MONTGOMERY, Ala. (ABP) — An Alabama Baptist church gathered Aug. 22 to
praise God for something that didn't happen. A day earlier, 14 church
members survived a frightening accident when a church van blew a tire
and overturned several times on an interstate highway.
"By all practical rights, we should be meeting here today to mourn because of a great tragedy," Pastor Jay Wolf told the congregation of First Baptist Church in Montgomery. "But instead we meet here to praise God for immeasurable victory."
The van was part of a caravan of teenagers and adult sponsors on the way to a retreat for the purpose of organizing "accountability groups" to provide students with positive peer support in the coming school year.
Several passengers were ejected from the vehicle, and the driver, First Baptist Minister to Students Stuart Davidson, had to be extricated using the Jaws of Life. Despite that, seven of the 14 walked away either without a scratch or with minor injuries. The rest suffered injuries including concussions and broken bones, but none were considered life-threatening.
The accident took place on Interstate 85 near Shorter, Ala., about 25 miles east of Montgomery.
Wolf described it as miraculous that no one was killed.
"Beyond explanation, defying the physical laws that should have been enacted, everybody survived," he said. "Fourteen people on the van, and seven walked away, not hospitalized, cradled in the hand of God. The devil meant evil, and the jaws of death were wide open, and the hand of God intercepted."
"In the microsecond of that accident, as the van was tumbling and those kids were being thrown out, God caught them," Wolf explained. "He intervened. He suspended the natural laws that should have occurred."
The pastor addressed church members who might have been wondering, "Why did God allow this to happen?"
"When you read God's Word you see that God did not save Daniel from the lion's den," Wolf said. "He saved him in the lion's den."
"We live in a fallen world, and we don't get an exemption," he continued. "We will travel through the valley of the shadow of death, but God will meet you there. He does not save us from these problems. He saves us within these problems."
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Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.