Story I just saw on Twitter.
@FoxNews:
Bible undamaged after SUV bursts into flames on Tennessee highway
http://fxn.ws/1L7fvAK http://twitter.com/FoxNews/status/70...919936/photo/1
Now let me add to this story.
My Dad's cousin, Gene, was very close to our family as we were growing up in Paducah. He was not married, and had no family of his own, so he spent a great deal of time with our family.
Gene was a great guy, but not particularly religious. He ran a little wild, but you'd never know it from his visits with us. One Christmas I gave him a Bible for a Christmas gift. He thought it was the greatest gift he had ever received. It zipped up with a cross attached to it.
He talked to me a bunch about it growing up. Of course, I was just a kid, and I was thrilled he loved the Bible I gave him so much. He carried it everywhere, even though he wasn't what most would consider a religious man.
One day he had spent visiting us. It was late, and Dad asked him just to spend the night. Gene said ok, then changed his mind and said he needed to go see some folks across the river that were going to pay him some money he was owed. To this day I don't know what the money was for, but I had the feeling as I grew up it might've had something to do with gambling. Maybe not, I don't know.
Anyway, my Dad gets a call early in the morning. Gene's VW had crashed just off the Brookport bridge from Paducah to Metropolis. The car burned.
Later that day, a Sunday as I recall, Dad went to see the car. It was like a bomb went off. Everything was burned to ashes. Gene's body was unrecognizable, burned so badly. You could barely tell it was a car, just a weird horrific burning.
In the midst of the ashes, Dad saw something glisten. It was the cross attached to the zipper that zipped up the Bible I had given him for Christmas.
He reached in.
The cross was still attached to the zipper. Which was still attached to the Bible.
Perfectly intact. Not one speck of a burn mark
It was as if it had been out of the car when it crashed, stayed outside while it burned up, and then carefully placed among the ashes for Dad to recover after it cooled off.
That was around 1968. I kept the Bible on my nightstand until fairly recently, when I returned it to my Dad. He moved back close to the area when he remarried, and I thought it appropriate for the Bible to return back to close to where it came. I suspect I will have the Bible returned to me one day.
From time to time, I would pull that Bible out, and read where we had inscribed it to Gene for Christmas, and then where he died.
This is a true story, and I cannot possibly explain how it could be true from this World. If you saw the Bible today, you would never believe it was in a raging fire until everything was burned that could be burned.
Except the Bible.
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