Proof The Bible Is True

 If you were working a nine-to-five for ten bucks an hour and someone handed you a hundred-dollar bill, sure, you might hold it up to the light as most people do, but if you had the money marker pen handy, you wouldn’t risk it being a counterfeit; you would use it and know with certainty. That’s ten hours of your pay that would get docked if it turned out it wasn’t authentic, and you failed to use the thing that would’ve proven it conclusively, one way or the other.

How much more cautious should we be with prophecy? Some people don’t just lose ten hours of their time, but years upon years, believing something someone said to be a word from the Lord, and building their entire future around it, only to discover that, no, Jesus isn’t contractually obligated to return on the date they said He would, just because they said it. What could they have done with the time they squandered, had they gone to Scripture and believed what it said: “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only.”

Likewise, just because someone says they have a word from the Lord for you doesn’t guarantee it is, in fact, from the Lord. Just because the words someone spoke over you make you feel warm and fuzzy, promising prosperity, influence, blessing, and all manner of earthly things, doesn’t mean they came from God. We tend to reject true, corrective words of prophecy and embrace those that praise and elevate us, because human nature is predisposed to receiving accolades rather than chastening.

Lamentations 2:14, “Your prophets have seen for you false and deceptive visions; They have not uncovered your iniquity, to bring back your captives, but have envisioned for you false prophecies and delusions.”

It’s not a new thing. Men have always gravitated toward praise rather than correction, even when correction was necessary. God doesn’t mince words when it comes to those who take it upon themselves to speak glowing words to those hungering for affirmation or validation. He doesn’t call them His prophets or the prophets; the distinction is made clear that it’s their prophets, the people’s prophets, those to whom they lent their ears because they prophesied good things. What they spoke was not of divine origin, but from their own bellies. The words they gave were of their own making rather than a message from God, and because they were neither challenged nor chastened, the people loved it.  

Your prophets have seen false and deceptive visions for you, so when the opposite of what they promised happens, don’t blame God or shake your fist at Him. It’s not God who lied; it’s the men you ran to hoping they would tell you something contrary to Scripture or give you liberties the Word does not.

Why does every word of prophecy nowadays have to do with how great you are, how great you’re doing, and how great the calling on your life is? Everyone and their pet pug is either called to be an evangelist to the nations or a prophet to the nations because being a servant in your local congregation just doesn’t cut it anymore. We want the big titles, the big callings, and the privileges we’ve been duped into believing come along with them. Who duped us into believing that the title of prophet affords you exclusive benefits? The same people who claim these titles and insist you should treat them with the same reverence you would Jesus. It’s almost euphoric having people defer to you, treat you like royalty, call you prophet or apostle, and you seem not to mind that it’s become about you rather than Jesus.

It is the snare the countless souls have fallen into, one that not only ensures a shameful downfall for the man or woman who sees themselves as something more than a servant, but also wounds the souls and shipwrecks the faith of those who bought into the lie that by claiming a title the individual was more special than the rest.

No one questions why modern-day prophecy doesn’t call anyone to repentance or uncover their iniquity because it’s best to let sleeping dogs lie. Why rock the boat or kick over a hornet’s nest when all you’ll have to show for it is angry letters about how you’re not supposed to touch God’s anointed?

But are they God’s anointed? Are they His prophets if they haven't heard from Him, yet speak flattering things in His name to lukewarm people who lap up the slop as though it were a fine feast?

Don’t blame God for things He didn’t do or expect Him to keep words He’s never given.

As God warned through Jeremiah, the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests rule by their own power, and His people love to have it so. Why, I wonder? Because a true word from God will address the pressing issues of your life, and humble you to your core. Because a true word of God is not a pep session where He praises you while you’re sitting on His lap braiding His beard.

Any promise of future national glory without addressing the iniquity among God’s people is, at best, wishful thinking and, at worst, a flagrant lie, knowingly disseminated because telling people it’s going to be all right is likelier to get them to open their wallets than telling them judgment is at the door is ever going to. Either way, God is not in it. He did not speak it, and the message did not originate from Him!

But it sounds so good, and hopeful, and full of promise. Even so, it’s still a lie. And because you put your trust in men’s words and believed them to be God’s words, when they don't materialize, your faith will be shaken, and your conviction will wane.

Even if it gives you hope in the moment, it’s artificial, a bubble that will eventually burst, and what you have left is less than what you had before you took the bait and believed your prophets over what the Word of God says.

The message of the hour is still repentance, as it has always been, and anyone insisting that we can have God's favor, blessing, and protection while bypassing repentance, whether as individuals or a nation, is lying to your face while you’re elevating him to sainthood for it.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

 The validity or veracity of a prophecy doesn’t hinge on peer reviews, how many bear witness to it in their spirit, or how popular the individual delivering it is, but only on whether it’s in harmony with God’s Word. Does it do what prophecy is meant to do, which is to edify, exhort, comfort, warn, foretell some future event, correct, rebuke, and draw the individual toward repentance, righteousness, and sanctification?

Any supposed prophetic word that doesn’t fall into one of these categories can be dismissed outright, no matter who insists that they are hearing from the Lord. How does someone knowing my dog’s name edify, exhort, comfort, warn, correct, rebuke, or stir repentance in my heart? How does their knowing the name of the street I live on, or my long-dead great-grandmother’s name, do any of the aforementioned things we know, biblically, prophecy is supposed to do?

If you’re looking for parlor tricks, plenty of mentalist shows in Vegas do that. If you want to be impressed by someone’s knowledge of your family tree, plenty of websites will tell you where your people originate from, how they migrated to where they ended up, and everything in between.

On the conservative end, the Old Testament contains over three hundred prophecies about the birth, life, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. Other, more generous estimates number closer to 550. It took over four hundred years for the last prophecy regarding the birth of Jesus to be fulfilled, and close to a thousand years from the first.

It boggles the mind and humbles the soul of man to consider such a thing, but what gets overlooked in the grandeur of some 48 prophecies being fulfilled by His birth alone, and over 300 throughout His life, is that those contemporary with the generation in which Jesus was born knew the scriptures well enough to identify them, harken back to them, and acknowledge their fulfillment.

Know your Bible. Know what it says for yourself, not what others say the Bible says, whether regarding prophecy, the end times, the supremacy of Christ, the last days, or how a believer ought to conduct themselves as strangers in a strange land, because in knowing what Scripture says, you will more readily be able to identify when someone speaks a thing which the Scripture does not say, trying to pass it off as the truth.

Those who claimed to be prophets of the Lord had the bona fides to back up their claims, from possessing the authority granted to them to prophesying events that came to pass, to living lives honoring to the God they served.

It was never about image, popularity, or consensus; it was about faithfully delivering the message they were tasked with delivering, and more often than not, to their own personal detriment. If you stood before a king or someone of great authority, it doesn’t take a genius to deduce that you would more readily be received and honored if you were to prophesy that their kingdom would grow and flourish rather than that God would snatch it out of their hand and all that they’d built would come to ruin.

The men of courage and boldness whom God called to prophesy in the Old Testament knew full well that they would stir the ire of individuals who had the authority to make their lives miserable, and even end them violently if they were to deliver the words they received unredacted and unfiltered, yet they did it nonetheless.

We often refer to the words of prophecy Elijah, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Amos, Zechariah, or any of the others delivered, but rarely consider what it personally cost them to do so. For faithfully delivering the word of the Lord, Isaiah was placed in a hollow tree and sawed in two at the order of King Manasseh. For speaking the word of the Lord as instructed, Jeremiah was put in stocks, publicly humiliated, beaten, and thrown into a muddy dungeon, only to be stoned to death in Egypt. Zechariah was stoned to death by King Joash for his unflinching faithfulness, and Amos had to flee for his life for preaching against Israel’s idolatry, meeting his end when he was tortured to death by a priest of Bethel.

If you want to prophesy thinking it will bring you honor and accolades, look back on those who came before you and realize the only ones that were esteemed, honored, elevated, and praised by the people were the false prophets who tickled ears and promised all would be well even though the people had strayed from God and gave themselves over to idols.

Those who delivered a true word from the Lord, whether a word of warning, judgment, or the insistence that they must repent and cast aside their idols lest the wrath of God come upon them, were not as readily embraced, because killing the messenger, thinking it would invalidate the message, has always been a viable option for those unwilling to submit themselves to the will, purpose, and authority of God.

By using the Biblical litmus test, and seeing how true men of God were treated throughout, we can rightly deduce that most of what passes for prophecy today isn’t, and most of those insisting they are prophets aren’t.

That’s not to say true prophecy does not exist. Wherever the counterfeit, or the false, exists, the true, authentic, and real will also exist; if there wasn’t true prophecy, there would be no need for false prophecy. The US dollar is counterfeited because it exists, is real, and serves as legal tender. If it didn’t, then anyone could point to it, laugh, and conclude that it was funny money.

The purpose of a counterfeit is to create something almost identical to the real thing, so much so that you could pass it off for the real thing. If you’ve held enough dollars, whatever the denominations, you will know the counterfeit by feel. Those in doubt can always avail themselves of the counterfeit detector pens, those things that grocery stores are fond of checking large bills with, because even if you might have been tricked by the feel of it, the pen doesn’t lie.

The Bible works like the money marker pen. It is the counterfeit detector. You may feel something is authentic or true, but if the pen tells you it isn’t, then it isn’t, no matter how close it may be to the real thing. 

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Chances are there were individuals in Joel’s time who rolled their eyes and proceeded to say something snarky about how what Joel had prophesied was nothing more than wishful thinking. Everyone knows God doesn’t do that; I mean, could you imagine sons and daughters, men and women, old and young, prophesying, having visions, and having dreams? Why, that’s unheard of. We know how things work. Whenever needed, God raises up a prophet; they prophesy, we ignore it because we don’t like what they have to say, and inevitably what they prophesy comes to pass because we refuse to heed the warning. That’s what we’re used to, and God can only do what we are comfortable with. Anything beyond that is suspect. Sound familiar? It should. People are people, and the way they react to new information that takes them out of their comfort zone doesn’t change from generation to generation.

There were likely scoffers in Joel’s day who became more vocal and belligerent the more time passed, and there was no evident outpouring. Sons and daughters weren’t prophesying, young men weren’t seeing visions, the old weren’t having dreams, there was no increase in prophecy, and the passing of time only emboldened them in their renunciations. Five centuries is a long time to wait for the fulfillment of a prophecy, at least to man, but to God it’s mere moments. To put it in context, the least time that could have passed between Joel’s prophecy and its fulfillment was twice as long as America has been a nation.

Another thing that few take into account is that the prophecy itself survived and was circulated by word of mouth for all that time, so that when it was fulfilled, Peter could harken back to it and confirm its fulfillment. There was no database with all the prophecies prophets had uttered over time; no mass pamphlets were printed; you couldn’t just log on to a website and access it for a small fee. Joel’s prophecy survived through the centuries because God willed it.

Nathan the prophet wrote an entire book that has been lost to time. It’s mentioned twice in First Chronicles and Second Chronicles, but as far as what it contained, we will never know. We can debate whether Joel was a more prominent figure than Nathan, and when allowing for their influence during the time they lived, it’s not a stretch to conclude they were on equal footing, even though Nathan had access to the king, while Joel never mentions any.

What’s the point? The point is simple, really, that God, in His sovereignty, established what would remain and be remembered from generation to generation, and what would be lost to time. He established what would be included within the canon of Scripture, and what would be left out. For anyone to insist that something that shouldn’t be within the pages of Scripture somehow made its way in, or that something which should be included was somehow left out, is to question both the sovereignty and omnipotence of the God we serve.

1 Corinthians 14:1-5, “Pursue love, and desire spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy. For he who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men but to God, for no one understands him; however, in the spirit he speaks mysteries. But he who prophesies speaks edification and exhortation and comfort to men. He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself, but he who prophesies edifies the church. I wish you all spoke with tongues, but even more that you prophesied; for he who prophesies is greater than he who speaks in tongues, unless indeed he interprets, that the church may receive edification.”

Does this mean that everyone who desires to prophesy will prophesy? It is, after all, what Paul instructed: to desire spiritual gifts, especially that we might prophesy. The short answer is no. Not everyone who desires to prophesy will prophesy, because, ultimately, God is the gift-giver, and He chooses whom He endows with that specific gift. In modern terms, you don’t get every job you apply for, and you may not get the position you desire even if you get hired.

Desiring to prophesy is biblical, and Paul even encourages it, but we must ask ourselves why we desire it. Is it to speak edification, exhortation, and comfort, or because the one who prophesies is greater than the one who speaks in tongues? God already knows the answer. He knows the intent behind the desire, and if it is to glorify self rather than Him, if it is to see ourselves superior in some way, though we may desire it, because it will be detrimental to our spiritual growth, God will say no.

You can’t bribe, coerce, threaten, or purchase your way to prophecy. It is God, via the Holy Spirit, who chooses specific servants for specific tasks, then equips them with the gifting necessary to carry out said task. The one thing incumbent upon us is to keep ourselves pure and undefiled, walk humbly with our Lord, serve Him in spirit and in truth, and be willing to serve in a greater capacity if He so chooses.

What we must likewise be aware of is that with a greater calling comes greater responsibility, as well as a bigger bullseye painted on our back. The devil doesn’t bother those already doing his will. He leaves those spreading deception, false doctrine, or false prophecy to their devices, knowing that they’re doing his bidding. He targets those who desire to serve, obey, and follow Jesus, not out of ulterior motives or vested interests, but because they’ve surrendered their lives to Him in their entirety. The enemy attempts to disspirit, dishearten, and destroy the faithful, not those who sow division and confusion, because they help achieve his end goal: a weakened, divided, distracted, and compromised church.  

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

 One thing that cannot be overstated, which also baffles the agnostics and atheists who study Scripture from a purely intellectual standpoint, is the interconnectedness of a book that spans and covers over 4000 years of human history, written by approximately 40 human authors, over a span of 1500 years. It is something they cannot explain because they refuse to allow for the possibility of divine inspiration, or that God had a hand in the authorship of this divine text, if not literally putting quill to parchment, then guiding the hands of those who did.

From the first book to the last, the Bible is a prophetic book. When the Holy Spirit descended in the upper room, it didn’t blindside those present; it was not a surprise, nor did they question what they had experienced, because it was the genesis of the fulfillment of what they knew had been prophesied by the prophet Joel, and reiterated by Jesus Himself when He promised that He would not leave them orphans, but would pray to the Father to give them another Helper.

John 14:15-18, “If you love Me, keep My commandments. And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever – the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.”

Those gathered in the upper room, about 120 people, may not have known the specifics of how or when this would happen, but they believed it would. They were commanded not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the Promise of the Father, and rather than debate and go back and forth as to how this would happen, or what the signs would be, they continued with one accord in prayer and supplication.

No further insight was offered, no timeline was given; roughly ten days had passed since Jesus had ascended, yet they were all still there in fellowship, in prayer, because they understood a fundamental truth that few today understand: when God promises a thing, He will bring it to pass in His time, in His way, and for His purpose.

It is also worth noting that the promise of the Helper was not presented as some stopgap, but as something permanent. In Christ’s own words, the Helper the Father would send would abide not for a season, or for an allotted time, but forever.  

Contextually, depending on which expert you ask, at least 400 years passed between when the book of Joel was written and when the events of the day of Pentecost took place, and at most 900. It’s a big window, but let’s be generous and err on the side of caution. Almost half a millennium passed between the prophecy itself and the beginning of its fulfillment.

We know that this was the beginning of the fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy because Peter himself harkened back to it when addressing the people of Judea and all who dwelt in Jerusalem, as some were amazed and marveled at hearing their native tongues spoken to them by Galileans while others mocked them, saying they were full of new wine.

As is the case with those who use Scripture to confirm their bias, rather than approach it with a sincere desire for understanding, more often than not what Joel writes is never presented in its full context, because it would undermine the presupposition of those insisting that what was no longer is, and was to be for a limited time and within a limited context.

Joel 2:28-32, “And it shall come to pass afterward that I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions. And also on My menservants and on My maidservants I will pour out My Spirit in those days. And I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth: blood and fire and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord. And it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be deliverance, as the Lord has said, among the remnant whom the Lord calls.”

Contrary to popular belief, Joel’s prophecy contains more than a foretelling of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. While Pentecost marked the beginning of its fulfillment, it was by no means the end. Since we, as men and women, are tethered to linear time, it’s difficult to wrap our minds around the idea that within the span of a handful of sentences, Joel prophesied something that would stretch beyond a singular event and into a millennia-long fulfillment.

God is outside of time. He knows the end from the beginning, and to Him a day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as a day. While the day of Pentecost and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit marked the beginning of Joel’s prophecy being fulfilled, we have yet to see its fulfillment in its entirety. After God promised that He would pour out His Spirit on all flesh, wherein sons and daughters would prophesy, the old men would dream dreams, and the young men would see visions, he also goes on to prophesy about the sun being turned into darkness, the moon into blood, all these things serving as mile markers on mankind’s way to the great and awesome day of the Lord.

Although, in hindsight, the promise that what was once reserved for a handful of individuals throughout history known as prophets would be granted to a far broader swath of servants, both young and old, men and women, menservants and maidservants, seems inconsequential, when factoring in the historical context of when this prophecy was recorded, it would have been earth-shattering.

Given that the Old Testament covers roughly 4,000 years of history, from Genesis to Malachi, the number of those called to be prophets of God throughout this time was minuscule. Suddenly, here’s Joel prophesying that the day would come when sons and daughters would prophesy, old men would dream dreams, and young men would see visions. What was once exclusive and rarely witnessed would be broadened to the point that it would become, if not commonplace, exponentially more frequent.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

 Now to the big question, the one that must be answered, and biblically so, because it will frame the rest of this study: Is prophecy still for today, and if so, what does it look like? By now you already know where I stand. I haven’t been coy or subtle; I’ve shown my hand and made my position clear. For those who may have missed it, yes, I believe God still speaks to His children, engages with His creation, and is intimately aware of all who serve Him in spirit and truth. For Him to keep a running count of the hairs on your head while withholding something as profound as speaking to us through His chosen servants, something He has done since the beginning of creation, is both illogical and contrary to His nature.

It’s one thing to believe something; it’s another to prove it biblically. I’m not here to present you with experientially derived doctrine that was passed down from past generations, nor am I going to lean on anecdotal evidence and personal experience as proof of why I believe what I believe. As always, we will go to the Word, for it has the final say; it is the final authority, and as long as we submit to it, we will know the truth that will make us free.

Since it is one of the most divisive topics within Christendom, I will approach it as lovingly as I am able, while remaining true to Scripture, not taking one verse out of context and pinning all my hopes upon it, but by rightly dividing the Word, studying the entirety of often misquoted passages in context, and using the light of Scripture to guide our path.

It’s not that rational arguments shouldn’t be presented or have a say; one of the strongest is this: if there is no longer true prophecy or prophetic utterance, why is so much of the New Testament focused on warning against false prophets and false prophecy? Would it not have been clearer to declare that these things have ceased, are no more, so any prophecy is, by default, false and should not be weighed, measured, or contrasted with the Word to see if it is of the Lord?

Why would Paul the Apostle encourage the church at Corinth to desire spiritual gifts, especially that they might prophesy, if, by the time the letter reached the church, there would be a window of a handful of years in which they could do as he instructed? It’s not as though Paul finished his letter, clicked send, and the e-mail was delivered to the church staff. There was no FedEx or DHL, so after writing his first letter to the Corinthians, it had to travel from Ephesus to the church at Corinth, about 300 miles away, not by any modern convenience, but by ship and horse; then only after arriving could it be read to the congregation. All told, there was about a ten-year window between Paul writing his first letter to the Corinthians and his death. 

Why is so much time devoted to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the operation of the gifts, and the insistence that we should earnestly desire to prophesy, and not forbid speaking in tongues, if that was done away with within a generation and never to be seen again?

Did Peter mispeak on the day of Pentecost when he declared that the promise was to them, to their children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call? If so, that calls into question the notion of divine inspiration with regard to Scripture itself, does it not? If something as monumentally relevant as the day in which the Holy Spirit was poured out can be muddled by the added opinions of men, wherein Peter declared that this was now the standard, and not a temporary exception to the rule, from generation to generation, a promise God had fulfilled to those who were His, and it was not the case but his added two cents, what does that infer about the inerrancy and infallibility of Scripture?

I believe Scripture is divinely inspired. Therefore, I believe that the Holy Spirit superintended human authors to write His exact message without ambiguity or opacity. It is only when men attempt to inject their opinions and superimpose their doctrinal leanings upon the written text that confusion reigns and everyone ends up doing what is right in their own eyes.

It may come as a surprise, but the doctrine of cessationism is only roughly five hundred years old. For fifteen hundred years after the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, no one even debated whether the gifts of the Holy Spirit were still active and present. As those with a fondness for musty tomes and the writings of the early church fathers can attest, the presence of spiritual gifts was testified to as early as 165 AD, wherein Justin Martyr wrote, “For the prophetical gifts remain with us, even to this present time,” some fifty years after the death of John the Apostle, in 100 AD.

Some people like to pretend there was no church history BC – Before Calvin – but anyone with a willingness to take the time and diligently study it will soon come to realize that there were many notable individuals who devoted their lives to The Way, and throughout the years wrote extensively about brethren in the church who possess prophetic gifting, speak all kinds of languages, and bring to light the secret things of men.

You may recognize some of the names, even after millennia due to the impact they had in leading the early church, from Irenaeus, to Tertullian, Origen, Augustine of Hippo, Francis of Assisi, John Knox, or George Fox, all wrote about ongoing gifts, prophecy, and healing. The presence of the Holy Spirit was never disputed by any of these men, nor were the gifts of the Spirit denounced or censured.

Again, ancient writings and the testimonies of the early church fathers are not evidence in and of themselves. It’s easy to get into the endless back-and-forth of he said, we say, they said, I say, but what is paramount is what the Bible says. What we are doing with this study is building a house, brick by brick, using the Word of God as the foundation. Likewise, at the risk of ruffling some feathers, I do not believe the words of Calvin to be sacrosanct; his words are not gospel; his words are not divine; therefore, I lend them as much weight as I do the words of the aforementioned men who affirmed the spiritual gifts well into the sixteenth century.

One piece of evidence may not sway anyone or convince them beyond a shadow of a doubt, but piece by piece, we are building a body of evidence. Eventually, all the evidence will be presented, the body thereof will be complete, and once it is, my job will be done. What you do with it is on you.  

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

 Even when God calls out a hidden sin or vice through prophecy, it’s not to wow the crowd or elevate the status of the person delivering it, but to stir repentance in the heart of the individual being addressed. It’s not so much about getting a word from the Lord or receiving a prophecy; it’s about how you respond, and whether it compels you to humble yourself in the sight of the Lord and repent of what He has pointed out.

On occasion, I’ve been present when someone has received a word of rebuke or correction, and rather than acknowledge that what was contained in the word of prophecy couldn’t be known by anyone else except for God, allowed their feelings to dictate how they responded to it, and, in the vernacular of the modern-day buffet-style prophecy template where you pick and choose the ones you like and leave the rest under a heat lamp for some other soul to poke at, they did not bear witness with the word.

They allowed their pride and their feelings to dictate how they responded to a word of prophecy instructing them to turn from their lukewarmness, repent of their misdeeds, and correct the error of their ways because it did not praise them, honor them, or lift them to a place or position they knew full well that they weren’t ready to ascend to.

From a practical standpoint, a good rule of thumb for prophecy is that a false prophet, and by extension a false prophecy, will never steer you toward drawing closer to God, denying yourself, repenting, or seeking a deeper relationship with Jesus. Chances are, it will pander to you, stroke your ego, and attempt to placate you, insisting that you are righteousness personified even though you know there are areas in your life that need tending to.

If one filters prophecy through the prism of whether it made them feel good about themselves, it leaves the door open for the enemy to exploit the individual’s predisposition to reacting positively to praise and adulation, and given that the devil is ever on the prowl, he will inevitably facilitate a meeting between the individual and one of his minions to do just that. Once that seed is planted, if, perchance, in His love and mercy God sends a servant with a word of correction, they will be shunned and ignored because the individual will cling to the word of praise rather than the word of correction, due to their biases and how they view themselves.

The attitude of our heart should echo the words of David if our desire is to grow in the likeness of the One we serve, and not desire to be showered with undeserved praise, or told that we’re so special that the standard God has established in His Word does not apply to us.

Psalm 139:23-24, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my anxieties; and see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

Just because a word of prophecy brings correction does not make it false, and just because a word of prophecy praises you does not make it true. Usually it’s the reverse, and if we attempt to attach feelings and emotions to prophecies, we’re likely to reject the true men of God, whom He sent to deliver a word, and embrace those who were never sent but saw an opportunity to exploit our sensibilities.

God will not coddle someone in their sin just to spare their feelings, and someone whose attitude is that of being an open book, and desiring for God to know their heart and see if there is any wicked way in them, shouldn’t expect Him to.

God chastens those He loves. As any good father would, He corrects those in need of correction, encourages those in need of encouragement, strengthens those in need of strength, and comforts those in need of comfort if His presence is their heart’s desire. God knows what we need better than we do, and while we might want something that would offer a temporary respite, His remedies are permanent.

God will not be put in a box, give in to men’s demands, nor will He offer counsel via prophecy that undermines the ultimate goal of becoming more like Jesus. God will not send a word of comfort when what we need is correction, nor will He send a word of correction when we need encouragement. Above all, God is good! He is a good Father, who is not too busy to know what you need, nor is He stingy in providing it. Whether we receive it as a gift from a loving God, even when the flesh protests, is another question altogether.

A true word of prophecy can just as easily lift you up from the darkest pit of despair as bring you so low as to humble you into the dust, depending on what God knows you need. Yes, I want correction if correction is called for. I want God to tell me if I’m getting ahead of Him, if I’m allowing my flesh to dictate my plans rather than His Spirit, even subconsciously and unbeknownst to my rational self.

My desire is to be pleasing in His sight, and if chastening is required for me to do so, then that chastening is an expression of love and affection.

Proverbs 3: 11-12, “My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor detest His correction; For whom the Lord loves He corrects, just as a father the son in whom he delights.”

Never correcting your child, even when you see them doing something they ought not to be doing, isn’t love; it’s indifference. I would rather God correct me every day if warranted, when warranted, than feel as though He is indifferent or unaware.

God’s silence is not consent. If you know that the path you’re walking is leading you further away from Him, if you know that the things which you occupy your time or pine over are contrary to His Word and no correction is forthcoming, it is not a reason to breathe a sigh of relief, but one for grave concern.

Knowledge and responsibility go hand in hand.

James 4:17, “Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin.”

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

 Sometimes it’s not the prophecy that is false; it’s the way we interpret its meaning that falls short of the mark. I’ve seen this on numerous occasions and have had to console individuals who, having received a word of prophecy, superimposed their own desires atop it and concluded it is what the Lord meant, when it wasn’t.

In the old country, in pretty much every Christian community, there is always a house, known to the body as a place where you can go to pray, not at any particular time, or between such and such hours, but whatever the day, whatever the hour, if you show up for prayer, the person is happy to receive you, have a prayer or two, sing a few hymns, and let you be on your way. It’s an open secret of sorts, and if you’re ever in a new place where all you know is a brother or a sister, you can always ask where you can go for a prayer, and chances are they’ll point you in the right direction.

Usually, it’s someone who’s in the latter part of life, who isn’t able to travel to church, and by opening up their home as a house of prayer, they get the fellowship of the brethren that they would otherwise miss out on.

Some of these individuals are also gifted in the prophetic, and although the purpose of the visit is prayer, if God has a word for someone present, it comes forth. I’ve always attended such prayer meetings, but after my grandfather’s passing, it became more common. I needed to pour my heart out to God, cry out, weep, groan, whatever the case might have been, and I couldn’t put it off until Sunday morning or Wednesday evening, so to prayer I’d go, whether midday on a Monday or Friday afternoon.

It was in one such prayer meeting, where I and a handful of other brothers and sisters were present, that a man, who I later discovered had a bedridden wife who had been ill for the better part of three years, received a word of prophecy. The man in question was as much a stranger to me as to the prophetess in whose house we were praying. Unlike the palm readers or tarot card readers of today, there was no exposition as to why we were there, what we were praying about, or what we were asking the Lord for clarification on.

God is not a magic 8 ball where we ask Him arbitrary questions, and He gives a yes or no answer. God knows your struggle; He knows your pain; He knows why you come before Him; and if He has anything to say on the matter, He will say it without narration or backstory.

Nobody in that room, except the man and God, knew his wife was ill, yet a prophecy came forth for him, one I remember verbatim because of what later transpired between the brother in question and me.

The word itself was short and to the point: “As for the one you have come to intercede for, soon, I will take away her pain.”

The man began to weep; we continued to pray, and after the prayer, we introduced ourselves, and I was glad to discover that he’d known my mother and that she’d helped him and his wife build the house they were living in. The village they lived in was a stone’s throw from where I lived, and given the number of people my mom had helped over the years, with everything from building homes to buying cows to digging wells, and everything in between, it wasn’t surprising to hear.

One week later, unbeknownst to me, his wife died. Three days later, I was at the funeral because the pastor who was to give the eulogy asked for a ride, and I happened to have a car. I sat in the back, waiting for the service to end since I couldn’t leave the pastor stranded, and I promised to give him a ride back into town when the man spotted me.

He waited until after the service, and while the casket was being loaded onto a flatbed to be transported to the cemetery, he walked up, eyes rimmed with tears, and said, “God promised! He said he would heal her. You were there; you heard it.”

I had no desire to add to the man’s pain, but I felt compelled to point out that all the prophecy had said was that God would take away her pain. There was no mention of healing or restoration, but he had interpreted the word to mean that she would be healed and, in that, her pain would be taken away.

“I know the pain you’re going through,” I said to him, having lost my grandfather less than three months prior, “but God kept His word, just not in the manner you thought He would. Her pain is gone, she is at peace, and that is all God promised He would do.”

I could see the heaviness lift from the man, the burden and shadow of doubt leaving his face, because he understood that he’d taken the word to mean what he thought it would rather than taking it for what it was. Even now, with all the years that have passed, I believe wholeheartedly that God had made a way for me to be there that day just so I could encourage this brother in his season of uncertainty, not so much to comfort him in his loss, but to strengthen him in his faith.

When we infer or assume something not specifically stated in a prophecy, we are opening ourselves up to doubt, resentment, the feeling of having been betrayed by God Himself, when what He said is what He meant, and He kept His word to the tittle. It may not be what we want to hear; it may not come to pass as we hoped it would, but unless God specifically says it, we cannot browbeat Him into making it happen, or making it happen in the way we think He should.

If you’re up for a job promotion and get a word of prophecy declaring God will bless you, and that same week your wife tells you she’s pregnant, but you don’t get the promotion, it’s not that God lied about the blessing; it’s that you didn’t see the blessing for what it was, and you assumed it would manifest in a different manner than it did.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

 If no allotted time is given, if there is no specific date by which a prophecy must come to pass, then you cannot make a determination on whether or not it was true based on its fulfillment, and so you must seek to discover the intent. Is the prophecy encouraging me to draw closer to God, or further away from Him? Is the prophecy encouraging me to seek after the Lord with my whole heart and soul, or is it encouraging me to flirt with mysticism, divination, out-of-body experiences, psychedelic journeys, or other such inanities? Does it aim to glorify God and point the way to Christ, or make the man or woman delivering it a de facto deity which must be obeyed without question? 

If you’re looking to be justified in your rebellion, you’ll likely find someone willing to do it. It will come at a price, but someone will provide the supply if there is demand. That doesn’t mean God is justifying your rebellion; it means a man whose interest is to steer you toward other gods is justifying your rebellion.

What’s heavier still is that when someone whose motive is to steer you away from the truth gives an accurate word, God is testing you to see whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and not merely paying Him lip service.

If I love God with all my heart and soul, I’m not looking for excuses to disobey Him; I’m not looking for permission to sin, because I do not want to sin knowing it will break His heart. If I love God, I serve Him and hold fast to Him, no matter how many insist I don’t have to be that radical, that committed, that watchful, or that sober-minded.

Look, that one guy prophesied something that came to pass, then insisted it was the Lord’s good pleasure for me to leave my crippled wife and marry my secretary even though I vowed to love her in sickness and health until death did us part. He must be right because he showed signs and wonders, even though Scripture states the opposite of what He insists I have the liberty to do.

It can’t be as simple as denying myself, picking up my cross, and following after Jesus. There has to be more, some repetitive act I can perform, some hidden knowledge I can access, something, anything. Look, over there, there’s a man who claims to be a prophet, who says sin is a mental construct, all dogs go to heaven, and in the end we all end up in the same place whether we are saved, sanctified, and redeemed by the blood of Jesus, or think our pet ficus is god.

If someone precedes something wholly unbiblical with the words “the Lord told me”, it wasn’t the Lord. At best, it was their feigned imaginings; at worst, it was the devil using them as a convenient pawn.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. Walk after the Lord your God and fear Him. Keep His commandments and obey His voice. Serve Him and hold fast to Him. Anyone who tries to sway you from these truths, even if what they’ve said came to pass, even if they showed signs and wonders, is, by God’s own definition, a false prophet!

That’s not me saying it; that’s God saying it.

Angry yet? We’re just getting started. If you are angry, who are you angry at? Is it me? Is it Scripture? Or is it having to wrestle with the reality that things aren’t as simple as they may seem, and that some men and women you believed to be prophets and prophetesses aren’t?

Yes, prophecy has a role within the household of faith; however, nowhere in Scripture does it say we’re supposed to chase after prophecy, go on an endless crusade to find the latest and greatest prophetic voice, or seek liberties through prophecies that the Word of God does not afford us. If God has a word of prophecy for me, I don’t have to chase it down; it will be delivered as surely as the mailman delivers my mail six days a week. The prophetic word will find me; I don’t have to search for it.

The problem with trying to bypass loving God, walking after Him, fearing Him, obeying His voice, serving Him, and holding fast to Him in lieu of seeking out a prophecy is that there are a plethora of unscrupulous, ill-meaning wolves in sheep’s clothing who will exploit your desire to receive a word from the Lord to their own ends.

God already told you what He expects of you. He won’t change His mind on the matter, no matter how many people insist that He has. Walk humbly with your Lord. Obey His voice, serve Him, and hold fast to Him.

If a prophecy you’ve received aims to impede your growth, if a prophecy you’ve received aims to keep you from hungering after God, if a prophecy you’ve received aims to hinder you in your pursuit of righteousness, it’s not true prophecy, no matter how fanciful and entertaining it may seem.

True prophecy will never contradict Scripture. Not ever, not once, no matter the situation or circumstance. God is not double-minded, nor is He double-tongued, and you will find the answers to the burning questions you have within the pages of Scripture far quicker than through any prophecy you might seek out. Prophecy confirms the Word of God. It confirms your need to draw closer to Him, deny yourself, grow in your faith, and mature in your walk. Yes, prophecy may point out some blind spots, some areas where you need to double your efforts; it may offer you a glimpse into the future, preparing you for what is to come, but Scripture first, always, without fail.

Granted, there are those who know what Scripture says, and because they don’t like what it has to say on a given topic, they seek after prophecies hoping that they will contradict the canon of God’s written Word. What those individuals are doing is nothing less than tempting the Lord and seeking permission for future rebellion.

If one’s attitude is “I know what the Bible says; I know what God is likely to say, but I will only accept a word that confirms my position,” they’re not seeking to know the truth; they’re seeking confirmation bias. Even though such individuals try to play games with God, I assure you, God doesn’t play games.  

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

 Few prophecies of old came to pass while the prophets tasked with delivering them were alive to see them fulfilled. They did not fret or rub their hands together, wondering if they’d misheard, or consider their reputation when the graying hairs grew in number, and the message they were told to deliver did not come to pass, because they knew who they were, they knew God had spoken, and understood that God would bring it to pass in His time.

It wasn’t about them, their reputation, their standing, their status, but that they faithfully delivered the message. It took almost seven hundred years for Isaiah’s prophecy regarding the birth of Jesus to come to pass. It took far longer for the first recorded prophecy in Genesis 3, coincidentally also about Christ and His ultimate victory on the cross, to be fulfilled.

Genesis 3:15, “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”

It’s not about the man or woman tasked with delivering a prophecy. It’s never been about the man or woman. It will never be about the man or woman, and anyone who attempts to make it about themselves is not following the examples of those who came before them.

I keep coming back to this point because it’s important: prophecy is not a means of elevating one’s status! Prophecy is not a means of growing one’s net worth! What’s worse is that some take their personal opinions and label them as prophecy just to give more weight to their musings. Such individuals have no fear of the Lord, for speaking when the Lord has not spoken, and going when the Lord has not sent, does nothing less than incur the wrath of the Almighty.

The quickest way to determine whether a prophecy was from God or someone’s belly is to use the two-tiered Biblical litmus tests of whether it comes to pass, and whether the prophecy itself is drawing you closer to the one true God, or toward the embrace of other gods.

Deuteronomy 18 is the benchmark Bible passage, the one most often used and not to be dismissed. However, there are caveats to this passage that we must consider and take into account, such as whether there was a specific timeline attached to the prophecy.

If there was, then your task is simple enough. A self-titled prophet said such and such a thing will happen on this date, or by this date; it didn’t happen; therefore, it was a false prophecy spoken by a false prophet.

Deuteronomy 18:20-22, “But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in My name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die. And if you say in your heart, “how shall we know the word which the Lord has not spoken?” – when a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the thing does not happen or come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him.”

By this plumb line, anyone who has ever set a date, insisting the Lord showed it to them, and that on this date the Lord would return, is a false prophet. They may be affable, you may like them, they may be your best friend, or they may have done you some kindness, but that does not erase the fact that they spoke something with specificity that did not come to pass within the allotted time they insisted it would occur. That doesn't change the fact that they spoke presumptuously; as such, they have no claim to the title of prophet, and you should not be afraid of him. Do not give them power over you, do not give them authority over you, do not defer to their counsel, because they are not true prophets!

That’s the easy test: straightforward, clean, clear, and absent ambiguity. But what happens when someone whose word came to pass, who showed some sort of sign or wonder, insists that there is more than one path, more than one god that man can serve and still be pleasing in the sight of the Lord? Are we to believe false doctrine just because someone is showing signs and wonders? Are we to disregard Scripture and embrace false gods just because someone prophesied something and it came to pass? Does a sign, wonder, dream, or prophecy that comes to pass override the established truth that Jesus is the only way, the only truth, and the only life?

Deuteronomy 13:1-5, “If there arises among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and he gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes to pass, of which he spoke to you, saying, ‘Let us go after other gods’ – which you have not known – ‘and let us serve them,’ you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams, for the Lord your God is testing you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. You shall walk after the Lord your God and fear Him, and keep His commandments and obey His voice; you shall serve Him and hold fast to Him. But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has spoken in order to turn you away from the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of bondage, to entice you from the way in which the Lord your God commanded you to walk. So you shall put away the evil from your midst.”

To be clear, the prophet that prophesied something and did not come to pass, the one who spoke presumptuously, you should not fear. You disregard them because they have proven themselves to be false prophets. However, the one who showed signs and gave wonders, and what they said came to pass, yet attempted to lead the people of God astray, saying they should go after other gods and serve them, should be put to death.

This is not a distinction without a difference, and many conflate the two passages, insisting that those who prophesy a thing and it does not come to pass were to be put to death. That’s not what the text says. If they spoke presumptuously and what they said did not come to pass, they should no longer be acknowledged as prophets or vessels of God; they should not be feared or believed when they insist they walk in the office they claim.

It’s those who, having given accurate words, shown signs and wonders, and attempted to turn the hearts of God’s people away from Him, that God declared should be put to death. Just because it sparkles, it doesn’t mean it’s gold.

For a prophecy to pass the Biblical litmus test, the one delivering it must show the evident fruit of a good tree and deliver an accurate word that comes to pass within the allotted time. Their doctrine must align with Scripture, and their purpose must be to stir men to repentance and a life of obedience not to themselves, but to God.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

 If we are to dispel the confusion around prophecy, the first step is to properly define what it is and where it originates. Prophecy is not a gut feeling. It is not an emotional response to a current situation, a guess, or a supposition, nor is it the logical deduction of a perceived outcome given a specific set of circumstances. Prophecy is not intuition. Prophecy does not originate with the individual, nor is it something they can induce, accelerate, or manufacture.

The true definition of prophecy is this: a statement or a message of divine origin that predicts the future, or proclaims a divine or supernatural will. It is not a feeling, nor is it tethered to emotion, but a message from God, delivered via a vessel of His choosing, to an individual, a body, a community, or a nation.

God does not speak in generalities. When a message is from God and is delivered as it ought to be, there is no guessing as to what God means or who it was intended for. The message is direct and clear, whether in its warning, correction, direction, or portent of some future event.

Both divine inspiration and divine revelation fall under the umbrella of the prophetic. Neither is meant to elevate the individual, nor is a prophetic calling a means of discovering a side hustle or a source of gain.

As a counterfeit to prophecy, the devil has his own version of it, commonly called divination. It is not God-breathed, God-inspired, nor does it originate from Him, and much of what passes for prophecy today, even within the church, is nothing less than the practice of divination.

I grew up in a country known for fortune tellers, palm readers, gypsies in brightly colored skirts eager to tell you your future for a few shekels, and though they try to differentiate themselves from evil by saying they were white witches, or something of the sort, the source of their power was not of the light but of the dark.

Tragically, some of these individuals had more power than those claiming to be prophets today, and could perform the parlor tricks with greater flair. They didn’t need ear pieces to tell you your mother’s name, or dog’s name, or your long-dead grandmother’s name, and their intuition was honed to razor sharpness.

If guessing someone’s zip code, or home address, makes them a prophet, then all the gypsy caravans roaming Eastern Europe have their own dedicated prophet or prophetess.

I had one experience with a gypsy woman when I was young and didn’t know any better, that I remember to this day. I was around seven at the time. We lived in a village, rural enough that we didn’t get much traffic, and one day, as I was playing in the yard, I heard a clatter coming down the unpaved road in front of our house. Being the curious sort since early youth, I stood on the bench beside our fence and peered over, only to see a caravan passing by. Three carts, heavily laden with pots, pans, and other sundries they sold as they went from place to place, and a handful of gypsies, the women of the group dressed in bright flowing skirts, with gold coins braided in their hair.

I didn’t wave or anything of the sort; I just watched as they passed, until a woman broke off from the pack and came to the fence, smiling and waving at me. I waved back, said hello, and after returning the greeting, she said, “I’ll read your future for a cup of water.”

Our well, still there the last time I drove through my home village a couple of years ago, was next to the fence, so I didn’t see the harm in giving her a cup of water. I pulled a fresh bucket, took a tin cup hanging on a nail at the base of the well, and handed it to her.

She drank it in one long pull, then said, “Give me your palm.” I extended my hand; she took it, looked down, then recoiled and said, “You’re one of them; you’re one of them. I can’t do it; you’re one of them.”

She let go of my hand, turned and rushed back to the caravan without another word or a sideways glance. What’s the point of this story? Simply that the darkness is aware of the presence of light, just as light is aware of the presence of darkness. Just because there is a supernatural element to something, it does not make it divine, nor does it ensure that it originates from God. Assume nothing. Test everything.

Yes, you may be called a wet blanket; others may demand you not question the man because the size of his ministry validates his calling, but fruit is fruit, and you can’t fake that, so no matter how well-known, how big, how much they might call themselves a prophet or a prophetess, take the time to see whether what they say is in harmony with the Word of God.   

God chooses when He speaks, He chooses whom He speaks to, and via whom the message is delivered, so thinking that anyone has the market cornered on prophecy and can guarantee a personal word from the Lord in exchange for legal tender is fallacious, wrong, and inconceivable.

You cannot monetize a gift that isn’t yours to do with as you will! That should be obvious, but given the current insanity plaguing the household of faith, it needs reiteration. If you’re a roofer and you learned how to put on a roof, that’s a skill you learned, and you are more than welcome to earn your daily bread from it. Prophecy is not a skill. It is not something you can learn. It is not something that another can teach you how to do, or impart upon you as a signing bonus.

God chooses the vessel; He chooses how often He uses the vessel, He chooses the extent to which He will use that vessel, and the vessel’s only contribution is that they remain faithful, walking in righteousness, and delivering the message they’ve been given verbatim, without taking away or adding anything to it.

It is not man’s job to guess what God was trying to say or to interpret the message they were tasked with delivering. I’ve seen more than my fair share of individuals having to walk back suppositions they made based on a word that was given because, rather than deliver the message and be done with it, they attempted to draw their own conclusions, whether regarding timeline, the means by which God would fulfill the word, or whether they, themselves, would end up playing an integral part in the fulfillment thereof.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

 Men presume; God declares. Men assume; God proclaims. Generations come and go, forgotten to time; God abides and remains the same yesterday, today, and forevermore. Men insist upon a thing, hoping God bends to their will, or think to themselves that if they are loud enough, belligerent enough, insistent enough, they will somehow convince Him to see it the way they perceive it.

Few topics today are more divisive than that of prophecy. From those who have a nuanced take on it, to those who insist it’s no longer for today, to those who believe everything they do, from brushing their teeth to what deodorant they wear, is prophetic, there is no end to opinions, often at odds with each other, and the arguments on every side oftentimes get heated and straddle the line between discourse, reasoning together, and all-out war.

In the heat of the moment, few have the wherewithal and presence of mind to take a pause and go to the Word of God to see what it has to say, because that would mean giving up their position, or acknowledging that they may have gotten it wrong, not because of diligent study of Scripture, but because they believed something someone once said and took it as gospel truth.

Rather than being one body united in purpose, the household of faith has become tribal, carving itself into ever smaller pieces, warring against itself, divided and fractured, staking its position and making certain everyone knows where it stands.

Far too many define themselves by the position they take on a given topic rather than by serving and following Christ, being saved and sanctified, and declaring Jesus Lord and Savior. Their identity is not Christ, but some tertiary issue they’ve chosen as the hill to die on, and wear it as a badge of honor, believing it makes them spiritually superior.

Those who profit from such division are eager to foment it, positioning themselves as intermediaries between God and man, and feeling entitled to the praise and glory rightly due God. Those with no interest other than humbly walking with Jesus, and pointing the way to Him, see the danger a divided body poses, understand that a divided house cannot stand, and that due to the infighting the entire body makes for easier prey.

We elevate men to the point that we deem them equal in authority to Scripture, then wonder why there is so much confusion, division, and no clear path forward toward the end goal of being a soldier of the faith, fully equipped and ready for every good work.  

To take a hard line and insist that God will not, cannot, or must not do something when God Himself did not declare it as such is to speak on behalf of God, assume that you know His thoughts more clearly than He knows His own, and demand that He fall in line with your way of thinking rather than submit to His.

To insist that God can no longer do something He has done since He first spoke to Adam in the garden of Eden is to appropriate His authority and place myself above it as the final arbiter of what He is allowed to do. In essence, it is saying I do not permit God to do as He wills, but demand that He submit to my musings on the matter and act according to my dictates.

If an earthly king with power limited to his kingdom were to declare a thing, and one of his subjects were to request an audience, then insist that the king cannot do as he purposed because the subject deems it so, how do you think the king would react? How much more when the King in question is limitless in His power and authority, when His will is sovereign, and He does as He wills?

No man living or dead, of this age or past ages, has ever had the authority to place limitations on God, or insist He can no longer do something just because they have declared it so. Hubris is a powerful drug, but it is also dangerous when we convince ourselves that we can dictate terms to the Almighty, and that He must abide by what we have declared for no other reason than that we have declared it.

What we must ultimately determine isn’t what men have to say about prophecy, or the prophetic in general, but what God has to say about it. How we do this is simple enough: first, we lay aside all presuppositions, preconceived notions, the things we’ve heard others say regarding the topic, and turn to the Word of God itself, and allow it to be a lamp unto our feet, to guide our way to wisdom and understanding, wherever that may lead.

We all have biases, one way or another, but if we are to rightly divide the Word, we must resolve that, if Scripture challenges them, we will humble ourselves before the Lord and submit to its authority.

If we are unwilling to bend, if our minds are already made up and we will disregard Scripture as a whole in favor of our interpretation of one verse taken out of context, around which we form an entire doctrine, then there is no point in proceeding beyond this juncture. We are all held to account for the things we know, and once we know them, we can no longer plead ignorance of the matter.  

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

 This is less a book I wanted to write than a book that needed to be written. I’ve waited patiently for someone else to take up the mantle, to put pen to paper and expound on these most controversial of topics, hoping someone would. It’s not because I don’t feel up to the task. My English is passable, I enjoy research, and I’ve been around prophecy and intimately aware of the prophetic since before I could read or write.

In hindsight, my reasoning is selfish: I was cognizant of the slings and arrows such a deep dive into prophecy, prophets, modern-day carneys, and everything in between would elicit, and my life has been such that I’ve had my fair share already, have the scars and bruises to show for it, and if I could avoid it and let another carry the burden, I would gladly do so.

Full disclosure, cards on the table, I believe in the prophetic. I believe God still engages with His people, communicates to His people, warns His people, chastens His people, and operates among His people supernaturally, as He always has; I believe He speaks to His own, and I believe He chooses vessels through which He does so.

Believing something, however, is not enough. A multitude of people believe a multitude of conflicting, contradictory things, and they can’t all be right, so the mission we will be undertaking during the time we have together is not to highlight what I personally believe and insist that by the sheer fact that I believe it, it must be thus, but to ensure that there is Biblical confirmation to support it. In layman’s terms, if what I believe and what the Bible says I must believe conflict, then the Bible has final authority on the matter.

The Bible provides no foundation for the idea that, at some point in human history, God chose to go radio silent. Ever since Adam and Eve walked in the garden, God has communicated with His creation, has been fully engaged, and is not, as some insist, an absentee landlord.   

What I do not believe is that God establishes new doctrine through the prophetic, since the canon of Scripture has been established, and we have all we need for a full, vibrant, complete, and victorious spiritual life. This is doubly true when someone claiming to be sent of the Lord speaks things contrary to what the Word of the Lord has already established, causing confusion, division, and turmoil within the household of faith.

Prophecy cannot offer you liberties otherwise not specifically granted in Scripture, nor can it place upon you burdens, whether practices, rituals, or ceremonies not contained therein.

After considerable deliberation, this study will be divided into three parts: First, what prophecy is, what it isn’t, its purpose, and its origins. The second part will focus on prophets, their roles, their authority, and how they operated in the time before the outpouring of the Holy Spirit versus how the gift of prophecy operates today. The third part will focus on the jesters and fools of our day, men and women who go without being sent and prophesy in the name of a Lord they’ve never known.

The rampant abuse of prophecy today is undeniable. Equally undeniable is that it is neither accidental nor coincidental. It is one of the telltale signs of the last days, as obvious and certain as the wars and rumors of wars, earthquakes in various places, pestilences, and general turning away from the truth we were warned would be evident. We were warned that such individuals would rise up and deceive many, but where the false exists, so must true prophecy; hence the need for discernment and the application of Scriptural litmus tests in order to separate one from the other.    

Anecdotal evidence and personal experience aside, this study will be tethered to Scripture, for we are bound by the Word in all things. Is prophecy still relevant? Is it still for today? What does the Bible have to say about it? These are the questions we will tackle and flesh out Biblically, not through the prism of a denomination or personal opinion, but via Scripture itself. Because, in the end, it’s the only opinion that matters.

This study is bound to ruffle some feathers on both sides of the aisle, whether among continuationists and cessationists, but that can’t be helped. As long as the Word is our plumb line, we must abide by what it says, even if it contradicts previously held opinions we believed to be true.     

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

 Every journey has a beginning and an end. Going through the book of Job and gleaning the wisdom therein has been quite the journey, taking longer than I thought it would, but necessarily so; yet here we are, at the end of the road, ready to endeavor upon a new journey shortly.

I will be taking a few days to recharge, refocus, and get Job out of my system, then on to the new project we go, which is loosely titled “Prophecy, Prophets, Jesters and Fools: The good, the bad, and the ridiculous of modern-day prophecy!”

If you've never done a deep dive into a topic, or a book of the Bible, you may not understand the need for a few days of quiet, but it’s like having a friend stay with you for close to two years, then suddenly packing up and moving away. You feel the separation, you feel the absence, and to tackle this next topic well, I need a few breaths between projects. That’s how I process, and ever since I started writing, it's been the case with each new journey.

To those who stuck with our study of Job to the end, thank you. I hope and pray you got something out of it, that you gained some insight or understanding, whether regarding the duty of man, the nature of God, or the reality that none is spared their valleys, no matter how righteous.

See you soon.   

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

 God doesn’t deal in hypotheticals. He’s not some sleazy investment guru on the internet who has to preface his pitch by saying he is not giving you investment advice, wink, wink, but all that he’s about to say is for entertainment and educational purposes. God doesn’t make empty promises; he doesn’t inflate His numbers; He doesn’t promise you the moon and the stars only to leave you with an empty wallet, wallowing in bitterness, wondering to yourself how you could have ponied up a whole hundred dollars for a course that promised to make you a millionaire only to be told you’re not getting a refund because you didn’t follow all the steps and didn’t have the initial half million seed money to grow your wealth.

No, I didn’t fall for it, but I know people who have. I grew up around hustlers, and I understand that if something is too good to be true, it likely is, so anytime someone tries to charge me in order to impart their wisdom, I shut down and walk away without giving it a second thought.

Unlike men, God means what He says, does as He promises, and whenever we take a step of faith and trust Him, He never fails. Oftentimes it begins with one small act of faith, something that your logical mind insists is wasted effort, but once you commit and follow through and do as the Word of God prescribes, you see the promise fulfilled in real time and in ways you could have never foreseen. 

It starts with one. Whatever it is you endeavor to do, it always starts with one. One choice to walk past the donuts and not pick up a dozen out of habit, one choice to walk around your block rather than sit in front of the television. One conscious decision to lay aside the troubles of this present life and commune with God. One step, one decision, one moment of realization that the earth and everything in it is passing away, so putting our trust in anything in it is an exercise in futility at best.

Of all the things that had been restored to Job, his fellowship with God was the most prized thing of all. This is not a guess or an assumption, but a conclusion tethered to his own words when he declared that God’s absence, the absence of His presence, His voice, and His guiding hand, was what vexed him beyond any of his physical or emotional torments.

From his early years, Job had anchored his hope, trust, and faith in God, not in his possessions, not in what he had amassed, not even in his wife and children. The source of his utmost joy was communion with God, being in His presence, and knowing that He was there. It was when he cried out and God was silent that Job felt truly lost, and even then he would not abandon his faith in God.

If you committed to serve, then serve. If you committed to obey, then obey. If you committed to follow, then follow. Not only when the wind is at your back and the sky before you is clear, not only when the way forward is smooth, and there are no valleys before you, but in every circumstance, in every situation, even in the trials and the setbacks, keep your eyes fixed before you, and keep going, because by its very definition, the testing of your faith is no light, easy thing.

If we saw the end from the beginning as God does, there would be no need for faith. If we understood all the mysteries of the universe and could process all wisdom and knowledge fully and completely, there would be no warning in the Word to lean not on our own understanding.

If one such as Paul concluded that for now we see through a glass, darkly, and know in part, then odds are you and I are in the same boat, and boasting about seeing everything clearly is an empty boast meant to stroke our ego and inflate our pride.

There was much Job didn’t know as he went through his trials, but the handful of things he did know were enough to carry him, strengthen him, and give him the ability to endure. What Job knew mattered more than what he didn’t know. He didn’t know why he was suffering the way he was, why everything in his life had been turned to ash, why his body had betrayed him and was nothing more than a skin suit covered in boils, or why God was being silent. He would have liked to know, had even cried to the heavens for clarification, but no clarification came.

What mattered, however, was what he knew. He knew God was real. He knew God was sovereign. He knew God was omnipotent. He knew God was worthy of worship whether in the valley or on the mountaintop. He knew God was just. He knew God was loving. He knew that though he did not feel His presence in the moment, God was nevertheless omnipresent. Most of all, having spent his life serving Him, Job knew God. Not an idea of Him, not what he’d heard others say about Him, but personally and intimately.

Do you know God? The one true God? The God of the Bible, and not some fabrication or approximation of what others think God is, or how they believe He should be, but as He reveals Himself in His word to those who are diligent to search it out and discover the beauty of all that He is?

If you do, then press on, press in, follow and obey, for He will lead you into all truth, to green pastures, and still waters. If you don’t know Him, while you still have breath, you have the opportunity to do so, not on your terms, but on His terms. Not for your glory, but for His glory. Not for your purpose, but for His purpose. Truly knowing God matters more than anything else in this life. It is the difference between life and death, light and darkness, eternity in His presence, or being cast into the outer darkness, far from Him. Choose wisely!

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

 I’m old enough to remember life before GPS and turn-by-turn instructions with real-time satellite imaging of congestion, traffic jams, and accidents. Having the world in the palm of your hand is convenient, to be sure, as is estimating your time of arrival within a five-minute window, but convenience comes at a cost, and one of the things we’ve lost along the way is the sense of adventure inherent in guessing which way you should turn, what highway you should take, and how exactly you ended up on the Polish border when you were expecting to cross into Austria.

I traveled a lot when I was younger, put on enough miles to rival an over-the-road, long-haul truck driver, and have enough stories to last me a lifetime. If the journey was more than a ten-hour drive, whenever the individual you were supposed to visit asked when you thought you were arriving, your best estimate was Tuesday rather than before six pm, but not after seven.

One of the multitude of graces we take for granted today, when we consider the time Job lived in, is that we have turn-by-turn instructions, a roadmap laid out in the Word, that all we need do is adhere to in order to reach our destination. Even so, none of us can say with any degree of certainty when we will reach it.

Job thought he was days away from ending his journey, and given his condition, that was a reasonable assumption; yet he lived another hundred and forty years beyond what he thought would surely be his end. There is an end point for all of us. Whether in a year, ten, or fifty, we will all, at one point, shake off this mortal coil, see a sunset for the last time, hug our loved ones for the last time, enjoy fellowship for the last time, then eternity.

Some of us get so caught up with wondering when our exit is coming up that we fail to cherish the journey. We death-grip the steering wheel and become obsessed with when the off-ramp will be, living in a constant state of stress regarding something we have no control over. God’s got it. He always has. Follow the instructions, and enjoy the ride.

Yes, sometimes the road may get bumpy, at other times so winding that your stomach might start to protest, but as long as you’re headed in the right direction, toward God and not away from Him, keep going. My duty is not to entertain the thoughts of when it all might end, but to ensure that when it does, I’ve finished well.

The destination is the destination. There is no place between now and then that is a viable option to pitch our tents and proceed no further. Nor is turning back to revisit the past something healthy for our spiritual man. We press ever onward, not looking back, not being distracted by shiny things off in the distance, but faithfully following after the One who promised he was going to prepare a place for us.

God knows the plans He has for you. For most of us, He does not disclose those plans, so trying to gauge what we can accomplish in five years, ten years, or even five days is foolhardy at best. This moment is all we have, and our duty before God is to redeem this moment for His glory and honor.

Some who think they have decades left will never see another moon cycle, while others who believe that death is knocking at their door and will soon kick it in will live for years still. When is God’s territory, and it is within His purview to determine such things. When we try to control things we have no way of controlling while simultaneously ignoring and putting off the things we have agency over, things we can control and do, we are wasting the most precious resource we’ve been given, which is time.

You have agency over whether you read your Bible today or not. You have agency over whether you spend time in prayer today or not. You have agency over whether you buy a hot meal for someone who is hungry today or not. These are things that you and I can control. When you close your eyes for the last time is not something you can control, so why fret about it?

We all want to move mountains, but it begins with the first pebble. It begins with the first shovelful of dirt, the first wheelbarrow, and given enough time, given enough consistency, that pebble will turn into a mound, which will turn into a hill, which will turn into a mountain that has been moved. It would be nice to see it happen in a breath or the blink of an eye, and sometimes, in His grace, God does just that, wherein He remedies a situation that seemed insurmountable to human intellect, but more often than not it’s a matter of degrees and forward momentum, and being diligent in the doing of the work required.

Did you spend more time today in God’s presence than you did yesterday? If the answer is yes, that is forward momentum, and it is a good thing. Have you spent more time in prayer today than yesterday, and has your prayer life grown month to month and year to year? If the answer is yes, that is forward momentum, and it is a good thing.

You know yourself well enough to know if you’re making progress, if you’re growing, maturing, and building up your faith, or spinning your wheels going from one distraction to another, grasping at straws and fanciful fables. If you can be honest enough with yourself to acknowledge the lack of progress, and take steps to rectify it, all you need do is knock, and He will open. All you need do is ask, and He will give. Desire fellowship with God and you will have it. Desire understanding, and you will glean it, not by osmosis, but by diligently studying the word of God, and seeing His truth revealed to you.

Time is running out for all of us. The gray hair, the achy joints, attest to the reality that we are getting older, and even if we’ve squandered more time than we would like to admit up until this point, today is the day it can all change, turn around, and we can double our efforts in redeeming the time and growing in God.

I can’t tell you how much time you have left; I’m not God. All I know is that as long as you draw breath, you have the ability to deepen your relationship with Him, and growing in God is never wasted time, for it pays dividends now and into eternity.      

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

 Job 42:12-17, “Now the Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning; for he had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, one thousand yoke of oxen, and one thousand female donkeys. He also had seven sons and three daughters. And he called the name of the first Jemimah, the name of the second Keziah, and the name of the third Keren-Happuch. In all the land were found no women so beautiful as the daughters of Job; and their father gave them an inheritance among their brothers. After this Job lived one hundred and forty years, and saw his children and grandchildren for four generations. So Job died, old and full of days.”

Job had endured; he had persevered; he had clung to his faith, resisted the whispers to curse God and die, rejected the ideas of his friends when they insisted he’d committed wickedness, and pressed on. As the adage goes, when you’re in it, the only way out of it is through it, and one way or another, Job knew there was a terminus to his pain, grief, struggle, and hardship. He could neither know nor control how that end would manifest, but he trusted the God he served. He would have liked an explanation; he would have liked to know why, and even how it would end, but to make demands of God is to place oneself on equal footing, and that Job would not do.  

It’s one thing to ask, petition, and request something of God; it’s quite another to demand it. When we ask or request, we submit to His will in that particular matter. When we demand, we insinuate that our will supersedes His, and He must do as we demand.

We get so caught up in the nonsense, so enamored with the idea that we can decree a thing, no matter what it is, and regardless of God’s will on the matter, that we forget even Jesus formulated His prayer in such a way wherein the will of the Father superseded His, and the final decision would be left to God alone.

Matthew 26:39, “He went a little farther and fell on His face, and prayed, saying, ‘O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.”’

This was not some trivial matter Jesus was praying about. It was a matter of life and death, yet Jesus acquiesced to the will of the Father, insisting that though He would prefer that this cup pass from Him, if it were possible, the Father’s will is all that mattered.

Some of us want what we want and will not let something as tertiary as God’s will interfere with it or change our minds on the matter. This is what I have decided; this is what I have decreed; this is how I see my life in five years, ten years, and it matters not if it’s in harmony with God’s will or if God desires for me what I desire for myself. When men adopt such a mindset, every step is drudgery, because rather than walking with God, they pull against Him, dragging their feet, stopping in the middle of their journey, deciding things they have no authority to decide because, in the moment, to their intellect, it seems the better way than what God has set before them.

What ought to have taken forty days for the people of Israel ended up taking forty years. Oftentimes, the trial, testing, and hardship we must overcome and endure take much longer than they ought to because of our unwillingness to submit to the plan and purpose of God.

He will have His way, eventually. His will is supreme, and He does as He wills, and the fastest way to get through it is to pray for strength and endurance, faith and resilience, rather than constantly insisting we’re being treated unfairly, asking to know how it ends, or attempting to get God to change His mind on the matter.

For Job, death had become a foregone conclusion. Never in his wildest imaginings did he consider the possibility that everything he’d lost would be restored to him, and doubly so. He felt death so near for so long that it had become a constant companion, and the best he hoped for was an end to the misery, but God had other plans.

Whatever it is in your life that seems impossible, never allow yourself to consider the lie that God can’t fix it, restore it, heal it, or make it whole. “God can’t do that” should never pass the lips of any one of His sons or daughters, because they would be speaking a lie. God can do anything as long as it is in His will to do it, not because He is miserly or His powers get depleted, but because what you believe will be the remedy would make it that much worse, and He knows it.

Job asked to die, but God didn’t let him. It wasn’t because He was cruel and wanted to see him suffer just a little more, but because His plan for Job was to restore him, bless him beyond what he had been, and give him another hundred and forty years of life where he saw his children and grandchildren for four generations grow and flourish.

To think you were at death’s door only to be given another hundred and forty years on this earth is no small thing. To have been the greatest of the people of the East, lost it all, having nothing save for a potsherd with which to scratch yourself, and a pile of ashes upon which to rest, only to be given double what you lost, is not an insignificant matter.

Trust God. Even when things look grim, and your logical mind can’t see a way to remedy the situation you find yourself in, trust God! He sees a way even if you don’t, and He will make a way even if none is visible at the outset.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Once the dust settles, everyone comes out of the woodwork insisting they were by your side all along. When you’re in the midst of being battered and bruised, radio silence is the expectation du jour, with those only pretending to be your friends or fellow soldiers of the cross giving you a wide berth as though you were toxic, or your hardship was somehow contagious, but once you get through it, they reappear like mushrooms after a summer rain, as if out of nowhere.

Those who strive for honesty will proffer an apology of some sort, unwilling to meet your eyes for fear that the guilt they feel is too plainly written therein, while those who don’t will insist they were always there, holding your hand, but you were just too busy to notice.

The only one you need standing beside you to get through the fire and out the other side is God. If God stands with you, all is well, will end well, and there’s nothing the devil can do to change the course that God has established if you remain faithful to Him.

Where were all of Job’s brothers, sisters, and those who had been his acquaintances while he sat on an ash heap scratching at himself with a potsherd? Unhelpful as they had been in the final analysis, at least Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar had shown up. At least they’d traveled from afar to try and comfort their friend. Other than Job’s wife, nothing was mentioned of his surviving extended family or acquaintances until the last chapter of the book. Once they’d learned of his downfall, they were nowhere to be found, yet now that he had been restored, and doubly so, they were quick to make amends.

“Then all his brothers, all his sisters, and all those who had been acquaintances before, came to him and ate food with him in his house; and they consoled him and comforted him for all the adversity the Lord had brought upon him.”

There are always bound to be men highlighting their bravery after a battle is won, and more often than not the loudest ones were never on the front line. The boisterous, self-aggrandizing, and those insisting that without them the battle would have been lost usually never saw the whites of the enemy’s eyes, nor did they go toe-to-toe in a life-or-death struggle. Those that do are usually quiet, reserved, unwilling to revisit the horrors of battle, grateful to be alive, and looking forward to returning to their loved ones.

The household of faith is overflowing with what amounts to stolen valor, and it’s those who’ve never seen a day of spiritual warfare that are the loudest, insisting that they are the warriors Jeremiah, Isaiah, Moses, and Job wished they’d been.

The problem is that boasts and theatrics will only get you so far. At the end of the day, you will have to answer for pretending to be something you weren’t, not to men, but to God. You will be called to account for having pretended to be a warrior without possessing armor, or insisting you were on the battlefield without the scars to show for it, when all you were was a teller of fables, regurgitating the lives others have lived, pretending as though it was your own.

The real ones know that the victory was not of their own making, design, or due to their knowledge of battle stratagem. They understand that victory was had by the power of God residing in them, and they are but servants, soldiers, vessels who could do nothing if they remained empty and were not filled with His presence.

The funny thing is that some of the most powerfully used men of God that I have been honored to know throughout the years never boasted of themselves, never attempted to stand in the spotlight, or insisted they were spiritually superior to anyone else. To the last, they were humble men who humbled themselves, picked up their crosses, and followed after Jesus every day, like everyone else.

Beware the man who elevates himself above the station of servant, or thinks himself special in his own eyes. Beware the individual for whom being known by a particular title is more important than being known for their humility.

Yes, Job’s brothers, sisters, and acquaintances had wronged him, just as Joseph’s brothers would later wrong him, yet the reaction of both men is almost identical in that they did not resent, browbeat, or hold it over their heads, but forgave. Job did not turn them away, but ate food with them in his house, and even at this late hour, although Job understood God’s plan, his brothers and sisters did not.

They still assumed that the adversity that had come upon him was brought upon him by the Lord. They still viewed God as a cruel taskmaster who took joy in seeing his servants suffer, rather than understanding that although God had allowed Satan to sift Job, it was not God doing the sifting Himself.

This distinction matters because it shapes the lens through which we view God. Yes, God allowed Job’s testing, and the devil went as far as he could go in attempting to sway Job into abandoning his hope, but even then there were guardrails and limitations placed on the devil by which he had to abide. Understand that were Satan allowed to run loose and do as he willed, there would be nothing of this world but ash and ruin. There is no sympathy, empathy, kindness, gentleness, or mercy when it comes to the enemy of our souls. He takes delight in suffering; nothing makes him squeamish or think he’s gone too far, and any armistice the church thinks it has with him is no less than an illusion.

If God desired to crush Job, it would have been done on day one, so utterly and completely that though he had once been the greatest of all the people of the East, his name would have been a long-forgotten byword within a generation. God allowed Job’s testing, not his destruction. Job proved faithful, and now all that had been lost during his testing was restored, and doubly so.

Mark 10:29-30, “So Jesus answered and said, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands, for My sake and the gospel’s, who shall not receive a hundredfold now in this time – houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions – and in the age to come, eternal life.”’

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

 When Job’s life began to unravel, and everything that could go wrong went wrong and then some, he made an often-quoted statement that, at the time, had no proof of concept beyond his current lot. He summarized what had occurred in his life thus far, acknowledging the reality of it without bitterness, resentment, or animosity. He had no way of knowing how it would turn out, or that the Lord would give him twice as much as he had before, but was at peace with the reality that the Lord is sovereign; He does as He wills, and whether He gives or takes, His name is blessed in equal measure. “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

Yes, the Lord had given, and He had taken away, and even in the taking, Job was resolute in blessing the name of the Lord, wholly unaware of how the drama would unfold, how it would play out, and how it would eventually end.

Job never saw himself as the star of his own show, the nexus of his universe, or the linchpin of this narrative. Job saw himself as a servant, one whose desire was intimacy with his Master, and whatever his Master deemed the best course, whether in the valley or on the mountaintop, He was deserving of praise.

Did he at times grow weary? Most assuredly, any man would, but through it all Job did not sin nor charge God with wrong. There is a reason beyond our understanding when our best-laid plans go sidewise, seemingly in an instant, and if our faith is not cemented in the truth of who God is, and we are serving a projection of who we would like God to be, despondency, gloom, and hopelessness are sure to pay us a visit and stay for a while.

The same God who took away can restore, and doubly so, just as easily as He took away. That’s His purview; it’s under His control, and the only thing we have agency over is how we react to the trials, the hardships, the setbacks, and the valleys. What is my attitude in the valley? Is it the same as it would be on the mountaintop? How do I react to failure? Is it with the same words of blessing and praise to the Lord on my lips as would have been had I succeeded?

If your praise, adoration, worship, obedience, and faithfulness are contingent on outcome, if you only praise Him when things are going well, or serve Him when you have not a care in the world, that’s not true and abiding faith. It is a reaction to a perceived favor, and the continuation of that fealty is not rooted in love, but fear that the favor you’ve been shown would be removed were you to reveal your true self. God already knows your true self. He knows if you serve Him out of love or obligation. He knows whether your loyalty is dependent on anything other than what He’s already done to save you from the mire and reconcile you to Him.

God knew Job. He knew his heart; He knew his intentions; He knew his innermost desire, and the sincerity with which he yearned to be in His presence. God knew that Job’s fealty wasn’t feigned, that he wasn’t faking it until he made it, or pretending to desire more of God, hoping He wouldn’t see through his charade and bless him even more. His desire for more of God superseded all else in His life, and as long as God’s presence was evident, he could abide anything.

Even with all that he’d been through, the one thing that Job insisted he could not abide was God’s silence and the absence of His presence. He’d endured the loss of all his material possessions, had borne the pain of burying his children, had gritted his teeth in the face of the pain he was in, but the one thing that was too much for him to contend with was God’s silence.

Testing and trial reveal one’s innermost heart. If the heart is singularly focused on being pleasing in the sight of the Lord, on growing in Him and knowing Him more fully, then nothing that life may bring will detour you from that singular purpose.

It answers the ever-present question of why some men can stand in the midst of the tempest, while others get bowled over by the softest breeze. Those who endure and manage to stand, coming through fire all the stronger for it, not only have a right understanding of what the purpose of this life is, but pursue God and Him alone. They don’t chase after fortune nor fame; they don’t desire to be known or leave their mark on the world, but simply to serve, follow, and obey.

The idea that coming to Jesus is a guarantee of ease and comfort for the rest of one’s life, or that life will be lived on easy mode for the rest of your days, isn’t just unbiblical but contrary to the words of Jesus Himself. If that’s the Jesus you’ve been sold, if that’s the pitch that stirred you to respond in the affirmative to the call, you will be shaken at the first wave that barrels into your boat, or the first unexpected trial that surfaces seemingly out of nowhere.

 There is a profundity to the second sentence in this passage that many overlook, or seem not to notice, but that nevertheless applies to everyone who has ever had to forgive, let go, and unburden themselves of resentments, past wrongs done to them, and the individuals responsible: “And the Lord restored Job’s losses when he prayed for his friends.”

The only ones to receive instruction regarding Job praying for them were his three friends. We are never told that God also went to Job to instruct him to pray for them, nor that He commanded Job to do so. God left it up to Job whether he would pray for his three friends, but by the same token, God restored Job’s losses only when he prayed for his friends. That reality is deeper than many perceive or understand.

Forgiveness was Job’s final test. I’ve looked at this passage, pondered it, meditated upon it, and it’s the only conclusion I can come to. Before everything could be restored to him, Job had one final hurdle, one last action he must undertake, and that was to forgive.

Like all his other testing, God was silent on the matter. He didn’t hint at what Job should do; He just sent his friends to be prayed for, and waited to see what would come of it. Job already knew what the right thing was; now he just had to follow through and release any latent bitterness that might still be present in his heart.

It’s far easier to tell someone else they must forgive than to go through the process of forgiveness yourself. Not merely saying you’ve forgiven someone, not simply speaking words, but actually doing it in your heart, when no resentment or bitterness remains for the way you were treated, or the things that were falsely said about you.

Unless you’ve lived in a bubble all your life, or aren’t old enough to ride in a car without a car seat, we’ve all been mistreated, spoken evil of, or mischaracterized at some point. Doubly so if you happen to be in the public eye, are in some type of ministry, or have a large circle of acquaintances you interact with regularly.

To many, especially in our hyper-sensitive day and age when we’ve invented terms such as microaggression and unconscious bias, what Job’s friends did would be unforgivable. This wasn’t an arched eyebrow or some perceived slight. They came out and accused him of wickedness deserving of his loss, pain, and situation, and concluded that he wasn’t suffering enough. He should be grateful that after losing all his worldly possessions, his children, his health, the respect of his spouse, and the abandonment of those he once deemed loyal, he still wasn’t getting what he deserved; for had he been, it would have been far worse. How could it have been worse? His friends never elaborated, but they were certain that it would have been.

All this while Job knew himself to be innocent, and more importantly, God knew him to be innocent. It wasn’t making a mountain out of a molehill; there was no molehill to begin with. Every accusation brought against him had been wholly fabricated; everything hinged on the theory of causation, wherein, since Job was suffering, he must have been guilty of wickedness because he was suffering.

Anyone believing this was an easy thing to forgive or get over has never gone through something similar, but as one who has, let me assure you, it’s not as easy as one might think. Even so, unless you enjoy the weight of a mountain pressing down on you, you must do your utmost to forgive those who have wronged you because only then will the peace and light of joy burn away the bitterness, frustration, anger, angst, and resentment.

I can speak on this because I’ve lived it. Not once, but multiple times, and every time, true peace came about only when I determined in my heart to forgive those who had wronged me. No, I didn’t show up to their door informing them that they’d been forgiven; they never asked for forgiveness, but it wasn’t about them and me; it was about me and God, my relationship with Him, and the attitude I knew I must exhibit as one of His children.

The issue was not about whether Job could ever restore his relationship with his three friends; it was about the attitude of his heart toward the God he served. When God sent the three to ask Job to pray for them, it wasn’t so much a test of their obedience as a test of Job’s heart.

Why do I say this? Because if God ever spoke to me and said His wrath had been stirred against me, and I must go and ask another whom I’d judged wrongly for prayer lest I be dealt according to my folly, it wouldn’t really be a choice. It wouldn’t be about doing the right thing, but about doing what I needed to do to ensure that I did not incur God’s wrath.

Job, on the other hand, had no vested interest in praying for his three friends, other than the rightness of his heart and the awareness that it would be pleasing in the sight of the Lord. He did the right thing because it was the right thing to do, even if in light of what had transpired they were undeserving of his kindness or prayer.

Matthew 6:14-15, “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”

We do not forgive only when we deem someone was apologetic enough, humble enough, or when they’ve asked for forgiveness enough times. We forgive knowing that when we do, we are likewise forgiven by our heavenly Father.

If you deem yourself so righteous as to never require forgiveness, then by all means, don’t forgive, ever, no matter how small or insignificant the matter. But if you know yourself to be in need of forgiveness from your heavenly Father, then be quick to forgive, without delay or recrimination.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

 Job 42:9-11, “So Eliphaz the Temanite and Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite went and did as the Lord commanded them; for the Lord had accepted Job. And the Lord restored Job’s losses when he prayed for his friends. Indeed the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before. Then all his brothers, all his sisters, and all those who had been his acquaintances before, came to him and ate food with him in his house; and they consoled him and comforted him for all the adversity the Lord had brought upon him. Each one gave him a piece of silver and each a ring of gold.”

There are two important takeaways in the first two sentences of this passage, one more obvious than the other if one is not meditating upon the passage and simply skimming it. The obvious takeaway is that all three of Job’s friends did as the Lord commanded, without delay or grumbling, because God had spoken it. They did not attempt to justify their actions, nor did they deem what God had asked of them too humbling; they did as they were commanded.

Give credit where credit is due: they did far more than many are willing to do today, because where they obeyed without delay, men spend years, if not decades, attempting to convince God that it’s better for them in the grand scheme if they didn’t obey, if they didn’t do as they were commanded, and followed their own urgings rather than the voice of God.

Some have even gone so far as to manufacture entire denominations just to keep from obeying the voice of God, thinking the denomination serves as a shield against God’s wrath, or will change His mind on what He previously commanded. God is not impressed by incorporation papers. Just because the state of Delaware recognizes you as a legal entity, it does nothing to countermand what God established in His word as the way in which we must follow.

We keep looking for false christs, thinking that since there’s no one of renown walking around in a robe and sandals claiming to be him, we still have time to drag our feet, stare at our navels, and take up whittling as a hobby. What many fail to realize is that a false Christ is nothing more than a counterfeit, a fake, a fugazy, something pretending to be authentic. The false christs are here, and multiplying; the false prophets, too, have made themselves known. Counterfeit gospels and those who peddle them seem to outnumber the true gospel at every turn. Yet, there we sit trying to convince ourselves that the hour is not so late, that we still have time, and that those insisting that we are in the endgame are no more than alarmists who feed off the fear of others.

If the preacher behind the pulpit is preaching a Jesus that is not mirrored in the Bible, if the Jesus they present is not in harmony with the Jesus of Scripture, then by definition they are preaching a false Christ. Anyone who’s ever gone through an ID check knows the process. You present your ID, the individual looks at the picture, then at you, then at the picture, then at you, to determine that it’s one and the same person. If, perchance, you present someone else’s ID, and the pictures don’t match, no matter how fervently you insist it’s you, you’re not getting on the flight. Scripture is Christ’s ID card. In it, we are presented with the reality of who He is, so clearly that even someone with a stigmatism can discern when what is said about Him doesn’t match what Scripture declares Him to be.

If the Christ presented to you doesn’t match up with the Christ presented in the Word, no matter how appealing, permissive, lax, non-judgmental, or accommodating he may seem, it’s not the real Christ!

If the Christ men present requires no repentance, sanctification, rebirth, obedience, and the daily picking up of one’s cross, it’s a false Christ, and one who has nothing in common with the true Christ.

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

If the self-appointed prophet insists that they received revelation contrary to what the Word says, or if, perchance, they attribute qualities to the One True God that He never claimed, then by definition they are a false prophet. We can try to split hairs, but that’s the reality of it, and many are being deceived. It’s no longer a future-time proposition; it’s happening in real time, and has been for years now.

We’ve lived through countless episodes of tomorrow’s rapture, and no matter how many times the predictions have failed, people still believe it, get amped up, put their pets in long-term care, tell everyone about it, only to suffer through the disappointment and deflation of not seeing it come to pass.      

It’s one thing to hear the voice of the Lord; it’s another to follow through and do as He commands. Jesus said, “Don’t go,” but we do. Jesus said, “Don’t believe them,” but we can’t help ourselves. We do the opposite of what He commanded, yet somehow manage to find a way to blame Him for not keeping to the words men spoke about Him, to the schedule they insisted He should abide by, and grow resentful toward Him, rather than rejecting the words of fools and their foolishness.

Deception gains traction because there is a demand for it. The devil does what he’s always done, but the appetite for far-flung theories, aberrant theology, and the twisting of Scripture has reached its zenith. Those with no fear of God, those whose only interest is the bottom line and the dollar amount attached to whatever bandwagon they get on, are more than happy to give the people what they want, to offer the supply for the endless demand of anything but Jesus.

Aliens? Sure, double helping please. Stargates? Absolutely! Hybrid humans, alien breeding cults, lizard people, playing hopscotch with God Himself as the twenty-four elders watch on and cheer? By all means, that sounds scrumptious. Jesus? Walking humbly with your Lord, denying yourself, picking up your cross? I think I’ll pass; I’m so full from all the other stuff, I don’t think I could manage another morsel.    

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

 A few years back, when I was still traveling a lot more than I am today, I’d gotten to my destination a little before midnight, ready to check in and get some much-needed sleep. Even as I walked through the sliding double doors, I could hear raised voices coming from the check-in counter, but since I needed a bed, and the only way to get to it was to go through the process, I shuffled closer to the counter to see what the hubbub was all about.

An incensed woman was almost screaming and gesturing at a young lady who couldn’t have been more than twenty about how she wanted her room comped because although she’d requested two queen beds, she’d gotten a king, and that just wouldn’t do.

To her credit, the young lady did not reciprocate in raising her voice, but in a calm tone said, “I don’t have the authority to do that, ma’am. The manager will be here in the morning, and you can speak to him.”

Although that did nothing to lighten the mood or calm the yelling woman’s anger, the terms of the conversation had been established, and no matter how much she pointed, waived, yelled, threatened, and insisted that she was about to call her lawyer- which, since it was almost midnight, was absurd on its face, never mind that it was a La Quinta, and people who stay at La Quinta rarely, if ever, have a lawyer on retainer that they can wake up in the middle of the night- the young lady just stood there, a passive, serene look on her face.

Eventually, she asked the screaming woman to move aside so she could help the next customer, which happened to be me, also the only other customer. When I got up to the counter, after giving her a credit card for incidentals and a form of ID, and watching her chicken peck something into her computer, she looked up and said, “Your reservation is for a king bed, but unfortunately we’re sold out for the night. I can give you two queens if that’s okay.”

I shrugged, told her a bed was a bed and I just needed some sleep, and after asking how many keys I needed and gesturing with my index finger, I was in my room in less than five minutes.

I never did find out whether the screaming woman got comped for her room, but the point of the story is one we would do well to heed: know the limits of our authority, and do not exceed them!

The young lady knew she couldn’t accommodate the screaming woman because she didn't have the authority to hand out free rooms to every irate customer. It wasn't in her job description, and if she had done as the woman demanded and the manager found out the next morning, it would have either come out of her paycheck or she would have been fired for the presumption.

When men assume the mantle of God’s authority without His express permission, when they presume that their word is law and God must accede to their judgment, there will always be consequences, whether that entails a rebuke or, if it persists, punishment.

It’s neither sinful nor wrong, but wisdom itself to say I do not have the authority to make a judgment on this matter! It may not be what the other parties want to hear, and it will do nothing to balloon your pride; then again, you won’t be courting God’s wrath being aroused against you either.

Between trying to play at being Solomon and remaining humble enough to acknowledge that God’s authority on any given matter far exceeds yours, choose the latter over the former every time.

It’s one thing to call out a consistent, unrepentant pattern of sin; it’s another to assume that the individual has sinned because they are going through a trial, a hardship, or a testing. One is provable, demonstrable, and something that must be dealt with; the other is an assumption of causality that has no basis in fact.

It must have been a tough pill to swallow, being told that the man you tried to convince was guilty of wickedness was the selfsame man who was now supposed to pray and intercede on your behalf before God, lest God deal with you according to your folly. If Job’s friends had the right of it as they’d assumed, then it would have been they that would have been called upon to go and pray for Job, and perhaps lay hands on him. If their presumptions had proven true, this story would not have ended with them having to humble themselves and go to Job entreating him to pray for them.

Once God speaks, nothing else matters. Neither Eliphaz nor his two friends attempted to justify their behavior or debate God on the merits of their conclusions. They neither tried to mitigate their actions, nor did they insist that God was asking too much of them, since they were well-intentioned in attempting to get Job to see the error of their ways.

God told them what they needed to do so that they would not be dealt with according to their folly, and they did it: no backpedaling, no whining, no justifying, just obedience to the prescribed remedy.      

Psalm 96:10-13, “Say among the nations, ‘The Lord reigns; the world also is firmly established; it shall not be moved; He shall judge the peoples righteously.’ Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad; let the sea roar, and all its fullness; let the field be joyful, and all that is in it. Then all the trees of the woods will rejoice before the Lord. For He is coming, for He is coming to judge the earth. He shall judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with His truth.”

When God speaks, we either obey or go the way of rebellion. When He calls us out and identifies what we must repent of, we either follow through and do as He commands, or continue pursuing the things He’s told us we ought not to pursue.

It’s not that God doesn’t offer us a remedy, a means of reconciliation and restoration; it’s that many are too stubborn and stiff-necked to humble themselves in the sight of the Lord, do as He instructs, and receive forgiveness.  

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

 The prospect of one’s words arousing God's wrath is terrifying. More specifically, the words men speak regarding God. God made it clear as to why He was angry with Eliphaz, and there was no ambiguity about the reason: “My wrath is aroused against you and your two friends, for you have not spoken of me what is right.”

We’ve all witnessed the flippant way some individuals speak of God, the lack of reverence, the absence of godly fear, and every time you can’t help but wince and cringe and wonder if they truly understand what they’re doing, or if their desire for an audience overrides the reality that God does not take words spoken of Him that are untrue lightly.

When we attribute anything to God that He does not Himself declare to be true, we do what Eliphaz and his two friends did. We are speaking of God what is not right; we are projecting upon Him attributes He never claimed, and given His reaction to Eliphaz, we cannot conclude that He waves it off, or is indifferent toward them.

Yes, God gets wrathful. Yes, His wrath is aroused. Even the idea that God is a cheerful, grandfatherly sort who’s never cross with anyone, who does not judge sin, who does not punish the wicked, or is stirred in His wrath, is a projection by individuals, words they spoke about Him, that are not right, and for which they will one day have to answer.

My wrath is aroused against you and your two friends, for you have not spoken of Me what is right, as My servant Job has. Nothing in the world can make a man wilt faster than hearing that he has aroused God’s wrath against him. God does not make baseless threats. He does not declare a thing without the ability to follow through. God is not in the empty words business. He spoke the universe into existence; He fashioned man from the dust of the earth and breathed life into him, so if God says his wrath is aroused, whether against an individual or a nation, He has the wherewithal to punish the transgressor for their transgression.

Even in His wrath, God was not absent mercy. This was not blind rage; God is not dictated by emotion as some men are, so He didn’t feel compelled to lash out, but offered Eliphaz and his two friends an opportunity to make it right, to repent, and what that entailed was seven bulls and seven rams to be offered as a burnt offering, and the prayer of the man they’d judged, mistreated, disheartened, and accosted, on their behalf.

The time had come for Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar to account for the words they spoke about God that were not right. They weren’t words of denial, nor were they words of irreverence; some of the things they’d said were noble and complimentary, yet they were not right.

You can say nice things about God and still be wrong. Saying something complimentary doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the right thing, as Eliphaz just discovered. Just because they were nice words, they were not right words, because they assigned qualities to God that He never claimed.

Some people get so caught up in being praised that, even though they know the words being spoken about them fall short of the truth, they accept them and revel in them. This is how we get the inflated numbers we hear once in a while about how, at one crusade, more people gave their lives to Christ than the entire population of the country they were in, even though the largest space the crusade could have taken place in wouldn’t accommodate a tenth of the total number.

If we were to do a quick tally of some of the claims men have made regarding revival meetings and add them all together, every man, woman, and child within these United States ought to, by now, be saved and sanctified believers. Millions upon millions, they say, or someone says about them, and they never correct them, because, well, it is more impactful to hear that a million people gave their hearts to Jesus in one night at their altar call than twenty-three.

Notice, God’s wrath was not aroused against Eliphaz and his two friends because of what they’d spoken about Job that was not right, but what they’d spoken about Him that was not right. It’s not a distinction without a difference. Yes, they had misjudged Job; they had spoken things that were not right about him, but that was something they could have hashed out between themselves. They could have repented and apologized; Job would have graciously accepted their apology, and there was a chance that it could have been water under the bridge, forgiven and forgotten.

The three, however, had taken it upon themselves to speak things of God, to assume that they knew His thoughts and ways, His plan and purpose, and that was something God would not abide.

Not only did God reveal His displeasure at Eliphaz and his two friends for speaking things of Him that were not right, but He also justified Job in the same breath by declaring that what Job had said was right.

God picked a winner, and it ended the matter. Between Eliphaz and his two friends, and Job, one had spoken what was right regarding God, and the other three had not. Make certain you are on the side of right, because if God has to step in and clear up the matter, you may not like the outcome.

The same individuals who insist they would never be as myopic as Job’s three friends have no reservations about who they think will make it into heaven and who will be cast out. They can’t help themselves; it’s empowering. To sit in your moomoo on a given weekday and unequivocally decide who gets to walk through the pearly gates and who will find the doors barred is euphoric. While the euphoria passes, the words you spoke remain, and one day God will declare whether what you spoke was right or not, and be certain, consequences will follow. God is not mocked; it is one of those absolute realities that will not bend for anyone.     

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

 None of Job’s three friends hesitated in passing their judgments. None of them had any hesitation when it came to declaring who God was, how He operated, what His will was, and what the ultimate reason for Job’s suffering stemmed from. They were certain. They would not be swayed, yet they were wrong. So wrong, in fact, that unless Job interceded on their behalf, unless he prayed for them, God would deal with them according to their folly.

God didn’t say they’d gotten it half right, or that there were some things they said about Him and about Job that made sense. He didn’t give them a pass, or insist that they’d spoken out of ignorance, but that what they’d spoken of Him was not right.

Men have varied opinions about God. Nowadays, it seems such opinions have little to no Scriptural basis, more a reflection of how they would like God to be if they could fashion Him for themselves. It is the same snare Job’s friends fell into, wherein they did not perceive God as He is, but as they would have preferred Him to be. They assigned attributes of their own design to His nature, they insisted that because they willed it to be so, God must be as they described Him, and all of it was folly, so off the mark that God had to step in and say, what you have spoken of me was not right; it wasn’t true; that’s not who I am, and you were wholly ignorant of my plan and purpose for my servant Job.

If your view and understanding of who God is contradicts who Scripture unequivocally declares that He is, it is not God who must change to suit your understanding, but you who must change to be in harmony with Scripture. If man’s will alone is sufficient to compel God to become something other than what He is, then Job’s three friends wouldn’t have found themselves in the position they were in.

God would not have rebuked them, nor demanded sacrifice, nor commanded that they go and entreat Job to pray and intercede on their behalf. Well, that’s how you see Me, so that’s who I’ll be, wasn’t God’s reply or attitude to their folly.

Idols are malleable. Gods of man’s own making upon which he can project the attributes and characteristics he desires are inconsistent and ever-changing depending on man's mood, wants, needs, desires, and peccadillos. They may be more permissive, tolerant, less demanding, and easily swayed, but they are not real. They are imagined, created, and shaped by the minds and hands of men, with no inherent power, identity, or will.

My god does as I will! Then he is no God. The Creator will never be subservient to His creation, nor His will inferior to their will. Job’s friends tried to paint a picture of the One True God, and God said, that looks nothing like me. You may have painted something to be sure, but as far as any likeness or resemblance, you missed the mark so thoroughly that unless my servant Job prays on your behalf, I will deal with you according to your folly.

God doesn’t change at man’s whims. He’s not looking to capture an audience, pander to a certain demographic, or ingratiate himself to a particular class. He is God! His will is supreme, He is sovereign, and history proves that everyone who has attempted to stand against Him, or demand that He change for their sake, has failed utterly.

You thought you knew Me, but you didn’t. You thought you knew My will and purpose, but your conclusions were flawed and limited to your anecdotal understanding. You could have said, this is beyond us to comprehend. You could have humbled yourselves and admitted that this was beyond your capacity to perceive, but instead you took it upon yourselves to pass judgment, to draw conclusions, to insist that the way you saw the situation was the only way it could be, and that there could be no other explanation for what was happening to My servant Job than that which you surmised.

If you labor under the misconception that God will eventually see it your way, or that you’re so special that He will change His mind on things He has declared in His Word, you are in for a rude awakening. God doesn’t give in to peer pressure, because He has no peers. God does not side with the majority opinion, because He’s not looking to win an election. Once again, even at the risk of belaboring the point, He is God! He does as He wills, and there is nothing in heaven, on earth, or beyond the galaxy that can stand against Him. If God declared a thing, it is so, no matter how many rant and rage against it.

Our duty as sons and daughters of God is to humble ourselves, deny ourselves, pick up our crosses, and follow after Jesus. Those who insist that those steps can be circumvented will one day stand before Him and be told that although they did many wonders in His name, including prophesying and casting out demons, He never knew them. It’s no small thing. It’s not negligible. Eternity hangs in the balance.

Does He know you? Not your title, not your bona fides, not how many churches you’ve planted or built, not how many sermons you’ve preached, not how many books you’ve authored, or how many hungry you’ve fed, but does He know you as one of His own, one who has been reborn, transformed, and sanctified by the power of His blood?

Do you know of Him, or do you have a relationship with Him? Do you serve out of fear or out of love? Is fellowship with Him your preeminent desire, or do you approach Him only when you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place with no way out of the situation you find yourself in? Does He know you?

Job’s three friends believed wholeheartedly that they had a handle on the situation, knew the mind of God, understood His ways, and were unabashed in declaring it. Only when God rebuked them and called out the folly of their judgments did they come to understand that His ways are not their ways, and His thought are not their thoughts. The same can be said of many today who insist God is something He never declared Himself to be. Rather than submit to the authority of Scripture, they double down on their conclusions, because to do otherwise would be to admit that they were wrong all along, and that is something they cannot abide.    

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

 Job 42:7-8, “And so it was, after the Lord had spoken these words to Job that the Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “My wrath is aroused against you and your two friends, for you have not spoken of Me what is right, as My servant Job has. Now therefore, take for yourselves seven bulls and seven rams, go to My servant Job, and offer up for yourselves a burnt offering; and My servant Job shall pray for you. For I will accept him, lest I deal with you according to your folly; because you have not spoken of Me what is right, as My servant Job has.’”

When the dust has settled, the only thing that matters in this life is how God views you. How does God see you? What is His assessment of you? Not your friends, strangers, family, or the guy behind the deli counter trying to sell you expired bologna, but God and God alone.

Both Elihu and Job’s three friends had judged Job to be a wicked man deserving of punishment, a man who, although he had lost everything and was sitting in a pile of ashes scratching at himself with a potsherd they deemed wasn’t suffering commensurate with his sin. Yet, within the span of two verses, God called the selfsame man whom others believed to be a wicked hypocrite of the worst kind His servant no less than four times.

He made no such distinction regarding Elihu, Eliphaz, Bildad, or Zophar. He had not called them His servants; rather, He rebuked them, informing them that His wrath was aroused against them for having spoken of God things that were not right, in contrast to Job, who had.

It’s a heady thing having your entire worldview, the way you perceive God, and what you understand of Him be turned on its head in a heartbeat. Unlike His interaction with Job, God did not attempt to show the three friends where they had erred, or where they may have made assumptions that did not align with God’s wisdom, because the true intent and desire of their hearts was not to know the truth, but to bring Job low and get him to admit to wickedness he had never committed.

Some men God corrects lovingly, showing them areas in their lives that must be pruned, repented of, and realigned with His purpose, while others He stands before, arm outstretched like a crossing guard, and says, “Stop! Proceed no further; turn around, because this is not the path you should be walking, and if you insist on proceeding further, it will not end well for you.”

Within God’s rebuke of Job’s three friends, there is a twist that some may miss if their goal was simply to get done with the book and be on to the next, given that we’re so close to the finish line, and only a handful of verses remain before this forty-two-chapter journey is complete. Upon speaking directly to Eliphaz, God commanded that he and his two friends take for themselves seven bulls and seven rams, go to Job, and offer up for themselves a burnt offering. That was not the twist, but it came on the heels of this command: have Job pray for you, because Job’s prayer is the only prayer I will accept.

Could you imagine having to go to the person you’ve been judging and maligning for days on end, the person you’ve accused of being wicked beyond measure, the one you insisted knew nothing of God, or His purpose, and ask that they pray for you? This isn’t having to eat a slice of humble pie; it’s the pie in its entirety, crumbs and all.

It’s also in this that we see Job's true heart. God never wondered whether Job would pray for them; He knew that Job would, because though they had berated, maligned, and judged him harshly, Job’s heart was still pure, and serving God remained his singular desire.

A lesser man would have likely taken the opportunity to exact his revenge. A lesser man would have likely turned Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar away, showering them with platitudes and clichés such as you get what you deserve, or who’s the wicked one now, but Job didn’t.

Practical as it might be, the lesson is nevertheless profound: even when people hurt you, malign you, speak ill of you, judge you wrongly, despise you, and eagerly await your destruction, forgive them. I know, it’s easier said than done. I’ve had occasions where supposed friends and brothers did things so egregious that I had to force myself not to give in to bitterness and resentment. I had to pray not once or twice, but for extended periods, for God to search my heart and make sure there were no seeds of hatred or animosity waiting to sprout in the soil of my heart.

Even when they don’t ask for forgiveness, forgive. Even when they won’t admit wrong or fault, forgive. This doesn’t mean that the relationship will be as it was, or even that it can be repaired and restored, but what it does mean is that you don’t have the weight of unforgiveness pressing you into the dust of the earth every moment of every day.

If you believe it was no small thing for Job to now pray for the same three men who had been certain of his wickedness no more than a handful of minutes prior, try to put yourself in his shoes and be honest with yourself about how easy it would really be. They’d spent a considerable amount of time not trying to encourage, uplift, or comfort him, but trying to convince him that his entire life had been spent in ignorance, that his wickedness far surpassed that of the most reprobate men in society, and that his suffering wasn’t just deserved, but was less than he deserved.

They looked down on him, belittled him, made him question things he was certain of before they began their insistent diatribes, and now they were asking him to intercede with God on their behalf and pray for them, for it was only his prayer that God would acknowledge and accept.     

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

 You may need grace and mercy, but I surely don’t. I’m spiritually superior, don’t you see? I’m the apple of God’s eye, as a once-famous alcoholic televangelist was fond of saying. Sure, the Bible says there is no partiality with God; yes, we’re all equal, but come on, you and I both know that some are more equal than others. Unscrupulous men have created a caste system within the household of faith, and we’ve allowed it.

And yet, as we get a glimpse of the lives of those who came before us, the man whom God declared to be blameless and upright said, “I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes, because I have seen your glory with my eyes.”

The man to whom Christ said, “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it,” fell at His feet and declared, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!”

Is it just me, or do you get the sense that the modern crop of those who deem themselves spiritual leaders are needlessly and undeservingly arrogant? Is it just me, or is the pride, haughtiness, and conceit off-putting and unpalatable?

But you don’t get it; the figurehead of a ministry or a church has to have presence and charisma. They have to have swagger and flash; they have to look the part! Show that to me in the Bible, though. If you can, then sure, grab a Patek or Piguet off the shelf, and for the middle tier, perhaps a Rolex, or a TAG Heuer. Array yourself in fine linens, and do your best to look like some Arab sheik fresh off of signing a billion-dollar oil deal, but if those are not attributes to which the Bible says we should aspire, then cut it out.

At this point, the gullible and those who tend to idolize individuals rather than worship God and serve Jesus will angrily begin to shout ‘touch not God’s anointed’, even though that passage is taken out of context, and by the sheer absence of fruit, it’s questionable whether some of those who think so highly of themselves are God’s anointed to begin with. It’s an easy way to ensure there’s never any pushback, and that no one questions their lack of Christian living, isn’t it?

I’m God’s anointed, so you can’t touch me! But if your life does not reflect what you claim to be, is there any danger in challenging your view of yourself as one of God’s anointed? No, there isn’t, and it is our duty as believers, and those who comprise the body of Christ, to admonish and correct those who’ve taken it upon themselves to twist, mutilate, and distort the Word of God for their own selfish gain.

Yes, there are noble pastors, shepherds, preachers, and evangelists, but more often than not they’re not the flashy sort. It’s far easier to wrap a piece of coal with a shiny piece of foil that draws the eye than endure the pressure required for the coal to become a diamond. Diamonds don’t need wrapping. They don’t need fancy boxes. They stand out all on their own. It is because of what they are that they are exposed to the light, so all can behold their brilliance. Nobody buys a diamond sight unseen. Nobody purchases the box hoping there’s a diamond inside.

Unlike Beanie Babies, or any of a hundred other flash-in-the-pan must-have things that came and went, a diamond retains its value without influencers shilling it, insisting you click their link for an extra-special discount.

Scripture is truth. It is the diamond. It retains its value and relevance from generation to generation, and those who strive to discover it are never disappointed, let down, or feel as though they were underwhelmed by the treasures contained therein. It has the power to enlighten, transform, challenge, correct, and instruct, without decreasing in its potency, because it is the Word of God, and remains constant and unchanging as God Himself is.

Ephesians 3:14-19, “For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height – to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

This was Paul’s heartfelt desire for the church at Ephesus: not to form cliques, castes, or hierarchies, but that together, as one, they would comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height of God. To know the love of Christ which passes knowledge, and be filled with all the fullness of God. How can one know God without knowing His word? How can one follow God when men are all they seem to want to follow?

Does Christ dwell in your heart through faith? Are you being strengthened with might through His Spirit? These are the relevant questions we must ask ourselves consistently, not whether this denomination is better than that, or who the next luminary that the world will foist upon a pedestal will be. Let nothing distract you from intimacy with God. Not men, not denominations, not fringe ideologies, or tertiary doctrinal issues. The goal is to be filled with the fullness of God, and know the love of Christ which passes knowledge, not shill for a particular individual and defend them even when their actions become indefensible.

Man is flawed; God is not. If your desire is to know God, go directly to the source. Go to Scripture, and devour it like a starving man who's been out to sea for a month with no food would devour the first meal after his rescue. Do you think such a man cares whether he uses the proper fork, or if his napkin should be on his lap or tucked under his shirt collar? No. He’s starving, and all pretense of propriety flies out the window at the sight and smell of food.

Read your Bible as often as you can, wherever you can, even if it’s for fifteen minutes on your lunch break, or waiting in the lobby for your dentist appointment. There is no place or time more special than the other; you don’t need to be sitting in an atrium, accompanied by a symphony, in a leather-backed chair to read Scripture; the cab of your pickup will do just as well. Food is food, whether it comes in a wrapper, from a food truck, a greasy spoon, or a Michelin-starred restaurant. And, unlike the food we eat, whose ingredients may be suspect, the Word of God is never spoiled, rotten, or of unknown origins. It is always pure and nourishing to the spiritual man.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.