Proof The Bible Is True

 Every journey has a beginning and an end. As one journey ends, another begins, but the only thing yet to be determined is the destination. I’ve started outlining the teaching on Job, and it’s a bruiser. It’s not one of those books you can get through in a few days or weeks. It’s challenging, humbling, and encouraging, but it’s not for the faint of heart or those who insist that the purpose of God is to serve man and not the other way around.

Simultaneously, I’ve also been outlining a shorter series on the last days of the world and the last days of the church, not through the prism of what I’d like to see or how I’d like it to play out but what the Bible says about these things.

More often than not, expectation determines how you react to something. If I make a reservation at an uppity restaurant and go through the trouble of selling a kidney to be able to afford it, I fully expect a meal so memorable that many years from now, as I take my last breaths, I’m recalling the taste of the baked brie with the fig marmalade spread and the truffle-infused baguette. Anything less will fall short of my expectations even though, in any other setting, the meal would be deemed excellent and worthy of praise.

What will blindside many Christians in the coming season isn’t so much what’s happening in the world as that their expectations were the polar opposite, and so their reaction to it will be disproportionate.

Some time ago, I made the mistake of ordering some shirts from a website that has since become a meme. I should have remembered the adage that if something looks too good to be true it probably is, but three bucks shipped for a shirt is tempting indeed.

 Being the husky fellow that I am, I ordered their largest size, taking into account that coming from China, they would likely be smaller, and making the requisite adjustments. Since I’m no fan of tight clothing, I usually wear an XXL but ordered the 6XL shirts, thinking that the size disparity would make up for it.

Some six weeks later, after I’d forgotten I ordered the shirts, they arrived in a beat-up envelope and still ended up being a tight medium, if not a small. If I hadn’t accounted for the difference in size, I wouldn’t have been bothered. Because I’d taken it into account, however, and they were still only big enough to fit a malnourished teenager, I was admittedly frustrated.

The point is this: In order to properly prepare for what is coming, we must acknowledge the reality of what the Bible says is coming, not something we hope is coming. Whether spiritually or physically, we must prepare in accordance with what the Word of God says we should expect; otherwise, all our preparations and machinations will be for naught.

There will be people who will have prepared but not for the things the Bible says are coming, and their frustration, resentment, and bitterness will know no bounds.

I said all that to say this: I do believe that a study on the last days of the world and the last days of the church is warranted, but I gave my word that after the study on persecution, we will commence with our discussion of Job.

Given that I am torn about which topic to explore, I will leave it to you to decide. So, if you would be so kind, please leave a comment with either a one or a two, 1 being the study of Job and 2 being the study of the last days of the world and the church. If you are so inclined, you can even write in Job or Last Days, but that’s up to you.

 Depending on our focus, we will either have peace or be overwhelmed with fear and trepidation. We can focus on Jesus's warning that we will experience tribulation or His counsel that we ought not to fear. When we take His words to heart, that we ought not to fear, then come what may we will be at peace. If all we dwell on is that there will be tribulation or that we will have to endure persecution and dismiss His direction that we shouldn’t fear these things, that feeling of having a rock in the pit of your stomach will turn into a boulder, and eventually become the thing that our entire existence revolves around.

The profiteers among God’s children use fear as a motivating factor. I’ve watched as we go from one certain, absolute, get in before you’re left out, cataclysmic event to another, and with each one, wouldn’t you know it, they have some product or service that will help you weather the storm, and see you through it safe as a babe in its mother’s womb. It’s almost serendipitous when you think about it. They seem to have a cream for every itch, a remedy for anything that ails you, but when you dig a bit deeper, you realize it’s the same repackaged, rebranded stuff you could make yourself for a tenth of the cost. Granted, you don’t get the spiffy buckets if you make it yourself, but with the money you’ll be saving, you could afford to splurge on a bucket if the need arises.

Never let fear be the driving force in your decision-making process. Never let fear cloud your rational mind and make you do something you’ll regret for years to come. What’s good for the goose is not good for the gander in this case, and what God might tell you to do to prepare might not be what He told me to do in order to prepare. What is general, for everyone, without exception, is the command not to fear!

Fear is not the natural environment for a child of God. Knowing the God we serve and His omnipotence over all things, we have nothing to fear, for He will be an ever-present help in times of trouble and a constant companion throughout this journey called life. A lifetime supply of potatoes-au-gratin from your favorite televangelist will do nothing to help you when facing prison, torture, or death, but an abiding faith that you’ve built up over the years will.

God doesn’t warn you of what will come, so you might fear it. He warns of what is to come so you might prepare. If you spend your days wallowing in fear of what tomorrow will bring, not only have you misunderstood God’s intent, but you’re also doing something Jesus commanded you not to do.

Why do you think Jesus said you should count the cost before you sign on? Was it because your life would be so glamorous, carefree, full of the best the world has to offer, and full of such abundance so as to make Solomon envious?

We cannot look at those who came before us and see what they endured and expect something wholly different for ourselves. When we see that they were persecuted, yet we expect praise; they lacked, but we expect abundance; they suffered, but we expect ease, we will either betray Jesus in pursuit of the things He never promised or grow bitter at not having what we expected to have.

If you spend four years going to dental school and when you graduate, you’re surprised that you don’t get to work on airplane engines, it’s not the school’s fault; it’s yours for expecting something contrary to what you spent four years learning.

If, throughout the history of the church, we’ve been witness to persecution, the vitriol of the godless, and the hatred thereof, what makes us expect any different in our day and age? The level of hubris required for someone to assume that this present generation will be spared the testing of their faith and will not have to endure as all others who came before them have is beyond my ability to fathom.

Hebrews 10:36-38, “Still others had trial of mockings and scourgings, yes, and of chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, were tempted, were slain with the sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented – of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in the desert and mountains, in dens and caves of the earth.”

But that was then, and this is now, brother. They didn’t have the keys to unlocking prosperity and living lives of abundance. Had they been privy to the teachings of modern-day televangelists, they, too, would have basked in the sun as they sat poolside of their beachfront mansions.

To clarify: Jesus warned that we would be hated and reviled, the Bible warns that the children of God would suffer persecution, Paul looks back on those who endured for the sake of Christ and endured things we could scarcely imagine, but we’re supposed to ignore all that because some snake-oil salesman wearing the equivalent of a small nation’s GDP on his wrist says otherwise.

Whether or not we acknowledge them, believe them, accept them, or receive them, some things just are. I can tell myself I’m in my twenties until I’m blue in the face, but my body is that of a fifty-year-old, my hair is gray, and the laugh lines are showing.

Persecution is coming because the Bible says it is. It may not be what we want to hear, but it’s what we need to hear so that we might prepare for the eventuality thereof. Denying it won’t make it not be so, just as denying that the sun is hot won’t keep someone’s skin from blistering if they sit in it all day.

We cannot dismiss God’s warnings and expect to be victorious during the coming storm. We cannot fail to prepare for the eventuality of having to endure to the end and then blame God for not having the necessary tools to do so. We have the blueprint and the roadmap of what to expect and what we need to do to meet it head-on. We have God’s promises and assurances, as well as the steps we need to take to become bold as lions and valiantly defend the truth of Christ as those who came before us did. The only question that remains unanswered is whether we will choose to do so. Will we follow through? Will we be faithful? And if so, will we be faithful to the end?

Ephesians 6:10-13, “Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.”

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

 The only people in the world that do not experience fear are psychopaths. At least, that’s what the learned among us, whose vocation is to study the human brain, have concluded. Even they, and by they, I mean the psychopaths and not the learned among us (although a case can be made that, in many instances, they share common traits), will sweat a bit when they’re tied to a gurney and feel the needle sliding into a vein as punishment for the lives they’ve taken and families they destroyed.

It’s not that those who’ve suffered and endured persecution for Christ’s sake did not experience fear; rather, in the moment, they concluded that there was something beyond it, something more important, and that knowledge allowed them to overcome their momentary fear. Even when human will failed them, Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, was there to strengthen them, comfort them, and carry them through.

Between love and fear, men have gone to far greater lengths when motivated by love than when motivated by fear. When love is the driving force in the actions you undertake, you’ll be able to endure much more for love’s sake than when you do something out of fear of reprisal or fear of reprimand. That’s what the godless will never understand because although they may have known human intimacy, although they may have known affection for a daughter, son, mother, or father if they have not come to the knowledge of Christ, they have not known true and abiding love.

We could readily go into the eight types of love the ancient Greeks identified. I can wax poetic about the difference between agape, pragma, philia, storge, and the less wholesome eros, philautia, ludus, or mania, but suffice it to say, no one has ever loved like Jesus loved, and you will never know the true depth of love until your eyes are open to the reality of what Jesus did on the cross. He loves us with a perfect love, a love that cannot be compared with any other kind, and that knowledge alone should bring us peace and comfort no matter what we might have to endure for His name’s sake.

Do not fear any of those things which you are about to suffer. Those were Christ’s words to the church of Smyrna after telling them what would befall them. Jesus knew that fear would attempt to worm its way into their hearts, yet He instructed them to resist it. Though the predisposition to fear would be present, they were to keep their eyes rooted upon Him and not allow it to sway them.

Fear is a powerful motivator. Fear of tomorrow, fear of the unknown, fear of what remaining faithful might lead to, yet we are commanded not to fear, not to dwell on the negative aspects of the trials that will come upon us, but rather on the glorious outcome of having gone through the fire and not having been burned.

We want to see miracles the likes of which Shadrak, Meshach, and Abednego saw but we do our best to avoid the situations in which those miracles can be made manifest. Before you can see the fourth man in the furnace, you must remain steadfast and faithful, be bound up, and throw into the fire. Had they relented, had they bowed, had they done as commanded by the king, they would have never had the testimony they did, nor would they have seen the power of God manifest in that it preserved them to the point that even their clothing didn’t smell like smoke.

A piece of coal remains a piece of coal until enough pressure is brought to bear to form it into a diamond. Pressure is the indispensable ingredient, and if it is not applied, the potential of becoming a diamond will always be out of reach.

There are limits to what the enemy and his minions can do. They can hurt the body, even kill the body, but they cannot touch the soul. Jesus said as much, insisting that we ought not to fear those who can kill the body because the body has an expiration date on it anyway. It doesn’t matter how well one takes care of oneself, at some point, this flesh will give out, return to the earth, and be no more. That’s not the end of the individual; it’s just the end of their flesh, for the soul goes on, and it is the One who can likewise kill the soul that we should fear and not the machinations of men who can only affect the flesh.

Matthew 10:28, “And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”

When our reality extends only to what we can touch, see, hear, or smell, we tend to funnel all our energies into the here and now, be concerned about the flesh more than anything else, and become subservient to its needs and desires. When our perspective shifts, and we set our minds on the things above and not on the things of this earth, come what may, we will embrace it, endure it, and be perfected through it.

One of the greatest disservices, dare I say evils perpetrated upon the modern-day church is the incessant focus on the flesh, the here and now, and the doctrines that accompany this mindset. Whether you want to call it the prosperity doctrine, the name it and claim it teaching, speaking things into existence, which oddly enough is always about something material, these things have caused an entire generation to be obsessed with ease, comfort, and the coddling of the flesh to the point that anyone who dares to mention what the Bible says about suffering, enduring for the faith, or persecution is summarily ostracized and shunned.

We don’t want to hear that we may have to suffer persecution. We don’t want to hear that evil men with evil intent may one day come and, with the stroke of a pen, leave us homeless, penniless, and with no way of earning our daily bread. We’ve been fed prosperity until we couldn’t take another bite, and it’s the only thing we associate with the Christian walk. It’s the only form of Christianity we will accept, embrace, and validate. Even so, we have the Word of God we must contend with, and if the Word says something contrary to what we believe, we either adjust our belief structure or call God a liar.

Hebrews 10:38, “Now the just shall live by faith; but if anyone draws back, My soul has no pleasure in him.”

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

 Persecution identifies you with Christ and as one of His own, as nothing else does. It’s one thing to claim we belong to Him; it’s another to endure persecution for His name’s sake. Being persecuted is not a punishment for lack of faith, as some have proffered. It is not the judgment of God upon those who have not embraced the prosperity doctrine or those who haven’t sown seeds in a particular televangelist’s ministry. Persecution serves to test our faith; it is something we should expect to encounter at some point because chances are we will. No matter how far removed one might be from the reality of persecution currently, it must be an ever-present expectation if they are truly denying themselves, picking up their crosses, and following after Him.

Light wars against darkness. Righteousness is an offense to sin. Those who pursue Christ turn their backs on the world, and from that point forward, the world sees them as mortal enemies. The only way to be embraced by the world is to be like the world; if we are like the world, then we are not as Christ would have us to be.

Whatever we are called upon to endure for Christ’s sake is temporary. The reward for having endured, however, is eternal. Jesus didn’t try to sugarcoat what they would have to go through. He told them they would have to go through tribulation, some would be thrown into prison, and some would have to endure unto death. He wanted those of the church of Smyrna to be fully aware of what to expect so they would prepare accordingly.

The only thing holding back the whole counsel of God accomplishes is to create bitterness in the hearts of those who expected to live carefree lives of warm breezes and umbrella drinks only to be confronted with suffering and persecution. You’re not doing anyone any favors by omitting the reality of likely persecution during their walk. On the contrary, since they’ve not been forewarned, they are not forearmed; they are not prepared to endure and, therefore, will find reasons and excuses to deny Christ and obfuscate the truth in the hope of being spared.

Those of the early church, those who suffered and were martyred for the sake of Christ, didn’t have death wishes. They didn’t go looking to be devoured by lions or dipped in tar and lit ablaze for Nero’s entertainment, but they didn’t shy away from it either. They did not love their lives to the death, and were able to endure faithfully, being examples of faithfulness and courage from age to age.

If Christ had not warned that some of them would have to endure to death, or if they had not heeded His warning, they would have faltered in their walk, waned in their commitment, and oscillated in their faithfulness. They knew what to expect just as we should know what to expect, and when we see it, we will not flinch away but be reassured in the knowledge that the One who foresaw our season of trial foresaw the testimonies that would arise from it, and the crowns of life He would be handing out.

Faithfulness is a choice. Enduring to the end is a choice. You can pray for strength and boldness, but you must choose to remain steadfast and resolute in the face of the enemy’s onslaught.

1 Peter 4:12-14, “Beloved, do not think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you; but rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ’s sufferings, that when His glory is revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy. If you are reproached for the name of Christ, blessed are you, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. On their part He is blasphemed, but on your part He is glorified.”

Strangely, so few have picked up on how contrary modern-day teaching is to the words of the Bible and how seldom we take the warnings we read within its pages to heart. It’s as though the average Christian does not have access to the Word or cannot perceive the words written therein. It’s simply written and does not require any advanced degree to understand its meaning, but we would rather believe men over the Bible because the words of men are soothing and comforting to the flesh, and we think that somehow we will be able to plead ignorance of the truth when we stand before the Almighty.

Peter wasn’t trying to be a hype man. He wasn’t trying to sell a product, insisting that he, too, used it every day and that for a limited time, you could get a great deal on whatever he was selling. It’s not as though encouraging people to suffer well would have mass appeal or open doors for him heretofore barred and locked. He was sharing his lived experience, the things he went through, and the aftereffects of having gone through them.

Enduring suffering or persecution is not a pointless exercise with no noticeable benefit. They are not hoops we jump through for God’s entertainment or things we experience for no practical reason. As one who had gone through fiery trials and partook of Christ’s sufferings, Peter testifies that His glory was not far behind. He echoes Paul’s words that the suffering of this present time is not worthy to be compared with the glory that will be revealed in us.

If we desire the glory of Christ, we must not shy away from partaking in the sufferings of Christ. The one opens up the way for the other. We may want the glory without the testing of our faith, we may want the glory without enduring, but Peter insists that suffering well is what activates the glory, and if we partake in the one, we will have access to the other.

When our focus is shifted from the things of this earth to the things above, when we are no longer living for the present but for the life to come, then whatever we might have to endure in the flesh will seem a small price to pay, something insignificant when compared with the reward our faithfulness will produce.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

 We cannot view the prospect of persecution as some exception to the rule, as some out-of-the-ordinary experience a handful in a given generation were given to go through, but as something common to the followers of Christ, regardless of era or continent. If believers in a particular nation are spared persecution, they must be aware that it’s only for a time, only for a season, and it does not mean that it will never be visited upon them.

If we are not currently being beaten, maligned, imprisoned, tortured, and killed for the cause of Christ, we must see it as the grace that it is, not as the benchmark or the norm. There are more nations in the world today where persecution is standard than not. It’s like the silver spoon kids who grow up rich but never realize it because they think everyone else’s parents have three homes, an indoor pool, and vacations on their private yacht in the Maldives.

It’s not as though the devil’s hatred of God’s children has an off switch, and somebody flipped it after the Romans had their fill of the blood of saints wetting the Colosseum’s sands. The hatred never stopped; the vitriol never stopped; those who would take the lives of believers in service to evil have not ceased being willing to be its instrument. Throughout the ages, God has restrained their madness and allowed it sparingly, but faith untested is faith unproven. Throughout every generation, there are those who’ve had their faith tested and who’ve paid the ultimate price in service to their King. To them, it was the highest honor, yet to this present generation, the notion of being persecuted for Christ’s sake is viewed as a punishment and reprimand. Make it make sense.

Historically speaking, Smyrna was a prosperous city with much commerce, yet by Christ’s words, the believers were considered poor. Jesus did not consider them poor; on the contrary, He called them rich, but anyone who judged them based on their possessions and who used the world’s methods to gauge wealth would conclude that they were impoverished. Joel Osteen would have stood out like a sore thumb.

Our treasure is not to be counted in the physical possessions we’ve laid claim to, but whether Christ has laid claim to our hearts and we belong to Him wholly and unreservedly. Jesus knew all that they’d endured, yet His message to the church of Smyrna was that they were yet to endure more for His name’s sake. They were yet to be tested, they were yet to be thrown in prison, and some would have to endure unto death in order to receive the crown of life.

But that was then, and this is now, and all we have to do is wave a hand, pay Jesus some lip service, and off we go, meeting Him with the saints in the air before a hand can be laid upon us before a fist can strike our ruddy well-fed cheeks. Dare I say most of today’s church would feel out of place among the saints, among those who bled and died and suffered to their last, not denying the Christ, but that’s just an observation.

True soldiers tell war stories, not to boast but to remember those who have already gone to their reward and to glory in the providence of God that carried them through situations and circumstances they would have lost hope in, save for the promise of the glory, and the crown of life.

Fake soldiers relive the battles true soldiers have fought and armchair quarterback their actions, preening about how they would have done it differently. To have the audacity to insinuate that someone who saw their entire family being slaughtered before they themselves were martyred for being a believer could have avoided it had they believed in prosperity is beyond the pale.

Twisted doctrine will never lead to the straight path. Compromise in the small things will not make you faithful and immovable when the sacrifice you are called upon to make is greater than losing a job or being shunned by former faux friends. I agree with the sentiment that preparedness is critical, but I think those trying to sell buckets of gruel for a few hundred bucks are talking about something else.

Spiritual preparedness is paramount, and anything else God might have you do to prepare for what is coming takes second place every time. You can store, itemize, and label a thousand years’ worth of foodstuffs and water filters, but if you’ve not committed your ways to the Lord, sanctified the Lord in your heart, and given Him the place rightly His, it’s all for naught.

Jesus warns the church of Smyrna that they must prepare themselves to endure to the end. If you have a destination in mind and only travel halfway, then turn around, you never reach your destination. You started a journey you never finished, pursued a goal you never attained, and started a race you never finished.

Someone who’s preached a false Christ for all their life will not be willing to lay their lives down for the real Christ when called upon to do so. It just doesn’t happen. The foundation upon which they’ve built their spiritual house is shifting sand rather than the rock that is the Christ of the Bible, and so at the first tremor, the first sign of unease, they will retreat and cower in fear.

Those to whom Jesus was speaking had been faithful, endured, and suffered persecution, yet He insists that they must persevere and continue to be faithful to the end no matter what the enemy might throw their way.

The sad reality is that many today serve a god of their own making, one they’ve fashioned for themselves because they are unwilling to submit and humble themselves to the one true God. They were given license to do so by men who, while calling themselves shepherds, are no more than ravenous wolves seeking their own comfort and ease of life at the expense of the truth of the gospel.

Philippians 1:29, “For to you it has been granted on behalf of Christ, not only to believe in Him but also to suffer for His sake.”

Suffering for the sake of Christ is not a punishment, a curse, or something that comes about due to lack of faith, but a grace and a blessing. That someone is found worthy to suffer for His name’s sake is not something we should look upon as undesirable or off-putting but rather as something we gladly endure for the glory that will be revealed in us through it.

Those who do not understand this glorious truth of the gospel will bend and break under the weight of persecution. Those who do will shine like the sun, and their testimonies will be retold among those who likewise endured to the end.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

 With the advent of the participation trophy, we’ve been taught to believe that half-measures are perfectly reasonable and acceptable. You don’t really have to try; you just have to show up, and someone will hand you a prize for something you never did and make you feel accomplished when, in truth, you accomplished nothing. We need to spare feelings because feelings have become the new currency. If you’ve got a winning smile and learn how to praise people who’ve done nothing praiseworthy, stroke their egos just so, and feed them spiritual scraps, leavings, and cast-offs, you’ll be living in high cotton with not a care in the world.

Whatever you do, however much your conscience hammers away at you, however often that doom-fraught sense that you are leading people into Sheol overwhelms you, if you want to retain the lifestyle to which you’ve become accustomed, you must resist the urge to preach the truth or rightly divide the Word. That way lies poverty and the vitriol of the godless. That way lies invitations to gladhand with Oprah, sip champagne on some rapper’s yacht, or attend a nonbinary wedding between two famous men drying up.

Clout chasing and the gospel are like oil and water. They don’t mix, never have, never will, and if you want to be well-received by the world, you must compromise the Word of God. Turning your face toward one necessitates turning your back on the other. You can have either the world or Jesus. You can’t have both. You must choose one.

Rather than being humbled by Stephen’s faithfulness unto death, as is the correct response, most Christians today tend to roll their eyes and find reasons why they think it was wrong for him to antagonize the ruling class and that, perhaps, he had it coming since he wasn’t willing to compromise, meet in the middle, give a little to get a little, and so on.

We have stripped the modern-day gospel of the Gospel, then wonder why there is so much confusion, division, and acrimony. Everyone’s a theologian, and they’ll make sure you know it given half the chance. Whenever anyone dares to point out that their theology isn’t Biblical, they’ll call you unenlightened and resistant to the spirit. If it’s unbiblical, it’s wrong. Yes, I am resistant to that spirit, as everyone who seeks the truth ought to be because great monsters have been birthed from within the household of faith who went on to persecute the saints because they placed their dogma above the Word of God and deemed it to be the final arbiter.

When someone’s counterargument to Biblical truth is to stone you to death or call for your demise, they have no counterargument and are lashing out in rage and vitriol. It’s to be expected. It’s something we were told to prepare for throughout the New Testament, but we’d rather listen to fairy tales about pet dinosaurs in heaven. Giving our last full measure, enduring to the end, and suffering for the sake of righteousness have become so anathema in the modern-day church that if anyone dares to mention it, they are looked upon as strange and out of touch.

It’s eye-opening to see how some churchgoers react to reading a Bible passage from the pulpit, as though they were hearing it for the first time or had never encountered something so controversial before.

Revelation 2:8-11, “And to the angel of the church of Smyrna write, ‘These things say the First and the Last, who was dead, and came to life: “I know your works, tribulation, and poverty (but you are rich); and I know the blasphemy of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan. Do not fear any of those things which you are about to suffer. Indeed, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and you will have tribulation ten days. Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life. He who has an ear let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. He who overcomes shall not be hurt by the second death.’”

Yes, I’ve heard the snarky theories of pampered boys in grown men’s bodies wearing horn-rimmed glasses and skinny jeans about how you don’t beat up your bride on her wedding night, and so because our ways must necessarily be His ways and our thoughts His thoughts, that childish anecdote should be enough for us to dismiss the words Jesus spoke through John the revelator.

We’re faithful; just take our word for it. We are committed and steadfast, resolute, and purposed to follow You to the end, but please don’t call our bluff.

In case anyone missed it, the First and the Last, the one who was dead and came to life, is none other than Jesus. It is He who gives the message to the church of Smyrna, encouraging them, but not in the way one might define encouragement where hurt feelings are compared to the worst of tortures and disagreement of any kind to the pains of death itself.

Jesus didn’t say he knew their tribulation and poverty but that soon they would prosper beyond their wildest dreams. Nor did Jesus say that they would be spared suffering, but rather that they should not fear the things they were about to suffer.

The image of a magic genie Jesus who’s there to serve at your pleasure and pamper you however you see fit, giving you everything, requiring nothing, and denying you nothing is a fabrication of the modern-day church, dare I say the Western church. It’s the only image that would have the mass market appeal they needed to push out enough product to keep them in the lifestyle after which they lusted and to which they’ve become accustomed.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that between a book on holiness unto the Lord and one on unlocking the keys to endless prosperity, the one about getting stuff will outsell the one on being holy a thousand to one. It’s market dynamics dictating what the shepherds feed the sheep, and if the demand is there for sin-affirming doctrine, the supply will manifest.

It’s not as though the church of Smyrna had not endured persecution up to that point. Jesus knew of their persecution and was preparing them for more persecution still. They had not shied away from it, but the foreknowledge of what was to come served as an encouragement to them to persevere and be faithful to the end. It’s not what we want to hear, though. Lord, don’t tell us that we’ll be persecuted; tell us that we’ll be spared persecution. In that case, we’re asking for Jesus to lie to us, and if He does as we will, then when persecution comes, we’ll shake our fists at the sky and call Him a liar.

If the Word of God tells us to prepare for persecution, and if Jesus insists that being hated by the world is a certainty and not a possibility, then it doesn’t matter how many degrees those speaking to the contrary might possess; they’re still wrong. One is a declaration by the omniscient Creator of all that is; the other is the opinions of men who see the world through the prism of having never had their faith tested nor ever having endured hardship for the sake of Christ.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

 If you think you’re going to get a fair shake from the godless, you’ve got another thing coming. The same goes for those within the household of faith with hidden agendas, vested interests, and pursuits other than the glory of God. It doesn’t matter what the thing they value more than Jesus is, whether a specific denomination, a theological bend, or a particular individual; they will fight tooth and nail to defend it and are willing to use nefarious means to silence any opposition.

Then you have the profiteers. Those who see the children of God as so many bleating sheep ready to be sheered and fleeced because not only are many of them gullible, they won’t do anything about it once they realize they’ve been taken to the cleaners. The profiteers know they have no credibility or standing, so they attempt to employ those who’ve amassed some sort of trust equity to shill their products and try to sell people worthless things. You may get a nice kickback from selling self-assembly nuclear bunkers or radiation-deflecting underoos, but is it worth the price of your integrity and credibility? If you believe in the product, it’s one thing; if you’re in it for nothing more than filthy lucre, that’s wholly different.

You can’t defend God with lies. It’s not that people don’t try; it’s that it’s impossible to do so. Men can band together, form coalitions, try to shout the truth down, and become vitriolic when you don’t fall in line, but God is still God, He is still on the throne, and He knows the intent of men’s hearts.

The ego and pride of unteachable men led to Stephen’s stoning, and though he tried his best to open their eyes so that they might see the truth, they would not. Their hearts were hard as stone, their minds were made up, and though his face looked as that of an angel, and his words cut them to their hearts, their reaction was one of hatred and their intent one of murder.

You can’t control how those to whom you speak the truth will react to it. Your duty is to speak the truth of Christ’s power to save, restore, and reconcile men unto God; how they respond to it is solely on them. The presumption that everyone will welcome the message with open arms and consider you a friend for speaking truth into their lives is demonstrably false. Yes, some will receive the message, but some will reject it and do so violently. You must be prepared for either outcome and willing to endure the backlash of the hard-hearted when their rejection is made manifest.

Jesus commands us to love those who hate us, to have compassion for their fallen state, and to do our utmost to bring them to truth, light, and life, even at the risk of our comfort, well-being, or lives. He never said it would be easy; He just said it is what we must do. For anyone who believes it’s easy to love one’s enemies, they’ve never had a true enemy. An enemy is not someone who is passive, indifferent, or otherwise neutral regarding your well-being but someone who is actively trying to undermine and destroy you. That some of your enemies will turn out to be those whom you once called brother or sister is doubly painful, and I say this as someone who has lived it.

It is undeniable that Stephen is an example, a prototype of what it means to walk humbly with God and suffer well. Just as Stephen had his heroes, we, too, have ours, and the entire point of it is to look upon their lives and learn from them. Stephen knew the history of God’s people. He highlighted those to whom he looked up and took the time to learn everything he could from their lived experiences walking with God. It’s an odd thing that we know more about baseball stats or the football rosters of our favorite teams than we know about the Word of God, the things Jesus said, and the things the forerunners of the faith had to endure for the sake of Christ.

We learn about things we respect. We learn about things we value. We learn about things that we deem needful. How is it that learning the Bible is so far down the list for so many calling themselves Christians and followers of Christ? Stephen didn’t mumble himself through a weak defense of his position. He knew what he was talking about, and it showed. It was largely the reason those who heard him despised him, so because they could not refute his arguments.

While growing up, there wasn’t much for us to do as children. Gaming consoles hadn’t yet made an appearance on the scene, so our primary entertainment was playing chicken with some rusty lawn darts a neighbor gave us rather than throw away. It was fun for a while until my middle brother Sergiu decided he wouldn’t move, and I planted a lawn dart in his foot. After that, we were prohibited from using them, so we switched to rocks. We’d stand a few feet apart and toss rocks at each other’s heads; whoever flinched or moved was the loser. I never said we were overly bright, but it was entertaining, and no, we weren’t throwing underhand. I mention this only because I know what it’s like to have a rock bounce off your kisser, and even then, it was a small rock compared to what they were using to stone Stephen.

Being stoned to death is not like being beheaded or speared through the heart. It takes time for the individual to expire depending on how many people do the throwing, how big the rocks are, and how violently they are throwing them. Given that the same people who stoned Stephen were the ones who gnashed at him with their teeth, chances are they weren’t holding back.

Through it all, Stephen never once prayed for himself but rather for those who were slowly murdering him because that’s what it was. Imagine being surrounded by men whom you once considered brothers, lobbing stones at your head, being struck over and over, yet having the presence of mind to pray for them. It’s one of those details that is often overlooked but one that is profoundly impacting if you think through it for a breath.

Just as Stephen was not alone during his final moments, neither will any of God’s children if they must walk the road of persecution and martyrdom. He looked up and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. In his darkest hour, God’s presence was made manifest. He was not absentee; He was not otherwise engaged; He was present and revealed His glory to Stephen as he gave his full measure for the sake of Christ Jesus his Lord.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

 We’ve become so mealy-mouthed and duplicitous that bonafide theologians have questioned Stephen’s actions, insisting that he could have denied Jesus presently and repented for it later. He didn’t need to be that confrontational, that standoffish, that unwilling to bend and compromise, or in the least omit the things he knew would trigger those to whom he was answering.  

He could have placated them, couldn’t he? That way, they say, he could have gone on to minister and preach the gospel and kept himself from being martyred. You live to fight another day. That’s the end goal, isn’t it? Actually, no. If you have to deny Christ to live another day, then the cost of living another day is not worth it.

Numerous people have tried to find excuses for cowardice and even encouraged others to practice it. Still, none of them can definitively state where the cowardice will end once it begins. Is once the cutoff? Is it twice or three times? How many times can you deny Jesus to get out of a scrape or avoid hardship before it becomes one too many? Those who insist Jesus would understand denying Him in certain circumstances conveniently ignore Christ's words, wherein He declared that if we deny Him before men, He will deny us before the Father because, to them, looking out for number one is their number one goal.

And you wonder why we’re not seeing the presence of God in most churches today? Do you still have to wonder why so many are lukewarm and willing to betray Jesus at the drop of a hat if it means elevation, promotion, or being left alone by those who would see harm come to the household of faith?

To go into Stephen’s entire discourse would be a book unto itself since he went through the entire history of Israel’s journey from Abraham to Jacob, Joseph, and Moses, reminding them of the prophecies given concerning the Christ and pointing out the resistance of their fathers to the Holy Spirit just as they were resisting the Holy Spirit. He encapsulated Israel’s journey up to that point in time and pled with them to open their eyes and see the truth of Jesus.

It likely wouldn’t have mattered if Stephen had been more conciliatory in his discourse because these men who had plotted his demise had been humiliated, and whatever he said would have landed on stony hearts anyway. If you believe compromising the truth will ingratiate you with those who hate you, you’re in for a surprise.

Why humiliate and prostrate yourself before the godless when their hatred of you will not be tamped down, and their desire to see your destruction will not be satiated? Perhaps, for a little while, they will leave you be, using you as an example to others who’ve not been cowed. Still, eventually, unless you renounce your faith altogether and join the forces of darkness in persecuting the followers of Christ, they will still see you as an enemy.

We’ve all seen what happens to those who give in to the pressure. Although they spoke something demonstrably factual, they backpedaled, apologized, and groveled, only to be shunned and ostracized by those they were trying to placate. Not only are they left with nothing, but they’ve also betrayed their ethics, values, and morals.

Know the truth, live the truth, and speak the truth. Then let the chips fall where they may because although you can control your actions, you can’t control the world’s reaction to who you are.

Acts 7:54-60, “When they heard these things they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed at him with their teeth. But he, being full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God, and said, ‘Look! I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!’ Then they cried out with a loud voice, stopped their ears, and ran at him with one accord, and they cast him out of the city and stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul. And they stoned Stephen as he was calling on God and saying, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.’ Then he knelt down and cried out with a loud voice, ‘Lord, do not charge them with this sin.’ And when he had said this, he fell asleep.’”

They knew Stephen's words were true; they just didn’t care. It’s as simple as that. These were supposed fellow saints who could not bear the thought of being theologically humiliated and so orchestrated the murder of a man whose only desire was to see the hearts of men turned to Jesus.

It takes monumental rage to gnash at someone with your teeth, perhaps something even beyond rage. I’ve been angry in life, but it never once crossed my mind to gnash at someone with my teeth. These men were convicted and cut to the heart, yet their pride kept them from seeking repentance. If you can’t kill the message, go target the messenger, hoping the message dies with him.

If there had been a shadow of doubt in Stephen’s conviction, if, at any moment, he had valued his life more than Jesus, his story would have had a different ending. If man has not purposed in his heart to endure what may come for the sake of Christ, he will find a way to bypass suffering, hardship, and martyrdom. The opportunity to do so will be presented.

It is a far greater boon for the devil to coerce someone into denying Jesus than to facilitate their murder for His sake. Martyrs have the undesired effect of being looked up to as examples of steadfastness and faithfulness, while cowards are dismissed, and rightly so. The enemy would far rather see a church full of cowards than one of committed saints willing to pay the ultimate price for the sake of Christ. A coward can be brought to heel one way or another. One whose life is forfeit and whose only desire is to do the will of God is impossible to corral.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

 When winning is the only thing that matters, man can justify any action undertaken in the pursuit of victory, both to himself and to others. The object of the exercise was not to play fair, play nice, play by the rules, make sure everyone’s having fun, or that everyone gets to participate, but that you win. Last man standing, all foes vanquished, bring me my medal, my giant trophy, and the heads of my enemies on a platter! To the victor go the spoils; as an added bonus, more often than not, the victor gets to write the story of how it all went down.

If the agents of darkness see it as war and you see it as a game, who do you think will win?

Come on now. We all know Jesus wins in the end, don’t we? Yes, He does win in the end, but if you treat the entire exercise as nothing more than fire insurance and consider this faith of ours as nothing more than a game we play to ensure our perpetual comfort, are you still on team Jesus?

When ensuring my comfort supersedes His glory, I will find a way to skirt, bypass, or otherwise circumvent enduring or suffering for His name’s sake. If I’m more concerned about me than I am about His glory, I will find a way to beg off the difficult season, justifying it as prudence rather than cowardice, self-preservation rather than betrayal.

When we are committed to Christ, we will not look for ways to bend the truth, massage it, or otherwise omit it for fear of what others might think, say, or do in retaliation. Stephen knew full well that he could have lived to see another day if he was willing to compromise the truth. He knew he could have worded his response in such a fashion wherein the crowd's anger would have been tampered down, and the situation de-escalated. He likewise knew that doing so would betray his conviction of who Jesus was and the message of a risen Christ who was the only way, truth, and life.

While Stephen did not set out to get martyred, he didn’t shy away from the possibility of it or betray Jesus for the sake of his own continued existence on this earth. He was not needlessly antagonistic, nor did he insult those to whom he spoke on purpose. He spoke the truth of Christ fearlessly and committed His ways to the Lord wherever they might lead.

We are already experiencing a soft tyranny when it comes to speaking the truth, unadulterated and undiluted. Whether it’s social media platforms that strike you when you get out of line or entire denominations who demonize you when you point out that the Bible says things contrary to what they are preaching, the silencing of truth is already well on its way. For fear of being de-platformed or no longer allowed on certain mediums, many have taken to self-censoring and holding back the things they know they ought to be trumpeting.

As yet, there is no threat of physical persecution, but that will come in time, and if someone is willing to compromise the truth today, they will surely do so when the threat of violence and death come to the fore, and those who wield power begin to condone it.

You don’t show up to a weightlifting competition, having never lifted weights in your life, and expect to place or win. Some things in life require preparation, dedication, focus, and commitment. People train for years on end just to be able to deadlift three times their body weight or run a marathon without their hearts quitting on them, but they have a goal firmly affixed in their minds and will let nothing stand in the way of achieving it.

When our minds and hearts are prepared for the advent of persecution, and we purpose therein to speak the truth no matter the threats and consequences, when the time comes that we are called upon to make a choice, we will not hesitate or retreat.

At some point along the way, Stephen likely saw where this was going. If you read through his discourse, you realize this was a wise man, if not a learned one, whose dedication to the word was proven out in the handful of truths he reminded those he stood before. This was no monosyllabic troglodyte who could barely put two words together, so when he saw false witnesses accusing him of things he’d never done, he likely put two and two together.

He knew where this was going and could have put it in neutral. Stephen could have backpedaled and obfuscated as we’ve seen so many self-professing spiritual leaders do time and again when asked about whether abortion, adultery, homosexuality, and all manner of hot-button issues being a sin, but he knew that by omitting the truth, he would be betraying it, thereby making himself unworthy of the name Jesus.

The Christian message has been so sterilized and neutered in our day and age that when someone stands boldly on the truth of God’s word and declares it unashamedly, we view them as brave, bold, courageous to a fault, and a rarity among men. It should not be so. Boldness should be the standard, not the exception. Courage and speaking the truth should be the baseline, not the unattainable ideal.

If you can get the same thing from Tony Robbins as you would from your pastor, then your pastor is not teaching the gospel of Christ. Your spiritual man is not being fed, and though you may not notice it momentarily, it is being starved and weakened due to a lack of spiritual succor. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. If we eliminate the Word of God from what we are hearing, are we not faithless, powerless, rudderless souls who are as vulnerable to the storms of life as the godless among us?

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

 One could say Stephen was overqualified for his position as he served widows day in and day out, but God’s plan wasn’t for Stephen to serve tables for the rest of his life. By the same token, Stephen didn’t beg off the responsibility or point out that the task was beneath him. It reveals his servant’s heart more than any words he could have spoken, and it is a testament to the character of those who made up the early church.

Imagine going up to one of the pompous peacocks masquerading as clergymen who siphon the glory rightly due God unto themselves, reveling in the praise of men and asking them to do something they might consider beneath their station. The tongue-lashing you would get would likely give you flashbacks to the one your mom gave you when she discovered you’d eaten a Costco-sized jar of Nutella in one sitting. How dare you ask someone of their station to sacrifice the time they set aside for golfing to serve food to widows. I mean, if one of them inherited a nice investment portfolio from her late husband, they could, perhaps, pencil her in, but just run-of-the-mill widows?

For the Apostles, it was a time issue, and they needed to prioritize preaching the word. It wasn’t that they thought the task was beneath them; they just realized their time would be better spent focusing on prayer and the ministering of the word. It’s not a sin to delegate, but it is a heart issue when the reason for delegating a certain task to others is because you deem it beneath you or your station. Whether it’s mopping the bathroom floor, feeding widows, or preaching the gospel, they all fall under the umbrella of obedience and are rewarded in like fashion. Obedience gives value to the action; the action does not assume value on its own. It matters not how grand a thing you do if God didn’t tell you to do it. However, even the smallest of things is seen and recorded by God if He commanded you to do it, and you obeyed.

Those who were plotting the demise of Christ’s followers knew that targeting Peter, John, or any of the others who’d garnered name recognition and were seen as those through whom God did miracles was out of the question. As yet, the people were on their side, and going after them would incur more blowback than they were ready to endure, so they hatched a scheme to go after a lesser-known individual, fabricate a crime so heinous that it may sway the populace, and make an example of them.

What they had not yet realized is that the power of the Holy Spirit and the working of miracles was not reserved exclusively for the twelve. God doesn’t work based on a caste system, and He does not imbue with power only those who are deemed to be in leadership but all who hunger for His presence and purpose to live lives worthy of the name of Jesus.

Acts 6:8-15, And Stephen, full of faith and power, did great wonders and signs among the people. Then there arose from what is called the Synagogue of the Freedmen (Cyrenians, Alexandrians, and those from Cilicia and Asia), disputing with Stephen. And they were not able to resist the wisdom and the Spirit by which he spoke. Then they secretly induced men to say, “We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and God. And they stirred up the people, the elders, and the scribes; and they came upon him, seized him, and brought him to the council. They also set up false witnesses who said, ‘This man does not cease to speak blasphemous words against this holy place and the law; for we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and change the customs which Moses delivered to us.’ And all who sat in the council, looking steadfastly at him, saw his face as the face of an angel.”

If you’re expecting the devil or his minions to play fair, you’ve got another thing coming. There are no lengths to which the devil will not go, no depths to which he will not sink in order to upend, hurt, damage, or destroy the people of God.

Knowing full well that Stephen was innocent, those who would see him come to harm set up false witnesses to accuse him of blasphemy. Keep in mind it wasn’t the Roman soldiers or Pontius Pilate that was after Stephen’s head; it was those of the Synagogue of Freedmen who’d debated him and were not able to resist his wisdom. If you can’t nullify the message, you seek to destroy the messenger, hoping the message dies with him.

I have no counterargument to your declared position, so I’m going to plot and scheme against you personally, get others to join in, accuse you of things you never did, and hopefully, everyone’s blood will be boiling by then, and they’ll do something to you they’ll live to regret, and which will be a stain on their conscience until the day they die. But hey, eggs and omelets and whatnot. At least we’ll be rid of the instigator, the person who says things we can’t refute, and in such a way that it draws others to his cause.

There have always been instigators and useful idiots who get steered into doing their bidding. Rather than acknowledge the inferiority of their argument or receive Jesus as Lord, they chose door number two, inducing men to say things Stephen never did and finding false witnesses to corroborate their stories. And you thought the old Soviets came up with the notion of showing them the man, and they would show you the crime. The old religious order had one-upped them two thousand years prior when they concluded that since there was no crime, they’d fabricate one out of whole cloth.

Do you think the servants of darkness today would hesitate for one second to accuse you of things you never did and even find false witnesses to corroborate their claims?

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

 The first recorded martyr of what would be countless martyrs throughout the history of the early church and beyond was a man named Stephen. History may have forgotten some of the names of those who gave their full measure for the name of Christ, but God has not forgotten a one. Every name, to the last, is remembered and cataloged, and their reward has already been set aside. There is nothing any principality, power, demon, or the devil himself can do to take away that reward or erase their names from the Lamb’s Book of Life.

Studying how persecution came about in the early church is worthwhile because although the enemy has refined his methods, his methods have not changed. When it comes to the attempted silencing of those who preach a risen Christ or those who would hold firm to the faith once delivered to the saints, he reacts in much the same fashion, hoping that the next generation of believers will be weaker or less committed than the previous one.

There’s no escalation from torture and death. That’s the end game for the enemy, and it’s the last hand he can play. His hope is that you don’t endure to the end. His hope is that somewhere along the way of escalation, you give up, cry, uncle, and retreat.

One of the most fascinating things about the early church that few notice today is the standard to which everyone who was tasked with ministering was held. When we dig down and see what Stephen’s function was within the body, we come to realize that there are no menial tasks in the kingdom, and the standard of faithfulness, maturity, and righteousness is the same across the board for everyone who is called to serve.

Perhaps the reason God is not moving among believers today as He was among the early church is because what was once the standard has been erased altogether, and individuals with divided loyalties would rather remain so than surrender their all to Christ that they might walk in the fullness of what belongs to those who are His by right.

Acts 6:1-6, “Now in those days, when the number of disciples was multiplying, there arose a complaint against the Hebrews by the Hellenists, because their widows were neglected in the daily distribution. Then the twelve summoned the multitude of the disciples and said, ‘It is not desirable that we should leave the world of God and serve tables. Therefore, brethren, seek out from among you seven men of good reputation, full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business; but we will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the word.’ And the saying pleased the whole multitude. And they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit, and Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolas, a proselyte from Antioch, whom they set before the apostles; and when they had prayed, they laid hands on them.”

It didn’t take long for the grumbling to begin. Whenever the New Testament writers speak of grumblers among the brethren, they are speaking from experience. This time, it was the Hellenists, who were Greek-speaking Jews who had returned to Jerusalem. They, too, were believers, but they felt as though their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution and began to raise a fuss. It only took one voice to insist that they were being neglected because they spoke Greek and not Hebrew, and soon enough, it snowballed into a big enough problem wherein the twelve had to summon the multitude of the disciples and task them with choosing seven from among themselves which they could appoint to the task of serving the Hellenist widows.

The twelve understood the dangers of division among the brethren well enough to try to ameliorate the situation, but some people just can’t be placated, and they will continue with their invectives even when they are shown grace and deference.

To put it into context, the men who were singled out to serve widow women were supposed to meet the standard of being of good reputation, full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom. These men were to be glorified waiters, yet these were the qualifications they were supposed to possess in order to be considered for the position.

If we were to use the same standard today, not for glorified waiters but for church elders, a good chunk of America’s pulpits would be left empty and void of leadership. Again, perhaps we should consider that we’ve lowered our standards while God has not rather than insist that God stopped being God and making Himself known to His children—just a thought.

Of the seven, two are mentioned again in the Book of Acts: Stephen and his martyrdom, and Philip, who went on to preach the gospel in Samaria and baptize the Ethiopian man whose chariot he outran on the road from Jerusalem to Gaza.

It doesn’t matter where you begin within the body. Wherever it is God needs you, whatever it is God calls you to, do it faithfully and to the best of your ability, because if you are given little and are faithful in it, you will be called to greater things.

The standard is the standard whether you’re serving tables, preaching the gospel, or being used to perform signs and wonders. The problem is that some start out being of good reputation, full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom, and falsely conclude that the greater the ministry God calls them to, the laxer they can become in their walk.

You begin with a good reputation, full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom, and grow from there. You don’t decrease; you increase and build up your most holy faith as you see God's presence and power move in ways that leave you humbled and in awe. We must be daily refined, perfected, and made more vividly into the image of Christ, for that is the natural way of the believer whom God can use in greater and greater ways.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

 It didn’t take long for the forces of darkness to mobilize. It didn’t take long for threats of violence to become actual violence. The enemy does not make empty threats, and when he reveals his purpose and his desire to destroy the household of faith is verbalized and on full display, be prepared for him to follow through. When anyone is vocal about their intent to do you harm, take them seriously and take them at their word. If someone says they’re intent on your destruction and the destruction of everyone you hold dear, you can’t assume they’re joking or that, at some point, they won’t attempt to carry out their threats.

There is one chapter in the Acts of the Apostles between the arrest of Peter and John and the escalation to deadly violence, and it’s filled with all the apostles being arrested, this time not just Peter and John, an angel of the Lord opening the prison doors, and them preaching in the temple. Once more, they were brought before the council, but this time, they didn’t get away with just a verbal warning.

So incensed were those who’d ordered Peter and John to keep silent that now they had to deal with six times the original number that they plotted to kill them outright. The ‘we got off on the wrong foot’ heart-to-heart hadn’t worked, and neither had their threats of intimidation because, you know, we can coexist as long as you do everything I say and stop doing everything I don’t like. The problem had not been fixed, the threats had not been taken to heart, and what’s worse, now there were more of them. Save for the intervention of one man, a Pharisee named Gamaliel, they would have likely followed through with their plot, but his was a voice of reason and one that could not be readily ignored.

His argument against killing the apostles outright was logical. Others throughout the ages had claimed divine inspiration or revelation, but they’d all come to naught. No action needed to be taken regarding those others, at least not anything close to the drastic measures the council was proposing, and the matters had worked themselves out without them having to get their hands dirty.

Acts 5:38-39, “And now I say to you, keep away from these men and let them alone; for if this plan or this work is of men, it will come to nothing; but if it is of God, you cannot overthrow it – lest you even be found to fight against God.”

As far as closing arguments go, it was a solid one. Calling back on recent history, Gamaliel pointed to two previous examples where the fervor died down, and those causing a ruckus blended back into the background, returning to society and no longer making nuisances of themselves.

Acts 5:38-39, “And they agreed with him, and when they had called for the apostles and beaten them, they commanded that they should not speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go. So they departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for His name. And daily in the temple, and in every house, they did not cease teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ.”

Peter and John got off with a warning. This time, they had the apostles beaten. The next time, a life would be taken. There is always escalation, and it’s always evident. What I’ve always found fascinating is how matter of fact Luke was about the council having the apostles beaten. They went, they preached, they got arrested, they were beaten, and then let go. Wait a minute; one of these things is not like the other.

There are no details forthcoming as to how long or how aggressively they were beaten, but it was enough for them to rejoice that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for the name of Jesus.

Threats had not deterred them, and now neither had a beating. They continued doing what they’d been called to do even though they knew that at some point, the Pharisees, Sadducees, high priest, and Sanhedrin would stop playing nice.

Their purpose and desire was not focused on themselves, their well-being, their safety, or security, but rather on preaching the Christ to all who would hear, whether daily in the temple or in every house. They were more committed than the Pharisees because their love for Jesus burned bright. Although Gamaliel’s counsel may have been wise, at some point, they realized this was something new, something different, something they’d not encountered before, and ignoring it wasn’t working. They were multiplying, growing, expanding, and drawing ever more people to their cause, and there was no sign of their slowing down. What had been but a mere nuisance had turned into an existential crisis and a direct threat to their power and control.

It’s hard to deter a person or a group of people who believe that suffering shame is honor and death is gain. The early church had no hidden agenda, no vested interest, no dreams of blueberry pies, gated seaside mansions, blinged-out chariots, or personal profits, so trying to bribe them was also out the window. They’d found that one guy, Judas, and he’d been so guilt-ridden he found the nearest sturdy tree and a strong rope and played hangman before he spent a piece of the silver they’d paid him for his betrayal. All that was before they started talking about a risen Christ. Now that these people were fully convinced Jesus had risen from the dead, and they were doing miracles that no one among the Pharisees could explain away, they’d become a real problem and one that needed to be dealt with.

There’s nothing left to threaten them with; there is nothing left you can use as a deterrent because the thing you think will harm them or hurt them they perceive as joyful. For them, it was a distinction, a mark of honor to suffer beatings and shame for the name of Jesus.

These were not the kind of people who would see reason as far as the Pharisees were concerned. There was no negotiating with individuals who sold everything they had and gave it to the poor and who were over the moon about being beaten because they deemed it a badge of honor. A man that can’t be moved can’t be moved, whether by threats or actions. His purpose is clear, his course is set, and come what may, he will faithfully follow the way of Christ.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

 What Peter and John, along with those who had assembled together, prayed for is telling, if not outright revelatory. Knowing that the course you’ve set upon will likely cost you your life and continuing to tread upon it is no small feat. These people were not soldiers on some battlefield half a world away; they had families, friends, businesses, and lives, yet they counted it all as a loss for the excellence of Christ Jesus, their Lord. That is the cost of the calling to which we have been called. God demands nothing less of us than He did of the early church, and perhaps it’s because we are unwilling to pay the price that we see so little of His power and presence in today’s church. If anything in your life holds preeminence over Christ, Jesus Himself said we are not worthy of Him.

Matthew 10:37-39, “He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it.”

They knew it was only a matter of time before things escalated. They understood because of what Jesus had said that it would not stop with threats but that it would turn to violence because even though this coddled generation has come to believe that words can hurt, they don’t hurt nearly as much as being tied to a whipping post and lashed with a whip.

Jesus didn’t try to bait and switch His followers. He didn’t promise them mansions, only to be led into a dungeon. He didn’t promise them prosperity, only to be confronted with persecution. It was because He prepared them for what was to come that they did not hesitate or grow despondent. They knew what was coming; it was only a matter of when. Once they saw it clearly, they cried out to God, not that they might be spared or escape, but that they’d be given boldness in the face of certain death. All men die, but not all men die well. All men live, but not all men live lives worth living.

Acts 4:29-31, “Now, Lord, look on their threats, and grant to Your servants that with boldness they may speak Your word, by stretching out Your hand to heal, and that signs and wonders may be done through the name of Your holy Servant Jesus. And when they had prayed, the place where they were assembled together was shaken; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spoke the word of God with boldness.”

Their prayer was neither self-serving nor self-aggrandizing. They didn’t pray for money or new chariots; they didn’t even pray for their safety or protection. Their singular desire was for God to give them the boldness to speak His word and that signs and wonders may be done through the name of Jesus.

They knew they were dependent upon God and could do nothing without His presence and power in their lives. They likewise knew that if they were to endure to the end, they needed boldness because it’s one thing to speak of Jesus when everyone loves you; it’s another to speak of Jesus when everyone is throwing stones at your head. That much of today’s church is unwilling to be bold for Christ when there is no threat of violence or death makes one wonder how many will do so when the cost of doing it will be their friends, families, jobs, homes, or even their lives.

It’s not as though Peter and John had not shown boldness in the face of those who threatened them, but they realized they would need more if they were to persevere and continue preaching a risen Christ. If you have no boldness, pray for it now, not when the whole world will be set on your destruction. Don’t put off praying for the things you know you will need when the time of persecution comes because the fog of war is no time to strap on your armor or learn how to use a sword.

The early church knew it was coming, and they prayed for boldness before it arrived. If you know a storm is coming, you don’t wait until it starts pouring and the thunder is rattling your windows before you start laying the sandbags down.

I live in an area that gets its fair share of snowstorms. The first thing I do before the first snowflake falls is make sure I have enough salt for the steps, and my shovel at the ready. Usually, those who wait until the last minute discover that everyone’s sold out of salt, and as far as shovels are concerned, they’re on backorder, but they can get one to you in a week’s time.

Don’t wait until the storm to figure out what you’ll need during the storm. By then, it will be too late, and you’ll be at someone else’s mercy to come and dig you out or share their salt so you don’t break a hip walking to your car.

Entreat God today for the things you will need tomorrow, whether that happens to be boldness, strength, endurance, faith, or direction. He is a good God and will answer the prayers of those who seek to do His will, who ask for things not of this earth or for this earth but for the power and gifting that can only come from His hand and will be used to further His kingdom.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

 When the future is crystal clear and what is to follow is evident, as a child of God, you will have two choices: submit, surrender, give up, and hope to blend into the background, or persevere, endure, and commit all your ways to the Lord. You can’t avoid the hard thing forever. You can’t avoid making a choice, thinking that the storm will pass you by.

When Jesus said that all would hate us for His name’s sake, He meant it just as readily as He meant it when He said He would return. We tend to gravitate toward the positive declarations Jesus made while avoiding the ones that have a negative connotation or foretell of suffering and grief. They are no less important, however, and a wise servant takes the whole counsel of Christ to heart and not just the parts that are pleasing.

Matthew 10:21-22, “Now brother will deliver up brother to death, and a father his child; and children will rise up against parents and cause them to be put to death. And you will be hated by all for My name’s sake. But he who endures to the end will be saved.”

Peter and John were present when Jesus spoke these words so what was happening didn’t come as a surprise, yet they were self-aware enough to know that they needed God’s help in order to endure what was coming. When they returned to their companions and reported what had gone on, they didn’t set about seeing what compromises they could make to appease the high priest, nor did they proceed with an endless celebration that they’d been freed. Rather, they raised their voices to God in one accord and cried out to Him. They knew where their help would come from, and it would not be a government body or any man but God Himself.

If you’ve ever been desperate, then you know the type of prayer this was. This was no subdued, formulaic prayer. It was a heart cry borne of a desire to see God's power and presence and to be equipped for the challenges that lay ahead. They knew what was coming, and they knew what they lacked. They didn’t beat their chests telling each other how great they were or quibbling about whose name would go on the ministry header. They never made it about them. It was always about God and about having the boldness and fortitude to continue preaching His word when the world was set against them.

Whether it had started due to jealousy or fear of losing market share, the followers of Christ were now in the crosshairs of the Sanhedrin, high priest, Pharisees, and all the other religious luminaries of their time, and the disciples understood what this meant. It’s funny how, during the days of the early church, the Pharisees and their ilk spoke of miracles in the past tense, just as some speak of them in the past tense in our day.

If asked directly, all of them would likely have agreed that God was a God of miracles, but they would point to the days of Moses and Elijah and say He did miracles, but in those days, during that time, not so much today, so just come and bring your offerings and nevermind all that supernatural stuff. When confronted with the true power of God and the reality that God remained the same as He’d ever been, able to heal, restore, and do miracles because they could not humble themselves or wrap their minds around the idea that though they thought themselves spiritually superior a couple of fishermen had outshined them, they chose the attempted eradication of those whom God had chosen to turn the world upside down.

There’s a lesson in this we would do well to heed because history has a way of repeating, and though they might go by a different name, a Pharisee can’t change its stripes.

A Pharisee will be content with an emotional response rather than insist upon a transformed life. It makes for good television to see a thousand people raise their hands at a crusade, but how many of those thousand come back the next day, humble themselves, repent, and submit to Christ? How many of them deny themselves, pick up their crosses, and become true disciples of Jesus?

Those who had gathered together to cry out to God were not interested in superficial religiosity. No one lays down their lives for something superficial or something they can get in any other religion without the threat of reprisal. I hear Buddhists are great on the tambourine, too, as are the Hare Krishna, and if you’re looking for positivity or structured purpose, there’s always Hinduism or Scientology. There are nearly four thousand recognized religions in the world, but only one faith whose head died on a cross rose from the dead on the third day and then ascended into heaven. There is only one faith that insists upon a relationship with God rather than blind adherence to a set of rules.

Those who had gathered together had found truth, had found light, had found life, and they were not about to capitulate and surrender this greatest of treasures. When we understand the value of something, we are more likely to hold it near, protect it, prioritize it, and sacrifice for it. The early church knew what they had, and no amount of threats or persecution would sway them from following Christ. Jesus is the treasure. He is the pearl of great price, and those who come to the knowledge of Him are no longer their own but surrender their lives to Him in all things.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

 Once the enemy has all his pieces in place and persecution commences, any presumption of innocence goes out the window. It has been a pattern since the early church, continuing into our modern day, and it will be so until the return of Christ.

Because of the freedoms we’ve enjoyed in America for as long as this nation has been a nation, we’re naturally inclined to believe that if we are innocent, then all this talk of persecution shouldn’t concern us because we will have recourse in a court of law whereby we will be shown to be innocent.

What were Peter and John’s crimes? They had committed none, yet the captain of the temple, along with the Sadducees, laid hands on them and put them in custody. They weren’t cordially invited, they weren’t asked to cooperate, and chances are that when hands were laid on them, it wasn’t gentle. The day will come, and in many instances, it’s already evident, wherein the law will be perverted to such a degree that those putting you to death will think they are doing something noble and virtuous.

They’ll be doing God’s work by golly, ridding the world of people who just won’t go along with, accept, and embrace the new paradigm. I mean, why won’t they trust the science? It’s science, after all; what do they know that scientists don’t? Well, obviously, that men can’t get pregnant, girls can’t be boys, and gender is fixed and absolute, but there I go, being a science denier all over again.

In their minds, you are already guilty. You have already committed the unpardonable sin of questioning their narrative or, worse still, their perceived authority. Even when they are proven to be wrong about a given thing they insisted was essential for human survival or about an existential crisis that would only be solved by face diapers and repeated chemical injections; they’ll never apologize or admit they were wrong. Rather, they’ll double down and dare you to imagine how bad it would have been had they not scared the world half to death and arrested mothers for the high crime of allowing their children to breathe fresh air and play on some monkey bars.

They know full well they have no way of proving it would have been worse, but that’s their story, and they’re sticking to it because the story is all they’ve got.

The devil doesn’t need proof or justification to persecute the children of God; he just needs an excuse. The devil is not interested in playing fair, above board, or being consistent about his accusations or whether they’re true or fabricated. You healed a lame man in the name of Jesus? How dare you? Unacceptable is what that is. You’d better stop it if you know what’s good for you.

They didn’t hurt Peter and John because they couldn’t, not because they didn’t want to. They feared the people’s reaction to the point of deciding to let them go because they’d been around long enough to know that people are fickle, opinions change, and today’s hero can become tomorrow’s villain with the right narrative and backstory. They chose to bide their time and began recruiting henchmen, muscle, and those who would go out and become the scourge of the followers of Christ for decades to come.

To their credit, Peter and John understood what was going on, so they didn’t sigh in relief and go off singing Hillsong for a few hours, thinking that it was a close one. They knew this was the shot across the bow, the moment everything changed, and they went in search of the brethren.

Once you know what’s coming, it is incumbent upon you to prepare for it. If you need boldness, strength, grace, faith, or know of any other thing you are lacking or short on, use the time of freedom you have left to pray for those things and do so consistently.

Acts 4:23-26, “And being let go, they went to their own companions and reported all that the chief priests and elders had said to them. So when they heard that, they raised their voices to God with one accord and said, “Lord, You are God, who made heaven and earth and the sea, and all that is in them, who by the mouth of Your servant David have said: ‘Why did the nations rage, and the people plot vain things? The kings of the earth took their stand, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against His Christ.’”

When everything changes in an instant, it’s always good to have someone to run to, someone to share the burden with, someone to draw strength from, fellowship with, and lean on. Yes, God is ever present, always there to listen and comfort, but that does not mean we are called upon to be the lone wolves of Christendom, wandering the wilderness, absent of camaraderie and brotherhood. We will yearn tomorrow for the things we forsake today, and the assembling of ourselves together is one of those things.

Upon being let go, Peter and John went to their own companions. They didn’t go to the courthouse to file briefs or in search of a lawyer to sue the Sanhedrin for mistreating them. They understood that they would not find justice from men because corrupt systems do not produce just outcomes, and corrupt men do not lend their ears to the truth. It’s a hard lesson that some will learn shortly, and the injustice they will suffer at the hands of those supposedly doling out justice will be like an unexpected gut punch to the solar plexus.

If those making the laws despise God, hate Jesus, and detest His followers, what makes you think that their laws will be just? Great atrocities have been committed by those whose justification was either that they were just following orders or they were just following the law. Prepare your heart for a time when you will have no recourse and when you will suffer for doing good because it is coming.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

 Only in our day and age would the godless have the gall to insist that what people are seeing really isn’t and what they’re hearing is likewise not as it is. If they can’t convince you that you imagined it, they’ll revert to arguing that your experience was anecdotal and so cannot be trusted to establish something as fact. That is until the shoe is on the other foot, and they insist that anecdotal evidence is science, and if you deny it, you’re a murderer of the worst sort.

Those who had put Peter and John on trial didn’t even bother trying to convince them that they were mistaken, that perhaps they’d imagined Christ rising from the dead, or that it was a hallucination brought upon by grief. You can tell when someone will not be moved from their position when their faith is solid and true and rooted in the divine.

Despite the threats they faced, Peter and John stood their ground. Their response was not one of fear or subservience but of unwavering faith. The authorities, who were accustomed to manipulating, intimidating, or browbeating others, could not read fear in their eyes. This display of courage likely left the authorities planning their next move in frustration.

If you fear dying for Jesus, you’re never going to truly live for Him. If the goal is to spare your life and not to faithfully follow after Him, you’ll always find a way of avoiding confrontation with the darkness but at the expense of compromising your values, beliefs, ethics, and morals.

It’s a slippery slope. One compromise will lead to another, and one omission will lead to ten. Because the focus is on preserving the flesh rather than the preaching of the gospel, you will justify any compromise, including denying Him before men.

I’ve seen it happen even in the best of times, where men compromised themselves for something as trivial as being glad-handed by Oprah or appearing next to someone they know full well is an enemy of the cross. The justification is always that it’s a bigger platform, and they can reach more people, but somehow, they never get around to preaching a risen Christ once that occurs.

If you’re lukewarm and mealy-mouthed before your sit-down interview with Larry King, then you’ll be lukewarm and mealy-mouthed during your sit-down interview as well. Boldness is birthed in the hearts of those who have seen and heard, who have known the Christ and not just known of Him, and there are many today who have been elevated to the heights of fame, even deemed spiritual authorities, who’ve only heard of Jesus but have never had an encounter with Him.

We must accept the reality that although we do not intend to offend the world by preaching a risen Christ, the world will take offense nonetheless. This does not mean that we should cease preaching Him or, worse, deny Him before men so we might retain their favor or approval. Our goal and purpose is not the world’s approval but Christ’s approval.

Acts 4:21-22, So when they had further threatened them, they let them go, finding no way of punishing them, because of the people, since they all glorified God for what had been done. For the man was over forty years old on whom this miracle of healing had been performed.”

That their frame of mind was to punish Peter and John for having healed a lame man is telling. There was no wonder in being unable to explain how the miracle had occurred; there was no pause or contemplation that perhaps they should allow the truth spoken to them to take root in their hearts. They just wanted to do away with the inconvenience and potential danger of it all, but they couldn’t because of the people.

The people had likewise seen the miracle, and they were glorifying God. If Peter and John happened to disappear mysteriously, there would be questions, perhaps even an uprising, and they just couldn’t risk it.

The devil learns from his mistakes. He’s realized that in order to be able to persecute the followers of Christ at will, he first has to demonize and marginalize them to the point that public opinion is turned against them. Granted, they hadn’t had enough time to foment hatred against those of the way. It had been less than a day between the lame man being healed and Peter and John being brought before them for trial, but time was on their side, and although they couldn’t punish them on that day, their sleight would not be forgotten or forgiven.

From this day forward, they would always be considered foes, adversaries, and enemies of the status quo and would have to be dealt with. Once they had the people on their side, all pretense of civility would disappear, the mask would slip off, and their true nature would be revealed.

It’s a ruse the church has fallen for over and over again. The enemy plays nice until the moment he has consolidated power in any given generation; then, the persecution commences in earnest. People believers thought to be allies and friends turn on them in an instant, and the whole notion of coexisting goes out the window, memory holed, with the godless pretending as though they never subscribed to such infantile theories. Why would we want to coexist with those standing in the way of progress? Why would we want to coexist with those standing in the way of a brighter tomorrow and a glorious future?

By the time they realize tomorrow is darker rather than brighter, that the future is bleak rather than glorious, the plans have already been put into motion, the children of God have already been crushed beneath the weight of their animus, yet what remains when the dust settles, is a refined, purified, tested, and glorious church. We tend to fear the fire, the hammer, and the anvil, but only until we realize that without these, iron can never be shaped or sharpened. We tend to fear persecution only when we fail to acknowledge that a martyr’s reward awaits those who are called upon to lay their lives down for the gospel’s sake and endure to the end.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

 The presence, power, and authority of God are disruptive to the religions and religiosity of men. The reason it’s disruptive is twofold: first, it opens the people’s eyes to the reality that there is more than empty ceremonies and dry homilies to be had when serving God, and second, it reveals the impotence of the figureheads who’ve grown comfortable and slothful in their feigned worship. It’s the difference between seeing a picture of a roaring fire and sitting by one as the logs pop and crackle in the hearth and the heat warms your face.

Those who are simply religious and not in a relationship with Jesus see everyone else as their competition rather than their brothers and sisters in Christ. It’s all about market share and their piece of the pie. It’s not about serving God but themselves and retaining the power base they’ve amassed. When they deem someone a threat to the status quo, they will do their utmost to silence or otherwise do away with them altogether. No self-awareness was present, and there was no introspection as to how Peter and John had healed the lame man or whether their words had credence. All the ruling religious class knew was that they had to be silenced.

Peter and John weren’t out to make a name for themselves. They weren’t out to start some sort of cottage industry or elevate their individual status, but through it all, they pointed to Jesus and credited Him for all that had been done. There’s a valuable lesson in this, one we should take to heart, because any man who points to himself, elevates himself, honors himself, or deems himself the author of wisdom, power, or miracles is a fool and one who has not humbled himself in the sight of the Lord.

Peter and John had not set out to do anything more than go to the temple together at the hour of prayer. This is likely what they did week in and week out because their desire was to worship God, not engineer a revival of their own making. God provides the opportunities. We don’t have to manufacture them. What is incumbent upon us is to be ready to be used when God sees fit to do so, in whatever capacity He might deem.

It’s doubtful that either Peter or John woke up thinking that this would be the day that changed everything. They were going up to the temple to pray. That was all they’d intended on doing. Yet, God facilitated the encounter with the lame man and, thereby, the opportunity for them to preach, resulting in about five thousand men who believed. It doesn’t matter how many posters, fliers, advance teams, or radio spots they would have availed themselves of; they could never have matched the success of what occurred that day on their own.

In our day and age, we try very hard to manufacture revival rather than focus on growing our faith and obedience, and the results are less than ideal. A flash in the pan is just that. It dies down just as quickly as it flares up because there is nothing to sustain it. Peter and John were just going about their daily lives, and in an instant, the ordinary became extraordinary.

Another worthwhile lesson is that if God presents us with an opportunity to share the gospel, to preach Christ and Him crucified and risen, we should avail ourselves of it even if we know full well there will be consequences to doing so. A soul is worth more than my job, my comfort, my reputation, or my freedom. That is the mindset we must possess as true followers of Christ that we might never squander an opportunity or miss a chance to step out in faith and further the kingdom of God.

We are on a lifelong mission to preach the gospel to all men. It’s not exclusive to those with a degree or those with a title but everyone who is a follower of Christ. When we are mission-focused, we will recognize when God brings someone into our path and when He creates an opportunity to share our faith.

Although the early church was prepared for persecution because of the words Jesus spoke to them, the suddenness with which it descended likely came as a surprise. One day, they were beloved by the people; the next, they were being hounded and hunted, vilified and demonized. Life turns on a dime. It can happen that quickly, and if you’re not expecting it and prepared for it, it will catch you by surprise.

Deer in headlights is not a good look for the children of God. Knowing what we know of what the Bible says regarding how the world will view us, what the last days will look like, and that we would be hated by all nations for His name’s sake, we should never be in a position where we didn’t anticipate something or didn’t see it coming from a mile away.

Peter and John had already committed to their course. There was no hesitation or indecision when it came to declaring the risen Christ, nor was there any temerity in their answer to the high priest and his ilk when threatened not to speak the name of Jesus.

In the simple words of simple men, Peter and John made it clear that their choice was binary. Either they would obey men or God, and they’d chosen to obey God no matter what the men might say in order to dissuade them from this purpose. They didn’t try to obfuscate or explain their reasoning behind it. They didn’t try to lessen the blow of telling the high priest that his threats had fallen on deaf ears. They weren’t being rude or disrespectful, just direct.

When the enemy comes to threaten you or attempts to keep you from preaching Jesus, be direct in your declaration that no matter what he might throw your way, your allegiance is to Christ and Him alone. You don’t need to explain yourself to the devil. You don’t need to try and ingratiate yourself to him by trying to see his side of the argument. What he wants is either your denial of Christ or your destruction. Why play nice with someone like that?

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

 Studies have shown that when you’re trying to perpetrate fraud or pull the wool over someone’s eyes, such as a pyramid scheme, multi-level marketing, or a church-run investment fund, there are three points along the way where you’re vulnerable. The first point someone is vulnerable is during the groundwork stage, where you’re putting all your pieces into place. The second is when you’re getting it off the ground before you have enough people on board so they can vouch for the return you promise the dupes, and the third is toward the end stage when you’ve been found out and fear that someone close will roll over on you and spill the beans.

There is a moment during the third stage when the individual sees the writing on the wall and pulls the chord. They push the eject button and attempt to disassociate themselves because keeping up the ruse means suffering consequences they are not willing to suffer. Politicians are masters at this, saying one thing today and another tomorrow and denying that they said either of the two so passionately that one would think the video of them saying the things they deny saying was a hoax of some kind.

I’ve been asked on occasion why I believe Jesus is the Son of God and that He rose from the dead, but the caveat was to exclude the say-so of the disciples or the eyewitness accounts. Those doing the asking are usually college-aged kids who took some introductory course on agnosticism or are parroting their communist professor who insists that gods are a human construct necessary to alleviate the pain of being human.

There’s always some veiled dig about how I seem too bright to believe in spaghetti monsters and how any reasonable person would be skeptical of two-thousand-year-old stories. They go into this long litany about how it all got passed down from word of mouth and how you can’t trust eyewitness accounts, and my answer is always because of the actions of those who’d been with Christ after His crucifixion.

If Peter and John had been perpetrating a fraud or playing a long con the moment they were brought before the ruling religious class, they would have pulled the chord on their scheme. You don’t keep to your story when not only don’t you have anything to gain, but you have everything to lose if you stick to it. If it was just a fabrication, a lie, a well-orchestrated sleight of hand where they took the body of Christ and hid it somewhere, this was the time they would have cried, Uncle, and confessed to their misdeeds. To proceed any further would be to stir the ire of the most powerful people of their day, and con men don’t want to get on the wrong side of the powerful if they can help it.

They were offered an out. We’ll let bygones be bygones if you promise not to speak to any man in the name of Jesus. We can pretend as though this never happened; we’ll find some way of spinning the once-lame man leaping about, but you have to promise not to bring up Christ again.

The only surprise in this exchange is that they didn’t try to bribe Peter and John. They skipped over the bribery and went straight to the threats, so somewhere in the deep recesses of their darkened hearts, those making the threats knew the authenticity of their claims. If they’d supposed it was a con job from the start, and the end goal of this con job was some sort of payoff, they would have likely offered them silver and gold just to be rid of the problem.

If Jesus is your everything, then nothing can sway you from your faithfulness and conviction, whether offers of wealth or threats of death, praise from men, or their hatred. You have all you’ve ever wanted and all you’ll ever want. You have Jesus, and He is sufficient. Because He is the treasure, the end goal, and not just a means to an end, once you are His and He is yours, nothing can beguile or tempt you away from His love.

The threats only work when men try to have divided loyalties or situational commitment to Christ. It’s when men are not wholly committed to daily denying themselves and picking up their crosses that the enemy’s schemes and machinations are effective. They compromise the truth for the sake of baubles, fame, or the adulation of those who secretly despise them because their heart's desire was never Christ but something other.

The dividing line is clear, and the sifting is inevitable. Even among those of the early church who preached the truth and proffered no promise of wealth and riches and taught it as gospel, there were those who walked away, and Paul speaks of such men, as do John, Peter, James, Jude, and even Christ.

Acts 4:18-20, “So they called them and commanded them not to speak at all nor teach in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John answered and said to them, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you more than to God, you judge. For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.”

Peter and John didn’t have to confer with each other about whether they would take the deal. Neither was afraid that his brother in Christ would throw them under the bus and take the offer while hanging the other out to dry.

You can’t choose your family, but you can choose whom you call your brother or sister in Christ. The only metric that suffices when doing so is whether they are as committed to the way of righteousness as you are and if they are as willing to lay it all on the line. If not, there will always be that nagging question of whether they will stand or fold when the road gets hard and the pressure mounts.

It’s one of the reasons attacks from within the body are often so successful and destructive. If you can’t trust the person in the foxhole next to you, if you have to watch your back as well as your front, then the chances of victory are slim to none. However, when you have a common foe and know that it’s either them or you, your only concern is engaging the enemy, knowing that the others are doing likewise.

Peter harbored no doubts about John, and John harbored no doubts about Peter. They were of one mind; they had seen what they had seen and heard what they had heard and would not be swayed from the truth no matter the threats or by whom the threats were being leveled.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

 Their problem was Jesus. It had been from the beginning, and they thought they’d solved their problem by conspiring to have him crucified. Now, it was His followers doing miracles in His name and teaching that there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. Simple men were doing what the most learned men of the time couldn’t, and that ate at them.

This couldn’t be of God; surely it couldn’t; if God were going to use anybody, it would surely be someone like a Pharisee, a member of the Sanhedrin, or even the high priest. They weren’t special enough to be used by God in such a manner. They were naïve in the ways of the world and didn’t have the first clue about marketing their gift, starting a television ministry, growing the fanbase, and monetizing. The gift of miracles was being wasted on people who had no inkling of how they could use it to elevate their own names and positions—doing good just for the sake of doing good? How quaint.

If being nice was all Christianity was about, Peter and John would never have gotten in trouble. For that matter, if helping the poor, or being charitable, leaving big tips, or not complaining when the service is sub-par was all Christianity was about, Peter and John still wouldn’t have gotten in trouble.

It wasn’t even so much that the lame man had been healed; it’s who they attributed the healing to. It doesn’t matter what the devil claims his problem is with the children of God. When you boil it down and you strip away all the isms, feelings, new science, and nonsense, the devil hates God’s children because of Jesus and His name’s sake.

The Pharisees could have even lived with Peter and John, healing the odd person here and there, but what they couldn’t abide was that they taught men of Christ and Him crucified and risen from the dead.

A few weeks back, one of the most popular churches in America declared that during resurrection Sunday, there would be no mention of Calvary, the blood of Jesus, or the resurrection. Not that they mention these things regularly the rest of the year; it’s one of those self-improvement clubs masquerading as a church, but to go out of your way to declare to one and all that you won’t be mentioning the resurrection on resurrection Sunday is a new level of cowardice. Congratulations! You’ve done what the Pharisees demanded of Peter and John without even being threatened or given a dressing down by powerful people.

That’s the troubling thing with the over-inflated sense of self that most churchgoing folk in the West have. You’re voluntarily censoring the message of the cross, the name of Jesus, His resurrection, and His ascension without ever being threatened by the agents of darkness. I wonder what they would omit if real threats by individuals who had the wherewithal to follow through on them were ever leveled against such people. You’re telling me they’ll finally discover they have a backbone? An amoeba in the sun will be an amoeba in the snow, just a shivering one.

You’ll know it when you see it, and you’ll remember someone warned you about it, but when the sifting comes, the greatest enemies the true followers of Jesus will have to contend with are the social justice congregations masquerading as true believers. They’ve already capitulated, stopped preaching Christ and the cross, and see you as an affront to their sensibilities because you are unwilling to cower and surrender as they have.

While the godless will raise them up as examples of what they believe a real Christian should be: docile, inoffensive, easily swayed, malleable, and compromised, they will point to you as the roadblock standing in the way of unity. What they fail to mention is that for there to be unity between the light and the dark, the light must die out. Yes, you, too, can avoid being persecuted; just deny Jesus, and we can be friends. But if we deny Jesus, what is left of our faith? If we marginalize the Christ and refuse to boldly declare that He is the risen savior of mankind, what sets us apart from all the other religions of the world that are just trying to be good and kind and accepting of the most depraved of practices?

When Communism took root in the old country, the first thing those in power did was make a list of government-approved churches. The leaders of those churches were vetted to ensure that what they taught was obedience to the motherland and nothing more. There was no talk of Jesus, His power, the Holy Spirit, or the way of righteousness, just general tropes about how the greater good was the paramount goal and how refusing to comply would be deemed rebellion against God.

The churches the government approved of were left alone, neither harassed nor persecuted. Nobody was showing up in the wee hours of the morning to arrest their pastors, nobody was terminating the employment of their parishioners, nobody was showing up to church with a black eye or missing teeth, and because those in authority had been compromised, they pointed to their absence of persecution and sacrifice as a grace and a blessing from on high rather than the fruit of their betrayal of Jesus.

Eventually, the narrative became that it served those people being persecuted right because they didn’t know when to keep their heads down and go along to get along. Does that particular narrative ring any bells? It should. Whether it’s abortion, homosexuality, transgenderism, or any of a dozen aberrant practices, whenever a church, a pastor, or a believer gets run through the mud by the godless, has their livelihood threatened and painted as the worst human since Hitler, and in some instances even worse than Hitler, there’s always some non-binary pastor of some Unitarian church showing up on television insisting that it serves them right. Jesus is all about love and acceptance, after all, so those people talking about sin and righteousness or holiness unto God are just not being very Christ-like and deserve to be shunned by society.

The message of the cross has been twisted by the wolves who have crept in unnoticed, the character of Jesus has been redefined, and those who continue to cling to truth and pursue righteousness continue to be vilified and demonized by those claiming to be of the household of faith. It only adds fuel to the fire and emboldens the godless to take ever-increasing violent measures. How do you think this is going to end?

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

 It’s not as though those who conferred on what Peter and John’s punishment should be didn’t want to throw them in a dark cell and forget about them, or better still, silence them permanently. There were ways, and surely, they were privy to them because it wasn’t the first time they had to deal with people they perceived as a threat to their power and authority.

They would have gladly done either or both, but they had the people to think about. They had to consider those who had seen the miracle and witnessed the power of God, and they couldn’t figure out a way of explaining Peter and John’s disappearance without stirring their ire.

They understood the pressure the crowds could exert and weren’t willing to endure it just to get rid of two fishermen. You can tell a lot about an elder board or a group of men in authority by what they prioritize and deem existential. The absence of reflection as to what it meant that two uneducated men with no formal training were able to do what their entire retinue could never dream of doing, that Jesus of Nazareth, whose murder they’d had a hand in, was identified as the source of the power, or that Peter and John insisted God had raised Him from the dead on the third day didn’t factor into their decision. One thing mattered above all else: how to keep it from spreading.

These were not seekers of truth, open-minded souls looking for the light. They just wanted to retain the power they’d consolidated, and if that meant ignoring bonafide, demonstrable miracles, so be it.

When those in power, whether religious or political, are confronted with something they can’t explain away, their first recourse is to ignore the thing they can’t explain. The second is to silence and do away with anyone they deem to be in opposition. They know they can’t win in a fair fight, and a fair fight is not what they’re interested in. It’s all about the win. How they get there is not a concern. If they have to lie, cheat, steal, obfuscate, and gaslight, so be it. The ends justify the means, and if a few lives have to be ruined and a few innocents have to spend the rest of their days in dank cells eating skewered rats, so be it.

Because of what Jesus had told them about their future, Peter and John understood that there was a noble purpose for which the fires of persecution were being stoked. This is one of those perception-altering revelations that the Western church has yet to glean because we’re too busy worrying about our flesh to be concerned with our spiritual man.

Often, fire is necessary to burn away the things we are bound with. In order for us to move freely in the midst of the furnace and be unencumbered, the fire must do its part and burn away those things that choke off our ability to grow.

If you’ve read the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego carefully, you’ve noticed that the three weren’t simply marched into the furnace but bound in their coats, trousers, turbans, and other garments, like so many human burritos that were set to be grilled alive. It would not make for a civilized spectacle to have three human torches leaping about trying to put the fire out, so they were bound and hurled in.

It seemed like all was lost—three men bound and falling in the midst of the burning fiery furnace—yet God had other plans. Whether the world counts you out is irrelevant as long as God is still on your side. Even when the enemy is getting ready to pop the cork on the champagne and celebrate your demise, God can turn the situation around in such a way that it will leave everyone who knew of it speechless and befuddled.

It may not have been pleasant for them at the moment, but the fire was a necessary component of their victory. It was the fire that burned away the garments with which they were bound so that they might walk freely among the flames. The fire freed them, and the thing the enemy attempted to use as the means of their destruction was used as the means of their freedom.

 To know the character of our God is to know that He is with us even in the fiery trials. To know the character of our God is to know that He will use any situation or circumstance for the good of those who love Him, even if, at the moment, it seems unlikely or impossible to human reason.

Rather than fear the flame and obsess over how to best avoid it, our time would be better spent discovering its purpose and resting in the knowledge that there is a purpose to it that God knows of beyond what we can see in the moment.

There was nothing Peter and John could have done to affect their current situation. There was no higher authority in the land they could entreat, there was no powerful or influential person they knew who could put in a good word, and they didn’t have money to buy their way out of their predicament. All they could do was trust in God and be faithful to the message of the cross, boldly proclaiming the risen Christ.

Our hope is not in politicians, political parties, people of influence, denominations, or net worth. Our hope is in Christ, and if our hope is in anything other than Christ, whatever else we place our hope in will fail us at some point or another. We are faithful to Him! Not the televangelist on television or the sleep-deprived guy on the internet who posts long-winded articles before the crack of dawn. Jesus is Lord; everyone else is either a servant and co-laborer in His harvest field or someone sowing tares among the wheat.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

 If there were no purpose to discussing persecution and ultimately being prepared for it other than an intellectual exercise, I’d be wasting your time and mine as well. The ultimate objective in being prepared for the advent of persecution is so we might be equipped to endure it, weather it, and ultimately be living testimonies to the power of God to preserve and keep us whole through whatever the agents of darkness might throw our way.

It may have fallen out of favor with the modern-day church, but I take Christ’s words seriously and at face value. Between what He said and what others say He meant by what He said, I’ll believe Jesus meant it as He said it and go from there.

The ultimate goal of persecution is to break the individual and bring them to the point of renouncing their faith and denying Christ as Lord and King. Yes, I’ve heard the insinuations that you can deny Him as long as you don’t mean it or as long as you cross your fingers behind your back, but the reality is that Jesus told us what would become of those who deny Him before man, and it’s nothing to gloss over or take lightly.

Matthew 10:32-33, “Therefore whoever confesses Me before men, him I will also confess before My Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies Me before men, him I will also deny before my Father who is in heaven.”

Untested faith is unproven faith. We’d rather God take our word for it and believe us when we say we are faithful to the utmost, but sometimes He chooses to test our faith and, at other times, allows us to go through a situation that, although uncomfortable for the flesh, will bring glory and honor to His name.

The prism through which many view persecution today is a negative one. They would do anything to avoid the possibility of persecution because they associate it with pain, privation, lack, and powerlessness. I’m not here to convince you it’s a walk in the park, but I will point out that Jesus said those who are persecuted for righteousness's sake are blessed.

They’re not being punished, taught a lesson, on the outs with God, or cursed, as I heard a preacher once claim in between asking for money for his second private jet. Jesus calls those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness blessed!

Matthew 5:10-12, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

The truth will always have enemies in a world of lies. The light will always be at enmity with the darkness. It’s the reality of the world we live in, and if you believe that the godless play fair or that they’d never go so low as to accuse anyone falsely, you’ve been living under a rock for the better part of a decade.

If there is no friction between the church and the world, it only means that the church has thrown in the towel, given up the fight, and acquiesced to the enemy's demands. Light and darkness cannot coexist peaceably. It’s an impossibility. 

If you are a believer actively working out your salvation with fear and trembling, pursuing righteousness and being light, the darkness will eventually target you, harass you, threaten you, and ultimately persecute you. It is an inevitability. It is certain and absolute.

If the devil is leaving most modern-day Christians alone, it’s because he has nothing to fear from them. They are in a state of such lethargy, lukewarm, and indifferent when it comes to spiritual matters that the enemy knows they pose no threat. When someone belongs to Christ in name only, they belong to the enemy in action and deed. When there is no action behind the words men utter in affirmation of being followers of Christ, they are likened to a spouse who, although they took a vow to be faithful until death do they part, is cheating their way through the telephone book.

If we cannot deny ourselves, pick up our crosses, and follow Him in times of plenty and ease, when we have no opposition and no threat of persecution, what makes us think that we will do so when hardship, famine, and the threat of losing one’s freedom and even life become ever-present?

If we can’t be faithful in the good times, what makes us think we will be in the hard ones?

When we are instructed to build up our most holy faith, to pursue righteousness and spiritual growth with the single-minded focus of someone who has no other goals but to know the fullness of Christ, it’s not just for the present, but that we might be prepared for the future so that when we are called upon to endure we will have the wherewithal to do so.

God doesn’t issue baseless warnings. He is not a fear-monger, nor is He interested in views or clicks. When God warns, it’s with the singular intent of His children being in a state of preparedness, ready to give a defense to everyone who asks them a reason for the hope that is in them.

Nobody decides to run a marathon today and then does it tomorrow. They have to work their way up to it, running a little more each day until they are physically and mentally ready. If there is no preparation involved, then we risk being a cautionary tale like Pheiddipides, who ran from Marathon to Athens only to drop dead after delivering his message. Build up your spiritual endurance before your greatest test arises. Once it comes, there will be time for nothing more but to endure. 

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

 It begins with threats. It escalates from there. Somewhere along the way, you will be offered the option of crying uncle, pulling the chord, and severing ties with Jesus, but know that betraying Jesus will be the cost of your flesh being spared and nothing less. If the enemy can’t compel you to deny Christ, then he’ll settle for destroying your flesh. It’s out of pettiness more than anything because he knows what is written about those who suffer for Christ’s sake and the reward they receive when He returns, but he can’t help himself.

If you’ve ever seen a group of children playing and one petulant child being denied a toy setting about destroying it because if he can’t have it, no one should, you understand the devil’s mindset when it comes to his anger and rage toward those he is unable to bend and break.

I’ve collected enough stories to know that until the moment you’re faced with the idea of having your fingernails yanked out with pliers, sitting on a toasty electric chair, and waiting for the current to zap you senseless, or watching four men strip down to their undershirts in preparation for beating you to a pulp, it’s easy to beat one’s chest and declare how you’re bold and unflinching.

The reality is that no matter how brave an individual might be, it’s God who sustains them through those moments. Otherwise, none would stand, and all would fold. There’s only so much the human form can take before it breaks. No one can hold out indefinitely or endure torture for months and years. Eventually, something snaps, something gives, and the human psyche fractures just to disassociate itself from the pain the body is enduring. This is why you will never see someone who has endured such things boast in themselves or of themselves but rather give all glory to God, for they know who sustained them and carried them through.

Man is inventive. Especially when causing pain to his fellow man. The pain isn’t always physical either because there have been documented instances when someone was able to endure untold physical pain but broke when confronted with psychological torment. One of the cruelest things the Securitate used to do back in the day had nothing to do with beatings or physical torture. They would confine a married pastor, preacher, Bible smuggler, or someone they deemed unsavory in a cell for a week or two, even better if they had children, and every day go into graphic detail about what was being done to them all because the individual in question refused to cooperate.  They could go and save their families. All they had to do was write a few names on a piece of paper or give the location of the next shipment of Bibles.

The psychological weight of that possibly happening to loved ones was enough to get many a soul to betray their brothers and sisters in Christ and name them as co-conspirators. Those who remained strong did so because they trusted that God was protecting their families, their wives, and their children because they were suffering for doing good.

I’m well aware that this is an uncomfortable topic. Every time it’s brought up in a public church setting, there’s always at least one individual who admits that they are afraid of the possibility of having to endure persecution, especially physical torture, and to that, I say, so was every individual who has ever had to go through it.

This isn’t the movies; this is real life, and everyone I’ve talked to who was tortured for the sake of Christ confessed to having the selfsame fear all of us share, but their love for Jesus overrode their momentary fear, and with the aid, help, and comfort of the Holy Spirit, they endured. That perfect love casts out fear has become an overused trope readily found stenciled on pieces of driftwood in your local crafts store for a nominal fee, but in moments such as these, wherein fear threatens to engulf one’s senses, it is that perfect love that keeps the faithful steadfast and determined.

For me, it’s not so much the fear of death but how long it might take for me to die that I find myself dwelling on when contemplating suffering for the faith. The dying part is easy enough. I’ve seen enough people breathing their last to know that it’s as easy as breathing your last. It’s the journey toward that final breath that might get a bit bumpy, but I know that if I falter, He will be there to see me through.

I have done what Peter counseled; I have sanctified the Lord God in my heart, and now all I can do is pray for strength to endure to the end. I can’t control what tomorrow will bring, but I can control how I meet it. Neither can you, but you already know that, so why fret and worry about what you can’t control?

Although we cannot know what we will be called upon to suffer, we can do our utmost to prepare earnestly for the eventuality thereof. Today, I can pray. Today, I can grow in God. Today, I can learn to stand on His promises and sanctify Him in my heart. There is a lot we can do today that we put off until tomorrow because our minds are too busy wondering what tomorrow will bring.

See it for the snare that it is. The weaker you are tomorrow because you have not matured in God today, the easier it will be to shake, intimidate, and scare you.

Peter and John, along with the early church, did not squander their time of relative peace. They didn’t take it for granted that they were loved by the people because they cared for the widows and the poor, but they came together daily in prayer and fellowship, knowing that it was a momentary respite. They knew it was momentary because they believed Jesus when He’d warned that eventually, they would be hated, maligned, scourged, and put to death.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

 The early church didn’t set out looking to be persecuted, but persecution found them nonetheless. If you live your life according to the Gospel and obeying Jesus is your singular goal, in time, persecution will find you as well. Jesus said as much, and even though this present generation is doing its utmost to ignore that particular reality, pretending as though Jesus never said the things He did, eventually, His words in this regard will be proven true, as were all the other things He said.

At some point during Peter’s discourse, the powers that be realized they’d bitten off more than they could chew. They’d hoped this mock trial, because that’s what it was, would remedy the situation, Peter and John would be cowed, and they could go back to business as usual.

It’s not that they didn’t put effort into it. Arranging for an overnight trial in which the highest ruling religious class in the land would be in attendance was no small feat. Schedules had to be reorganized, meetings had to be canceled, and high-ranking individuals who were shown deference in all things had to be put out, all because two fishermen had performed a miracle they could not explain or hide from the public eye. At least, that’s how they saw it. They could not allow this to continue, and pressure had to be brought to bear.

They never once considered the substance of what Peter had said or allowed for the idea that he might be correct, and they’d crucified the Son of God, who later rose from the dead. They were too set in their ways for any of that, even with all the anecdotal evidence pointing to the veracity of Peter’s claims. They knew of the empty tomb; the once lame man was standing before them in full health; those responsible for his healing, at least in their eyes, were simple men of low status, yet their singular concern was how to keep the message of a risen Christ from spreading to the masses.

Acts 4:13-14, “Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled. And they realized that they had been with Jesus. And seeing the man who had been healed standing with them, they could say nothing against it.”

It’s not so much that they denied Jesus; they didn’t want to acknowledge Him. Jesus leaves a mark. You can’t be with Jesus and remain the same as you were before you knew Him. They realized they’d been with Jesus by the sheer fact that the things they said could not be said outside of some event taking place in Peter and John’s lives to make them more than the sum of all they’d been prior to it.

We have two guys who smell like fish, who are neither educated nor trained, yet here they stand, boldly declaring that save for the name of Jesus, there is no salvation in any other. Those who had put Peter and John on trial were astute enough to understand that it was not of themselves that they possessed such wisdom but that they had been with Jesus, and that makes all the difference. To complicate matters, the man who had been healed was standing with them, and as the adage goes, the proof is in the pudding.

In our modern age, we’ve somehow managed to disassociate from reality and pretend as though what we’re seeing really isn’t there, but they hadn’t mastered that particular skill during the time of the early church. The undeniable reality that two simple men were speaking profound truths and that a once lame man was standing before them was too much for those judging Peter and John to ignore or disregard.

Although we can’t draw any conclusions about John, we know that boldness was not characteristic of Peter. This man who now stood before the most influential people of his time and declared unequivocally that they had crucified Christ and that the lame man was healed by His name had denied Christ no less than three times months prior.

The source of their boldness was twofold. First, the presence and indwelling of the Holy Spirit that they’d received in the upper room, and second, they’d sanctified the Lord God in their hearts, and would no longer be swayed by any external forces.

Acts 4:15-17, “But when they had commanded them to go aside out of the council, they conferred among themselves, saying, ‘What shall we do to these men? For, indeed, that a notable miracle done through them is evident to all who dwell in Jerusalem, and we cannot deny it. But so that it spreads no further among the people, let us severely threaten them, that from now on they speak to no man in this name.’”

Even though it was evident that a notable miracle had been done, and they could not deny it, not one of them desired to know the truth of it. Jesus, it turns out, was right again, and some people will not be persuaded even if someone was raised from the dead.

In the aggregate, it would be difficult to envision someone seeing another come back from the dead and not be moved to repentance, but here were men, admittedly religious, who’d just witnessed a bonafide miracle done to a man known to have been born lame from birth, and they were not moved. Their only concern was covering it up and preventing it from spreading any further among the people.

The gravy train must keep chugging forward, the biscuit wheels must remain on the track, and if they had to severely threaten men whom they knew to be innocent in order to achieve their goal, so be it.

One would think we’ve grown past such things, but the selfsame self-serving actions are being undertaken today in many churches, ministries, and denominations the world over. Men will ignore egregious sin in the lives of figureheads just to protect the brand, and anyone who would call it out is summarily ostracized and cast out. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

 Hindsight and context are two powerful tools that we can use to better understand the Word of God. The interconnectedness of Scripture is one of those things even the rational among the godless have a difficult time explaining away because for there to be some sixty-five thousand cross-references throughout sixty-six books written over four thousand years is something only a supercomputer can accomplish, and that with great difficulty.

The fingerprints of God are evident throughout Scripture for anyone willing to look and see. But once you’ve seen, once you’ve looked and honestly assessed that there is something beyond mere chance to the universe, then comes the reckoning, where the individual must determine what they do with this newfound knowledge. It’s because men want to avoid the reckoning that they refuse to look and see.

Given what happened to Peter and John in the book of Acts, it lends greater gravitas to the words Peter wrote in his first epistle. Looking back on his lived experience, we realize he wasn’t speaking out of turn or being hyperbolic to make himself look good but that he’d gone through the testing and had seen the presence and power of God in the midst of it.

While ‘those who can’t do teach’ is an apropos mantra for college professors and dating coaches, there’s no substitute for lived experience. Between someone who can recite the theory of flight and someone who’s actually piloted a plane, I’ll listen to the guy who had his hand on the yoke and felt the excitement of being in a metal tube soaring above the clouds and landing it safely afterward.

Between someone who can tell you what it may be like to take a beating for the sake of Christ and someone who removes their shirt to show the scars of the experience, it’s the man with the scars that I will lend my ear to ten out of ten times.

Not to go off-topic, but I take personal offense when some pampered, coddled, drug-addled cat mom wearing the net worth of the congregation they’re looking down their nose at in jewelry starts to bloviate about how they’re suffering because they haven’t unlocked the storehouse of prosperity. To this day, there are men who bled, suffered, sacrificed, and endured among us, living simple lives of obedience and faithfulness, whose stories will never be told because they didn’t go through the experience so they could get a book deal on the back end, but because it was their duty to remain steadfast and committed to the way of Christ.

Rather than seek such men out, the modern-day church is enamored with stories of pet dinosaurs in heaven and how some clown is claiming that God used a port-a-potty to teleport her to heaven. If this is the peak of spiritual maturity in the West, I dare say the coming persecution will devastate what we’ve come to call the church to a level we dare not imagine. Will there be a remnant who will endure? Yes, most definitely. Will that remnant be smaller than most think? Most assuredly.

1 Peter 3:13-17, “And who is he who will harm you if you become followers of what is good? But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you are blessed. And do not be afraid of their threats, nor be troubled. But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear; having a good conscience, that when they defame you as evildoers, those who revile your good conduct in Christ may be ashamed. For it is better, if it is the will of God, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil.”

Everything Peter wrote was not theoretical. He’d lived it. He’d suffered for doing good, he’d given a defense to those who asked a reason for the hope that was in him, he’d been slandered as an evildoer, and his good conduct had been reviled. None of these things came as a surprise to him because he’d walked with Jesus and had heard His words regarding the way the world would view those who followed Him, as well as how the religious elites of the time would react to seeing those of Christ walking in power and authority.

By the time he wrote his epistle, Peter had already seen all that Jesus foretold regarding suffering for His name’s sake come to pass and, with the benefit of hindsight, concluded that the most important thing one can do to endure faithfully was to sanctify the Lord in one's heart. To sanctify something is to consecrate it, to set it apart, to make it the pinnacle of your focus, attention, desire, and purpose, with everything else in life becoming a distant second. When Jesus is your all in all, you will be able to endure whatever the world throws at you, whether it’s hatred, derision, or outright persecution. If He’s not your everything, then whatever is competing for preeminence in your heart will be used against you when the time comes.

It’s easy for the enemy to whisper in someone’s ear that they can have the next best thing without having to endure pain if the Lord is not sanctified in their heart. If we allow for the possibility that something is approaching equal value with Jesus, then it becomes an issue of tradeoff. If only Jesus would satisfy us, if He alone is our portion, then though the world’s treasure would be laid at our feet, we would still cling to Him, for His presence in our lives would be priceless.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

 There was a good twenty years during the Communist rule of Romania where anyone who turned in an individual suspected of being a believer would get extra food rations as a reward. It may not seem like much to us today since, for the most part, a fully stocked grocery store is a few minutes drive away, but back in the day, the shelves of every store were bare, and all you had was what the government gave you as far as foodstuffs were concerned.

Those living in the country and the villages had an easier time because they could raise chickens, goats, pigs, or cows, plant some vegetables, or have a couple of fruit trees on their property, but even they had to count on the system for things such as flour, sugar, oil, and other essentials for survival.

There was no shortage of people being turned in to the secret police for an extra ration of sugar or oil, many by their kin, by wives, husbands, daughters, and sons, and though those individuals were only supposed to be called in for questioning, if they remained faithful to Jesus, and did not deny their faith, being put to death was not outside the realm of possibility. When you get sent to a work camp where the survival rate is less than half, you could say you were being put to death at least half the time.

People keep talking about the guillotine as though it were the pinnacle of suffering, but there are far worse ways to go than by beheading. There are countless souls whose names we will never know who endured to the end, being slowly starved out of existence, beaten, tortured, and abused in ways few of us can imagine. We may never know their names, but God does, and one day, they will receive their martyr’s crown as is fitting.

Just because we have it easy doesn’t mean everyone else does, nor does it mean that we will have it easy in perpetuity. There is such an animus being fomented against the children of God currently that those turning you in won’t need any incentive than to be rid of you to go and report your anti-social activities. How dare you not stand on the street waving a rainbow flag while perverts and pederasts perform lewd acts in public? How dare you try to avert your children’s gaze when grown adults are walking other adults on leashes naked as the day they were born? There’s got to be something wrong with you. Why don’t you want to be loving and inclusive?

If you don’t participate in the experiment, you are automatically against it. There is no neutral party, no conscientious observer, not with something so important. Pick a side, and you better pick the right one; otherwise, you’ll suffer the consequences of your actions. What is the new narrative? Free speech is free, but it’s not consequence-free. You can say whatever you want, but if you say the wrong thing, we’ll take away your bank account, your platforms, your voice, and sooner than some might think, your freedom and your life. Don’t say no one ever warned you because I just did. Do with it what you will!

The sad reality is that most of the church has been cowed and brought to heel even before the persecution has started. The holdouts will now become the target, with the aid of those who name the name of Jesus but are not of Him, and your persecution will be justified because you will be demonized, ostracized, and branded an enemy of the common good.

If we have to prune the tree of a few bad apples, it would be criminal not to, wouldn’t it? Even though the bad apples, the instigators, the troublemakers they’ll be referring to are little old ladies who just want to be left alone, the narrative will be spun in such a way that you’d think that arthritic octogenarian was a blood-thirsty psychopath.

We can’t have you disrupting the indoctrination of the masses with common sense and reason. That just won’t do! Little Billy is a poodle because he says he is. Look at the little darling; he’s even trying to lick himself clean and everything. How dare you, you unfeeling, uncaring, intolerant monster?

Before you think it could never come to that, I would ask that you look back and see how far we’ve come in the last decade. That should put a hitch in your giddy-up. Understand that evil doesn’t have an end in mind. It devours, corrupts, and destroys until there is nothing left to devour, corrupt, or destroy. There is no end in sight to the depravity, and anyone who believes otherwise is fooling themselves.

We’ve already seen the test runs, and they seem promising. Generally speaking, for the most part, people will do what they’re told by perceived authority, even if what they’re told to do makes no rational sense. Shrink wrap grandma’s head so she doesn’t cough on you, stand six feet apart because seven feet is one foot too far, become a shut-in, and have no contact with the outside world. Churches are a danger zone, but liquor stores and weed shops are as safe as a mother’s bosom. Need I go on? And people obeyed; they submitted, and anyone who questioned any of the lunacy was summarily ostracized.

During the peak of the craziness, I told the ministry staff that I would agree to go and speak in any church, anywhere, that asked for me to come and that was still holding live services. It would be on my own dime, and although I never do, I would not require an offering or anything of the sort. There was one church in Michigan that asked for me to come and speak, and I did it gladly because I have the utmost respect for Shepherds who shepherd not only when life is good, and the sun is shining but when times get hard and the threat of reprimand for doing good looms large. Yes, there were others who defied ordinances and rules created from whole cloth by petty tyrants, and they proved their mettle by doing so.

At the risk of sounding conspiratorial, I would wager that every one of those pastors and churches who kept their doors open and did not obey without question are on a list somewhere for the next time an existential planetary threat that has now been declared no more dangerous than the common flu arises. After all, you must beta-test a program before going live and work out the bugs along the way. What was pales compared to what will be, and those who folded once will likely fold again.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.