This story has not been refuted by snopes, that was a story
about the Pentagon, a separate incident
Page from Bible
found at World Trade Center site--but what's the message?
By GREGORY J. RUMMO
FEBRUARY 25, 2002
DOES
GOD STILL SPEAK today? Gary Gere and Michael Bellone believe He does.
Gere, an actor and a
photographer claims he found a page from the Bible in the rubble of the
World Trade Center that described a tower that reached into the heavens.
“After more than 93 days of
fires, a skinny little frail page from the Bible survived. I find it quite
unbelievable,” he told New York Post reporter Maria Alvarez whose
story on this “shocking revelation of faith and hope” was reported in the
February 11 edition of the newspaper.
Gere who was accompanied by
Michael Bellone, a safety director with the New York City Fire Department
found the page near the place where the south tower once stood. The page was
from the book of Genesis and told of the account of the building of the
Tower of Babel.
“It was amazing,” Bellone
said. “We can’t rebuild fast enough. We can start all over again.”
While we can all relate to
Mr. Bellone’s enthusiasm, his exegesis of scripture leaves much to be
desired.
The story of the building of
the Tower of Babel, recorded in Genesis chapter 11, occurred several
millennia before Christ and sometime after Noah’s flood in an area called
the Plains of Shinar, the region we know as Mesopotamia.
The whole earth spoke one
language back then, and the nomads living in that region got together one
day and said to each another, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a
tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves
and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth."
But their motivation for
building the tower was wrong. Instead of trusting God and his plans for
their future, they built a structure that would literally “vault” them above
the heavens and place them at a strategic vantage point where they thought
they could establish themselves above both man and God. By building this
monument to themselves, they reasoned they alone would control their
destiny.
The Wycliffe Bible
Commentary notes that the purpose of the undertaking was twofold: “First,
they wanted to assure themselves of the strength that comes from unity. The
city and the tower would tie them into a solid group, so that they might be
powerful-even without God's help. They said: ‘Lest we be scattered.’ On the
other hand, they were determined to make themselves renowned, to make for
themselves a name.”
“The sins of
self-sufficiency and pride predominated in their thinking. They wanted to
make sure that they would not be forgotten. The tower would hold them
together and secure their names from oblivion. They defied God and set out
to prove their towering structure would be a monument to their energy,
daring, genius, and resources.”
The Bible goes on to say
that God wasn’t amused with this at all. He “confused their language” and
the people’s worst fears came upon them. God “scattered them over all the
earth.”
When Gere found this portion
of Scripture the New York Post reported he said it was “a sign from
God that He is still watching over us.”
Gere is at least right about
that. God is still watching over us, and is capable of speaking to us
today-even through the rubble of what’s left of the Twin Towers.
The post-9-11 resurgence of
God in America is good. And God’s voice is certainly discernable in the
midst of all the cross talk and cacophony of life on planet earth in the 21st-century
if we know how to listen for it. But upon hearing God's voice, it then
behooves us to make an effort to rightly understand what he is trying to say
in its proper context.
Even if that means we may
not like the message he is trying to convey.
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