Voices of the Past

American Airlines emergency line, please state your emergency. Hey, this is Knitted American Airlines calling. I am monitoring a call in which flight 11, the flight attendant is advising our reps that the pilot, everyone's been stabbed. Flight 11? Yeah. They can't get into the cockpit is what I'm hearing. Anybody know what that smoke is in lower Manhattan? I'm sorry, say again? A lot of smoke in lower Manhattan. Out of the top of the World Trade Center building, a major fire. Yeah. Hey, can you look out your window right now? Can you see a guy at about 4,000 feet, about five east of the airport right now? Looks like he's ... Yeah, I see him. You see a guy? Is he descending from the building also? He's descending really quick too, yeah. Well, that's ... 2,500 feet now. He just dropped 800 feet in like one week. That's another situation. Another one just hit the building. Wow. Another one just hit it hard. Another one just hit the World Trade. The whole building just came apart. Holy smokes. I also want to give you a heads up, Washington. Go ahead. United 93, have you got information on that yet? Yeah, he's down. He's down? Yes. When did he land? Because we have confirmation- He did not land. Oh, he's down? Yeah. Somewhere up northeast of Camp David. So I'm wondering, do all those voices and those news recordings bring back some memories? Do they sound at least a little bit familiar? This is the podcast environment of 100 Fold Ministries, and I'm Dave Scherrer. We're going to be breaking with our series on the kingdom parables for just this week to discuss something that's most likely on the hearts of all Americans, at least those who were 20 years old or older on September 11th, 2001. 22 years ago, does it seem possible? 22 years ago, my wife and I were in South Dakota. I had just spent the weekend speaking at a youth and family conference, and as I walked through the lobby of the hotel in the morning to check out, I remember thinking how real the images looked on the lobby TV of the Trade Center building collapsing. As I walked out the doors of the hotel with my luggage, I thought, wow, people were really attentive to the images on TV. There was no chit-chatting, no hustling around. It must really be a good movie because the graphics were good, that was for sure. And as I came back into the hotel, having put my luggage in the car, I saw that the lobby was filled with even more people, and it finally dawned on me that maybe this was the news and not some special effects movie, and I watched like everyone else, and I was stunned and horrified by what I saw. You see, just 10 years earlier, I had made my home in the New York City area, and I had many friends in that city and done years of meaningful ministry there, and my heart was broken like most others, and I wondered what this meant for our country. Would there be more attacks? What would be next for us? How could this be? So thinking back, 9-11 was just short of 60 years since our country had been attacked on our own soil. We are not used to this. That attack 60 years ago was at Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941, and that event launched us into the Second World War. A little over 2,400 people died at Pearl Harbor on that day, and we're told that 2,977 died in the 9-11 attacks across New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania on that day and the days following from those injuries. By and large, the U.S. has been protected from outside attacks, so this feels very odd to us. Militarily, the oceans alone serve as a formidable defensive protection for our country. The size of our country, our wealth, our military might make it unlikely that any single nation would just rear up and attack us. The nations to the north and south of us are allies, and frankly, times have changed. International and monetary interdependence, by that I mean our political adversaries, and we Americans have a lot in common called money, and that interdependence makes it less likely that political adversaries like China or those in the Middle East are likely to move against us. It just costs too much money for everybody. I'm not sure I like that, but it seems to be true as a protective factor. So do you remember how the U.S. responded after that attack? There was a renewed patriotism and overall a feeling of coming together across the political lines of politics and ideologies, and soon we would be at war with Afghanistan and Iraq, ostensibly to drive out the terrorist hubs that threatened our security as a nation and the world at large. We started a manhunt for Osama bin Laden, and that would eventually end in his death. We fought against terror with, remember what President Bush said, with shock and awe. In a sense, you could say that we fought against this terrorist power with a power of terror, the same kind of force, just bigger and better and equally resolved. So here's where I'm going with this. Some would say that today the church, the body of Christ, is under attack, an attack of terror of sorts by those who see the doctrines of Christianity as mean-spirited and narrow-minded. In fact, they even see it sometimes as racist and filled with language of hatred. So this attack on the body of Christ, I believe, is increasingly true here in the United States, but it's not a new thing in the world. There have been horrific attacks against Christians in the church for 2,000 years, and today Christians across the world are being killed daily by hateful terrorists who despise the name of Jesus. More Christians have died as martyrs since the start of the 20th century than the previous 20 centuries combined. So how is the church to respond? Are we to take the world's way and respond in like fashion? Do we fight the power of terrorism with the terror of power? God says no. Paul, on behalf of God, writes in his letter to the young church in Corinth, saying this in 2 Corinthians 10, for though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. We fight with the truth. We do not wage war the way the world does. We fight back against hate and lies with love and truth. Turns out that truth and grace are our one-two punch against terrorists. We forgive with abandon, and we rush to the aid of the defenseless, making our own lives at risk as we do. Hope, mercy, love, grace, truth, these are the weapons of life, light, and love. And when the church begins to fight on the world terms, and sadly, I hate to even say it, but sometimes the church has acted according to the world, and I'm sorry for that. But when we begin to fight on the world terms we've already lost, then we will be in the world and of it as well. And at that point, what's the point? So I'm asking you today not to take anything for granted. Hug your family tonight, tell someone that you love that you love them. Remember that life is relentless, and we fight back by embracing the life, light, and love of Christ. We do not forget those who lost their lives in the attacks of 9-11, and we do not forget the first responders who acted with such bravery. We remember. So have a great week. Keep your eyes on Christ, the author and perfecter of your faith. Take care.