Time line for Terror, Tuesday, September 11
8:45 a.m.: Jet airliner crashes into the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York.
9:03 a.m.: A second airliner crashes into its twin south tower, causing a devastating explosion.
9:10 a.m.: In Florida, President Bush is reading to children in a classroom when his chief of staff, Andrew Card, whispers news of the attacks into his ear.
9:20 a.m.: The FBI investigates reports of planes being hijacked before the World Trade Center crashes.
9:29 a.m.: First reports of casualties indicate that at least six people were killed, with at least 1,000 injured.
9:30 a.m.: Bush declares: "We have had a national tragedy. Two airplanes have crashed into the World Trade Center in an apparent terrorist attack on our country."
9:43 a.m.: Another plane crashes into the Pentagon in Washington. The nerve center of the U.S. military bursts into flames and a portion of one side of the five-sided structure collapses.
9:48 a.m.: The White House and the Capitol are evacuated amid further threats.
9:49 a.m.: All airports across the U.S. shut down.
10:00 a.m.: United Airlines Flight 93, en route from Newark, N.J., to San Francisco, crashes near Pittsburgh. The crash site is 85 miles northwest of Camp David.
10:05 a.m.: The south tower of the World Trade Center collapses.
10:29 a.m.: The north tower of the World Trade Center collapses.
UNBELIEVABLE!
I. Unbelievable Storms
After all they were following Christ, Matt. 8:23
A. Jesus first addresses would be followers
1. Some only follow for conveniences,
(“Master, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest. And Jesus saith unto him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head” Matt. 8:19b, 20.)
2. Some only when it is convenient (“And another of his disciples said unto him, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father” Matt. 8:21.)
That seems to be a reasonable request on the surface. But the issue is more complex than it first appears. Obviously, the father had not recently died, nor was he awaiting burial; otherwise the young man would not he along the beach at such a crucial time for the family! Alfred Plummer cites an instance of an oriental custom and expression that sheds light on this mysterious passage. “At the present day, an oriental, with his father sitting by his side, has been known to say respecting his future projects: ‘But I must first bury my father.’” The young man did not give the kingdom the highest priority in his thinking. He embraced a delayed-discipleship concept that allowed him to follow Christ when it was convenient.
“Follow me; and allow the dead to bury their own dead” (Matt. 8:22).
Which is the same as saying, “Let those who are spiritually dead be wrapped up in the things of this world. You, as a disciple, have a higher calling of preaching the kingdom (cf. Luke 9:60). And so another “disciple” deserts the ranks.
A. Jesus addressed His would be followers
B. Jesus addresses His willing followers
They were following because they were committed, 8:23
They were committed to following Christ wherever no matter what and yet a “great tempest” still came. That is unbelievable!
As Christians and Americans it seems unbelievable for us to face “a great tempest.”
Matt. 8:23 ¶ And when he was entered into a ship, his disciples followed him.
24 And, behold, there arose a great tempest in the sea, insomuch that the ship was covered with the waves. . . .
All of this is suddenly interrupted. In an instant the Sea of Galilee is transformed from a lamb to a lion. The once placid lake had become a turbulent sea of churning waters. Critics of Scripture have been leery of the possibility of such a quick shift in weather.
The weather changes on the Sea of Galilee are understandable when you examine the topography of the region and consider the meteorology.
∙ The Sea of Galilee is part of the great Jordan rift and measures approximately fourteen miles north to south and seven miles from east to west.
∙ Surrounding this fresh water lake are the Galilean hills and Golan Heights. Since the sea is nearly seven hundred feet below sea level, it has a subtropical climate with warm, pleasant weather year-round. Today, a journey around its shores will reward the traveler with several opportunities to see groves of banana trees.
∙ To the north is majestic Mount Hermon, that enjoys its share of snow. The cold winds from this higher elevation sometimes drift down through the natural land trough heading for the Sea of Galilee. As the cool air dumps itself over the hills and meets the warm rising air of the Sea, severe conditions can occur.
The Gospel writers might not have been meteorologists, but they each provided a graphic bit of information about the storm that fits the description of the circumstances above. Luke records that “there came down a storm of wind on the lake” (Luke 8:23). “came down” is translated from the Greek word katabaino which literally means “to go down” and has reference to the northern winds of Hermon. Those winds create a furious storm (Greek lailaps; Luke 8:37; Mark 4:37). The translators of the Septuagint chose the same word to describe the storm in which Jonah was caught (Jonah 1:4). It could be used of a hurricane or a squall and often is used in conjunction with darkness (cf. 2 Peter 2:17). Matthew adds that the storm became “a great tempest” (8:24). Here the Greek word is seismos from which we get the word seismograph, an instrument used in measuring the intensity of earthquakes. Matthew is painting a portrait of a “seaquake.”
No more horrifying experience can be imagined. Darkness has closed in on the small vessel. Cold, bitter winds whip about the sailors, resisting them on every hand. Waves mount so high as to cause the other boats to disappear for a brief moment (Matthew 8:24). And to make matters worse, the boat is taking on water faster than it can be bailed out (Mark 4:37).
The fact of storms is often unbelievable for Christians, after all they are with Christ in the boat—They are following!
Or for Americans because we are Americans and this is a “Christian Nation.”
∙ Storms are a fact of life for a Christian.
∙ Job 5:7 “Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.”
∙ “Beloved, think it not strange (unbelievable) concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you: But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings; that, when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy” (1 Pet 4:12, 13).
∙ The unbelief comes because we have the wrong expectation about the storms followers should experience. Christians should never have to go through a storm where they are in “jeopardy” as Luke says they were.
∙ Mark’s Gospel adds an interesting sidelight. The disciples took Jesus “along with them, just as He was” (Mark 4:36).
∙ We need to take Jesus as He is and not as we construe Him to be.
∙ We amplify our service to mean: “I’ll follow, if Jesus meets my conditions”
“And Jacob vowed a vow, saying, If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, So that I come again to my father’s house in peace; then shall the LORD be my God:” (Gen 28:20, 21)
If that is the case for you then not only will storm surprise you they will stop you.
I. The Storm is Unbelievable!
II. It’s Unbelievable that the Lord is sleeping!
“And he was in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow: and they awake him, and say unto him, Master, carest thou not that we perish” (Mark 4:38)? (cf. Matt. 8:24, 25)
The disciples in their panic have nowhere else to turn. As sailors, they have given it their best efforts, but the situation looks hopeless. They must awaken the Master. John MacArthur has wryly noted, “When Sailors ask a former carpenter what to do in a storm, you know they are in a lot of trouble.”
Do you ever pray and it seems as if the Lord is sleeping? Does it make you ask, “Carest thou not that we perish”?
We think that if God doesn’t seem to hear it doesn’t seem that He cares.
There is a reason for this. Jesus never rescues those who are intent upon saving themselves. As long as you think that you can handle it He’ll allow you to try.
There was no way these fishermen sailors were going to ask a former carpenter how to sail. They trimmed the sails, jimmied the rig and played with the rudder before they went to the Savior.
As a nation we are upset that God allowed the attack. Was He asleep? But are we interested in God’s will as we have slaughtered 40 million innocent babies?
It is Vitally essential in our Christian life - to recognize Jesus is not a passenger, He is the Pilot.
We ought never say, “I receive you, get in the back. I’ll pilot my own ship. I’ll set my own course. If I need You, I’ll call upon You.”
We’ll never feel the need, until a storm comes and we almost perish. That’s precisely why they come.
Then we learn like Peter: “Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you” (1 Pet 5:7).
There’s always an end to a rope. And regardless of the world’s opinion, the best advice is not to “tie a knot and hang on.” Few people get anywhere while hanging on to the end of the rope. When you get to the end of the rope, let go of the rope is the right answer.
1. The Storms are unbelievable
2. It is unbelievable when the Lord sleeps
III. It is unbelievable when the Lord speaks
“And he arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. And he said unto them, Why are ye so fearful? how is it that ye have no faith? And they feared exceedingly, and said one to another, What manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him” (Mark 4:39-41)?
“What kind of a man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey Him?” (Matthew 8:27).
The answer comes resounding, “There is only one man, and He is the God-man, Jesus Christ.”
“O LORD God of hosts, who is a strong LORD like unto thee? or to thy faithfulness round about thee? Thou rulest the raging of the sea: when the waves thereof arise, thou stillest them” (Psa 89:8, 9)
To Him our fear and lack of faith are unbelievable!
When you have a small God, He can only do so much. Example John 11.
“Why are you fearful, how is it they had no faith?”
1. They weren’t trusting in His word (Mark 4:35). What had Jesus said? “Let us go down to the bottom?”
2. They were not trusting in His will which is vitally connected to His word. The very purpose of His word is to reveal His will. “Let us pass over”—His word also reveals His will.
The Safest place in the world is in the will of God.
Even on a lake in a storm
Paul believed that God had a purpose for him, that God had a job for him to do. I can’t imagine God saving a soul through the blood of Jesus Christ and not having a purpose in that life and a job for that person to do.
Something else I believe—and I’ve come to this gradually—I believe that If you will find the will of God and if you will honestly put your life in the hands of the Lord to do that job that God has for you to do and will stay on that job until it’s done, that all the devils in Hell can’t stop you and nobody can kill you until it is done.
Nothing on earth can defeat you, nor stop you from that job till it’s done, if you are in the will of God and honestly trying to do the thing that God would have you to do.
Look at Paul for a minute. He was concerned about just one thing from the day he was saved, and that was to finish the job God cut out for him.
When he was going down to Jerusalem for the last time, everywhere he went people would tell, “Paul, they’re going to kill you when you get down there.” “They’re going to throw you in jail when you get down there.” What did Paul say?
Acts 20:24 “But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry, which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God.”
At dawn on June 7 (1944), Lt. Waverly Wray, executive officer in Company D, 505th PIR, who had jumped into the night sky over Normandy twenty-eight hours earlier, was on the northwestern outskirts of the village. He peered intently into the lifting gloom. What he couldn’t see, he could sense. From the sounds of the movement of personnel and vehicles to the north of Ste.-Mère-Eglise, he could feel and figure that the major German counter-attack, the one the Germans counted on to drive the Americans into the sea and the one the paratroopers had been expecting, was coming at Ste.-Mère-Eglise.
It was indeed. Six thousand German soldiers were on the move, with infantry, artillery, tanks, and self-propelled guns—more than a match for the six hundred or so lightly armed paratroopers in Ste.-Mère-Eglise. A German breakthrough to the beaches seemed imminent. And Lieutenant Wray was at the point of attack.
Wray was a big man, 250 pounds with “legs like tree trunks.” The standard-issue army parachute wasn’t large enough for his weight and he dropped too fast on his jumps, but the men said hell, with his legs he didn’t need a chute. He was from Batesville, Mississippi, and was an avid woodsman, skilled with rifles and shotguns. He claimed he had never missed a shot in his life. A veteran of the Sicily and Italy campaigns, Wray was—in the words of Col. Ben Vandervoort, commanding the 505th— “as experienced and skilled as an infantry soldier can get and still be alive.”
Wray had Deep South religious convictions. A Baptist, each month he sent half his pay home to help build a new church. He never swore. His exclamation when exasperated was, “John Brown!” meaning abolitionist John Brown of Harpers Ferry. He didn’t drink, smoke, or chase girls. Some troopers called him “The Deacon,” but in an admiring rather than critical way. Vandervoort had something of a father-son relationship with Wray, always calling him by his first name, Waverly.
On June 7, shortly after dawn, Wray reported to Vandervoort—whose leg, broken in the jump, was now in a cast—on the movements he had spotted, the things he had sensed, and where he expected the Germans to attack and in what strength.
Vandervoort took all this in, then ordered Wray to return to the company and have it attack the German flank before the Germans could get their attack started.
“He said ‘Yes Sir,’” Vandervoort later wrote, “saluted, about-faced, and moved out like a parade ground Sergeant Major.”
Back in the company area, Wray passed on the order. As the company prepared to attack, he took up his M-1, grabbed a half-dozen grenades, and strode out, his Colt .45 on his hip and a silver-plated .38 revolver stuck in his jump boot. He was going to do a one-man reconnaissance to formulate a plan of attack.
Wray was going out into the unknown. He had spent half a year preparing for this moment but he was not trained for it. In one of the greatest intelligence failures of all time, neither G-2 (intelligence) at U.S. First Army, nor SHAEF G-2, nor any division S-2 had ever thought to tell the men who were going to fight the battle that the dominant physical feature of the battlefield was the maze of hedgerows that covered the western half of Normandy.
One hundred years before Lieutenant Wray came to Normandy, Honore de Balzac had described the hedges: “The peasants from time immemorial, have raised a bank of earth about each field, forming a flat-topped ridge, two meters in height, with beeches, oaks, and chestnut trees growing upon the summit, The ridge or mound, planted in this wise, is called a hedge; and as the long branches of the trees which grow upon it almost always project across the road, they make a great arbor overhead. The roads themselves, shut in by clay banks in this melancholy way, are not unlike the moats of fortresses.”
How could the various G-2s have missed such an obvious feature especially as aerial reconnaissance clearly revealed the hedges? Because the photo interpreters, looking only straight down at them, thought that they were like English hedges, the kind the fox hunters jump over, and they had missed the sunken nature of the roads entirely. “We had been neither informed of them or trained to overcome them,” was Capt. John Colby’s brief comment. The GIs would have to learn by doing, as Wray was doing on the morning of June 7.
Wray and his fellow paratroopers, like the men from the 1st and 29th Divisions at Omaha and the 4th Division at Utah, and all the support groups, had been magnificently trained to launch an amphibious assault. By nightfall of June 6, they had done the real thing successfully, thanks to their training, courage, and dash. But beginning at dawn, June 7, they were fighting in a terrain completely unexpected and unfamiliar to them.
The Germans, meanwhile, had been going through specialized training for fighting in hedgerows. “Coming within thirty meters of the enemy was what we meant by close combat,” Pvt. Adolf Rogosh of the 353rd Division recalled. “We trained hard, throwing hand grenades, getting to know the ground. The lines of hedges crisscrossing one another played tricks on your eyes. We trained to fight as individuals; we knew when the attack came we’d probably be cut off from one another. We let them come forward and cross the hedge, then we blew them apart. That was our tactic, to wait until they crossed over the hedge and then shoot.”
The Germans also pre-sited mortars and artillery on the single gaps that provided the only entrances into the fields. Behind the hedgerows, they dug rifle pits and tunneled openings for machine-gun positions in each corner.
Wray moved up sunken lanes, crossed an orchard, pushed his way through hedgerows, crawled through a ditch. Along the way he noted concentrations of Germans in fields and lanes. A man without his woodsman’s sense of direction would have gotten lost. He reached a point near the N-13, the main highway coming into St.-Mere-Eglise from Cherbourg.
The N-13 was the axis of the German attacks. Wray, “moving like the deer stalker he was” (Vandervoort’s words), got to a place where he could hear guttural voices on the other side of a hedgerow. They sounded like officers talking about map coordinates. Wray rose up, burst through the obstacle, swung his M-1 to a ready position, and barked in his strong command voice, “Hande hoch!” to the eight German officers gathered around the radio.
Seven instinctively raised their hands. The eighth tried to pull a pistol from his holster; Wray shot him instantly between the eyes. Two Germans in a slit trench one hundred meters to Wray’s rear fired bursts from their Schmeisser machine pistols at him. Bullets cut through his jacket; one cut off half of his right ear.
Wray dropped to his knee and began shooting the other seven officers, one at a time as they attempted to run away. When he had used up his clip. Wray jumped into a ditch, put another clip into his M-1, and dropped the German soldiers with the Schmissers with one shot each.
Wray made his way back to the company area to report on what he had seen. At the command post he came in with blood down his jacket, a big chunk of his ear gone, holes in his clothing. “Who’s got more grenades?” he demanded. He wanted more grenades.
Then he started leading. He put a 60mm mortar crew on the German flank and directed fire into the lanes and hedgerows most densely packed with the enemy. Next he sent D Company into an attack down one of the lanes. The Germans broke and ran. By mid-morning Ste.-Mère-Eglise was secure, and the potential for a German breakthrough to the beaches was much diminished.
The next day Vanderrvoort, Wray, and Sgt. John Rabig went to the spot to examine the German officers Wray had shot. Unforgettably, their bodies were sprinkled with pink and white apple blossom petals from an adjacent orchard. It turned out that they were the commanding officer and his staff of the 1st Battalion, 158th Grenadier Infantry Regiment. The maps showed that it was leading the way for the counterattack. The German confusion and subsequent retreat were in part due to having been rendered leaderless by Wray.
Vandervoort later recalled that when he saw the blood on Wray’s jacket and the missing half-ear, he had remarked, “They’ve been getting kind of close to you, haven’t they Waverly?”
With just a trace of a grin, Wray had replied, “not as close as I’ve been getting to them, sir.”
At the scene of the action Vandervoort noted that every one of the dead Germans, including the two Schmeisser-armed Grenadiers more than a hundred meters away, had been killed with a single shot in the head. Wray insisted on burying the bodies. He said he had killed them, and they deserved a decent burial, and it was his responsibility.
Later that day Sergeant Rabig commented to Vandervoort, “Colonel, aren’t you glad Waverly’s on our side?”
The next day Rabig wasn’t so sure. He and Wray were crouched behind a hedgerow. American artillery was falling into the next field. “I could hear these Germans screaming as they were getting hit. Lieutenant Wray said, “John, I wish that artillery would stop so we can go in after them.”
“Jesus! I thought, the artillery is doing good enough.”
Before the battle was joined, Hitler had been sure his young men would outfight the young Americans. He was certain that the spoiled sons of democracy couldn’t stand up to the solid sons of dictatorship. If he had seen Lieutenant Wray in action in the early morning of D-Day plus one, he might have had some doubts.
Of course, Wray was special. You don’t get more than one Wray to a division, or even to an army. Vandervoort compared Wray to a sergeant in the 82nd Division in World War I, also a Southern boy, named Alvin York. . . . (pages 189-193)
On September 19, Lt. Waverly Wray, the man who had broken up the German counterattack on the morning of June 7 at Ste.-Mère-Eglise, and killed ten Germans with a single shot to the head of each, led an assault on a bridge. “The last I saw of him,” one trooper reported, “he was headed for the Germans with a grenade in one hand and a tommy gun in the other,” As Wray raise his head over the railroad track embankment, a German sniper firing from a signal tower killed him with a single shot in the middle of his head. (page 241) —The Victors, Stephen E. Ambrose, pp. 189 ff.
God used the greatest of injustices for the Salvation of man (the cross). The cross was not something Jesus looked forward too but He recognized it as the will of God and committed it to God.
Reasons for “Why are ye so fearful? how is it that ye have no faith?”
They weren’t trusting in the Word of God
They weren’t confident in the Will of God
They weren’t mindful of the Presence of God
Jesus was in the boat!
“Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness” (Isa 41:10).
The faith that casts out fear recognizes an unseen presence.
Thomas Andrew Dorsey was a black, jazz musician from Atlanta. In the twenties he gained a certain amount of notoriety as the composer of jazz tunes with suggestive lyrics, but he have all that up in 1926 to concentrate exclusively on spiritual music. “Peace in the Valley” is one of his best known songs, but there is a story behind his most famous song that deserves to be told.
In 1932 the times were hard for Dorsey. Just trying to survive the depression years as a working musician meant tough sledding. On top of that, this music was not accepted by many people. Some said it was too worldly—the devil’s music, they called it. Many years later Dorsey could laugh about it. he said, “I got kicked out of some of the best churches in the land.” But the real kick in the teeth came one night in St. Louis when he received a telegram informing him that his pregnant wife had died suddenly.
Dorsey was so filled with grief that his faith was shaken to the roots, but instead of wallowing in self pity, he turned to the discipline he knew best—music. In the midst of agony he wrote the following lyrics:
Precious Lord, Take my hand,
Lead me on, let me stand,
I am tired, I am weak, I am worn,
Through the storm, through the night,
Lead me on to the light;
Take my hand precious Lord,
Lead me home.
Norman L. Bales, Pulpit Helps, May 1992, p.20
