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"Christian Stage Worldwide Protests Against Norway for Seizing Children From Parents"
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Believe it or not, God does punish sin! Those who reject our Lord and deny His wise instructions will not escape the consequences of their foolish choices. Yet most Norwegians today seem to prefer this increasingly corrupt world. I wonder what will happen to those who reject the wise and wonderful guidelines of our Lord. Ponder His words:
"...if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.
"If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us."
A pastor in Norway contacted me last summer and shared his discouragement over Norway's unbiblical churches. He told me that many so-called pastors are also freemason. They know well that many of Norway's large churches are marketing a fraudulent belief system. In other words, Biblical Christianity no longer fit their values.
This spiritual corruption began more than seventy years ago. Norway's socialist leader, Trygve Lie, was a "friend" of Stalin and the first head of United Nations at the end of World War 2.
When Hitler's armies invaded Norway in 1940, my father was one of the leaders in the Norwegian resistance movement. He was captured and tortured near the end of the war, and he spent the last four months of World War II in Oslo's main concentration camp. Many years later, I asked him whether or not he and his fellow prisoner prayed to our Lord during their time of incarceration. His answer was a sad "no".
Through the years that followed, most of my male relatives were involved in Freemason. None went to church.
I was born in 1939, four months before the war ended. When I started school six years later, God blessed me in a most wonderful way. My Godmother who was a missionary to Madagascar, "happened" to came home on a furlough, and she spent an evening with me. She read some of her favorite portions of the Bible, and she helped me to memorize The Lord's Prayer and speak it to Him every night before going to sleep. What a gift! She -- and my Lord -- changed my heart!
One day I discovered a life-changing book in our attic: an old Norwegian translation of a British book titled The Wide Wide World. It told me about a young girl named Ellen who went to live with an distant aunt after the death of her mother. Since Ellen had already learned to trust Jesus, she knew He was with her in the midst of her lonely surroundings. And she experienced His love in amazing ways -- especially through a kind young woman who used every painful hurdle in Ellen's early life to point her to God's ever-present comforts.
Since my family rarely mentioned God in those days, this book opened my eyes to His loving care and sovereignty. The wonderful truths it revealed to me became a daily life-line to His wisdom and love during Norway's post-war years. And when we moved to America in 1952, this book was the richest treasure I brought with me. (See Purging the Memory of Our Christian Roots)
God has wonderful ways of bringing His Truth and Guidance to hungry hearts. This year in Norway, He is surely using Ruth and Marius Bodnariu to draw both lost sinners and faithful witnesses to Himself.
So let's pray for the Bodnariu family as well as the people around the world who long for His precious nearness. How blessed we are to know and follow Him at a time such as this! Berit