On August 11th of this year, we were in Pennsylvania at the 9/11 memorial for Flight 93. As we went into the visitor’s center, there were rows of displays showing the timeline of events and monitors playing television broadcasts from that fateful morning we will never forget: September 11, 2001.
What struck me while in the visitor’s center were the number of kids – adolescents and teens – as well as young adults glued to the screens, watching what was unfolding. Yearly, news channels, Discovery, History channel, and even the major networks dedicate airtime to replaying the events. Though it sounds cliché, I feel like I’ve seen them all a hundred times. But those kids – they weren’t even alive when this happened!
In my brain, it doesn’t feel like it’s been 23 years ago. For them, most were probably seeing these things for the first time, and it makes me wonder how they are feeling as they are watching this.
Do you remember where you were and what you were doing on that morning? Do you remember how you felt as you watched the planes hit the towers, the Pentagon, and crash in an open field in Stonycreek Township near Shanksville, Pennsylvania? Can
you still feel the sickening grip of sadness as you watched the Twin Towers collapse, knowing that thousands of people had been snuffed out into eternity in an instant? Can you still sense the feeling of vulnerability and the loss of security when we learned that a group of terrorists perpetrated such an act against our nation IN our nation. People complain that nothing has been the same since COVID. But since 9/11, nothing has been the same, either.
I say this with no animosity or judgment in my heart, but I believe 9/11 was a wake-up call to a nation that had become too complacent and comfortable, thinking that the enemy could never touch us in our own homeland. In a lot of ways, Americans have the same problem as the church. We think the enemy is far away, bothering someone else, and can never attack us on our home turf. This is a dangerous comfort to develop!
We have Peter’s familiar warning in 1 Peter 5:8. “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.” We know our enemy, Christians, and his demonic team is out to destroy us.
Like the terrorists, Satan’s demonic hoard know how to fly under the radar and fool most people. Jude 1:4a says, “For there are certain men crept in unawares…” Peter says, “But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction…And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you: 
whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not.” (2 Peter 2:1, 3) And Paul describes them to Timothy in 2 Timothy 3:5-6 as “Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. (6) For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts.”
As Americans, we cannot live in fear. However, 9/11 taught us to live with heightened awareness. As Christians, we are not to live in fear, either. But in these last days, we need a heightened awareness that the enemy is out there.
As I write my final thoughts on this devotional, let’s put two passages together: Matthew 7:15 and 2 Corinthians 2:11. “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves… Lest Satan should get an advantage of us: for we are not ignorant of his devices.”
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