Power of prayer

On April 18, as I was busy doing gardening, I chose to carry heavy compost bags that I picked up wrong, resulting in hurting my back terribly. The result of that injury was six days of agonising pain, immobility and lots of painkillers. (My plans for the long weekend cancelled of course.)

April 23 I went to see a chiropractor, who suggested I complete an ACC form for this injury. He said if I injured a disk it might take up to six months to heal.

Friends Rob and Bianca Higham, who heard about my very painful situation prayed for

me and anointed me with oil, asking Jesus to heal my back, that by the evening I would be able to freely dance for the Lord again. I gradually felt the pain disappear over the rest of the day, and by night time I was truly completely pain-free. Praise God!

Thank you friends for praying, asking on my behalf. Thank you God for answering prayers today, however long or short it takes for us to get the answers. I love You.

AMMI STEENKAMP

Kaitaia

conscientious objections to euthanasia and assisted suicide will ‘simply be required to refer patients to the Ministry of Health'. The Royal NZ College of General Practitioners sees it rather differently.

In its submission to the Justice Select Committee, ‘The college firmly disagrees with any requirement to refer . . . by referring a patient, a medical practitioner may feel complicit in an act to which they are strongly ethically opposed. This may put undue strain on the medical practitioner.'

Once again, the amateur advocates of this serious and complex issue have allowed

their enthusiasm to run away with them. instead we should be listening to those with professional and ethical experience in this area.

For the sake of doctors and patients alike, this bill must not pass.

MARY APPLEBY

PUKEKOHE homosexual offenders, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor slanderers, nor swindlers will inherit the Kingdom of God.'

If one repents and turns away from these sins then he is forgiven. An unrepentant person obviously does not believe in scripture, God, heaven or hell, and should therefore have no worries.

If he does not believe scripture then why should it upset him so much? BRUCE BELL

KAITAIA accepting her rationalisations for doing so? K MCNAUGHTON

KAITAIA world the most powerful image of unity we could hope a politician might give. If only she wasn’t the exception.’

She went on to lament Theresa May’s ‘cold, stilted, detached’ response to the Grenfell Tower disaster, where 72 people died in June 2017.

However, her wearing of the headscarf, viewed by many Muslim women as a symbol of misogynistic male oppression, was misguided to say the least. Women in Iran are being harshly punished with up to a decade in jail for failing to wear it.

Jacinda’s wearing it like a fashion

accessory in this context is not cool, particularly on a political level.

Furthermore, under Jacinda’s watch, Jesus has been removed from the parliamentary prayer, and the Muslim call to prayer has been broadcast throughout the nation.

If the Adhan were to be used at the Anzac service in my town, I wouldn’t be going.

I have lived among and worked with Muslims for several years in Indonesia, Abu Dhabi, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. If I were to return to Abu Dhabi, where I last worked, I would happily reacquaint myself with my colleagues as I met them. Most of them, like people everywhere, are lovable.

However, I disagree with the Dutch Catholic bishop who wants the name of God in the Bible to be replaced with Allah. Arabic Christians are disturbed by any Arabic Bible that translates God as Allah. Allah is not the Christian God.

The Koran has many similarities to the Bible, but also many key differences. Those differences cross the ‘red lines’ of Christianity. For example, the Koran tells us that a) Jesus was born of a virgin but only as a man, not as the Son of God; b) He performed miracles as a prophet rather than as God; c) He was not crucified at the cross; and d) was certainly not resurrected.

The Koran has it that a substitute went to the cross in His stead, and consequently our sins couldn’t have been atoned for by that sacrifice. Nor is Jesus, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, the living God of Christianity today.

The Old Testament is not consistently mirrored in the Koran either. For example, in the Bible (Genesis 22) God commands Abraham to sacrifice Isaac (patriarch of the Jews), whereas in the Koran, Allah commands him to sacrifice Ismail (patriarch of the Arabs).

Anyone attending a place of worship in response to the Adhan (Muslim call to prayer) should be aware that they are demonstrating their faith in a god based on the Koran. As a Christian, I can’t do it, indeed I mustn’t. If my Muslim colleagues in Abu Dhabi were to see me doing so they could be seriously offended, because knowing I’m Christian, they’d know that I’d be insincere in worshipping their god. I get into quite enough trouble already, without inviting it. JOHN MATTHEWS

MANGONUI of residents, congestion and parking issues in Paihia and Mangonui, traffic congestion in Kawakawa, heavy vehicle effects from avocado development in Kaimaumau/Houhora, heavy vehicle use for forestry in the Hokianga, main street congestion in Kaikohe, congestion in the North Park area in Kaitaia, and the need for resilience planning for potential new roading routes to coastal settlements, which may have roads affected by sea level rise and storm events.

We cannot do everything at once, and therefore, to be practical, work plans need to be staged in implementation. I would like to see roading and traffic assessments done in a staged approach, to cover the roading issues that I have highlighted above, in order to establish business cases to get the funding needed to address all our roading issues in the Far North.

Our roads won’t be fixed instantly, but over time, with a plan of attack, we can attract funding for our roading projects, and therefore progress to get all our Far North roads sorted.

COUNCILLOR FELICITY FOY Where does correspondent Gillespie get “Eye for an eye, 20 lives for a rock” from? (The messenger is shot, letters April 16).

Israel bulldozed Jewish homes and exited Gaza in pursuit of peace with the Arabs. What followed was an escalation of rockets fired into Israel and attempted incursions by tunnelling, and of course the suicide bombings in Israel a decade ago.

We had the Israel/Gaza war in which the IDF would phone targeted Gaza buildings containing arms, munitions or command posts warning of a strike to minimise casualties at detriment to military advantage.

Now a border wall and controlled border crossings have largely quelled terror attacks against civilian targets in Israel.

Today we have badly injured Syrians from that civil war being accepted from over the border being treated free in Israeli hospitals, recuperating before being sent home.

Israel is the only democracy in a region surrounded by totalitarian nations that desire her extinction. You may feel that Britain badly mismanaged the allocation of land when they were the mandatory power following World War I, but that is how it came about.

In fact, originally Israel was to have land essentially what they control now following the 1967 war, but the British reneged to appease the Arabs, who threatened their oil concessions in Iraq. They redrew the land allocation to the pre-1967 border, hence you have the contested West Bank.

It’s popular in some circles to portray Israel as an aggressive invader displacing so-called indigenous Palestinians, but their history in the land goes back 3500 years. Although invaders throughout their history have at times severely reduced their numbers, there have always been some Jews in the territory, and throughout they have had a national longing to regain a self-governing homeland.

Muslim nations in general, and many Arabs resident in Israel, are implacably intent on destroying Israel. That is their bottom line, repeatedly expressed.

For the UN to insist Israel return to its pre-1967 border would see the expunging of modern Israel. Military strategists agree that modern military logistics mean Israel, in that event only 10 miles wide in places, would be undefendable.

PETER MATTHEWS

Whitford unfairly assist students. This is designed mostly to stop the online essay writing groups, a problem that occurs at universities around the world.

The idea is well intentioned but farcical, not a unique event in politics. When you see how many murderers, rapists and robbers get less than that despite their guilt it seems unlikely people will be jailed for helping on an essay. If they do get jailed Australia will have one of the best-educated prison communities, an unusual claim that probably won’t help our standing in the international education environment.

Yes, cheating is wrong, and if only the Members of Parliament who have never cheated vote for it there will be no chance of it becoming a law of the land.

I’ve got to rush off and help the neighbour’s kid with their maths homework, which may make me a criminal, and I could face getting jailed for it. There might not then be any more letters to the editor from this Australian criminal. DENNIS FITZGERALD

Melbourne