Names of tragic events have come to symbolize calamity—Waterloo, Armageddon, and Pearl Harbor. For over twenty years the numbers 9/11 have represented disaster. The images of the burning World Trade Center are permanently etched in our memories. Tons of falling debris buried financial records, personal items, and bodily remains. It took months to remove the wreckage.
These were not the only things that were destroyed or buried on that fateful day. The facts and lessons surrounding this tragedy have been buried underneath apathy and deceit.
Muslims carried out this attack. Our media successfully misrepresented this fact by blaming it on Islamic “extremists” or “radicals.” Many, especially in our government and even in our military, have accepted these labels without understanding the true nature of this “religion.” The truth is that the word Islam means submission and its goal has always been to dominate the world and impose sharia. Muhammed was a warlord and a false prophet. His movement is more political than religious.
The essence of this ideology is found in the words “Fight those who believe not in Allah” and other statements in the Koran (9:29). A document of the Muslim Brotherhood found three years after 9/11 shows that this conquering mentality has not changed. It stated that the goal of Islam in America is “a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions” (An Explanatory Memorandum). Islamists are not out to peacefully coexist in our culture. They intend to overthrow it. But to this day this fact often lies buried beneath government compromise, media propaganda, and church indifference and entertainment.
The nation stood still that day. People prayed as fear and shock gripped our hearts. In the weeks following church attendance rose. It seemed that this wakeup call, though horrific, was what we needed. Our dependence on earthly security had been shattered. The patriotic pledge “We will never forget” was plastered everywhere and churchgoers seemed to take life, death, and eternity more seriously.
But within a few months the feelings faded and people reverted from prayer to pleasure and from spirituality to worldliness. The commitment to focus on important things was soon buried underneath constant enjoyments of life. The truth about our fragile existence was covered by the debris of negligence and thrill-seeking.
What happened to Old Testament Israel so many times happens to us. When the Israelites were in Egypt, they could not get out fast enough. When they were finally free they rebelled in the wilderness. After all they had seen, after all they had suffered, and after all that God had given them, “they soon forgot His works” (Psa. 106:13).
We cannot afford to live in the past but we must learn from it. We must remember or we are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past—our own and those of others. We must heed the warning and exhortation of Deuteronomy: “And you shall remember that the Lord your God led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you and test you” (Deut. 8:2). “Remember God” is a key theme in this great Old Testament book. It should be an important thought in our lives on the anniversary of a dark day in our history.
Kerry
West End church of Christ bulletin article for September 11, 202
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