Ron Cusano

Why doesn't prayer heal?? Sometimes it does, however, the Bible does not provide a guarantee that God will heal everything, everytime. Sometimes, God does not heal through prayer, for whatever reason. I don't know the whole mind of God. Sometimes God heals through other means, like medical science, whic I believe also comes from God. What I asked you previously is to give a reason for your stated belief system. You know the Bible says that we should "be ready always to give a reason for the hope that is within you"! That is what I have been doing here on this thread. I am jus asking if you are willing to do the same!! You are entitled to believe anything your choose, anyway you want. Since you are raising all of this objections to biblical understanding, I am just asking you to give some evidence to substanciate you statements. Just feeling or believeing something is not evidence. When someone believes something, there is a reason and evidence that causes one to come to their conclusions. Do you have any??

Sue, You, like Grumpy-Old-Man are missing the big picture here. We live in a world that has been corrupted by sin. As the result, the world and everything and everyone in it suffers from the consequences of sin - sickness, pain, death, etc. Why did I get the band since gluttony is a sin?? Because once we come to believe, we are forgiven, but we are still sinners, and we are weak in the flesh. We try and do our best to repent (turn away from sin) but we are still sinners and weak. The difference is, with Jesus, we are forgiven! Can God just heal me if He chooses? Of course He can, however, for whatever reason, He has chosen not to. Even the Apostle Paul had an affliction that He ask God to heal, which God choose not to, and Paul counted it as a life lesson to remind him of who he really was, and to humble him. I can't answer for God for everything He decides, but I can trust that He has a good reason for all he does allow. I also believe that all knowledge, even mediacl knowledge, if a gift from God, and since God has provided this tool for me, I consider it a blessing from Him! Sue, God loves you and wants to have a personal relationship with you. My prayer is that you might put your bias aside and give God a chance to work in your life. You sound like an intelligent and thoughtful women, and I personally think that if you dilligently investigated the biblical evidence wtih an open heart, that you would come to a different conclusion.

AMEN SISTER, AMEN!!

You apparently have not grasped a thing from the discussions yesterday about this same subject or else you get some kind of pleasure attacking Christian believe and biblical understanding. I am sure that Cal is more that competitent to answer you herself, but just to reitirate what was discussed yesterday, Pain, sickness and death came into the world because man sinned. Healing and even medical science as well as all knowledge is a gift from God. We get sick, hurt and die because we are still in this fallen world, but the true reward for Believers is in eternity where we will not experience sickness, pain and death any longer. Unbelievers, on the other hand, are in for a rude and sad awakening, according to scripture.

Dear Cal, It is hearing testimony from folks like yourself that make my ministry such a blessing. Please visit my ministry website at: http://www.shiloh-ministries.org Yours in the Name of Sar Shalom "The prince of Peace" Ron

There are many millions of conservative Christians and the majority of Bible scolars who would disagree with you regarding taking the Word of God literally. If it can't be taken literally, and it is just a bunch of "stories" then we might as well throw it out and completely disregard it. There is NO contradiction in the Bible, unly a lack of understanding and not viewing the whole portrait of scripture. Scripture intreprets scripture. You said Jesus never spoke in the Bible, and yet the New Testament is froll of His quotes. You say we have to rely on the New Testament writers about what Jesus said. Well, everytime you read a newspaper, an article, a book or listen to the news or a teacher, you are relying on first person quotes. There were the men who lived with Jesus and experienced the things written about, and went to their deaths because of their beliefs. Christianity is based upon the teachings of Scripture. If you discount scriptures you have no foundation upon which to base a belief system. If you don't know that Jesus was who He claimed to be and did what He did, then you can't be a follower of Jesus. The Jesus figure you claim to worship is based entirely on a figment of your imagination instead of strong biblical evidence. You are describeing a "blibd faith" that is based upon whatever you choose to believe. That is why the Bible was given . . to provide evidence of the messianiac credentials of the Messiah. Again, I am not going to get into your politics because it is not a simplistic as you make it out to be. A lot of the problems that you talk about have been made by people in both parties and is in no way a reflection of spiritual beliefs.

Controversial!! Really!! It's a controversial subject because the means of atonement have been removed with the destruction of the Temple. The Rabbi's are confronted with a problem!! Either God has removed atonement from His people, or He provided atonement another way. The prophet Jeremeiah spoke about a time when God would make a New Covenent (New testament / New Law) with the House of Jacob and the Prophet Isaiah tells us that we need to make the Messiah's "soul an offering for sin" and that God "hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all"!! The problem the Rabbi's have is that either they have to find a way to explain away why Israel no longer has a means of atonement OR they have to accept and acknowledge that Jesus is the Messiah and atonement is now through His blood sacrifice. They explain it away by claiming repentance, prayer and giving to charity is the new atonement! Unfortunately, that is not what the Law of Moses says! The Law says, "the life of the flesh is in the blood and I have given it to you upon the alter to make atonement for the soul, for it is the blood that makes the atonement for the soul"!! Well now the question is, who is right . . . Moses and The God of Israel, or the modern Rabbi's with no valid explanation about where atonement is for Israel!! What do you think??

Regarding the term, "Completed Jew"! There are now many thousands, perhaps millions of Jews, including Rabbi's who have accepted Jesus as their Messiah! They coined the teminaolgy "Completed Jew" because it describe exactly how they view themselves!! From the time of Moses, Messiah has been the hope of the Jewish people. Whan a Jew finds his Messiah, he feels complete in his judiasm. To my new found Jewish friends on this board, allow me to ask you a profound question, and I would welcome and encourage sincere intelligent comment and debate . . . On Yom Kippur you acknowledge the Day of Atonement, but . . . "WHERE IS YOUR ATONEMENT" Under the Law of Moses, atonement can only be made with a blood sacrifice, by the High Priest in the Temple. Since 70 AD when the Temple was destroyed by the Romans, and the priesthood ceased, and the Temple records destroyed, there has been no sacrifices for Atonement. So where is your atonement?? Can anyone comment on this please??

Of course, you are entitled to your opinions and beliefs. What I admitted was that when I felt attached, I reacted aggressively in return. I did not err in my approach to theological answers. If you go back and read my posts you might be suprised to find that I did extend blessings to non-Believers and offered pray for them. You might imaging that it is difficult to feel blessings toward folks who you preceive as attacking you. If someone came over and attacked YOU, I wonder if your first thought would be to extend a blessing!! What upsets me is people taking things that are said out of context, twisting their meaning or repeating things that were never said or implied in the first place. You just did that again with your statement, "So only Jews who find Christ are complete Jews? The rest of the Jews are bad, I guess"!! Would you care to point out who said that and where?? Did you make that up?? What was actually said by someone else was that , a Jewish friend called herself a "completed Jew" because she accepted Jesus. Everything else about your remark you made up! WHY?? You are quick to call me to task for what I say and accuse me of inciting trouble! Have you considered judging YOURSELF by the same standards?? You say you are a Christian but you don't accept a literal understand of the Bible, and that it is made up of "stories to make a point" as you put it! The literal intrepretation of Christian is "One Who Follows Christ"! Christ said, "Search the scriptures for in them you think ye have eternal life, it is they that testify of me", and "study to show they self approved of God". Would Jesus have us study and search the scriptures if they were only "stories"!! The Apostles preached Jesus and bore witness to His messianic credentials through prophetic scripture. Jesus quoted the scriptures constantly identifed tham as being true. Was the Jesus you claim to believe in a liar? Did the Apostles die in vain?? Let me ask you a question, fellow Christian!! If you don't accept the Bible as your spiritual authority in all matters, then what do you accept! What is the foundation of YOUR Christian beliefs?? If the Bible is just a bunch of stories to make a point, how do you know Jesus was who He claimed to be and did what He claimed to do! CAN YOU ANSWER THESE THINGS?? I am not even going to address your political comments because your angry, liberal bias make it plain that you already have you mind made up and nothing I could say would open it.

Thank you and bless you! Since the Bible, both Old and New Testaments are Jewish books, written by Jews for Jews, I have a hard time understanding how people can really understand them unless you look at them from a Jewish perspective. At the very least, it opens up a whole new world of understanding. My hat is off to your Pastor for taking the time to understand and teach this to His congregation. And about your friend, seeing the joy in the heart of a Jew that discovers their Messiah is something that is such a blessing. God bless!!

With all due respect, there is more scientic evidence to support the biblical claims of creation, and I might add the flood, than there is against it. A lot more! I am sure that you have not read this in the media, but with the growth of DNA technology, many scientists have now concluded that there is a single person in past geneology from whom all people have come from. Even the Einstein Theory of Relativity concluding that all thing in existance are growing older, indicates that at some point in time they had to be younger. And, if you trace backward far enough, there had to be a starting point; a point of creation!

When you stand in from of Him some day, YOU TELL HIM THAT!

I appriciate you input, and I admitted that I could have handled things differently at times. When confronted by attack, I allowed myself to act in kind. I appoliziged for my part in the disagreements, took responsibility for it and said that I would welcome any serious theological discussion. That is exactly what has taken place here all day. People are asking sincere questions, I am answering to the best of my knowledge and ability, and I think God is getting the glory. If nothing else, people are hearing truth according to God's word. Unless you took the time to read all 10 or so pages of the thread, you probally don't know all that transpired. There is a time to use tact, and there is a time to be forceful and blunt, as was Jesus when speaking to the Pharisee's, or the money changers in the temple. In fact, in both cases, Jesus used language much stronger that I did here, and showed physical aggression as well. Have you considered that?? I also don't believe that there is anything negative with telling people that you pray for them. If anything, if shows concern and caring. When Jesus preached, he spoke truth, and at times people reacted aggressively and violently to that truth. I think that is partly what happened here, although, as I said, I did allow my emotions to come into play. I know better that that, however, I am still human, growing, learning and making mistakes even after 30+ years serving the Lord. I expect that will continue until I am called home.

God doesn't cause fights! People cause fights!

I think what you are saying is that while you have a choice weather or not to bear the child, you don't have a choice regarding that child being perfect or not. That's a fair question. The only answer that I can give you is what I said before! Creating us not to have the capicity and ability to choose weather to sin or not, does not allow for us to choose righeousness and obedience which is glorifing to God. And to glorify himself was the reason he creaed us in the first place.

Of course there is a difference! If you have a child, you know he or she is going to suffer sickness, problems and eventally die, but you still bring the child into the world, don't you? Would you rethink having the child?? Regarding glory, I don't think it's a matter of anyone benefiting from it. Glory, for lack of a better explanation, it making God the object of our worship and praise. When we do that, we receive blessing and God receives His due because of who He is. We don't do it jsut to benefit from the blessing, we do it because God is God and worthery of it.

As do I!! God bless!

God did not create us to make wrong choices and to suffer and is not glorified by our sin. That was never said. It is something you are reading into it. We were made to make good choices and live in a paradise existance with Him. Yes he foreknew, but it was still up to us to make the choice. Just as it is up to you to accept or reject Him now. God receives the glory when we accept His free gift of salvation and make GOOD choices and attempt to lead holy lives. I have been repeating this over and over again, but you apparently are not grasping it.

That was cute! I love it!!

Perfection in the biblical sense means without sin or corruption. Adam was created without sin or corruption . . . perfect in every way. Being perfect, or sinless, does not mean that Adam did not have the capcity to sin. Only that he was tainted by it until he choose to sin. Perfection does not mean without having free choice. The Bible tells us that Saten was created without sin, but because of pride, rebelled against God and was cast out of heaven. If you had the ability to make your niece be born without the chance of ever making a mistake or doing something wrong, then how would that be a testimony to her parents ability to raise her and nurture her. She would need no teaching, education, moral foundation, etc. She would be nothing more that a robot, a human figure without the ability to make decisions and choices. God, in His wisdom, chose not to make us that way. I don't knbow all the reasons why He did that because I don't know th whole mind of God, I just know that He did!! Like you, I don't pretend to know everything about God. Anyone who tells you he does is a liar!

You have a wonderful way of twisting things! He created Adam perfect. His whole creation was perfect. Man used his free will to disobey God and sin entered into God's perfect creation and were made imperfect. If you had some horrible disease, had a child and it was passed on to the child, the child has to live with it weather he deserved it or not. The world and all that live in it are contaminated by sin and we live the consequences of that sin. God, however, provided a way out . . . through Jesus! The "little kids" and us do stand a chance because of what Jesus did. In fact it's more that a chance, it's a certainty to those who embrace the Messiah. God is not the bad guy here! We are! Of course, if you are perfect and have never sinned, then you would never get sick and die! The fact of the matter is, we have ALL SINNED, so we are living the consequesces. You do know that you have sinned, don't you!!

No, not at all! He created us perfect; made in His image. We became imperfect after man disobeyed and sinned. We know our children will be imperfect but we create them with the ability to choose between ring and wrong. They have a choice.

Let me use an analogy to answer you! You are a parent! You conceive a child knowing that the child will do wrong, get into trouble, get sick and eventually die. Yet you still create this child, wanting only the best for your child. God is our Father and created us with foreknowledge of what we would do, because He wanted us to worship Him and enjoy fellowship with Him. Could he have created us never to have the choice to sin and disobey? Yes, He could have, but how would that glorify Him if we had no choice in how we acted? It would be like having a robot that was programed to do only what you wanted, completely devoid of love and respect for you. God didn't create robots, He created us in His spiritual image to worship, obey and fellowship with Him.

God did not make us with a sinful nature. He made is pure, but with free will/ It is after Man choose to disobey God that sin entered into the world and man became tainted. The sinful nature is inherited from Adam, the first man.

Please allow me to adress this, and clarify something. First, I am not a "Reverend", I am in ministry. I do not pastor a congregation. I serve the Lord in a ministry into which I was called by God. Second, I would never pesume to tell anyone that there is only one way to worship or that only a particular denomination is correct. There are doctronial differences between believers, those who claim the name of Jesus, however, there are common beliefs that are understood by all real Christians & Believers. Real Christians believe that there is a sin problem that seperates them from their God. (The wages of sin is death ) Real Christians believe that only through the blood sacrifice of Jesus are we justified to God and our sin problem dealt with (For God so oved the world that he gave His only son, that who so ever believeth in Him shall have eternal life) And Real Christians believe that this salvation is a gift from God that must be accepted by us, and we need to make a decision to repent, meaning to turn away from sin to the best of our ability. (For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourself; it is a gift from God, Not of works, lest any man should boast) This is the crux, the bedrock, the foundation of the Gospel. All other doctronial issues take second place to this understanding. I believe that many Believers from many different denominations and congregations, even those with different doctronial foundations will inherit eternal life and be saved. I may disagree with them on many of fine points of the faith, but nevertheless, I consider these folks to be brothers and sisters in Messiah. I hope that clarifies the issue some.