It's almost three am and I find myself having to explain my position on matters again. May be I should not be allowed to write before daylight or at least until all the meds wear off! LOL

  Well here's the thing, I offended some folks with what I wrote concerning the guy that was born blind. I simply wrote (copy and pasted) a couple verses from John's gospel and then began to write down the rambling that was going on in my mind. I have reread what I wrote and do not see what was perceived but that could be because I'm looking through my 'man eyes'. Anyway it was said that I believe that God causes bad stuff to happen to people i.e. sickness and disease and just bad stuff. Here is how I look at sickness and disease in believers and those who do not yet believe. 

   I believe that because Adam and Eve disobeyed God and were expelled from the garden and away from the tree of life man is destined to die once. Whether that death comes through sickness or a car accident, plane crash or whether a person just sits down with a glass of wine or whatever and goes to sleep and never wakes up he is going to die, period. There are only, to my knowledge, a couple of people in the history of the universe who escaped this world without dying, even Jesus had to experience death. My belief is not that God has or does cause death but that He allows it to happen. He does not bring sickness on people but He allows it. He does not make 'bad' things happen He allows them to happen. All the things we would call evil are the result of man being evicted (temporarily) from Eden. We are from the dust of the earth and that dust was corrupted by sin and we too are corrupted by that sin. Jesus paid the price for those sins and we are no longer held guilty of them nor will we have to pay the price for them but, and this is a big but, we are still in and a part of this fallen world and will suffer many of the things of this world and death and sickness are a part of that world. I absolutely believe that He can and very often does intervene and heal people. All of the Apostles suffered horrible deaths, except as far as we know John escaped martyrdom but suffered exile on Patmos which I am sure was no picnic! Timothy was often sick according to Paul who told him to drink a little wine for his stomach issues.

 The point is I believe God is not the author of sickness and disease nor does He endorse them or enjoy seeing any one suffer, but because of the decrees He made and the "laws of nature" He established it has to be. We can agree to disagree on these issues (sickness and death) and still love each other I hope. None of these beliefs I hold take away from the essential message of the gospel, that there is no other name by which a man can be saved than by the name of Jesus. I firmly believe in the virgin birth, sinless life, death, burial, resurrection, ascension to heaven and the literal and physical return of Jesus, and I believe that the Bible is the inerrant word of God.

   Here is what I believe about the different denominational doctrines; A wise old gentleman once told me that the only difference between a Catholic and a Methodist, or a Baptist and a Pentecostal, or a Lutheran and an Episcopalian is that we don't all share the same "Wrong doctrine". The point is we need to stop allowing doctrinal differences that have nothing to do with salvation through Jesus divide us. If we feel one is wrong in their belief we should ask God to give revelation to the person that is in error and be ready to have our own misconceptions corrected too. Sometimes we see and are critical of things in others because we have similar issues in our own lives (seeing a speck in a brothers eye while we carry a beam in our own eye). Let love be our highest goal not correcting what we think is wrong doctrine in another brother. Ramble..........."Lord I was born a rambling man", I knew there was a reason I always liked the Allman Brothers!