The sinking of Numenor - a lesson to whom?

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Well, I would not worry that much as in fact, this is far closer to the original topic than lots of other things which have been discussed around were. Let me say only this, what you just presented, Form, is exactly what I always thought was Tolkien's idea about the evil in Middle-Earth. I have not read any letters or such, but only from Ainulindalë and these remarks "nothing was evil at the beginning, not even Sauron", I thought that it's pretty clear: the original state of Arda (resp. of the whole universe, including Ainur and everything) was "good" at the beginning. And only due to certain "falls" - of Melkor etc. - the state did not remain just good. And just to add, I am not possibly as much of an expert on Catholicism as Form is, but certainly the idea I had about Catholicism was that - of course, as in all forms of Christianity and Judaism, too (maybe even stronger there, without the ideas of "original sin") - it clearly holds that everything was good in the beginning, i.e. that the world and creation is fundamentally good. One hears "and it was good" after every day in the first chapter of Genesis, so I strongly doubt such think could be overlooked. Any sins, even if they were hereditary, are just a secondary thing.

Anyway, to get somewhat back to the very original topic, I actually find the second thing Ibri quoted as most interesting for this discussion:

They appealed to God, and a catastrophic 'change of plan' occurred.

What does it mean - "change of plan"? Does it simply refer in other words to the reshaping of the world (i.e. rather "change of architectonic plans"), or does it get to the core of the problem we are questioning here? Doesn't it seem to you that this quote sounds almost like "there happened an accident"? Perhaps it's the word "occured" that makes me think so: had there been "Eru drowned them all", I would think otherwise. This sounds rather as if it were indeed an "accident", as some were implying here. Most curious, are we getting here the chance to see what Tolkien himself thought about it, or am I reading too much to this?