though no one saw this coming because if you comb through the things I’ve written, the pattern is undeniably consistent. However, because they know that we know that they know that we know that their positions were not earned but rather stolen, their need to dominate, to silence, and to destroy will only multiply.

It’s like the guy who’s putzing around on a stolen bike in the neighborhood he stole it from. He’s always thinking someone’s eyeballing him, watching him, calling the cops on him, or is about to chase him down the street yelling about him being a thief.

Small people are vindictive people by nature. In their quiet moments of reflection and self-assessment, they acknowledge that they are individuals of no accomplishment, vision, or moral clarity. They are the kind of souls that have never built up anything meaningful, so all they know is how to destroy, tear down, and vilify.

They are not content to let the best argument win out in the end because they know they will lose. As such, we can no longer agree to disagree, but if you disagree, you must be banished, demonized, and ultimately destroyed. You must be brought low to the point that you can no longer provide for your family or afford to keep a roof over your head. Even then, at your lowest, they will say you’ve not suffered nearly enough for the great high crime of questioning the wisdom of pre-pubescent children being fed hormone blockers like it was candy.

In short order, I fear, we will learn a handful of indispensable truths that ought to have been self-evident. We will learn how tyrannical small people can be when given power, how policy ought to trump personality insofar as governance is concerned, and how hurt feelings don’t hurt nearly as much as an empty belly and an empty wallet.

As I was getting ready to publish these musings, a disturbing thought came to me: there’s no one coming to save us! No allied forces are coming over the hill, and there are no liberating armies ready to tear down the enemy’s gates. We were the last of the good guys. We were the last of those willing to sacrifice themselves to rescue strangers in peril. I know how it sounds, but it’s the truth! Sooner or later, you’ll come to realize it as well.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr.