500d99d7   
   From: fwbrown@bellsouth.net   
      
   On Sun, 21 Sep 2014 09:50:56 in article <2014092110505664275-ome   
   llymdatgeemaildotcom@news.giganews.com> Bill O'Meally  wrote:   
   > On 2014-09-21 07:08:44 +0000, Sandman said:   
   >   
   >> But Bilbo was a rather poor choice to meet this end goal. Sure, better than   
   >> a goblin, but he takes the ring back to the Shire and sits on it for 60   
   >> years, during which time Saurons forces grows tremendously in Mordor.   
   >> Surely this divine power would have had the ring leave Bilbo and find a   
   >> more suitable wearer that would bring it to mount doom? I have a hard time   
   >> imagining that Hobbits, or even just Frodo, being the only ones in Middle   
   >> Earth that could have destroyed the ring.   
   >   
   > God works in mysterious ways.   
      
   Exactly.  We have to remember that Tolkien was writing from a Christian   
   perspective, even if he doesn't make that perspective as blatantly   
   obvious in his stories as C.S. Lewis did in his own.  From a Biblical   
   point of view, God intended from the very beginning for Christ to die   
   for the sins of the world.  So why all that mucking about with the Flood   
   and the Egyptians and the children of Israel in the wilderness and the   
   Divided Kingdom and the Babylonian Captivity and the Romans and so forth?   
   Why not just have Christ come and die and be resurrected right after Adam   
   and Eve sinned?  The answer is that God has his own plans and reasons   
   and methods and does things in his own time.   
      
      For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,   
      declares the Lord.  For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so   
      are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.   
      (Isaiah 55:8-9)   
      
   I imagine Tolkien had the same sort of thing in mind about Eru's plans   
   and methods.   
      
   --   
   F. Wayne Brown    
      
   Þæs ofereode, ðisses swa mæg.  ("That passed away, this also can.")   
      from "Deor," in the Exeter Book (folios 100r-100v)   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)