There are plenty of contentious issues in organized religion, and the idea of divine intervention has to be right up there. Why would a deity intervene in one case and not another? It’s all part of the plan, or so we’re told.
Still, many people are seeing signs of some goodness that might have come out of a nasty church fire, and there’s nothing wrong with finding the good in the bad.
Firefighters in West Virginia found an unusual sight when the responded to a fire at Freedom Ministries Church in Grandview.
A massive fire had consumed the church in flames in the middle of the night, reducing it to a shell of its former self and effectively evicting the congregation.
However, when the sun rose the next day, the building had a surprise in store.
Picking through the rubble, the firefighters found that all the bibles inside were still intact.
“Picture this, a building so hot that at one point in time, firefighters had to back out,” read a post on the Coal City Fire Department’s Facebook page. “In your mind, everything should be burned, ashes.”
It wasn’t just the bibles that emerged from the inferno with little more than a singe and a dusting of soot.
The fire department said that “not a single cross was harmed!” And, thankfully, they were able to add that “Not a single firefighter was hurt!”
“Prayers for the pastor and the congregation today,” they concluded.
No surprise, the firefighters’ post went viral, with the images of the unburned bibles stirring many folks on Facebook.
Just two days after making the post, it had received more than 34,000 reactions and 37,000 shares.
The post also received more than 3,400 comments, with many of the glowing and thankful variety, as you might expect.
And many, many people had similar stories to share. “Our house burned nothing left but my dads bible. He had passed years before,” wrote one person. “The cover was gone but not one word was burned. Gods word prevails.”
Another person, who said they had been a volunteer firefighter responding to the Flight 93 crash in Pennsylvania on 9/11, said she had seen something similar that day, too.
“We were walking in the woods yelling for survivors, and looking for the wreckage, when we got on scene. We found wallets and papers, blowing in the wind, that were charred and burnt. Un readable. We did however, find a Bible. Untouched. Completely readable,” she wrote . “I don’t talk much about responding that day, but felt compelled to share my story too.”
Some other folks suggested a more terrestrial phenomenon was at work.
“Books usually don’t burn unless parted. The compression of the paper leave no room for air to feed the fire. Smoke damage and light burning on outside is normal,” wrote one person.
Another person backed that up, saying “unless its moved and manipulated (poked at with a stick or something to open pages up) the fire will not burn the inner pages bc there is no oxygen flowing thru…Have a bonfire toss some old books and dont mess with them. The outside may burn a bit, the edges but the inside of the pages will be completely fine.”
The affected congregation made a post about the fire as well, but didn’t even mention the un-burned bibles or crosses.
“We will have to rebuild but we will be ok,” read their Facebook post. “We will fight the enemy and not let him hold us down.”
