There will probably be several more pages posted to this thread by the time I complete this post. Currently we are at 62 pages.
For the "off topic" stuff..
I don't remember who, but about ten to twenty pages back someone branded me with being a part of a forum that I visited for like a week several years ago..(long time ago and I vaguely remember it). What I remember about it was that I was invited there, posted a couple of comments and was berated because I was not a JW and didn't belong there. I didn't respond then and just "faded" more like I only read the stuff sent to me from the admin in email for a time and when the emails stopped that was the end of it for me. I only visited that site for about a week. The emails for another week or so.
To Mark me as in league with that website is like smoking pot at a weekend celebration in 1984 and being convicted of being the drug lord of Colombia. The elephant in the room is that to lump me in with someone that I don't even know is to tell the others that what I have to say is not worth listening to or considering. Marked. Whatever...
I wasn't ever a JW. I loved (still do) someone that was born in to the cult. I joined sites like this one to try to understand him. I got an education and I know TTATT. It took a while as I was so wanting to find common ground until I realized the common ground should have been at Calvary.
With the JW "jesus" not being Jesus but some belittlement (made less than) of God in the flesh and the Holy Spirit too, I discovered there is no common ground. The God I love is not the mean spirited tyrant of the watchtower. My Jesus is not their "Jesus/Michael" and the Holy Spirit is my best friend, not some "active force" likened unto electricity. It would be great if there were something that I could say or explain for you people to know Him as I do. For that to happen it would take faith on your part to be born again of the Holy Spirit of God. When all is said and done, knowing Him is all that will matter. (Matthew chapter 7).
So on to the *topic* at hand and the other elephant in the room.
Cofty is facing his mortality. He desparately wants others to affirm his disbelief so he has threads like this one to have others side with him in his hatred of God. His suffering is what this is really all about. The Boxing Day tsunami is just a means to an end to justify to himself that God is not good or he wouldn't have allowed the suffering that insued or allowed him to suffer as he has. Once, long ago, Cofty had posted that when a Christian friend of his died that he lost faith because he couldn't understand why God would allow his friend to die in a farming accident and leave his friend's wife a widow. That was when he quit the church.
So lets do the math..
Cofty is celebrating being being free from religion for ten years, the boxing day tsunami was December 26, 2004, so he left "religion" a year before the tsuami...
Religion doesn't save you. Only Jesus, the real Jesus, can. Jesus suffered, died, and rose again for the purpose of reconciliation so we can have a loving relationship with Him and escape the wrath that is coming. And it is coming.
I posted Job 36:15 earlier in this thread. It is the answer to why God allows suffering. Y'all can carry on with your believer bashing and God hating but it will not deter His plan.
Job 36:15 "God teaches men through suffering and uses distress to open their eyes."
This is love,... this is hate,... we all have a choice to make.
Post Script:
Just a quote from Cofty way back on page one... and a mention that the Boxing day tsunami was nine years and three weeks ago...
My response - It was casued by the movement of tectonic plates. Earthquakes are an intrinsic part of how the earth was made. They have been happening for billions of years. It would have been trivially easy for him to quell the beginning of the tsunami wave long before anybody even knew it had happened. He chose to do nothing except watch the wave wipe out a quarter of a million lives.
At this point he impressed me with his honesty. He said explicitly that he had no answer. He said that as christians they ought to have answers because people do ask these sort of questions. I suggested that theology has had more than long enough to think of one.
In retrospect it was appropriate to have that conversation on the 10th anniversary of the event that marked the end of my journey from faith to reason.
Another thing ..
I know that my post will be picked apart, I will be accused of "preaching", the beliver bashing will insue and what I have said will be dismissed as lunacy. It is my hope that maybe, just maybe, someone will have their eyes opened and repent before they face the wrath of God.
