Entertaining Angels Unawares

W

Woody

Musical Creationist
Registered Senior Member
I am one of a few people that has experienced several close calls with death. I thought I would share my earliest experience, which brings a bible quote to mind:

Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.

If anyone has a similar personal experience I would be glad to hear it.

As a young child I loved climbing trees. It started doing it when I was about 5 years old. When I was about 7 years old my sister and I often climbed a sweet gum tree at my grandmother's house. My sister was about 9 years old.

I remember this limb up near the top of the tree with a dead knub sticking out of it maybe about an inch or so. I'd sit on it and my sister would sit around the other side of the tree. We'd pick gum balls and throw them at our cousins down in the parking lot. Likewise they'd throw them back at us. They couldn't hit us because we were up higher than the power lines, which we had to be careful about, though that isn't the story. We were probably 40 to 50 feet above the ground. The tree limbs down below were large, and a fall would probably break several bones, if the fall didn't kill me outright.

One day my sister and I climbed up the tree and sat at the regular spots. I was wearing blue jeans and a heavy leather cowboy belt. I slipped off the limb and fell. Somehow the little dead knub on the tree limb slipped under my cowboy belt, and I was dangling in the air by the seat of my pants. My cowboy belt and a tree knub were the only things that saved me. Or were they?

My sister was shocked when she saw what happened. She gasped and cupped her hand over her mouth. Then she said: "God just saved you!" I wasn't going to disagree, and hanging around seemed a great idea. The physics worked so well that day, my belt and a dead knub of a tree limb, grasping at my body's center of gravity with a perfectly balanced grip, as I spun side to side like a spider hanging by its fanny.

What were my odds of going unhurt that day?

I believe there is a God that cares after children, and he didn't want to see me get maimed or my poor grandmother's heart broken. Isn't that just like God?
 
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The problem I have with your story, and others like it, is that God (or his angles) is accredited with positive outcomes but not negative ones. So what about those children who did fall to earth, their little bodies broken and bleeding, unsaved by God's supposed grace and a cowboy belt? Shall we say that God found them unfit to live, or did he just not care? Perhaps he was simply busy saving a few dozen people from a tsunami that killed hundreds of thousands.

God is apparently entirely capricious in deciding who he will save and who he will allow (or cause?) to die. Such a God is, IMO, unworthy of respect much less reverence.

Some statistics on accidental deaths:
http://www.nsc.org/lrs/statinfo/odds.htm

~Raithere
 
2920as03.jpg



Yes, yes. Just very much like God.
 
What were my odds of going unhurt that day?
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High or low odds in no way imply there's a being in the sky saving you from harm.

But that aside, would you cite this same story and your conclusion the day you find yourself dying of a sickening illness, or the day your child gets hit by a car? (touch wood these things wouldn't happen - it's just an example).

When I was a young lad I also liked to climb trees, (as do most boys), but never to that height. One time I climbed up a fir tree in the back garden, but upon reaching the top lost my grip and fell. I actually landed on the garden fence, (on my bum). It was a really odd sensation. You see, I thought I had landed on the ground.. but after a few second pause.. I fell off. My mind was trying to figure it out - how had I managed to land on the ground and then fall off the ground? Was really quite spooky.

Saying I was saved has no more merit than saying I was pushed.

As for extreme odds...

I was once talking with a bunch of friends in a pub about movies. We spoke of our favourite movies, the worst movies ever and so on. Eventually an old movie favourite of mine sprung into my mind.. "Journey to the center of the earth". I blurted it out, man Pat boone and James Mason.. Awesome film. I took a walk home, thinking about that film, and how I should try and buy a copy when I could. While walking I passed a bench that had a video sitting on it.

I walked over to it, and found that it was a brand new, unopened copy of Journey to the center of the earth.

Are the odds of this happening even calculable? I don't think so - and yet there is no credence to suspect that god wanted to improve my night of watching the TV.

Besides, odds work in both directions. What are the odds of getting Porphyria, (disease very often attributed to vampire legends. The disease makes a person very sensitive to sunlight among other things). Because the odds of getting it are insanely slim, does that mean it's god doing it?

Would that now give me just cause to say that I believe there's a god who goes round infecting people with rare diseases? I don't think so.

And finally.. If it was "just like god" to go round saving children so as not to break their grandmothers hearts, then the odds would not be so high surely? The odds would be 1:1 no? Or at the very least, all the obedient little boys and girls would always be saved from the jaws of injury.. No?
 
What were my odds of going unhurt that day?
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Most likely just a statistic in a normal random distribution of people who have such incidnets where some are hurt and some are not.
 
leather belt $5
blue jeans $16
fall from a branch, and being saved by another branch, lucky
thinking that god saved you, but does'nt save millions of others, PRICELESS!!!!!
 
SL,

So was I once myself a swinger of birches says Snakelord in Robert Frost's poem.

You fell from a fir tree, and felt eerie. Fir trees have dense feathery limbs that catch you. I remember climbing to the top of a scrub pine with extremely dense foilage. My brothers watched as I jumped out of the top, allowing the branches to slow my descent. I landed unhurt at the bottom and repeated my experiment -- still unhurt. I challenged nature to hurt me in front of my younger brothers as I repeated a third time. Still no pain! They wouldn't dare try it but my challenge was heard! When we went back a few days later, I found pungee stakes in the ground underneath the canopy of the limbs -- put there to impale me with. We figured who did it, and he wasn't with us. This person is supsected of killing someone and served time in prison -- another story for another day. It wasn't the last time in my life I had to deal with that individual under dangerous circumstances.

High or low odds in no way imply there's a being in the sky saving you from harm.
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Sorry for the diversion, but your view of the world might change if you were the dangling participle like I was.

As Raithere pointed out, My fall fell into the W00 category of death, so, should my name be W00-die, or W00-not-die? So many people misspell my name as "Woodie", that I couldn't pass up on a pun!

And, then I am presented with those horrid pictures. I just have one question for everyone: Do you ever see a man in any of those pictures?

Bible:

But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.

Southstar, Absentee fathers hold a prominant position on God's list of scumbags. You are indignant with the pictures. How do you think God feels about the fathers that went AWOL, refusing to help the poor children they sired? As you can see, God doesn't look highly on dead-beat dads. Whoever fathered those poor children has a lot of explaining to do.

And one more thing: My grandmother prayed for me and my sister that God would keep us safe. So everyone here would say prayer is pointless. If you were dieing in the hospital, and I said: you don't mind if me and my church pray for you do you? What would you say?
 
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it is mre to do with "the RULE of the fathers", Patriarchy! than pikin out dada as scapegoats

One of THe most evil stories i have EVEr read concerned an unspeakable event in a public house in Germany.
In its backroom was a 5 year old boy. regulars there took turns to rape him. when he cried they hit him till he cried no more. eventually he died in that vile room. the woman landlady knew what was going on

where was the angel to protect that child from UTTER evil such as that?

but i know this. that AFTER that poor little boy died, he was embraced by the deepest love imaginable
 
Duendy said,

One of THe most evil stories i have EVEr read concerned an unspeakable event in a public house in Germany.
In its backroom was a 5 year old boy. regulars there took turns to rape him. when he cried they hit him till he cried no more. eventually he died in that vile room. the woman landlady knew what was going on

where was the angel to protect that child from UTTER evil such as that?
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Answer: In order for a rapist to have a free will, someone else must be violated. In Hell, they will viloate no more. If they haven't asked God to forgive them, I can't feel sorry for their fate, and I'd say they deserve whatever they get. They will learn their lesson, and they have a long time to think about it.

that AFTER that poor little boy died, he was embraced by the deepest love imaginable
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Who loved this poor boy Duendy?
 
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For all the religious treatises written since writing emerged I sometimes think that Lucas' fictional Star Wars universe may have gotten closer to the truth than any of the religious works. It allows for spirits that continue after death and a dark side to take the blame for all the bad things that happen. A sort of the Devil made them do it escape valve.
 
And, then I am presented with those horrid pictures. I just have one question for everyone: Do you ever see a man in any of those pictures?
Click to expand...

And so do we ask:

Do you ever see the love of God in any of those pictures?
 
Southstar said,

And so do we ask:

Do you ever see the love of God in any of those pictures?
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No I don't see God's love in those pictures, though I know he hurts for them. Instead I see the absense of the party responsible for the problem: the dead-beat father. I am a father, and I know what should be done. Somebody bonked the woman with the starving baby. She aint doing good but she's doing better than the child.

You need to look at the attitudes of the cultures that produce this problem.

Show me a starving child that believes on Jesus, and I'll say you've got something to talk about. King David said:

I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.

There were starving people in David's day. You might ask, aren't little children righteous too? If they believe in God, yes they are. But the parents odviously are not, therefore the children are begging bread as your picture so vividly shows us.

When a murderer raises his knife to stab someone -- tell me Southstar what is God supposed to do? Strike the murderer dead right then and there?

I already got an answer for you: If he's going to be fair about judging the wrong in this world, there won't be any of us left.

But let's take a look at the culture issue again:

Did you know that the country of India has more beef in the world than any other country including the USA? Did you know that beef is the least efficient meat source for converting grain into protien? The ratio is 10 pounds of grain for every pound of beef. The ratio for pork is 5 to 1 and the ratio for poultry is 2 or 3 to one. So the nation of India feeds all their "sacred cows" at the expense of grotesquely malnourished little children like the ones in the picture -- and a chump like you comes along and says it's God's fault, lookee here, he doesn't care, **point **point, snicker, snicker!

I'm about to get pissed off, so I'm going to stop. Instead I'm going to catch my breath and tell you a true story:

I know a guy named Cecil that was a Navy Seal in Viet Nam. Those guys are some kind of tough. They are specially trained warriors in the military, to take the worst kinds of physical and mental abuse, and they must have a black belt in one or more of the martial arts. In viet nam they were considered the highest trophy for viet cong soldiers to capture. If a Navy Seal was captured, the viet cong immediately began removing all their appendages as souveniers: noses, ears, fingers, and yeah you guessed it. How would you like your scrotum sack made into a money bag with pull strings? All this was done while the seal was still alive and screaming.

Anyway, after the war Cecil decided he wanted to work for the Peace Core. He got a mission for India where he was supposed to show the farmers how to grow corn so they could feed themselves. While he was there he got a case of ameobic dissentary. If you don't know what this disease is you can check it out with your resources. The bottom line is: it ruins your intestines and kills you if it goes untreated.

Cecil got onboard a railroad train for New Delhi. The train was so crowded that he had to sit on top of one of the railroad cars (on a metal roof). The temperature was over 100 degrees and the sun was beating down on him. There was no water to drink, he had diarhea real bad, and he was dehydrated.

Well there were some cows in the railroad tracks, and the train stopped. Cecil begged the engineer to go shoo them off the tracks because he was about to die and needed to go to the hospital. The train engineer said there was no way they were going to disturb the sacred cows, and anybody that tried it would probably be killed. So Cecil just laid there baking in the sun.

After a couple of hours the sacred cows moved along, and the train resumed. Cecil made it to New Delhi, but he said he almost died on the train.

Now tell me, was Cecil's suffering God's fault? If that's the way he's going to be treated, what about the starving children over there that are getting a dry teat?

And what about the cultures in Africa? You want to hear about their practices,? I'll tell you. If you don't want to hear it I'm just wasting band space.
 
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Woody,

It seems to be you are ignoring the obvious to ramble on about suffering and death that occurs due to human influence. If you'd like to attribute man caused suffering to human free will so be it, but what about all the accidental deaths and injuries? What about all the natural disasters? How do you know that those starving children in the photos are not starving because their country was devastated in a tsunami that also claimed the life of their father. Your ad hoc accusation that it's the "missing" father's fault is bullshit.

~Raithere
 
Raithere said:
Woody,

It seems to be you are ignoring the obvious to ramble on about suffering and death that occurs due to human influence. If you'd like to attribute man caused suffering to human free will so be it, but what about all the accidental deaths and injuries? What about all the natural disasters? How do you know that those starving children in the photos are not starving because their country was devastated in a tsunami that also claimed the life of their father. Your ad hoc accusation that it's the "missing" father's fault is bullshit.

~Raithere
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I doubt he will answer you. Way to shut him up anyway.
 
Ok Raithere and Southstar,

Let's put the shoe on your feet. What would you do if you were God?

Your ad hoc accusation that it's the "missing" father's fault is bullshit.
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Go tell that to my sister -- she was married to one of them. She has a son with autism that he takes no interest in, though he is the father. He spends everything he has on new cars, wide screen tVs and anything he can put his paws on. He managed to bankrupt her with over $100 thousand dollars worth of credit card debts. And you are going to stand there and tell me I'm a bullshitter. Well the both of you are really getting on my nerves. If I wasn't a christian I would tell you what I think about you and it wouldn't be nice! :rolleyes:
 
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Woody said:
I believe there is a God that cares after children, and he didn't want to see me get maimed or my poor grandmother's heart broken. Isn't that just like God?
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nope,unless you fell down and some invisible force grabed you in mid air before you hit the ground and said "I got you kid" in a strong booming voice,..maybe
but even then you still couldnt be sure its God it might be some UFO or Aliens in a spaceship catching you with their transport beam,much like Trekies have ;)

if there was god why would he save some children and not others,also why would He the allmighty all good god create some children with strange ugly diseases like for example:the lobster boy
or this
http://asylumeclectica.com/malady/archives/harlequin.htm
:eek:
 
I'm reminded of this passage by Bertrand Russell:
The world, we are told, was created by a God who is both good and omnipotent. Before He created the world He foresaw all the pain and misery that it would contain; He is therefore responsible for all of it. It is useless to argue that the pain in the world is due to sin. In the first place, this is not true; it is not sin that causes rivers to overflow their banks or volcanoes to erupt. But even if it were true, it would make no difference. If I were going to beget a child knowing that the child was going to be a homicidal maniac, I should be responsible for his crimes. If God knew in advance the sins of which man would be guilty, He was clearly responsible for all the consequences of those sins when He decided to create man. The usual Christian argument is that the suffering in the world is a purification for sin and is therefore a good thing. This argument is, of course, only a rationalization of sadism; but in any case it is a very poor argument. I would invite any Christian to accompany me to the children's ward of a hospital, to watch the suffering that is there being endured, and then to persist in the assertion that those children are so morally abandoned as to deserve what they are suffering. In order to bring himself to say this, a man must destroy in himself all feelings of mercy and compassion. He must, in short, make himself as cruel as the God in whom he believes. No man who believes that all is for the best in this suffering world can keep his ethical values unimpaired, since he is always having to find excuses for pain and misery.
http://www.threads.name/russell/religionciv.html

That is a horrifying disease there Scorpius. I have to hope that if I'm ever lucky enough to be a parent, no child of mine will suffer from that horrible malady.
 
Raither said,

It seems to be you are ignoring the obvious to ramble on about suffering and death that occurs due to human influence. If you'd like to attribute man caused suffering to human free will so be it, but what about all the accidental deaths and injuries? What about all the natural disasters? How do you know that those starving children in the photos are not starving because their country was devastated in a tsunami that also claimed the life of their father. Your ad hoc accusation that it's the "missing" father's fault is bullshit.
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So if you were God, nobody would ever die? Is that right?

Or maybe if God really had mercy he'd just never create us to start with.

I watched my father die, it was an ugly sight that I will never forget. I don't go around mad at God.

Who in this life has never endured a hardship? Does that mean we're supposed to like it? answer is: No.

Someday I too will die. On the tsunami, ah yea, I have another true story, but you seem to be more interested in bad stories.

Our church has missionaries overseas. One of our missionary families is serving in Thailand. They just happened to choose a beach vacation down there on the indean ocean the week of the tsunamis. We were interrupted during the church service and we prayed for the missionary family that God would spare them. The telephones down there didn't work so nobody knew if they were alive or dead.

Get this:

They had beach front reservations in a hotel. The hotel staff double-booked their hotel room by mistake (yeah right!) so they had to take another hotel room up on a mountain just a few miles away.

The morning of the tsunamis they were planned to be on the beach, but the wife ate something that made her sick. She had to stay at the hotel room and throw up. The husband, being the nice husband that he was, decided to help his wife rather than go to the beach alone.

The rest is history, they stayed for the relief effort. Isn't that just like God to take care of his own?

Yeah, I know -- just another one of those astronomical outliers on the bell shaped curve, right? But heh, I think we are starting to see a trend, if you get enough outliers, then the assumption of a bell shaped curve is false -no. Anyone care to do an ANOVA on this probability distribution?
 
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