Christianity Today Magazine On 'Spiritual Disaster Preparedness': Will Christians Show The Will To Pursue Prevention Of Pending Threats?
At 10:13 a.m. on Sunday, May 25, 2008, a 14-foot U-Haul truck will abruptly come to an inexplicable stop in the middle of the 900 block of Pennsylvania Avenue. There, in the heart of downtown Washington, D.C., only yards away from the FBI and the Justice Department, the nuclear warhead hidden in the truck's cargo bed will explode... at 15 kilotons, the blast radius will cover 1.5 miles, encompassing and destroying the White House, the Capitol Building and Congressional offices, and the Supreme Court; the buildings housing the IRS and the Departments of Energy, Commerce, and Transportation; and the Washington Monument, the Smithsonian, and the National Mall and Museums. That morning the district will be bustling with workers clearing their inboxes prior to the long Memorial Day weekend and tourists who are already making the rounds. Tens of thousands of people will die in the first minutes. The dead include the majority of all nationally elected officials, including the President and Vice-President, as well as the core employees in each branch of the government. Additional tens of thousands will die both quickly and slowly by asphyxiation, burning, and building collapse in the subsequent firestorms. And the number of critically injured will dwarf the number of initial fatalities as the regional health-care system collapses. The ledger of the dead will overflow as radiation and the plume of deadly smoke take their toll on downwind communities, whether Baltimore or Arlington. Now, the stunned silence. Now, the widespread panic. Now, the disaster response. Now, the howls for retribution. Now: What does the American church do? One thing the American church will almost certainly do in such a situation is wish that it had done something sooner.
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