This past week is surely one all will remember. One day a tropical "Paradise", and the next day a death trap for over 150,000 people. All the years I was associated with the organization, I alway had it in my mind that the new world would be a place free and safe from the kind of disasters we have all watched unfold over in Asia.
The huge plates that all the different nations of the earth rest upon, are constantly in a state of moving and pushing against one another. When one plate slides past another, the results are the earthquakes , large and small, that are recorded each day by the thousands.
. Our earth has been doing this for millions of years, and will continue to do its natural thing for as long as it exists. As we have been witness to, earthquakes are just one of the results of this plate movement. The earthquake in turn caused the Tsunami (tidal wave) that killed so many. The larger the quake, the larger the wave that races across the ocean at hundreds of miles an hour and then rises up into a huge wall of water that destroys so much . This kind of chain reaction is a process that the nations have come to expect when earthquakes happen under the ocean. Tsunamis have been destroying shorelines of these same asian beaches long before man was created and will go on doing so for countless years in the future.
There are plenty of other kinds of violent events that kill thousands and thousands of people each century . The earth is constantly going through one sort of change or another, and people die as a result. Volcanoes with their pyroclastic clouds and violent outbursts have killed thousands and thousands , yet violent as they are, they are still a natural earth building process, and people that die are simply in harms way. Tornados and hurricanes, the deadly storms the cause so many to lose their homes and lives are also a result of the natural processes of our earth and have been happening for who knows how long, and will continue to happen as long as thunder storms develope in warm moist air.
There are many other natural disasters we could mention, but the point is, they are all just a part of a chain of events that happen as a result of some natural movement of the earth. Remember in sciense class ( for every action,there is an equal and opposite reaction.) These kind of violent and catastrophic events are natural to our planet earth just as huge and violent storms are common to out neighbor planets. Look upward at our moon, and see the large craters that scar the moon's surface. The earth also has such craters, due to being in the way of huge meteorites that have reached the earth from outer space.
The Society paints a pretty picture of a Paradise free from all such violent events that throughout history have killed so many. Is it using a sound mind to reason that plate movements,volcanoes, tornadoes, hurricanes, warm air and cold air collisions, earthquakes, tsunamies, and a host of other natural events that are all part of what we know as" Nature", will all be put on hold just for man? Where would our farmers be if it weren't for lightning. The high energy in lightning mixes the oxygen and nitrogen in the air to form nitrates. These dissolve in rain which is then used by plants to make protein and enzymes. This great benefit to man also has danger. More people are killed by lightning than by any other kind of storm, including hurricanes and tornadoes. In the whole world, lightning kills more than 1,000 people in a year, and maybe many more. Lightning hits the earth 8.6 million times a day. Weather officials estimate that the United States alone receives up to 20 million cloud-to-ground lightning strikes per year from as many as 100,000 thunderstorms. Would this great danger be in "Paradise" ?
Are the huge plates really going to stop pushing on one another so that there would be no danger to "Paradise"? Will the huge waves stop rushing toward land at hundreds of miles an hour ? All these volient events in doing what they do, are actually following the natural laws of science and physics that our Creator put in place so very long ago. Can you imagine what would happen it all the tremendous pressures down in the earth that are the forces that moves the huge plates had no way of getting rid of all that energy? If all that pressure had no release, the result would certainly not be "Paradise" but rather a giagantic explosion. Just like a plugged pressure cooker in the kitchen. As long as mankind gets to close, or gets in the path of these natural events, he stands the chance of getting hurt or killed. If a Paradise earth was really the goal which Christians were to work for, why didn't Jesus or his disciples make mention of it? The goal was heavenly, not earthly.
ROCKHOUND