Remembering 9-11

Coffee with a Calvinist and the Call to Remember 9-11

Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist. This program is dedicated to helping you better understand the Word of God and the doctrines of grace. The Bible tells us, do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who is no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.

Get your Bible and coffee ready and prepare to study along. Here's your host with today's lesson, Pastor Keith Foskey.

Did you weep for the children who lost their dear loved ones, pray for the ones who don't know? Did you rejoice for the people who walked from the rubble, and sob for the ones left below? Did you burst out with pride for the red, white, and blue, and the heroes who died just doing what they do?

Did you look up to heaven for some kind of answer, and look at yourself, and what really matters?

Personal Memories of September 11, 2001

And welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist. My name is Keith Foskey, and I am a Calvinist. Today is September 11, 2020. It is hard to imagine that there are people today that are too young to remember what happened on September 11.

I remember so vividly the day and how it unfolded. I was at the time working in a bread truck, and I had taken a load of bread into a Publix, I believe it was. And as I walked into Publix, and I was unloading the bread, and I was scanning, and I was talking to the man in the back, one of the managers.

A man ran up and he said, did you hear a plane hit a building in New York? And I immediately thought it was maybe like a Cessna or some kind of a small plane. And so I honestly didn't think much of it at all.

I just thought maybe it was an accident. By the time I had gotten my rig put back together, put back into the truck, and I got into the truck and I had the radio on, I think at that time I was probably listening to AM radio.

And it was everything. Every channel was stopped and everything was considering. And that was right about, if I remember correctly, that was right about the time the second plane hit. And my wife was working at a high-rise in downtown Jacksonville.

She was on the, I believe, the 13th or the 15th floor of the Bell South building downtown. And so my thoughts immediately went to, is this attack going to continue? Are buildings going to continue to fall all around the United States?

Is it over? And then, of course, we heard of the plane hitting the Pentagon. We heard of the plane being taken down by the heroic passengers. And so by the time I got the bread back to the office, got the truck closed down, got in my car, drove home at that point, I was living in a small apartment.

By the time I get back to the apartment, I'm watching on the news and horror, there's videos of people who are falling to their deaths. There are, it's impossible to get a hold of my wife who was at work.

There was, all of the lines were just filled and unable to be able to reach anyone. Finally, they let everyone go home. She comes home and we just sat and held each other and cried and looked at the television screen and prayed for those who were affected most closely, those who had died, those who had family members who had died.

And I was stunned along with the rest of the world. It was a horrific day. And I want to talk about it today. Of course, it is the anniversary of this day. It's an important day. But I also want to talk about the impact that it has had on our world.

I want to talk about the impact that it had even on my own life. At this time, in 2001, I would have been 21 years old. I'd been saved for two years. And I was already beginning to feel God calling me to do something in the church.

And I think at that time I was helping with youth or I was helping with Sunday school. I was doing something. Because from the moment I was saved, I felt like I wanted to be a part of what God had for me.

The Church Response After 9-11

On the Tuesday of 9 -11, we all were in shock. On Wednesday, the churches were filled, absolutely filled. Nobody missed church on Wednesday, September the 12th. Everybody was at the prayer meetings. Everybody was in service.

And we had a full service, and people were weeping and crying and talking. And, of course, everyone was talking about different things. Some people were angry. Some people were weeping. Some people knew people who had died.

If I remember correctly, I think there was one man who was even supposed to be on a plane on that day. And for some reason was not. And so he told his story. And so there was all kinds of things going on.

Well, one of the elders at the time was Tom Watts. Tom Watts came to me. And a side story to this is at this time, the pastor that we had had been in an automobile accident. And he was not able to preach.

And therefore, we did not have anyone preaching on Sundays. He had done some pre-recorded things for us. And at that time, our worship service was kind of odd because we didn't have a preacher preaching.

We had a video recording. This is long before live streaming or anything like that. This was VHS tapes. So that's what we had. And Tom Watts came up to me, and he said, Keith, we do not want to listen to a pre-recorded message this Sunday.

We need somebody to preach. Would you preach? And I said, yes. And so I had, at that point, a couple of days to put together a message, something I don't think I had ever done before. I think this was the first time I'd ever preached.

I think it was the first time I'd ever been asked to preach. I believe that's the case. And so I went to my study. I began to look into, you know, what can I talk about? What do we need to hear? Thousands of people are dead.

Our nation has come under attack. What do we do? How do we deal with this? And so I went and I pulled out Romans 13, and I preached a passage from Romans 13. The government does not bear the sword in vain.

It is God's minister to bring vengeance on the evildoer. And I said, this is what we need to hear. Again, some may argue and say that was the wrong choice, but the crux of my message was we are at war, and we need to pray that our government make good decisions.

This is not a time for passivity. This is a time for strength and resolve. This is a time for a response, and we need to pray that the response is right. Now, we can argue about whether or not the response that we made was right, whether the wars that we fought since then and the ongoing war on terror, how it's been handled and how it's been managed, we can argue about all of that.

But at that moment, Sunday following 9 -11, one thing we knew, the world had changed. The world was never going to be the same anymore than it was. You look back at historical events, and you can say that day the world changed.

The attacks on Pearl Harbor, the world changed. The dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima in Japan, the world changed that day. Never after that would it be exactly the same. These are watershed moments in human history, never be the same.

And 9 -11 was one of those days where it would never be the same. And so I want to give you three things. As I was thinking about today's episode, I was thinking about three things that I think have happened as a result of 9 -11 and things that are still strongly ensconced in the DNA of the United States that were, if it were, they were injected because of 9 -11.

The Rise of Islam in Public Attention After 9-11

So I'll give you three things to think about. Number one is the people became very interested in Islam because it was Muslims who had perpetrated the attack, and they had done so because of a hatred of the United States and what they considered to be their enemy.

They considered the United States their enemy. So I can honestly say before 9 -11, I didn't know anything about Muslims. I didn't know anything about Islam. I grew up in a small town, Callaghan. I didn't know much about any of that.

And after 9 -11, that's all anybody ever wanted to talk about. Everybody wanted to read a Koran. Everybody wanted to talk about Islam. Everybody wanted to talk about how they pray five times a day and this and that.

Everybody wanted to know everything they could. And some of them, I think, because of the old adage, you know, know thine enemy. I think others because they were fascinated that people would be so willing, I mean willing to die for their religion and to do so in such a spectacular and horrible way to blow yourself up.

I think they would say what a spectacle that is, and they wanted to know more about it. And so Islam became fascinating. And what's sad is there was actually a lot of conversions to Islam. And so we actually see that.

People talk about the hatred of Islam that followed 9 -11, and that is true. But there was also a lot of turning to Islam. People who were already disenfranchised with the United States, people who already hated what they considered the Western thinking.

This gave them a new home base to run to. And so Islam became an interest to a lot of people that honestly it wasn't before. And I am surprised today that we see such a rise in Islam around the United States after 9 -11.

You would think it would be the opposite, but it hasn't. There has been a rise in Islamic influence in our politics. There's been a rise in Islamic influence in our local communities. Even I think it was President Obama said during his time as president, I want to say, and I'm quoting from memory here so I can be corrected, but I believe at one point he said, Muslims built this country.

And I was like, what are you talking about? That's crazy talk. I don't say that kind of thing. I don't look at a Muslim country and say, look, that's what Christians built. And I'm not saying that America is necessarily a Christian country because I know we have a diversity of backgrounds.

But to say Muslims built America, I mean, it's such a foolish thing to say. And it's such pandering. It's not right. And so, again, there was a rise in what I would say is not only interest in Islam but pandering to Islam.

That's been a huge issue. That's the first thing. The second thing, people have become very suspicious of religion in general. After 9 -11, I think there's been a cloak over religious thinking and people saying, look, religious people blew up these buildings, therefore all religion is bad.

And even one, I remember one particular talking head on television saying that radical Christianity is just as dangerous as radical Islam. And the reality is it's not true because such equation is not true because true biblical Christianity is not going to fly a plane into a building.

True biblical Christianity is not going to behead people because they don't believe. But one could make the argument that these things are encouraged and allowed in the Quran and the idea of jihad and the idea of taking life to subdue the world for Allah is very important in Islam.

And Islam is an invading religion and it invades in various ways. And so comparing all religions with Islam and basically saying Christianity and Islam are equal in their atrocities is absolute falsehood.

And yet it's one of the things that was resultant from 9 -11, sort of a blanket suspicion of all religion. But the third thing, and the thing I'll end with, is I think one of the things that we've seen following 9 -11 is we have seen a massive division in politics.

And politics have always been divided, but I don't remember a time in my lifetime, and I know I'm only 40 years old, but in my lifetime we are so divided now. And that division I think was, a lot of that division started with 9 -11 because after 9 -11 there was the, how do we respond to this?

And that division has kicked off and created lots of various divides and positions. And so if you look at the world, and especially the world of the United States, and you say, where did this division really kick off?

If you look, I think the left and the right have always been divided, and we follow that back to the beginning. But the idea of things like xenophobia, xenophobia is the fear of outsiders, and the left is always accusing the right of xenophobia.

And what has the left done to counter xenophobia? They have adopted Islam and Muslims as part of them. They want to protect them because they are minorities. And here's the great irony, is we see people from the far left supporting the radical movements, well, maybe not supporting the radical movements, but supporting Islam, and yet the radical movements overseas would not support them back.

It's certainly a one-sided situation. And so what we have is we have a country that is very divided, and I think a lot of that division has been fostered by the events that happened shortly following 9 -11, a lot of political division, a lot of people seeing things either from the side of the left or the side of the right, and there's been a lot of fighting back and forth.

God's Sovereignty in National Tragedy

But, you know, one of the things that we can do is we can say that God is not out of control, God was not out of control on 9 -11, and God is not out of control today in 2020, 9 -11, 2020. You know, here we are two decades later, we see a world that looks like it is absolutely in madness.

We see cities burning, we see hatred all around, we see people being murdered in the streets, and it does seem as if like everything's out of control, and yet we know that God sits on His throne, and He has not in any way, shape, or form lost control.

He's got a purpose for all this, that God had a purpose on that day. And we may not ever understand the purpose on this side of eternity, but the Bible says God works all things together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose, and so His purpose will stand.

He says the way of a man plans his steps, but God's purpose will stand. And so we need to find comfort in trusting that God does have His own purpose in all this. And I do want to again remind everyone that we are in a place right now where so many people are hating police officers, and even firefighters are having to wear bulletproof vests because of the fear that as they go in to protect people from fires of being shot in some places in the United States, such an atrocity that these people have to do that.

And just think, these are the people that two decades ago, they were the ones running into those buildings. They were the ones running to save lives, and many of them, many police officers, many firefighters gave their lives on that September day, and we said we'd never forget.

And I think many people have forgotten, and I think that's part of the reason why we are where we are today. Well, again, I know this has been a heavy episode. I hope it continues to be an encouragement to you.

I want to thank you for listening and taking this journey through this difficult memory with me, and I pray that it has been an encouragement to you. Thank you for listening to Coffee with a Calvinist.

My name is Keith Foskey, and I've been your Calvinist. May God bless you.