What can a people do on behalf of those who gave the ultimate sacrifice to provide the priceless freedoms which we enjoy? What can we do to honor those who stormed the beaches, climbed the cliffs in a rain of gunfire, fought in the jungles, the deserts, the treeless and seemingly God forsaken mountains and across the deep blue seas? How could we EVER re-pay the blood spilt for our freedoms on every continent around the globe? How could we do it? This is how, we can remember and we can thank God for their sacrifice and we can stand up in their stead to protect the freedoms we still enjoy and fight back against the forces which endeavor to infringe on our freedoms today.

What a wonderful idea it was after WWI that an unidentified soldier would be brought home and buried in our most famous cemetery Arlington National Cemetery. With so many families not able to claim the body of their loved who perished in battle, the very thought that just maybe the one who lay in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was their loved one, provided a place in our homeland to focus their hearts and also a place to visit and pay their respects. Since WWI there have been other soldiers from WWII, Korea and Vietnam laid to rest there for the very same reason.

One of the most striking memorials to the fallen soldier is the faithful service of those who guard the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Here are some interesting facts:

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

1. How many steps does the guard take during his
walk across the tomb of the Unknowns
and why?

21 steps:
It alludes to the twenty-one gun salute which
is the highest honor given any military or foreign
dignitary.

2. How long does he hesitate after his about face
to begin his return walk and why?

21 seconds for the same reason as answer number 1

3. Why are his gloves wet?

His gloves are moistened to prevent his losing his grip on the rifle.

4. Does he carry his rifle on the same shoulder all the time and, if
not, why not?

He carries the rifle on the shoulder away from the tomb. After his march across the path, he executes an about face and moves the rifle to the outside shoulder.

5. How often are the guards changed?

Guards are changed every thirty minutes, twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year.

6. What are the physical traits of the guard limited to?

For a person to apply for guard duty at the tomb, he must be between 5′ 10′ and 6′ 2′ tall and his waist size cannot exceed 30. They must commit 2 years of life to guard the tomb, live in a barracks under the tomb. They cannot disgrace the uniform or the tomb in any way.

After two years, the guard is given a wreath pin that is worn on their lapel signifying they served as guard of the tomb. There are only 400 presently worn.

The shoes are specially made with very thick soles to keep the heat and cold from their feet. There are metal heel plates that extend to the top of the shoe in order to make the loud click as they come to a halt. There are no wrinkles, folds or lint on the uniform.

In 2003 as Hurricane Isabelle was approaching Washington , DC , our US Senate/House took 2 days off with anticipation of the storm. On the ABC evening news, it was reported that because of the dangers from the hurricane, the military members assigned the duty of guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier were given permission to suspend the assignment. They respectfully declined the offer, “No way, Sir!” Soaked to the skin, marching in the pelting rain of a tropical storm, they said that guarding the Tomb was not just an assignment, it was the highest honor that can be afforded to a service person. The tomb has been patrolled continuously, 24/7, since 1930.

God Bless and keep them. We can be very proud of our men and women who gave the ultimate sacrifice and those who served and those currently in the service no matter where they serve. Find and attend a Memorial Day service in your area this year and pay your respects. Start a family tradition. It will pay dividends as your offspring will develop a love for their country and respect for those who serve.

This blog is not for the faint hearted or skimming reader. It will take some time to soak it in. So turn off the TV and/or radio. Find a quiet place, grab a coffee and settle down and ask the Lord to help you to apply these truths. This is a bit longer than my usual blog but here we go.

If you think you’re perfect then this blog’s not for you! If you think you can do no wrong then this blog’s not for you! If you think you’re not so bad, since there are SO many other people who do worse things than you… then this blog’s NOT for you! BUT, if you don’t think these things, and you realize that your imperfections, your wrongs and let’s just say it, YOUR SINS are a problem, then this blog is for YOU!

Let’s face it, God is HOLY and we are not! Our sin is a BIG problem. Sure we can try to turn over a new leaf, make a new start, make resolutions or whatever, but sin has a way of creeping back and you know why? Because it is the most powerful and invasive, personal negative force that we will face in our lifetime! King David found that out and he found out some very powerful truths about sin and wrote about it in Psalm chapter fifty one. Let’s see what he learned. The whole chapter is about him confessing his sin to God and in the opening verses he uses some terms which are good to consider.

Psalm 51:1-2 “Have mercy upon me, O God, According to Your lovingkindness; According to the multitude of Your tender mercies, Blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, And cleanse me from my sin.”

To describe his sin David used the words transgressions, iniquity & sin. Here is what those words mean in the Bible’s original language:

Transgressions: This word actually means rebellion against God’s Word or God’s law. So when we sin we become a rebel against God. Not a good thing to be fighting against God!

Iniquity: This word means to become crooked and devious. The more we sin the more crooked and devious we become. We try to cover our tracks and we often lie about our actions. Not a very good thing to lie and scheme to keep our sins secret!

Sin: This word means to miss the mark. God has a wonderful plan for each of us but when we sin we stray from that path and miss out on His will for our lives. Again, not a very good place to be going in the wrong direction away from God’s will!

So to summarize, when we sin we become crooked rebels that miss the mark or plan which God has for us. Do you see the entirety and immensity of these negative consequences?

These words demonstrate the importance of us avoiding sin at all costs and when we do sin we must recognize it, and then go to God for forgiveness.

David also used three other words or phrases to describe what God does when we confess our sins to Him. Let’s take a look at “Blot out”, “Wash me” & “Cleanse me”.

Blot out: Means to erase or utterly wipe away. David wanted his rebellion wiped out of his life and God granted his request and erased it.

Wash me: Means to trample or wash by stamping with the feet. David wanted God to stamp out the croooked ways of his life. We may feel we’ve gone through the proverbial wringer in this process, but sin does have it’s consequences!

Cleanse me: Means to be made blameless, acquitted and set free to fulfill God’s purpose and will for our life. What a wonderful result when we are honest with God and admit our sins.

Many of you know my brother Pooch (Warren) Wolfe has Melanoma Cancer. I asked you to pray for him back on April 5th  (Pray!) and your prayers are being answered! I was talking to Pooch on the phone the other day and he expressed to me, “I believe I got a miracle!” His condition had been deteriorating very badly and he was hospitalized for five days. Since then… well, I’ll let his wife Thelma explain: (she calls him “Butch”:)

The wind howled outside and slightly moved the curtain on the window sill. The linoleum covered floor creaked as I walked over to the coal fired Heatrola that sat in the corner of our living room to slack it off for the night, hoping the stove pipe that disappeared through the ceiling and passed through our bedroom upstairs would provide enough heat. I recalled a few mornings when there was a miniature snow drift on the window sill by our bunk beds. I picked up the heavy bucket of coal and reached to open the door. The fire gleamed through the small windows in the door like a jack-0-lantern on a porch at midnight. I poured in a good helping of coal which I had just lugged up from the ground cellar accessed by a wooden door on the floor of the back porch. There wasn’t much coal left in the dust of the coal bin, which was lit by one dim light bulb hanging over it, but mom always seemed to get another delivery just in the nick of time to keep us warm through the cold and sometimes snowy Pennsylvania winter nights. The sulfur smell rising from the fresh coal covering the bed of hot coals smelled sweet to my nostrils.

I was one of Irene’s boys and we all knew the routines. We were just in grade school but already self sufficient in some ways. We knew how to make a fire, take out the ashes and work the damper to regulate the temperature in the living room which was the main heated area of our 1/2 a house apartment. We also knew how to keep house, how to “read it up” when company was coming or when mom was in a feisty mood, which wasn’t very often. We knew how to make simple meals when mom couldn’t be home because of work. We were getting ready for life and unknowingly she prepared us in many ways.

I headed up the steps leading up to my bedroom. The stairs to the second floor were shared by the couple who ran the general store located on the other end of the house and they lived in the apartment adjacent to us so we always made it a quick trip up the steps so “Rose” wouldn’t catch us in our underwear. I knelt down by my bed, folded my hands and closed my eyes with my face toward the heavens. “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. God bless Mom & Butch & Larry & Bruce & Fred & Stevie. God bless grandma Anspach, Grandma Trailer, Grandma Back Home and Lucy’s Mom & Pop. Amen.”

There was a lot in that simple prayer that mom taught us. She instinctively taught us there was a God who watched over us. His loving care was evident in how He seemed to always provide for us and keep us safe. She taught us that we had eternal souls “I pray the Lord my soul to keep” and that when we die we go home to be with Him “I pray the Lord my soul to take”. She taught us that it was a good thing to pray for a blessing on others which instilled in us a caring heart attitude for family and their welfare.

I believe Mom was used by God to begin preparing my heart for the future day when I would open my heart and invite the Lord Jesus in, in a personal way. (see Bud’s Decision and Destiny) I would marry and have 3 sons of my own. I can still remember the night sitting around our supper table having some fellowship with friends from church after our Sunday evening service. The hour was getting late and I coaxed my wife Joanne to take the boys upstairs for their bedtime prayers when my friend said, “You’re the father and that’s YOUR job!” I was propelled into action by that admonition from that day forward. My boys and I had some wonderful and blessed times of prayer in their growing up years. To hear their simple prayers calling out to their Heavenly Father in sincerity showered me with blessings.

I hope the fathers and mothers reading this take the time to pray along with your children and grand children. What a great opportunity to lead them to the place where they open their hearts to the Savior. Teach them to pray. It will have eternal results. Now I lay me down to sleep…..

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It started way back in the beginning with a question, “Did God really say?” The effort to undermine the Truth of God began in the Garden of Eden when Satan approached Eve and sowed the seeds of doubt in her mind. Satan deceived her, and continues today to sow seeds of doubt in the minds of believers leading them to question their salvation. So why is that such an important mission for him? Think about it, eternal salvation is a wonderful treasure but will a person share something with others in which they themselves have doubt that they possess? What kind of salesmen or witness for The Faith would a person be if they didn’t believe in the product? That is a major problem which undermines Jesus’ Great Commission to go into all the world and preach the Gospel.

So where do we go to solve this issue? You guessed it, the Word of God of course!

Two questions: Can a person be eternally saved and know it & what do you do when doubts arise? Let’s take a look at the answers:

#1 Yes, a person can be saved, be born again, become a Christian and know it without a doubt! My blog Second Birthday! gives a detailed account of the process and what happens when you trust Christ as Savior so I won’t repeat that here. The focus of THIS blog is really question number two.

#2 What do you do when doubts arise? We are frail human beings and have a fallen nature which cannot and will not believe or comprehend the things of God. That is why when we are saved we are given from God a New Nature or New Man as the Bible calls it. The New Man must be fed the Word of God regularly as 1 Peter 2:2 says “As newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the Word that ye may grow thereby.”

The Apostle John, one of the writers of the Bible, also gave us a few passages to assure us in our salvation when doubts arise. We must memorize these verses and use them like a sword against the enemy when he tries to deceive us. Take a look:

John 1:12 But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.

1 John 5:11-12 And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.

SO… first of all John tells us it is possible to become a child of God by receiving Christ. Then he tells us in plain language that we can KNOW we have eternal life. There’s no equivocating, no doubting, no second guessing! We can KNOW for SURE we are saved from the penalty of our sins and have eternal life.

I shared the following story with a young believer recently who was having doubts. Maybe it will be a help to you as well.

There’s a story told of a farmer who constantly had doubts about his salvation. Whether it was the world’s influence, the Devil or even his own fallen nature, he kept questioning in his mind whether he was really saved. So one day he went out behind his barn, got on his knees and trusted Christ as his Savior right then and there. Then he got up and wrote the date on the wall of the barn. From then on whenever he had doubts he just said, “Ok Satan we’re going behind the barn! See that date? Now stop bothering me because I know I’m saved!”

You see, for me the “barn” was the inside cover of my Bible. My brother gave me great advice the night I received Jesus as my Savior. He said write this date down inside the cover of your Bible. That way when you have doubts you can go right to that date and remind yourself. So I wrote down the date I received Jesus as my Savior and in those early years when doubts arose, and they did, I just went to that date by faith and chased all the doubts and my spiritual enemies away! Not to mention I memorized the above verses as well!

I pray you have the assurance of your salvation and if needed establish a date or time or year so you can document that eternal event just in case you need to take Satan out behind the barn!

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It was on the 26th day of December 1922 when the best Christmas gift of my future life was born, my wonderful mother Irene Violet Anspach. This Christmas she would have celebrated her 100th birthday! She was born to Clarence and Margaret (Soliday) Anspach, the first of seven children, five girls and two boys near Indiantown Gap, PA. She was born, if not into poverty, into a very meager home which didn’t have many frills. Her mother Margaret (whose name means Pearl) was the pearl of her life and her mom had a tremendous Christian influence in her life. Being born the day after Christmas, for my mom there were many years her Christmas gift and birthday gifts were one in the same, but I never once heard her complain.

When she was growing up her family would often travel over Indiantown Gap to the little hamlet of Green Point where there was a country store keeper who allowed his customers to buy on credit or the “tick” as they sometimes called it. In those meager depression days many families had a very tough time making it. The kind and generous store owner was Allen J. Wolfe who had a grandson Warren A. Wolfe who worked at the store and he was the same age as Irene, born earlier in 1922 on May 2nd. Their friendship began and it eventually led to marriage. It was a Prince Charming & Cinderella-like marriage and they had great hopes of living happily ever after.

Unfortunately, that didn’t happen as when my dad came home from WWII he began following in his own father’s alcoholic habit.

My brother Larry tells the story like this:

Although Dad was described as a friendly, likeable guy by those who knew him, he definitely came home from the war, a different guy, with a multitude of bad habits including a dependence on alcohol. Drink and the surrounding lifestyle it brings wrecked our home for alcohol was his priority, not his family. But, after twenty traumatic and very painful years of marriage, Mom divorced Dad in the spring of 1962 just months before my High School graduation. But, this is not the end of the story, it is only the beginning, for ‘The Wolfpack’ began to open up its range, covering new territory, as each of us began maturing, going our separate, but still connected, ways.

During those years, Mom was one of the greatest spiritual influences on our family, especially my older brother Warren and me, because in the summer of 1958, she enrolled the two of us in a catechism class that brought forth ‘Fruit that remains’ even until today, and will for eternity. At the conclusion of these classes we attended a Revival-style meeting which was going on in Mom’s family Methodist church. Pastor Arthur Miller preached a fiery salvation message and we went to the altar when the invitation was given and my brother Warren was saved. 

As Larry mentioned, our Mom knew that her boys needed the influence of “The Faith” and I remember she would always make sure we prayed the “Now I lay me down to sleep” prayer at bed time and “God is great God is good prayer” at meal time. When she wasn’t working weekends she would see to it that we attended church and Sunday School and the Faith that our oldest brother Warren found would later prove very effective in reaching his little brothers with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Mom had it VERY rough raising six boys on the little money she made waitressing or as a short order cook but we never knew it. We always had clean clothes to wear and there was always food on the table as simple a meal it might have been. One particular meal was called “Nep and Navy Beans”. She would take a ham bone (which she brought home from the restaurant) put it in a pot of water and pour in some Navy Beans then when it would boil she’d drop in some dough balls. We had that meal that often our little brother Fred once told her “No more Net Mom!”

She was very musical and had a beautiful voice and played the guitar and the piano. She had her boys put thumb tacks on the hammers in her old upright piano producing that old “honky-tonk” sound and we would often stand around the piano and sing with her. “Oh we ain’t got a barrel of money, maybe we’re ragged and funny. But we travel along singing a song, side by side! Oh we don’t know what’s coming tomorrow, maybe it’s trouble and sorrow, but we travel along singing a song, side by side.Through all kinds of weather, no matter if the stars should fall, just as long as we’re together, it really doesn’t matter all. Well, well, we don’t know what’s coming tomorrow, maybe it’s trouble and sorrow, but we’ll travel along singing a song, side by side!”

One thing she purposed to do and that was to keep us together as a family. That was her life’s goal and she acccomplished it with style. Our family get togethers grew large as almost all of the boys married and started families of their own.

In the community we were known as “Irene’s Boys” Warren, Larry, Brian, Bruce, Fred and Steven. I still meet people today who refer to me in the same way. Yep, I’m one of “Irene’s Boys” and proud of it! Mom’s in heaven now, since October 18th 1991 and I’m sure she’s glad of the sacrifice she made for her boys, we are sure proud of her!

I’ll let Larry close…..

And so, the loving, sacrificial influence of Mom, putting us in the right place at the right time became the very reason why we, ‘Irene’s boys’ as we were called by the people in the area, are children of God today! Yes, it was and still is the miraculous working of God throughout the history of our family that is the MAIN reason why we can truly say today, “To God be the glory, great things He hath done!!” As one Bible Preacher has rightly said: “It takes a thousand pounds of Preacher to equal one ounce of Mother”, Amen and Amen!

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