________________________________________ From: Bruce Woodford [mailto:bwood4d@...] Sent: Friday, 27 October 2006 3:58 AM To: soundofgrace@... Subject: [soundofgrace] Fwd: NCT and politics Hi Moe, (I seem to have lost some posts in cyberspace from my hotmail account . So, on your invitation, have opened a gmail account. So will see how this works! Please pardon me if some duplicates of this message show up later!) Thanks for you brief e. I'm glad to hear it has shed a little more clarity. Just a few more comments below in bold... Bruce, Thank you for the greater amount of clarity. There is one point that I believe still hangs in doubt. When I quoted the following text I did not have in mind anyone other than an enemy who may be hungry. Brethren fall into another category. A good example is the need of the saints in Jerusalem. Paul took a collection for them and never even hinted they were lazy. I agree wholeheartedly with you, brother! The need in Jerusalem was not a result of sloth or laziness but rather famine. [Jeff comments] How do you know that? As a matter of fact famines and droughts and their effects are frequently the result of just those things. In my country whenever there is a drought all the farmers cry out 'poor us' and yet they know that these event occur with repeated regularity. They ought to be able like Joseph in Egypt to make provision for such events. [Bruce again] Nor did Paul expect the Roman government to provide relief, but rather the church! [Jeff comments] And where would that have got him? The Roman government cared little for that. They did not see it as their problem in all their 'pagan-ness'. The situation is fundamentally different today in our modern industrial economies where unemployment and poverty are often the result of structural adjustments as workers move from one industry to another. Our economies are such that we all benefit from general economic 'progress' and the government, controlling as it does the money supply, has a vital role to play. It cannot be otherwise. That we should all therefore contribute to the welfare of those who cannot keep up in the economy would seem therefore eminently reasonable and fair and such comments as the above are really ideologically driven. God bless, Jeff