Thoughts on the
Attack upon America

I was on a DC 10 when I heard the news. We had just landed in Toronto, Canada, which was quite a surprise in itself, as we were supposed to have landed in Detroit. When the pilot announced that planes had flown into the World Trade Center building in New York, it seemed somehow unreal. One of my first thoughts was that this must be something like the showing of H. G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds,” in which America had mistaken a fictional presentation for reality.

But this was no fiction. In the ensuing five hours we had on the plane before we were allowed to exit, the radio programs piped in over the intercom convinced us that America had indeed seen her worst day. Though, at that time, we had no information as to the identity of the men responsible, we assumed they would prove to be Islamic terrorists. We were not wrong.

As I record this broadcast, this day of national horror is still very fresh in all of our minds and hearts. The rubble will be cleaned up soon, but the pain will linger for a long, long time. Ministries like ours are often besieged by inquirers during times of calamity. We are asked to fit this neatly into a prophetic passage concerning the end times. Many want to know if there is a particular verse in the Bible that darkly foreshadows the momentous event. Can we fit it neatly into our eschatology, so that we can assure ourselves that God is in control, and was not sleeping on Tuesday morning, September the eleventh, 2001?

I am no prophet. I have no divine revelation concerning the why’s and wherefores of this horrific act of evil. I am a Bible reader and a Bible believer, though, and certain truths are always relevant in times of tragedy and loss.

First, the answer to the question: “Where was God?” As the twin towers burned, as people made last minute phone calls to their loved ones and wished them tearful good-byes, where was God? As godly prayerful Christians burned to death alongside cursing skeptics, where was God?

That’s an easy one. God was on His throne, just as He always has been and always will be. The Sovereign God of all creation neither slumbers nor sleeps. Isaiah called Him the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, who neither faints nor is weary, whose understanding is unsearchable.

Nebuchadnezzar learned through personal experience that the God of Israel “does according to His will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth,” and “no one can restrain His hand or say to Him, “What have you done?”

During times of great tragedy, people tend to want to either limit God’s power and control, or else impugn His compassion and concern. The Bible will allow neither. God’s power is absolute, and His compassion and tender heart toward His creation is all encompassing. He is both powerful and concerned.

One of the basic tenets of Christian theology is that all that occurs on earth is either caused or permitted by God. A second tenet is that not all that God allows is His perfect will. Jesus taught us to pray, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” The clear inference from this simple prayer is that not all that goes on down here is God’s will. Thus we pray that, on the earth, God’s will by be carried out as perfectly and explicitly as it is in heaven, where there is no sin, misery, or terrorism.

When a child is sexually abused, God’s will is not done. When a husband leaves his wife for another woman, God’s will is not done. When a teenager breaks the sexual laws of God and contracts a disease, God’s will is not done.

Our world is filled with consequences. Just as every action calls for an equal and opposite reaction, the despising of God’s sacred laws invites ruin and destruction. We would like it better if the ruin only came crashing down upon the head of the lawbreakers. Such is not the case. Many an innocent child has paid a terrible price for the sins of his parents. Countless women have suffered unbearable anguish due to the callous disregard of their husbands to their pledges of fidelity. Millions of Jews suffered unspeakable horrors during the holocaust as a result of the rabid anti-Semitism of a fanatical former tramp from Vienna named Adolf Hitler.

During the burning and collapse of the twin towers of the World Trade Center every person that died, died because of sin. The sin was not their own sin; it was the sin of malicious hatred that filled the hearts of a few fanatical Muslims. Christians died alongside of atheists. No doubt the thousands of people killed represented beliefs of every stripe and sort. Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Baptists, Pentecostals, Episcopalians, Catholics, agnostics, and yes, probably even some Muslims. The God who mercifully sends rain upon the just and the unjust sometimes allows tragedy to likewise touch the sinners and the saints equally.

Why must it be this way? I don’t claim to have all the answers, but this much is certain: if good things only happened to good people, and bad things only happened to bad people, there would be no need for faith. Faith does not insist upon life being fair for this short season we find ourselves on the earth; faith merely insists that, given enough time, all will be sorted out and every wrong will be righted. God, the Judge of all the earth, will do right.

Terrorism in Israel

One of the great ironies of September 11 is that America experienced what the nation of Israel had been living with for decades. How strongly we have urged Israel to “show restraint.” We have moralized about “stopping the cycle of violence” as though the nation of Israel and the fanatical Palestinian suicide bombers who walked into restaurants and blew themselves up were cut from the same cloth.

In a sermon at the Al Azsa Mosque, the Palestinian-Authority appointed Mufti of Jerusalem proclaimed: “Oh Allah, destroy America, her agents and her allies! Cast them into their own traps, and cover the White House with black.” As news of New York attack reached the Middle East, Palestinians danced in the streets.

Back in 1999, the Chief Mufti of the Palestinian Authority police, Sheik Abd Al-Salam Skheidm, declared this doctrine of martyrdom: “From the moment his first drop of blood spills, he feels no pain and he is absolved of all his sins; he sees his seat in heaven; he is spared the tortures of the grave; he is spared the horrors of the Day of Judgment; he is married to 70 black-eyed women; he can vouch for 70 of his family members to enter paradise; he earns the crown of glory, whose precious stone is worth all of this world.”

And yet America has tried to suggest that Israel and the Palestinians are on equal footing, and are both responsible for the “cycle of violence.” Now we have tasted the bitter fruit of murderous, fanatical, Islamic terrorists. We are ready to go to war, and rightly so. Yet in our eagerness to deal with terrorism, we have made ourselves hypocrites.

Telling the Children

One of the voices we heard after the attacks had to do with our children. Psychologists came out of the woodwork to give us all sorts of advice in trying to help our children understand these things. Kind of strange, isn’t it? We allow our children to watch violent movies which depict death and murder in the most gruesome ways imaginable. We buy them video games that enable them to slaughter whole cities. They slap earphones on their heads and fill their minds with music that comes straight from the cesspools, glorifying illicit sex, murder, and suicide, and then we trot out the psychologists to help us explain things when real life mirrors things they have been watching and listening to for years.

If I may be permitted to offer a simple thought, it would be this: Teach your children about righteousness, and they will be able to comprehend evil. Don’t give them that old lie about all people being basically good. Both the Bible and practical experience tell us this is patently untrue. Teach your children about God and the devil, about righteousness and sin, about heaven and hell. And while you are teaching, make sure and give them a great big dose of the cross of Christ.

People grounded in the great truths of Scripture are the only ones who can truly put evil in its proper perspective. When 16 Scottish children had been killed by a mass murderer in a local school, someone asked Pastor MacLeod if his faith had been in any way dented. His reply: “No, but rather what it has done is confirm the words that the Lord spoke through Jeremiah, when he said that the heart of man is desperately wicked and deceitful, and who can know it?”

In a U.S. News and World Report article commenting upon the Holocaust, the perceptive author stated: “Even for secular individuals the Holocaust supplied the most powerful brief yet for the existence of original sin. Two centuries earlier, thinkers were asserting the perfectibility of man. Now, they were debating whether Germans were human. The answer, tragically, was yes.”

One of the things you notice, during the coverage of the events of September 11, is the use, once again, of the word evil. Even Tom Brokaw called the terrorism evil. That’s quite a switch from the popular liberal view that says there is no such thing as evil. Chuck Colson encountered this attitude when he visited a prison in Oslo, Norway, which was supposed to be a model maximum security facility. AS the warden showed him around, she touted the number of counselors and the types of therapies given to inmates. They met so many psychiatrists, Chuck asked her how many of the inmates were mental cases. “All of them, of course,” she replied quickly, raising her eyebrows in surprise. When he asked her what she meant, she stated that “anyone who commits a violent crime is obviously mentally unbalanced.”

Thus, people that kill don’t need punishment or justice, just therapy. Perhaps some time on a psychiatrist’s couch, or some reassuring “there, there’s” will do the job. After all, it was all really Momma’s fault. After the World Trade Center destruction we seem to be going back to the idea that some things are actually evil. Of course this is what the Bible has told us all along.

What Shall We Do?

Nearly everyone agrees that America must respond to these terrorist attacks. Indeed there have been many responses already. One of the most noble responses has been the way the firefighters and rescue workers have risked their lives, and some have given their lives, for the sake of the victims. Such selfless labor reflects the sacrificial love of Jesus Christ, and we can’t praise these courageous men enough.

There have been two very popular responses to the crisis in America. The sale of guns has risen dramatically, and church attendance has likewise increased. At our local church, the sanctuary couldn’t hold all who came to church the Sunday following the attacks.

I have no problems with gun ownership, and I certainly am all for church attendance, but these things are sure to prove temporary. Gun sales will return to normal, and many people will find that sleeping in on Sunday mornings is just too powerful a temptation to resist for very long, at least until the next crisis.

The truth is America has a serious heart problem. We can increase our airport security, we can launch missiles at Afghanistan, we can drop a nuclear bomb on the head of Osama bin Laden, but until we deal with our own internal spiritual health issues, we remain a nation “at risk.”

We are a nation in the process of decay. With every passing year, our television programs grow filthier, our society more secular. Our hands are dripping red with the blood of the unborn, slaughtered upon the sacrifice of pleasure and convenience. We protect our criminals and slaughter the innocents. Our airwaves are filled with lewdness and revelry. We have called good evil and evil good.

America is at present weighing various military options. This is fine; there is nothing wrong with taking military action to deal with terrorism. But it is not enough. The struggle is more than one of planes and bombs and guns. There is a vast spiritual clash that is going on for the soul of our nation and indeed the world.

On the dark side, many weapons are arrayed. Who knows what wicked men are plotting even now? This time death came through the hijacking of airplanes. Next time it may be something altogether different. We may achieve flawless airport security only to find that some new scheme has been hatched that has nothing to do with airplanes. Demons breathe creative, evil thoughts into the hearts of wicked men, and destruction overflows to thousands of innocent lives.

All is not lost. Jesus promised to build His church, and He always keeps His promises. The weapons we, the church, have been given are far more potent than mere bomb, planes, or guns. The blood of Christ, the Word of God, the power of the Holy Spirit, the shield of faith, the breastplate of righteousness… these are our weapons, and they are mighty.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is more powerful than any weapon the world will ever produce. It has the power to change hearts, alter destinies, and revolutionize societies. We are not going to convert the whole world, but life by life and family by family we can bring positive change. Jesus is determined to have representatives from every tribe, tongue, and nation to live with Him in eternity. Heaven will be populated with lots of ex’s. Wait for a little while, until all the dust settles, and New Jerusalem is permanently settled. Then do a survey. Among the many millions of inhabitants you will find ex-fornicators, ex-drunkards, ex-Muslims, ex-Hindus, ex-rapists, and countless other ex’s. These blessed individuals will be those who tasted the life transforming grace of Jesus Christ before they died, and found themselves in that happy company of the redeemed, God’s chosen ones purchased by the blood of Christ, and destined to live in righteousness, peace, and joy with Him for ever and ever and ever.

Although, during the recent disaster, sinners and Christians died side by side, that wasn’t the end of the story. For the sinner, the terror of a burning collapsing tower quickly gave way to another, more fearful reality. As the physical realities of steel and concrete and fire dissolved before his eyes, a the spiritual realm of Hades opened up before him. Too late he realized that he had spent his life in a vain display of sin and selfishness. Too late he realized he had been tricked by the ultimate deceiver, Satan. Crashing into his consciousness with infinite weight came the knowledge that he was eternally lost, without Christ and without hope.

Those who died trusting Jesus Christ had a far different experience. The heart pounding fear that had gripped them in their last moments was suddenly replaced by a peace beyond words. As their spirits departed their bodies, they found themselves in the presence of the loving Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. As His tender eyes welcomed them into the holy habitation of God, they immediately knew that they were safe. Eternally safe. Terrorism could never touch them again. Pain and fear were gone forever. All of eternity lay ahead, their never-ending bliss paid for by the sufferings of Jesus, the Lamb of God. For the Scriptures declare that “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them…” (2 Corinthians 5:19).

Before long we will join them. Our Lord shall come, just as He said He would. The bodies of those who died in Christ shall rise first, and we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air, and thus shall we always be with Him.

Maranatha! Lord Jesus, come quickly!