Category Archives: Bible Studies

Six Reasons to Be Holy

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Stephen Nielsen's avatarPrayer A to Z

Not everyone desires holiness. But just in case you do, just in case God has put it on your heart to be like Him, I think you will find these point helpful. Here are six reasons to be holy.

1.  To be like God.  God created man and woman in His own image, according to His likeness (Gen. 1:26).  This of course included His holiness.  God wanted all mankind to be holy like Himself.

After the fall of man sin marred that image.   But God’s purpose for us did not change.  He has always wanted us to be holy like Him, even in a sinful world (Gen. 2:14, 15).  In fact, throughout the Old Testament He commanded His people to be holy, saying to them, “Be holy because I, The Lord Your God, am holy” (Lev. 19:2, NIV).

And we can be holy!  God has provided a way for us…

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Finishing My Life Well

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Lately, I’ve been giving some thought to finishing my life well. I’ve been asking myself these questions: what will I have achieved in my life? or, Will I have done all the things that God has called me to do?

I suppose the unspiritual person would concentrate on worldly achievements, on greatness, wealth, and popularity. And even the Christian may be tempted to measure himself with these things: how much wealth have I stored up? How popular am I? or even How great I am, as far as my position in the community?

Then when I looked at a few Scriptures, I was pulled another direction. I first looked at Ecclesiastes 12:13: “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.” It’s hard to judge how much I have done that. I would say that it’s a daily thing—to walk in His Spirit and obey Him every day.

I also looked at Micah 6:8: “He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?”  This is another one of those daily things and hard to judge how much I have kept up with this. It is something that I can only do when I am constantly walking in His Spirit.

Then I was led to a very familiar passage, Psalm 131:1-2:

1 Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty: neither do I exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for me.

2 Surely I have behaved and quieted myself, as a child that is weaned of his mother: my soul is even as a weaned child.

It is a song of accent of David, and tells us of David’s childlike trust in the Lord. Here we can definitely see in David how we ought to conduct our lives; and if we are old, how we ought to finish our life.

For me, I ought not to give my thoughts to greatness or high achievements, even if they are regarded as spiritual, or “for the ministry.” I ought rather to quiet myself and be contented with the Lord—meditating on His word, listening to His voice, walking in His Spirit and doing His will.

Moreover, I ought not to pressure myself with how many books I should write, or blogs I should write, or with ministry goals. My focus should be to daily and hourly keep my heart right with Him and to walk humbly with Him—and then to be open to see where He leads me.

The Sixth Trumpet (Revelation 9:13-21)

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Stephen Nielsen's avatarStudying Bible Prophecy

This sixth trumpet judgment, and the second woe, is every bit as terrible as the first woe; and it leaves us scratching our heads with questions. We will break up the verses into three parts.

Verses 13-15. Then the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God, 14 one saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, “Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.” 15 And the four angels, who had been prepared for the hour and day and month and year, were released, so that they would kill a third of mankind.

So when the sixth angel sounded his trumpet John head a voice coming from the four horns of the altar of incense—presumably, the voice of God responding to the prayers of His saints; prayer for vengeance. And He told…

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The Meaning of Holiness

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Stephen Nielsen's avatarPrayer A to Z

I think we have a good definition of holiness in Psalms 15:1-2.  Here David asks, “Lord, who may dwell in Your sanctuary?  Who may live on Your holy hill?  Then he answers himself: “He whose walk is blameless and who does what is righteous” (NIV).  Hence holiness is two things: being blameless, or not doing what is wrong; and it is also doing what is right. 

We have this same definition in Job 1:1. Here we read, “In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job.  This man was blameless and upright; “he feared God and shunned evil” (NIV).  Thus, those who are holy fear God—have a reverent respect for God and seek to obey Him in everything.  They also endeavor to conform to His holy character, which would include shunning or hating sin

In the simplest terms, holiness is living “without sin.”  That is what…

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God’s Ten Purposes for Prayer

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Stephen Nielsen's avatarPrayer A to Z

 

 

This is an excerpt from my book Purpose of Prayer.  You can get it as an e-book at mywebsite.

1.  Prayer is God’s idea as the way to acquire salvation.  Whether it is verbal prayer or a silent prayer of the heart, God has designed that salvation will come to us when we cry out to Him in prayer.  For He has said in His Word, “Whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved” (Rom. 10:13).  Hence, God has made prayer a tool that gives expression to our faith and works it out.  Therefore, our prayer of faith acquires salvation—as we ask Jesus into our heart and He comes in and redeems us from our sins.         

2.  Prayer is God’s idea as the means for His will to be carried out in accordance with His great plan.  God has planned from eternity…

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The Second Trumpet — Revelation 8:8-9

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Stephen Nielsen's avatarStudying Bible Prophecy

When John saw the second angel sound his trumpet something like a great mountain burning with fire was thrown into the sea (into the oceans and all the salt water bodies); and a third of the sea became blood, and a third of the sea creatures died; and a third of the ships that were on the sea were destroyed.

What was the mountain? The bible says “something like” a mountain was thrown into the sea; 4and it was burning with fire. So we don’t know exactly what John saw, but it looked kind of like a burning mountain. And that means that it was very big. Most commentators say that it will probably be a meteor or an asteroid. But Hal Lindsey, again, thinks it will likely be an H-bomb. He states that a hydrogen bomb that explodes in the ocean “would look like a huge, flaming mountain smashing…

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Five Reasons Why Forgiving Another Seems So Difficult

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Stephen Nielsen's avatarPrayer A to Z

1. Pride. Pride I think is the main reason why it’s so hard to forgive. Pride makes it harder for us to trust God. We say to ourselves, I don’t want to forgive, and I don’t have to!  And so in our pride we cut off God’s help to us.

2. Fear. Fear also keeps us from His help. We say to ourselves, I’m afraid; forgiveness is too hard. Here again we are not looking to God for help; we are instead looking at our weakness, the giant who hurt us, and the huge problem ahead of us.

So pride and fear I think are the real reasons why forgiveness is so difficult and why we don’t forgive.  But I also want to give you three of the reasons (or excuses) we will give as to why forgiveness is too hard for us—so we can take a look…

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The First Trumpet — Revelation 8:7

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Stephen Nielsen's avatarStudying Bible Prophecy

The seven trump judgments will be revealed in the breaking of the seventh seal, and are judgments of much greater intensity. Whereas the seals were each opened and revealed by the Lamb of God, the trumpets are announced by angels when they blow their trumpets.

The first four trumpet judgments are much like the plagues of Egypt as they are divine judgments on the earth. The next two involve devastation of earth’s inhabitants; and the seventh trumpet, like the seventh seal, announces all that will follow in the Tribulation: the bowl judgments, and all the events leading up to the millennial kingdom.

In the first trumpet judgment God brings hail and fire, mixed with blood; and the result will be that a third of the earth, the trees, and the grass (and probably also grains such as wheat, rice and oats) will burn up.

Now the Scriptures do not give…

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Forgiving Yourself

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Stephen Nielsen's avatarPrayer A to Z

 

Forgiving yourself is what you will naturally do when you accept and receive God’s forgiveness.  When you are forgiven by Him, His forgiveness flows to you and gives you the strength you need to forgive yourself.

The reason why we don’t always forgive ourselves is because we fail to see that God loves us and cares for us and that He really wants to forgive us.  And so we fail to truly repent of our sins—thus the guilt of our sins remains with us.  Accordingly, because we are unable to trust the sacrifice of Christ for us, we feel the need to punish ourselves, to tell ourselves how dumb and stupid we are, to restrict ourselves from fellowship, and to wallow in our guilt.  Some have tried to starve themselves, and to cut themselves; some viciously mutilate themselves.  I think one of the more common ways people punish…

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My Great Discovery: I Can Laugh at the Evil World – Psalm 2:4

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What does a Christian do in this evil world—with all the progressivism, with constant attacks on conservativism and Christianity, with government mandates, with wokeism, with all the fraud, especially with voting and in the media? If we think it is best to keep up with the news in order to be informed and to bring a positive influence, there will always be suffering—because the world is against us; it hates us.

So, this has been my dilemma and battle and cause of great sadness—to see the world falling down all around me, and to be inflicted as Lot was (2 Pt. 2:7-8). But recently, I have discovered a wonderful answer—some ways to bring help. There are a few of them.

My Discovery, Part 1 – I Can Laugh with God (from Psalm 2)

I will start with what God showed me in Psalm 2. Verses 1-3 kind of describes what is going on right now with globalism and the Great Reset, and all other such evil movements. We see it quite clearly here in these verses. They are taking counsel together against us Christians and all who are godly, and they are plotting to destroy us in order to exalt their own evil system—which eventually will become the government of the Antichrist.

But what does God do? What is His reaction to all this evil plotting against Him? He laughs! Because He knows how foolish they are and how all their plotting and planning will come to nothing. And He knows that soon His Son will take possession of all the nations of the earth and He will break them with a rod of iron in His New Kingdom which we call the Millennium (verses 6-9).

So this is my great discovery: since I am in Christ and I sit with God and His Son in the heavenly places (1 Cor. 2:6), I can laugh with Him at all that is going on in the world. God is not the least bit affected or disturbed by it, so I shouldn’t be either. And I can and should see how foolish the nations are in all their foolish plotting. And I, with God, can see how it all will end—when Christ rules the world in His wonderful kingdom of peace and love.

My Discovery, Part 2 – Being in the Word and in Prayer Helps

More recently, God reinforced what He showed me earlier in a much different way. He showed me that I can have some comfort and peace (from the evils of the world) in knowledge—knowledge of truth, of Him, and of His word. There is some knowledge to be gained in books that speak the truth (about many things); but a greater knowledge is in the bible and also in prayer.

My Discovery, Part 3 – In Bible Prophecy

When I study bible prophecy and thus learn many things of the future, this gives me an unbelievable edge on all the so called “elite” and experts in the world. I know some things they don’t know—because they regard the bible as foolishness. Hence, with this future knowledge I, with God, sit with Him and laugh!

This discovery was greatly reinforced one evening as I was sitting on my couch watching one of my favorite TV series, 24. It is a series of 24 highly dramatic hour-long shows staring Kiefer Sutherland, as Jack Bauer, where Jack and a cast of other CTU (Counter Terrorist Unit) workers are constantly, for 24 hours, trying to counter terrorist activities against America. I love the show, but it has been a constant stress to me, especially seeing it for the first time. But I discovered that seeing these shows for the second and third time is significantly less stressful—because I know what’s going to happen. So, it gives me an entirely different perspective. And this is how we can and should view what is going on in the world.

So, when I learn (from my reading) what Klaus Schwab is doing and planning in his Great Reset, and what John Kerry is doing in his climate change stuff, and what Stephanie Kelton I doing with her Modern Monetary Theory (that we can just print more money), and what President Biden is up to, I should not worry or be stressed out, and I can actually laugh at it all and be at peace—because I know what is going to happen! I have seen the movie, and guess what? God wins! And we win!