Most Christians, it seems, have very little concern about whether they will have to give an account for their life or not. They live as if what they do now will have little effect on eternity. But the bible tells us that we will stand before Christ some day at what is called the Bema Seat, and will be judged by Him. In this post we will consider, in the following three points, on what basis we will be judged.
We will not be judged on the basis of sins.
It is true that through Adam, sin entered into the world; and because of that sin, spiritual death was passed on to all men at birth (Romans 5:12). But because of the mercy and grace of God, those who have believed in Him have received redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses (Rom. 1:17). Thus, those who…
As I sped down the hill on my new black Schwinn bicycle, a new assurance gave me an overwhelming joy. I was saved and I had a place reserved for me in heaven. This new assurance had come to me a few months prior, at a church camp, when my camp counselor explained to me from the bible how I could be saved. And then I knelt down beside him in his cabin, and prayed that Jesus would come into my life and take control of my life. Instantly, after my prayer, I received a new peace, that after I die, I would go straight to heaven. From that point on my life was changed, not because of anything external or because of changed circumstances, but because I had a changed heart due to a new life inside of me. I had Jesus in me and He had given me a new peace, a new assurance, and a new attitude about life. I felt new and clean inside. In reality, at age twelve, I really did have a new life!
We had recently moved from our Montevideo farm to a house in the city of Montevideo. I don’t remember anything about the move, or about the house we moved into, but I do have a few memories—besides my salvation experience at camp.
One of my clear memories was when I was on the wresting team in 7th grade. I always thought I was a good wrestler, since I always beat my brother. But I found out different. Either I was really bad, or the guys I wrestled were really good—probably a little of both. Anyway, I had a rude awakening.
Another clear memory was of the city swimming pool, which was only a few blocks from our house. It only cost 10 cents, and for that one dime you could swim there all day if you wanted. And some days I did just that. It was so much fun. There were two slides and also two diving boards—a lower one and a high one. The high dive was scary, but I did try it a couple times. It was in that pool that I learned how to swim. Mom insisted that we take swimming lessons, and we all did.
One other good memory of that place in Montevideo, was playing baseball with all the neighbor kids in a nearby park. I remember how easy it was to get a game together. We just walked, or ran, down the streets and yelled out something like, “Who wants to play baseball?” We seemed to always get enough kids to play. We played for hours at a time. And now that I think of it, we also played football. That was a little rougher, but I loved it. Those were the days!
I thought it would be good, in these troubled times, to bring a bit of positive news.
From my newspaper I read the good news that because of the bars being closed and far fewer people are drinking and on the roads, there are significantly fewer DWI’s, crashes, and injuries. So, even though the COVID-19 death toll is rising, at the same time the traffic accident death and injury toll is declining.
A retired Venezuelan army general, Cliver Alcala, has surrendered to U.S. That’s great news. Also, I presume that someone just received a 10-million-dollar reward.
Generally, I think people are praying more.
Due to this pandemic, and all the precautions we are supposed to take, there seems to be more positive messages going out, especially among the youth.
This is grandpa and grandma Anfinsen celebrating their fiftieth wedding anniversary.
My grandparents on my mom’s side were a lot different than my grandparents on my dad’s side. Grandpa was a house painter for the first few years of his work life; and then, when he was about forty, he began working in the Minneapolis Post Office until he retired. I think what people most remember about Him was his dedication to Christian ministry. In his younger years he would travel around and sing gospel songs in a men’s group, and my mom would play the piano. She was only about 16 or 17; of course, I wasn’t born yet, but I heard about it and have seen pictures.
My grandpa was also a fill-in preacher. But I think his biggest mission was what he did with Christian literature. He and a few others would meet regularly and box up and send used and slightly damaged books and literature overseas to missionary groups and churches all over the world. I helped out one time and I was quite impressed by how much literature they were able to get—which was donated from Christian book stores, and groups such as the Billy Graham Association.
Grandpa and Grandma Anfinsen moved a few times, but the place I remember most was their house in Minnetonka, Minnesota, right on Lake Minnetonka. I remember that house so well, and grandpa saying that Rosie (or grandma) wanted a pink house. So he painted the entire house bubblegum pink. He also painted the garage pink and the fence around the house pink, and even the fishing barge pink. Grandma loved it! And she loved flowers; she planted mostly pink ones all around the house, and the garage, and along the fence, and around the trees. It was plain to see that grandpa and grandma loved each other—just by the way they looked at each other and how they talked to each other.
Every summer they invited all the relatives (about 50, on my mom’s side) over to their home just to sit and visit and eat. There was always plenty of room in the back yard, and it was beautiful with all the flowers. And for the kids, grandpa or uncle Marv would break out the croquet set. And then later in the afternoon grandpa would fire up the barge motor to go fishing. The pink barge was quite large, about 20 feet square. Grandpa made it himself. It was a simple floor with a fence around it; and under the floor were 60-gallon drums that made it float. Fishing was always good. We never caught any big ones, like Northerns or Walleyes, but we always caught plenty of Crappies and Sunfish—with worms.
Christmas time was always special, and it was the tradition to meet at grandma Knutson’s house in Minneapolis. That was my grandma Anfinsen’s mother. Grandma loved to see everyone; and she was funny, and would love to laugh and talk to the kids, and to remind them to be good! She was all Norwegian and had a strong Norwegian accent.
The thing I remember most about Christmas at grandma Knutson’s house was when all us kids, about a dozen of us, would go wild in the basement and run around and around the furnace. I must have been very young then, about 6 or 7. I also liked all the sweet foods laid out on the tables—all the Norwegian sweets like krumkake and lefsa.
The last thing we all did was gather around and sing carols—and opened gifts. Grandpa would always take charge of announcing and leading the songs, and leading the devotional and prayers. And the way he led, and what he said, and the way he said it was always so inspirational. You could tell he was so proud of his family; and you also knew he was so dedicated to God.
Later in life grandpa and grandma moved to a smaller house in Ortonville, Minnesota; and again, on a lake. And I didn’t see them much anymore. And the most touching thing was when they died. Both of them died almost at the same time, only a few hours apart. Everyone said that that was so fitting; for just as they were always together in life on this earth, they left this earth in the same way—together.
President Trump suggests the high goal of reopening the county on Easter Sunday–April 12th.
woke up extra early this morning and was unable to fall back to sleep. I had on my mind what President Trump was hoping for: that we could reopen the United States by Easter. That after so much suffering and lock-downs and being isolated from the world due to the Coronavirus, that we could, very soon, by Easter reopen our country. Here are three quotes from him that I read in my Newspaper this morning. He said,
I would love to have the country opened up and just raring to go by Easter.
Wouldn’t it be great to have all of the churches full?
You’ll have packed churches all over our country.
It does seem a little early for that to happen. But President Trump seems confident that it could happen, at least in most of the country. And what I have been thinking is, why don’t we make it a prayer! As long as the President is thinking that way, why don’t we as Christians get behind him with our prayers. What have we got to lose? Let’s make it a matter of prayer with faith—a prayer focus. Let’s pray every day until Easter that God would heal our land and open up our schools and churches and our work places and meeting places. Like the President has said, “It will be a great celebration on that day.” And all believers will give thanks to the Lord.
This is my grandpa on the left after his successful deer hunt.
Our visits to the grandparents were always fun. My grandparents on my dad’s side were totally into farming. They had a huge farm, located not far from our farm, with many animals, and acres and acres of corn, oats, soybeans and flax. Besides my two uncles that were still living at home, Mike and Lyle, they always had hired help—as many as they needed. And grandpa was always working too. And so was grandma. She was the brains of the outfit—much more than grandpa. She kept the books, made the schedules, and I think even made sure grandpa got up in the morning to milk the cows! And then after the early chores were done, all the workers came in for breakfast, which grandma had all ready for them on the big kitchen table. Breakfast was always a big deal—eggs, bacon, pancakes, juice, milk, coffee, whatever you wanted.
I guess you could say that when we came over to visit, nothing stopped just for us. The farm work had to keep going and we understood that. Many times, us kids would just set in the living room and watch TV. That was fun for us because we didn’t have TV at our farm. I also remember walking around in the barn while the milking was going on.
Everything on Grandpas farm was so much more modern and bigger than on our farm. All the milking was by machine, and unlike our old wood barn, grandpa’s barn was made of shiny, silver-looking metal; and it was huge! And all their buildings looked modern and huge. And their tractors and machinery looked so new. And they had horses, which we didn’t have.
And they also had other properties. Besides their farm in Montevideo, they also had land in South Dakota, where they had Black Angus cattle—hundred of them. I remember riding with grandpa and my dad one day to check on them. Grandpa said he just needed to check to see if they had enough salt blocks, and also to see if there were any new calves.
I liked grandpa. He laughed at my stories (when I was about 7), and he told stories to me too. Unlike my dad, grandpa was a hunter. He hunted deer and pheasants, and even rabbits. And he always had his rifle in his pickup truck. I remember once when I was with him hunting rabbits. The way he would do it was just to shoot them out the window of his truck as we drove through the fields. I heard some stories about grandpa after he died, that he would go into town to drink, and that he had a wild side. I never knew that about him. I guess for some reason grandma and my parents wanted to hide that from us. But I still have always liked him.
There are many cries these days about our rights. Some say that every person has a right to free health care. Some of these same people have been saying for years that every woman has a right over her own body, and that she has a right to choose whether she wants an abortion or not. Well, this is a topic that we all would do well to seek God’s will on—to seek the Scriptures. With some help from an internet source (listed below), I have come up with the following biblical directives.
According to The Bible, What Rights Do We as Humans Have?
1.Since we all are created in God’s image (Gen. 1:27), we have a certain dignity, and thus, we have a right to be treated with dignity.
2.God has said to us that we should not murder (Gen. 7:6), that we should treat everyone humanely. Thus, all humans have a right to be treated humanely, especially a right not to be murdered.
3. The Ten Commandments gives prohibitions against murder, theft, coveting, adultery, and bearing false witness. Thus, we have a right not to be wrongly treated with any of these violations.
4. Immigrants have a right to be treated well (Exod. 22:21).
5. The poor have a right to be treated well (Prov. 14:31).
6. We all have a right not to be discriminated against in any way (Gal. 3:28; Col. 3:11; Ja. 2:1-4).
According to the Bible, What Rights Do We Not Have?
1.I do not have a right to sin against my own body, especially as a Christian, since my body is the Lord’s (1 Cor. 6:19-20).
2.No person has a right to sin against another person because he is a creation of God (1 Cor. 6:19-20).
According to the Bible, What Are a Woman’s Rights?
1.A woman has a right to be treated as a woman the way God designed her (Gen. 2:18; 1 Pt. 3:7).
2. A woman does not have a right to go against her natural, God given sexual desires (Rom. 1:26). This is also true for a man.
3. A woman has the right to protect her own baby inside of her, but she does not have a right to force her babies death, because God forms the baby inside of her and because the baby, in whatever stage of grows he or she is in, is a creation of God (Ps. 139:13).
4. A woman has a right to be treated well just as a man has a right to be treated well, because she is created in His image (Gen. 1:26).
This is me on the right with my little brother Jimmy, sitting in the dirt in back of the old Delano farm house.
As I wrote previously, I lived on a farm near Montevideo, Minnesota when I was about six and seven years old, and then later when I was about ten and eleven. In between those years we lived on a small farm near Delano, Minnesota. I have no memory of school there (3rd and 4th grade), but I have plenty of other memories.
The house was quite small and rickety—much smaller and older than the large Montevideo house. The ceiling leaked, the walls creaked, and the inside of the walls were infested with mice. We would hear them all the time. Though my mom and sister hated them, me and Mark had fun killing them with mouse traps. We would get at least one a day.
Another house adventure was the attic. Dad did some repairs to the attic and to the steps leading up there, but it still looked like an attic. And that’s where us kids would sleep. It wasn’t cold up there like the Montevideo farm was; but it was musty, and we could hear the mice; and once in a while we would even see and hear bats flying back and forth over our heads while we hid under the covers. That was scary. I think my mom felt sorry for us, but my dad didn’t seem to care.
Oh, I’m sure he cared, but I know he had so much on his mind. We were not making it too well financially, and I suppose he was always thinking of any way possible to make more money to hold the farm and the family together. And I know mom wasn’t happy in that house, and any suggestions she gave dad made him angry. I don’t know if it was her idea or not, but I remember that dad worked part time at a macaroni factory in town. I remember that he brought leftover macaroni home, probably swept up from the factory floor, and fed it to the pigs. He actually made a pig slop out of it; he mixed the raw macaroni with feed and sour milk. Oh, those pigs just loved it! They would go crazy over it! In fact, when we fed them, we had to be really careful, because when they would see us heading their way with a pail of slop, they would come running and squealing. If we didn’t quickly dump it in their trough and get out of the way, they would run us over.
We had a few acres of farm land, mainly corn; and we had one or two cows, some chickens, and about 30 pigs, as I mentioned. They were penned up only about 20 yards from the house. I remember that every time my grandpa and grandma came over to visit, they would always be holding their nose—literally. They couldn’t stand the pig smell. But I didn’t mind at all. I guess you get use to it; and I really sort of liked that farm smell.
I have such vivid memories of that little farm, especially the back yard. Not too far from the back of the house, across from the pig pen was an old windmill, used to pump water. And it worked! Then not too far from the windmill there was a row of fruit trees; mainly apple trees, but also a pear tree. Mom would sometimes make apple pies from the apples. And I remember, she would also make chokecherry jam from the chokecherry trees (pictured), which were scattered all over the farm. Mom was really good at making stuff. Besides making pies and jam, she baked bread—which was always wonderful.
We had one of those old-fashioned telephones that you had to crank. And it was a party-line phone—so you had to share it with the neighbors. We didn’t have many neighbors. But I remember up the gravel road, about a quarter mile, was a farm on the right with a crab apple tree and geese walking all over in the yard. Across from that farm, on the left, was an underground house with a flat roof that was about three feet above the ground level.
Then, a little way from that house was an old farm house, more like a shack, where two old bachelors lived, and where they often sat out on their back steps. We liked hanging around them, listening to their stories and watching them whittle their sticks. And they had a distinctive smell of tobacco and beer. Yea, they were a couple of happy, carefree guys, and I remember thinking that I wanted to be just like them!
This is me on the gravel road in front of the house.
Okay, my first thought is this: If we compare this virus to the flu, it really seems like the flu is much deadlier. Last year there were34,157 flu related deaths. And no one hardly said anything. Am I missing something?
Also, what about abortion? In 2016, 623,471 deaths came as the result of abortions. And nobody has been saying anything. Or what about suicide? In 2017, 47,173 deaths from suicide occurred. And where was all the concern for that?
Oh, here’s a real winner. Everybody’s so concerned about our troops in Afghanistan. So many of our men are being killed over there. Well in the total war, 1,833 of our troops have been killed; that’s an average of about 96 deaths per year. If you compare that number to the flu last year, the flu has been 356 times deadlier that the Afghanistan war.
I’m just trying to put some perspective on this. Can anyone tell me why this coronavirus is so concerning—more than other things like I have mentioned? I mean I know it’s a big deal, but I’m just wandering why we seem to be so much more upset about this virus than other viruses, and about abortion and suicide (not to mention so many other diseases).
And here are some questions I have:
Should the government be spending so much money on this coronavirus? If God has allowed this virus to happen maybe we should just take it as His way of disciplining us. Does this make any sense to anyone? I mean, everyone will die at some time in their life.
Is this coronavirus a harbinger of things to come? If so, how can we prepare for it? How can we let this virus prepare us for things to come? What does the bible say about future viruses? Or future disasters that will cause deaths? Should we try to control them or just be ready to face them?
Will this coronavirus in some way work together for our good? Maybe God has allowed it to benefit us in some way, to draw us to Him for His help. I have heard that there are bipartisan efforts gong on. There is some unity happening. Sometimes I guess it takes a disaster like this to bring us together. Maybe God is in it all. What do you think?
I just want to say that I am super proud of President Trump and the whole Trump team the way they have responded to this virus. I think President Trump has been especially resilient the way he has faced the press. He has a great, positive attitude, and just because of that I know we will come out of this much better than anyone ever thought. I just feel that he was made for this kind of disaster. No one could handle it better.
My sources: All the data was gathered from reliable government websites.
In previous blogs I talked about my chores and the field work. But I hope I didn’t give the idea that I was working all the time. The chores were only in the morning and evening, and the field work was mainly during the harvest season. And even then, my dad didn’t always give us jobs to do. Sometimes he got so busy plowing or whatever, that he sort of forgot to give us jobs. So, we just ran off somewhere. And there was plenty of things to do. In fact, my mom didn’t mind at all that we were out playing. She just wanted us home for supper. And if we weren’t home at supper time, believe me she had a loud voice and she would call us home by name for supper—at the top of her lungs.
I think the main fun thing I remember doing is exploring, sometimes by myself and sometimes with my brother Mark. My sister was more of a bookworm and I think she preferred just reading, even if it was in the house. I liked walking along the creek that ran in a large circle around the farm. Sometimes we would see frogs and we would try to spear them with a sharp stick we made. It never bothered us that we were killing them and reducing their population. We were like fierce hunters.
Some days, when we knew that we had a few hours to kill before we had to be home for supper, we would go deep into the woods until we came to a great river. We didn’t know what river it was, but we knew it wasn’t the creek. It was too wide. I remember the imposing sound of the water. I just loved standing by its banks and feeling its strength and majesty. It gave me the shivers! Another time we encountered a few red-haired cows with long horns. And they were mean looking, so we ran out of there!
Back behind the grainery, which was not too far from the house, there were two old junk cars. One of them was a light cream color with lots of chrome on it. The other car was clearly a Ford model T, all black. We would often see rats crawling in and around the cars…cool! I remember one time we were there with our dog Brownie, and he spotted a squirrel under the cars. I’ll never forget what happened. When the squirrel tried to run away, out from under the car, Brownie, as quick as a flash, caught him between his teeth, and he was dead instantly. I couldn’t be more proud of him. What a great dog. And he was fast. One time we clocked him as he ran along side of our car. I think he got up to about 40 miles per hour!
I don’t know where I got it from, but it seems like I was always doing things to try to prove and challenge my bravery and strength—me more than my brother. Besides spearing frogs, I remember more than once trying to ride our buck sheep. It was kind of silly.
I also liked wrestling with my brother Mark. I liked it mostly, I think, because I knew I would win. Mark didn’t seem to care. I guess he just liked being with me. Now that I think back on it, he had a better spirit than me, a very sweet spirit. All I cared about was winning, being number one, being better than him. That selfish attitude has been with me for years, and now I regret it. I should have treated my brother better and now it’s too late.
Stephen Nielsen 