The world will never forget the tragedy of September 11, 2001, when 2800 innocent people died in the twin towering infernos of the World Trade Center, my former home office in New York City.  The visual images are so horrifying the human mind does not want to remember, let alone contemplate them.  Yet one picture, of the many indelibly imprinted on my gray matter, refuses to recede from my conscious mind.  It is a still photo of a man falling from one of the burning towers.  He’s just one of about seventy people who chose to jump to their death rather than be consumed by the fire.  Just trying to imagine the thought process of that decision, in the chaos and terror of the moment, is so painful the mind refuses to process it.

The man in the photo, unlike the others that I saw, was not tumbling as he fell. I witnessed his fall real time and in the videotape as it was replayed that day.  He was falling headfirst, straight down with perfect posture, arms at his sides with one knee bent as if he is about to take a step.  That is not a normal way for the human body to fall.  In my adventurous youth when I was learning to skydive, my body was all somersaulting ankles and elbows until I learned to fall in a controlled manner, and it was not straight down headfirst. The profile view of the man was not close enough to see his face, but there is a strong sense of serenity exuded by his body language just seconds before his instantaneous death.  And that is what consumes me.  Did he know his eternal destiny?  Did he have the blessed assurance of his salvation?  Were millions of us witnessing the death of a saint?

If so, it was the second time for me.  My saintly mother, who was my mentor in all the important lessons of living and dying, breathed her last with a serenity that was an overwhelming witness to her faith for her assembled family.  She was wired up and kept alive by the machinery of modern medicine and could not sing, but she mouthed all her favorite hymns we sang at her bedside.  Her last whispered words to me were, “I’m almost there.”  I wonder if the falling man knew he was “almost there” and was in fact taking his first step into eternity with the Lord God Almighty, even as he fell. 

Another thing about this tragedy I’ve pondered at length:  many of those 2800 people who were not instantly killed were trapped in the top floors of the towers.  They had from thirty minutes to an hour in which imminent death was a certainty.  We know from phone calls to loved ones that was so.  We also know that there were a number of godly people among them who perhaps witnessed to them.  As a novel writer I spend a lot of time trying to put myself inside the head of other people and inject myself into scenes I can only imagine.  I wonder how many of them were spiritually born again in the last hour of their life.  I want to believe many of them were.  Hopefully those desperate men and women, knowing no other options remained, fought off the mental paralysis of fear and fell on their knees even as they felt the heat of the flames, the shuddering of the building and finally the floor giving way beneath them.  I hope and pray they asked for forgiveness for their sins, begged a merciful God to admit them into paradise that day as they claimed the covering blood of Christ.  In my experience as a combat fighter pilot I learned the wonderfully focusing effect that imminent death has on the mind.  We can be sure those who prayed in their final hour had no problems with wandering minds, insincerity in their pleas for mercy or lack of intensity in their cries for salvation.  God most likely gathered a number of his children in the last moments of the World Trade Center’s existence.   

By God’s mercy, believers and unbelievers alike died with a minimum of pain, unlike the millions of people who suffer for long periods of time with the diseases that ravage humankind.  But their greatest blessing was that they had the opportunity to get right with their Maker and Savior before they died.  How many people today are banking on seeing death coming and getting prepared at the last minute?  How many think they want to enjoy their life of sin and selfishness, have a deathbed conversion, then spend eternity in paradise?  Dear reader, such depravity plays Russian roulette with your eternal soul. Many, both the damned and the redeemed, died instantly when the airliners hit the World Trade Center, but the wail of the damned will sound forever as they are eternally consumed in “the fiery furnace” (Matthew 13:42).

As a child I believed in Santa Claus, the tooth fairy and Jesus Christ.  Fifty years of life experiences, Bible reading, comparative religion studies including evolution theories, and I still believe in Jesus, now with an informed conviction—head knowledge and heart knowledge. 

Some folks have never known him except as a common curse word.  For others he disappeared from their worldview soon after Santa and the tooth fairy.  If the polls are correct, a majority of people who call themselves Christian think Jesus has no more relevance than Santa.  They are lost and oblivious to their “lostness.” 

I call the latter category casual Christians.  They know what is needed for salvation but just procrastinate when it comes to acting on it.  Next Sunday I will go to church….  As soon as I get past this big project at the office I will find time for daily devotions….  I suspect the majority of souls in hell fall into this category.  They simply put off asking God to change their hearts one day too long.  A significant number of those who perished in the top stories of the north tower of the World Trade Center died not knowing what hit them.  Those who die from terrorist bombings around the world don’t see it coming.  People die suddenly every day.  In 2001, 41,730 Americans died in auto accidents, 93,000 in other accidents, 15,000 were murdered, 160,000 died from strokes, 700,000 died from heart disease, many of them instantly.  

Life is uncertain, as the terrorist attack of 9/11 so graphically demonstrated.  “No man knows when his hour will come” (Eccl. 9:12a)—the hour that God determined before we were born. The Psalmist says, “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be” (Ps. 139:16b). That same Holy Writ contains the only certainty there is in an uncertain world.  In spite of so much evil, so much hatred and so little love for the God who made us all, there are some unshakable certainties we can cling to in this unstable powder keg called planet Earth.

This little book is an effort on the part of a sinner saved by grace to witness to the power of a handful of the most important of them.  They are unshakable certainties that can, God willing, open your eyes to his truth, fill you with the peace that transcends all understanding, and show you the way to the unimaginable joy of life, both now and forever, with him. 

One of my favorite newspaper columnists, the late Mike Royko, wrote, on the sudden death of his wife, “If there’s someone you love and haven’t said it lately, do it now.  Always, always, do it now.”  In the same manner, if you haven’t asked God to change your heart, do it now.  Always, always do it now.  God willing, the following words of Jesus who saves can save you, too.