Merciful Deliverance on 9/11

It is now eight years since that calm, beautiful, cloudless day over northern New Jersey. That morning, my wife, Thelma, and I got in our car for the brief drive to our doctor for routine physicals. We realized later that one of the ill-fated airliners had flown nearly over us as we drove. While we were in the waiting room, our family physician learned of the Trade Tower attacks and led a poignant prayer for our country and our safety. Later, from a high hill near our Towaco office, we could see the smoke curling up from the fallen towers.

In the hours and days that followed, I heard amazing stories and personally interviewed individuals who had a special insight into 9/11.

My son-in-law, David Justnes, was working at Newark International Airport that day and had unknowingly walked past the line of terrorists and passengers cueing up for Flight 93. That evening he shared with me how he had been in meetings at the airport that morning with Port Authority personnel who had come from their offices in the World Trade Center. They all watched the second plane hit the tower and then watched their office crumble. In an interview for our radio program, "The Word and The World," David described watching the terrible scene and how he bowed his head and prayed, an action taken by untold millions throughout the day.

Though the day was one of devastation and death, it was also a day of God’s merciful deliverance.

One of David’s sons had a friend whose father worked in the World Trade Center. That morning, he had to catch an alternate bus and was running fifteen minutes late and escaped death.

A few days after 9/11, I attended a regional National Religious Broadcasters convention where one of the speakers was Pastor Rod Caesar of Bethel Temple in New York City. Of his church members who worked in the Trade Towers, he found that nearly all were either off work or late for work and were not killed. He called other churches, some with thousands of members and possibly hundreds who worked in the disaster area, and asked for their casualty reports. They all said that 99% of their people who worked in the Trade Center were not in the towers that day. Either plumbing broke, a child got sick, or they missed their bus and were spared.

I also interviewed Guy Yasika who reported for his job that morning on the 73rd floor of the south tower. Because a conference call cancelled, he and an associate went down to the 43rd floor for breakfast. They felt the tower sway and eventually made their way down all those fights of stairs, and Guy arrived home safe later that day in southern New Jersey.

Months later, I met a man whose business card read One World Trade Center. When I asked how he survived, he said, "We had two offices, one at the Trade Center and one in Jersey City across the river. We were all at the Jersey City office that morning."

A man I met in western New York State said he had contracts in the Trade Towers and was assigned a job there on 9/11. He said he couldn’t go and was told that if he didn’t he would be fired. He replied, "So be it" and lived to tell about it.

Pastor Jim Cymbala of the Brooklyn Tabernacle spoke at a later NRB convention and told how an attendee of his church, Genelle Guzman, was in the stairwell when the tower fall on her. Trapped for hours, she cried out to God for mercy, confessing her immoral lifestyle and asking God for another chance. Cymbala said, "She was the last person to come out [of the wreckage] alive, and whenever the church doors are open, she is there."

A young woman from one of the Chinese churches were I often preach said that her group had many who worked in the towers, but they all came out alive.

Alan Unruh is active in the Crisis Pregnancy Center movement in South Dakota. In an interview for our program, he shared how a young woman came into their center one day immediately following 9/11 by "accident" thinking it was an abortion clinic. At the time, there weren’t any local doctors who performed abortions, and abortion doctors had to travel to South Dakota. Because all flights were cancelled immediately following 9/11, the doctors couldn’t fly in.

Since she couldn’t have gotten an abortion that day no matter where she went, the woman stayed at the center. She agreed to an ultrasound, which showed she was carrying twins. She said, "I’m a twin. I can’t go through with the abortion." When her boyfriend arrived later, he agreed with her decision. Unruh continued, "One year later, they brought in two lovely girls dressed in red, white and blue, all because of 9/11."

Though so many died that day, we thank God for all the merciful deliverances as Psalm 76:10 says: "Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee: the remainder of wrath shalt thou restrain." And Psalm 91:5 & 6 declares, "Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day, nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday."

"The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? the LORD is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?" (Psalm 27:1)

Dave Virkler