It’s clear by now that the U.S. Secret Service is not a very elite security detail. Random, weaponless rallygoers paid more serious attention to the would-be assassin before he fired than the allegedly professional team assigned to Donald Trump on Saturday. Trump’s security detail did not secure him. Someone else did.
The Person who saved Trump’s life — and our nation from dangerous social unrest — is Jesus Christ. It is not random that wind gusts were present in just the right amount to have shifted the bullet’s course from fatal to flesh wound. It is not accidental that Trump turned his head at precisely the right second to avoid sudden death.
To phrase it as Whittaker Chambers did in explaining his conversion from atheism to Christianity, which began when he watched his toddler eating: “My eye came to rest on the intricate convolutions of her ear — those intricate, perfect ears. The thought passed through my mind: ‘No, those ears were not created by any chance coming together of atoms in nature. … They could have been created only by immense design.’ … I did not then know that, at that moment, the finger of God was first laid on my forehead.”
The finger of God was also laid on Trump’s forehead Saturday night, turning it in the precise direction at the precise moment to spare his life. The chances of everything occurring as it did by random chance are impossibly improbable. No, the only Person who saved Trump is the same Person Who saves anyone who is ever saved: Jesus Christ, the God of the universe in human flesh.
He Who Controls Both Body and Soul
The whole world watched a miracle in live-time on global TV Saturday night. We watched in striking color the reality that the life and death of every person — and nation — is held in God’s hands. It is Jesus Christ who proclaims:
[D]o not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered.
Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows. So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.
This is why the Christian martyrs often surprised their captors by boldly declaring that no one could put them to death. For the true God promises that “he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.” The good man who died saving other people’s lives in Pennsylvania Saturday, Corey Comperatore, believed in Him Who Is “the resurrection, and the life,” and Who promises, “[W]hosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.”
According to Comperatore’s daughter, he was a “man of God” who “loved Jesus fiercely.” No one took Comperatore’s life. Like his Savior, Jesus Christ, he laid it down for those he loved. Also like Jesus Christ, he will rise again. In the same chapter of Matthew quoted above, Jesus promises, “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” See you in eternity, brother.
The Power of Life and Death Is God’s
Saturday was not Trump’s day to die. His near-death experience was a very visible divine event displaying to all the world Who holds full power over life and death: Jesus Christ. It is a spiritual shock treatment to increase the faith of those who believe and ignite new faith in those ready to believe.
Even with a highly competent Secret Service, Trump could fall at any time God chooses, to any malady. Like every one of us, he could have — God forbid, of course — a heart attack, an aneurysm, or myriad other fatal events. Not even the world’s best doctors or warriors can stop death. The best they can do is sometimes delay it.
As Proverbs says, “The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord, Like the rivers of water; He turns it wherever He wishes.” Yes, the king’s heart and his head as well. The psalmist says, “But thou, O Lord, art a shield for me; my glory, and the lifter up of mine head. … I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people, that have set themselves against me round about.”
No one but God shifted Trump’s head that day, and no one but God decides when Trump will meet his Maker. It’s direct and clear evidence that, yes, there is a God, and he divinely intervenes in human affairs.
Miracles Are Proof God Is Real
Miracles are everywhere. They are proof that God is real. And the fact that He’s real should change all of us every moment of our lives.
Miracles are both a rare and everyday occurrence. Every time a child is conceived is a miracle. That happens hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of times each day. It’s a miracle there aren’t more wars, that millions of people have clean and even hot water, that billions of people can eat enough to stay alive every day. Such quotidian miracles are typically hidden: inside mothers’ bodies, plastic pipes, farmers’ tools, the everyday.
Miracles like the one we saw Saturday are rarer and thus a special call for us all to stop, reflect, and pray. That’s because, if we’re honest, we all understand that any of us could die at any moment and face God’s just judgment, yet so many of us are mercifully spared each minute. This highly visible mercy for our undeserving nation calls for national and international gratitude, repentance, faith, and prayer.
