Biblical Perspectives on the Twin Towers (radio 9/12/01)

Driving home: In the midst of the shock, the rubble, the human carnage, the incalculable devastation, many are asking, where was God in all of these things?

The collapse of the massive buildings is compared to castles in the sand dashed by a wave, emphasizing the sudden and complete destruction.

Airplanes slamming into massive structures of steel and glass. Huge fireballs leaping upward to the sky. Buildings collapsing. Buildings collapsing.

1:55 - 2:05 Read in full sermon

Driving home: In the midst of the shock, the rubble, the human carnage, the incalculable devastation, many are asking, where was God in all of these things?

The horrifying scenes of destruction are contrasted with Hollywood's use of special effects, highlighting the real-time, real-people, and eternal consequences of the tragedy.

Buildings collapsing. Like castles in the sand when dashed by a breaking wave. Screaming masses of humanity running for safety amidst choking billows of smoke and clouds of pulverized debris. Such scenes witnessed before in Hollywood's clever use of special effects film technology.

2:05 - 2:26 Read in full sermon

Driving home: Man made in the image of God, Genesis 1 and 2, is man who fell from God, Genesis chapter 3. And he can be, in one sense, so God-like as to take our breath away, and so devil-like as to make us want to retch and to vomit.

A story of a man who used to admire the Twin Towers from a park bench, asking 'What has man wrought?', and then after the collapse, asking the same question, illustrating the dual nature of man's capacity for creation and destruction.

The events of the past days validate the biblical doctrine of what man is. Someone who was accustomed to sitting on a park bench, this came through the anouncement... one of the announcements yesterday used to come, and before he went into work, sit on the bench and look at the Twin Towers and say, What has man wrought?

8:13 - 8:36 Read in full sermon

The point: The unfolding death toll ought to make us all inwardly weep, but remember, not one person died in this tragedy that in any way was not found in God's appointment book.

Martin recounts asking students at Trinity Christian School what the most unjust deed ever perpetrated was, and a young woman correctly answered, 'the murdering of the Son of God,' to illustrate God's sovereignty over even the most wicked acts.

whom be glory forever and ever amen Ephesians 111 God who works all things after the counsel of his own will Daniel 435 Nebuchadnezzar confesses that there is but one true and living God and that he does according to his will among the armies of heaven and the inhabitants of the earth and none can stay his hand and say unto him what are you doing and in the book of Acts we have one of the most marvelous statements of this truth that God is the absolute sovereign governing all men and all their actions in the chapel period yesterday at Trinity Christian School I asked the kids I said what was t...

10:12 - 11:35 Read in full sermon

The point: The unfolding death toll ought to make us all inwardly weep, but remember, not one person died in this tragedy that in any way was not found in God's appointment book.

Examples of people who, by human reasoning, should have been in the Twin Towers or Pentagon but were providentially delayed (flat tire, sick relative, long discussion), illustrating God's sovereign control over individual lives and events.

And in days to come, if the Lord spares us, we will read and we will hear reports of people who will mark this tragedy as the open door to their coming into a saving knowledge, which is the knowledge of the Lord Jesus. We will hear of those who, by all human reasoning, ought to have been in one of those buildings or down in the part of the pentagon, but a flat tire, an unexpected call from a sick relative, or as we've heard with someone who was once a member of this church, a 45-minute discussion with a father made an individual 45 minutes late for work, which meant they were on the road, on t...

14:01 - 15:24 Read in full sermon

Driving home: You'd say one of two things is true. They either have all snapped and gone mad, or they saw a terror in front of them worse than the terror behind them.

The image of masses running away from the collapsing towers and smoke is used to illustrate the Day of the Lord, asking what it would mean if they turned back, suggesting a greater terror ahead.

I'm sure many of you have indelibly imprinted on your minds the scene of those masses of humanity running, I think the commentator said, running south away from the smoke and the impending destruction behind them. And that image of the milling multitudes and behind them the billows of smoke like a tidal wave seeking to overtake them. Let me ask you, what would you have thought if when looking at that scene, a live scene, if those people suddenly stopped, turned around, and ran right back in the direction of the crumbling buildings?

16:15 - 16:55 Read in full sermon

Driving home: The Bible teaches in Isaiah 5, 20 and 21 that when men cast off God's changeable moral law as a definition of right and wrong, then the prophet says they call good evil an evil good.

Martin creates a hypothetical scene of all 9/11 victims' bodies heaped in Manhattan, asking how a politician defending the terrorists' 'rights' would be received, then contrasts this with the 40 million aborted fetuses since Roe v. Wade and politicians defending a 'woman's right to kill her baby,' to expose the hypocrisy of selective morality.

What would you think of a man if he were able to engineer and I trust this does not open up unnecessary wounds in anyone hearing my voice, but I believe we need to think in this biblical category. If all those who will eventually be discovered dead as a result of these tragedies were all gathered and their bodies heaped in one place there in southern Manhattan, what would happen to the man who would dare to stand in the midst with a bullhorn and say, take no real concern and turn at this site. It was only certain men asserting their right to express their political views. It was only the right...

19:53 - 20:57 Read in full sermon