Someone recently passed this article on to me, which I posted on another board. It was promptly removed. So sad . . .

Frightening News from France

Once again, the real news in France is conveniently

not being reported as it should. To give you an idea

of what's going on in France where there are now

between 5 and 6 million Muslims and about 600,000 Jews,

here is an email that came from a Jew living in

France. Please read! Will the world say nothing - again - as it did in Hitler's time?

"I AM A JEW -- therefore I am forwarding this to

everyone on all my e-mail lists. I will not sit back

and do nothing." Nowhere have the flames of

anti-Semitism burned more furiously than in France:

Lyon, a car was rammed into a synagogue and set

on fire. In Montpellier, the Jewish religious center

was firebombed; so were synagogues in Strasbourg and

Marseilles; so was a Jewish school in Creteil - all recently.

A Jewish sports club in Toulouse was attacked with

Molotov cocktails, and on the statue of Alfred

Dreyfus in Paris, the words "Dirty Jew" were

painted. In Bondy, 15 men beat up members of a

Jewish football team with sticks and metal bars. The

bus that takes Jewish children to school in

Aubervilliers has been attacked three times in the last 14 months.

According to the Police, metropolitan Paris has seen

10 to 12 anti-Jewish incidents PER DAY in the past

30 days. Walls in Jewish neighborhoods have been

defaced with slogans proclaiming "Jews to the gas

chambers" and "Death to the Jews."

A gunman opened fire on a Kosher butcher's shop

(and, of course, the butcher) in Toulouse , France;

a Jewish couple in their 20s were beaten up by five

men in Villeurbanne , France . The woman was

pregnant; a Jewish school was broken into and

vandalized in Sarcelles , France . This was just in

the past week.

So I call on you, whether you are a fellow Jew, a

friend, or merely a person with the capacity and

desire to distinguish decency from depravity, to do,

at least, these three simple things:

First, care enough to stay informed. Don't ever let

yourself become deluded into thinking that this is

no t your fight. I remind you of what Pastor

Neimoller said in World War II: "First they came for

the Communists, and I didn't speak up, because I

wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and

I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Jew. Then they

came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up,

because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me,

and by that time there was no one left to speak up

for me".

Second, boycott France and French products. Only the

Arab countries are more toxically anti-Semitic and,

unlike them, France exports more than just oil and

hatred. So boycott their wines and their perfumes.

Boycott their clothes and their foodstuffs. Boycott

their movies. Definitely boycott their shores. If

we are resolved we can exert amazing pressure and,

whatever else we may know about the French, we most

certainly know that they are like a cobweb in a

hurricane in the face of well directed pressure.

Third, send this along to your family, your friends,

and your co-workers. Think of all of the people of

good conscience that you know and let them know

that you and the people that you care about need

their help. The number one best selling book in

France is "September 11: The Frightening Fraud,"

which argues that no plane ever hit the Pentagon."

Tami,

The reason why there are ministries that reach out to the Jews is because Jews have been persecuited in the name of Christianity for thousands of years, and the name of Jesus has become a curse word to them. Our role is to present the messianiac claims of Jesus to His Jewish brethern from a Jewish perspective that they can comprehend with minimal offence. Most self-respecting Jews would rather die that set foot inside a church, so it is through misinsties of this type that they can learn about Yeshua and His messianiac credentials. This is a good thing, not a bad thing.

Jesus was a Jew! The Bible is a Jewish book written by Jews, for Jews about the Jewish Messiah. Nothing could be more Jewish, and yet, us Gentiles think it stange that a Jew could believe in Jesus. What is really starnge is that us Gentiles have come to believe in the God of Israel and His Messiah!

Ron, thank you for clarifying that! I was raised a Christian, and married a Jew. We both live our lives as agnostics. But, I always thought that if I wanted to return to the faith, that the messiantic ministry might be a way to blend Christianity with his roots and traditions of Judaism. However, now that I know that the goal is to prostelisize to Jews, I'll take a pass!

Tami

Thank-you! I agree, and accept responsibility for my part in the misunderstandings that have taken place here. Forgive me! I do not wish to offend anyone, but I do need to speak what I understand to be the truth.

Ron, I think you've hit a very important nail on the head, and commend you for it. No one here, to the best of my knowledge, is put off or offended by your knowledge or your confidence in your knowledge. Rather, how the message was communicated. I think we can see that in the speed with which this conversation deteriorated. We do debate and we do disagree here, but perhaps in a different manner than you're accustomed to, as you to us.

Cheers!

Victoriana...I'm sorry, but I see a WORLD of difference between telling a child to NOT do something and his choosing to do it anyway and getting a boo-boo that needs a band-aid and his doing it anyway and dying of AIDS...or, even, his doing NOTHING wrong and dying of a childhood-onset leukemia.

Ron is saying that ALL of this is from his god. I'm missing the wisdom and the connections in "God is good," "God COULD fix stuff if he wanted to, that's why we pray to him and ask for recovery from disease and injury," and "The babies are dying but everything happens for a good reason."

Samuel Clemens said, ""If there is a God, he is a malign thug."

If God didnt allow us a choice, how would it be love if we worship and trusted Him out of a lack of other options. God understands love, and the Word says He is love, it was out of love that he allows us the choice, and if we choose to deny Him, thats it. He provided a perfect, sinless, disease free garden and the tree that we were instructed to not eat from. Hoping that obedience would ensue. But since Eve never had anyone lie to her before, she didnt know she could not trust the serpent when he asked her the question, Did God really say... and caused her to doubt, and sin. But God did warn her to stay away. As a parent I taught my children what was dangerous, but sometimes they tested me and had the consequence of getting hurt. This broke my heart to mend a cut finger or something like that. But, God in His infinate love knew that He could still provide a way to be with Him again, but it still comes as a choice, to love Him or abstain. Just because He doesnt force us to love Him doesnt mean that He doesnt continue to hope that we would choose Him. He did take my punishment upon Himself after all, even if I choose to ignore Him.

It seems that there is a pervasive rule somewhere that says that since God knows everything, He set us up for punishment. Its just the opposite, He knows we are not perfect, so He still gives us the choice to come back to Him.

Personally, I was such a wretched person without His intervention. Not that I was mean to people, or a murderer, or thief. I had a basic moral code that I followed, and believed in personal ingegrety and honesty. I was wretched because inside my self, I was insecure, sad, lonely, and allowed people to walk all over me, I had no value in my own eyes. When I learned how much I really am loved by God, I became safe, free from fear, peacefull, confident and so much more. The only thing that changed was my choice to choose Him, ask His forgivness for not loving myself, and therefore not loving others the way they should have been, and most of all, not loving Him enough to trust Him with my life.

That is why my signature about forgivness is on each of my post. I never want to forget the power of His forgivness.

Remember, I respect others choices, because God honors us with choices.

Very nicely put! Thanks.

I missed something somewhere ... since when do Christians use tallit? and for that matter, when do christian WOMEN use tallit?? Tallit (prayer shawl) is a MEN'S requirement not Women - and Jews would look at women ursurping a man's mitzvah as a BAD THING!!! Sorry, but I'm a proud US Jewish War veteran AND a feminist AND pretty conversant in hebrew and arabic and I just don't see any ties between tallit and christians, never mind the other rants about Allah not being G-D and showing none of the attributes of G-D and on and on and on...oh, and btw - I have read the Tanach in hebrew and english, and have NEVER seen ANY reference to JC or ANY word about G-D sending his "son" - I see references to Moshiach (the messiah) BUT it doesn't say ANYWHERE it's going to be offspring of the one unknowable inquantifiable singular G-D.

Just my two cents - I should have posted this much sooner... I trust that T_O_M said as much more eloquently...when I get riled I tend to break it down to the lowest level...LOL

I posted earlier in this tread about a meeting I had with a group of Christians (we used to call them "Protestants") last year after my minister gave a guest sermon at a church before an interdenominational group representing about a dozen different denominations.

I spoke to about 10 people as we were enjoying cake and coffee after the service. Each was of a different denomination and I don't believe any was a from a Messianic (I hope I spelled that correctly) church.

Each of the 10 told me that his way of worshiping the "One and Only True God of the Bible" was the only way to enter the "Kingdom of Heaven". Each and everyone of them was just as sure as Reverend Cusano that only the people who worshiped in their denomination (or their way) would make it into Heaven and all the others would not. They were each also sure that neither my minister (nor me, of course) nor Jews, nor Roman Catholics would enter the "Kingdom of Heaven". In fact, I should not have said "Each and everyone of them was just as sure as Reverend Cusano that only the people who worshiped in their denomination (or their way) would make it into Heaven and all the others would not". I should have said "Each and everyone of them knew beyond any doubt as Reverend Cusano knows beyond any doubt that only the people who worshiped in their denomination (or their way) would make it into Heaven and all the others would not".

And there is the crux of the problem. How can 10 people (actually 10 groups) all KNOW opposite things?

Each claims it is his faith that makes him sure. But one does not need faith to be sure 1 + 1 is 2. When you know something, you do not need faith. When you have to have faith, you do not know. These people are all substituting the word "KNOW" for the phrase "sure because of (my) faith".

I was raised in a mixed family of Roman Catholics and Pentecostals. I played, as a child with the child who became Jessica Hahn's minister (when she had the infamous affair with Jim Bakker). My grandparents were renowned at a dozen Pentecostal churches throughout Brooklyn, and Nassau and Suffolk counties on Long Island. Every Sunday, a different Pentecostal minister was invited to dinner and their trophy was converting me from Roman Catholic to Pentecostal so that they could save Sister Rose's and Brother Paul's grandson.

I am no longer a Roman Catholic, but after being agnostic for many years, I now belong to a church that doesn't force one vision of God down our throats, but instead tries to stress the teachings of Jesus Christ. Trying to emulate Jesus instead of trying to emulate Constantine makes me a better person and I don't care if anyone says that I will go to Hell because I don't do it their way.

At that meeting that I was writing of at the beginning of this post, my minister was speaking to a women during the post sermon cake and coffee session, and she became very belligerent about his sermon. She was annoyed because my minister said that Jesus wanted to help the poor, but she said that she would vote for congressmen who would keep her tax dollars out of programs like Medicaid and “Food Stamps” And she knew what Jesus said because she was also a Minister.

Funny how many people can read the same bible and come away with totally different ideas. Maybe when Constantine had the bible canonized, the selection commission didn't do quite the job that many Christians think they did.

God can and does heal, but most often we have to experience illness and certainly death in this world because the world is contaminated by sin. Our reward is in eternity. We are like strangers here in this world waiting to go home to our eternal place with the Lord.

You can tell a child not to go out into traffic. If the child does, and gets hit by a car and dies, tragic as that is, it is the natural consequesce of disobeying. Man choose to disobey God and suffers the consequence of that disobedience, with the ultimate outcome being physical death!

God, in His wisdom and mercy, knowing that man, with a sinful nature, is incapable of being in the presence of a holy and sinless God, made provision for His creation. He sent Jesus to take the rap for us. Since Jesus was God incarnate, he was by virtue sinless and holy. His atoning death for us, taking our sin upon Himself, made it possible for us to be justified to God the Father. When God see's Believers, He does not see their sin any longer, but He see's the atoning blood of the messiah that covers us. Our physical bodies my become diseased and die, but we have eternal life after physical death because of what Jesus did.

God didn't cause the sin problem, we did, but He provided the remedy for all who will accept it. Physical death is not the end of existance, it is the enterance into eternity.

Victoriana...I'm sorry, but I see a WORLD of difference between telling a child to NOT do something and his choosing to do it anyway and getting a boo-boo that needs a band-aid and his doing it anyway and dying of AIDS...or, even, his doing NOTHING wrong and dying of a childhood-onset leukemia.

Ron is saying that ALL of this is from his god. I'm missing the wisdom and the connections in "God is good," "God COULD fix stuff if he wanted to, that's why we pray to him and ask for recovery from disease and injury," and "The babies are dying but everything happens for a good reason."

Samuel Clemens said, ""If there is a God, he is a malign thug."

God, in His wisdom and mercy, knowing that man, with a sinful nature, is incapable of being in the presence of a holy and sinless God, made provision for His creation.

God didn't cause the sin problem, we did, but He provided the remedy for all who will accept it. Physical death is not the end of existance, it is the enterance into eternity.

My question is still why God made us with that sinful nature?

Geezer, is this the gist of your question?

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.

Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.

Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?

Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

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.

I posted earlier in this tread about a meeting I had with a group of Christians (we used to call them "Protestants") last year after my minister gave a guest sermon at a church before an interdenominational group representing about a dozen different denominations.

I spoke to about 10 people as we were enjoying cake and coffee after the service. Each was of a different denomination and I don't believe any was a from a Messianic (I hope I spelled that correctly) church.

Each of the 10 told me that his way of worshiping the "One and Only True God of the Bible" was the only way to enter the "Kingdom of Heaven". Each and everyone of them was just as sure as Reverend Cusano that only the people who worshiped in their denomination (or their way) would make it into Heaven and all the others would not. They were each also sure that neither my minister (nor me, of course) nor Jews, nor Roman Catholics would enter the "Kingdom of Heaven". In fact, I should not have said "Each and everyone of them was just as sure as Reverend Cusano that only the people who worshiped in their denomination (or their way) would make it into Heaven and all the others would not". I should have said "Each and everyone of them knew beyond any doubt as Reverend Cusano knows beyond any doubt that only the people who worshiped in their denomination (or their way) would make it into Heaven and all the others would not".

And there is the crux of the problem. How can 10 people (actually 10 groups) all KNOW opposite things?

Each claims it is his faith that makes him sure. But one does not need faith to be sure 1 + 1 is 2. When you know something, you do not need faith. When you have to have faith, you do not know. These people are all substituting the word "KNOW" for the phrase "sure because of (my) faith".

I was raised in a mixed family of Roman Catholics and Pentecostals. I played, as a child with the child who became Jessica Hahn's minister (when she had the infamous affair with Jim Bakker). My grandparents were renowned at a dozen Pentecostal churches throughout Brooklyn, and Nassau and Suffolk counties on Long Island. Every Sunday, a different Pentecostal minister was invited to dinner and their trophy was converting me from Roman Catholic to Pentecostal so that they could save Sister Rose's and Brother Paul's grandson.

I am no longer a Roman Catholic, but after being agnostic for many years, I now belong to a church that doesn't force one vision of God down our throats, but instead tries to stress the teachings of Jesus Christ. Trying to emulate Jesus instead of trying to emulate Constantine makes me a better person and I don't care if anyone says that I will go to Hell because I don't do it their way.

At that meeting that I was writing of at the beginning of this post, my minister was speaking to a women during the post sermon cake and coffee session, and she became very belligerent about his sermon. She was annoyed because my minister said that Jesus wanted to help the poor, but she said that she would vote for congressmen who would keep her tax dollars out of programs like Medicaid and “Food Stamps” And she knew what Jesus said because she was also a Minister.

Funny how many people can read the same bible and come away with totally different ideas. Maybe when Constantine had the bible canonized, the selection commission didn't do quite the job that many Christians think they did.

Geezer, is this the gist of your question?

Yup. That'll do it.

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.

My question is still why God made us with that sinful nature?

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.

That doesn't really answer my question, maybe I'm not asking it clearly.

Why did God, who could have created us any way He wanted, create us know that we would choose sin, choose to disobey Him and suffer for it?

God can and does heal, ...

Only in ambiguous situations. IOW, you have to believe that God can and will heal to come to the conclusion (faulty though it is) that God HAS healed. There are no unambiguous healings.

I give you:

http://www.whydoesgodhateamputees.com/god5.htm

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.

That doesn't really answer my question, maybe I'm not asking it clearly.

Why did God, who could have created us any way He wanted, create us know that we would choose sin, choose to disobey Him and suffer for it?