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"I
don't think we're going to get out of this thing.
I'm
going to have to go out on faith."
It was the voice of Todd Beamer, the passenger
... and Wheaton College graduate
... who said,
"Let's roll" as he led
the charge against the
Terrorists who had hijacked United Flight 93,
the one, you will remember, that
crashed in
the Pennsylvania countryside.
The whole world knows how brave Beamer
and his fellow passengers were on
September 11th.
But this week we learned more
fully what buttressed
that bravery: Faith in Jesus
Christ.
Todd died as he lived, a faithful
evangelical believer.
In an article titled "The Real Story of Flight 93,"
Newsweek reveals gripping new details from the
actual transcripts of the now-recovered cockpit
voice recorder. "Todd had been afraid,"
Newsweek relates.
"More than once, he cried
out for his Savior."
After passengers were herded to
the back of the
jet, Beamer called the GTE
Customer Center
in Oakbrook, Illinois . He told
supervisor Lisa
Jefferson about the hijacking.
The passengers
were planning to jump the
terrorists, he said.
And then he asked her to pray
with him.
As Newsweek relates.
"Beamer kept a Lord's Prayer
bookmark in his
Tom Clancy novel, but he didn't
need any
prompting. He began to recite the
ancient litany,
and Jefferson joined him:
Our Father which art in heaven,
Hallowed be Thy name."
As they finished, Beamer added,
"Jesus, help me."
And then, Beamer and his fellow
passengers
prayed a prayer that has comforted millions
down through the centuries. The prayer that
David wrote in a time of great anguish:
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall
not want.
Yea, though I walk through the
valley
of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil.
And then the famous last words:
"Are you guys ready? Let's
roll."
We now know from the cockpit
voice recorder
that Beamer and other passengers
wrestled with
the hijackers and forced the
plane to crash into
the ground, killing themselves
but foiling what
was believed to have been the
hijackers' plan to
fly Flight 93 into the Capitol or
the White House.
As Christians, we know that God
can bring good
out of evil. In Todd Beamer, the
world witnesses
a faith that held up in the
extremity of fear.
A faith that is even now
comforting his widow
and two young sons.
Lisa Beamer told NBC's Dateline,
"You know, in the Lord's
Prayer, it asks us
to forgive our trespasses as we
forgive those who
trespass against us."
"As Todd prayed this prayer
in the last moments of his life,
in a way," Lisa said,
"He was forgiving those
people for what they were
doing, the most horrible thing
you could ever do
to someone."
It wasn't Todd Beamer's job to
fight terrorists.
He was just a passenger, who
along with several
others, did what he didn't have
to do but foiled a
terrible evil that might have
been done to his country.
As Flight 93 hurtled towards
destruction,
Todd Beamer could not have known
that his
quiet prayers would ultimately be
heard by
millions. That
the story of his last acts on
earth would be a witness to the
Lord he loved
and served and a lasting example
of true heroism.
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