The date was September 6 – and the year was 1970. Members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijacked four commercial airliners taking two to a dry lakebed outside Amman, Jordan. The third was flown to Cairo where it was blown up shortly after the passengers disembarked. The fourth had sky marshals on board. There was a shootout killing one hijacker and wounding the other, and the plane landed safely in London. In the following days, a fifth airplane was taken to the desert landing strip, hostages were taken, the planes destroyed, and a violent civil war broke out between the terrorists and the Jordanian army. I was on TWA flight 741 that day and was held hostage for twenty-one days. I was one month short of my twenty-second birthday.

Shortly after my plane left Frankfort, Germany on its way to New York, the man and woman in the seat behind me ran down the aisle to the cockpit and took control of the airplane. The man had a gun – the woman a hand grenade with the pin pulled. They ordered us to put our hands behind our heads and told us they were taking us to a "friendly country. " We were twenty thousand feet in the air with no place to go but down.

For the first time in my life I felt genuine fear. It was the pure unadulterated terror that I was about to die. I know now I had good reason to fear death that day because I am convinced as a matter of absolute truth that if I had died, I would have spent eternity in hell apart from holy God. Not because I was a bad person – I wasn't, I was a good person. But I was a lost person, apart from a saving relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. Raised in a church-going family, I knew all about Jesus, but I did not know Jesus and death that day would have meant eternity alone and apart from God.

Fast forward with me now – it is another September day. For the second time in history, Arab terrorists simultaneously hijack four commercial aircraft. Once again two are taken to the same place, the Twin Towers in New York. Once again the third is taken to another location as it slams into the Pentagon in Washington, D. C. Yet again on the fourth, the terrorists meet resistance and fail to reach their intended destination as the plane crashes in a field in Pennsylvania. Once again there are violent events in which many people die as the Twin Towers collapse and the Pentagon burns. And once again I was there – Pentagon, fourth floor, A ring, just off corridor two. I was one month short of my fifty-third birthday.

I had concluded one meeting and was waiting for a second to begin when we heard the Twin Towers had been hit. As I sat watching the events in New York unfold on television, there was a loud muffled explosion and the Pentagon shook. It was much like a sonic boom going off right overhead. Three thoughts went through my mind in very quick succession. First, I said to myself, "That's not normal. " Second, I looked around and said to myself, "No smoke, no fire, I'm in no immediate danger. Sit tight and wait for instructions. " Many feelings flooded through me in those moments, but the one feeling I did not have was fear. I had no fear at all. You see the third thing that went through my mind was this, "I'm right with God and no matter what happens to me today, whether I live or die, I'm right with God and I'm going to be all right."

We evacuated the building and made our way to the Rand Corporation offices at Pentagon City. It was from there that I was finally able to call my wife nearly two hours after the event. When I talked to Joan, she told me that her first reaction when she heard the Pentagon was hit was panic. But she immediately began to pray and had many others praying, and as prayers lifted up to God, Joan told me a great peace came over her.

God spoke to her clearly and distinctly in her head and said, "Joan, don't worry. George is with Me. " Did you hear what He said?

He didn't say I was alive – He said I was with Him. Joan told me that she realized that at that very moment I could be standing face to face with holy God, and if so she knew that she and our children would be all right – because I was with Him.

Two events – thirty years apart.

Two events that were so eerily similar and yet so rare – and I was there in both. Two events that were so terrifying in their aspects and yet my reaction to them was so different. Why? The answer is found in the most important event in my life. You see, in between those two events, on May 25, 1997 at the altar of Second Baptist Church, Warner Robins, Georgia, I met Jesus. I didn't find religion that day – I had a religion. I didn't join a church that day – I was a member of a church. I taught Sunday School in a church. No, I found Jesus that day. I joined the redeemed that day, because it was on that day that Jesus reached down from heaven, and through His shed blood saved me so I would never again have to fear death.

What about you? You know the distance between life and death is incredibly small. While held hostage in Amman during the civil war, I was kept captive in a house with a large store of ammunition in the back room. At one point Jordanian army tanks closed in out front from two directions. One came within twenty-five meters of our house. I am convinced that if they had come much closer they would have fired into the house blowing us all away. In the Pentagon if the plane had hit the building fifty feet higher and a hundred feet to the right it would have gone right into the roof where I sat. For me the distance between life and death was measured in meters, not miles.

"But George, " I can hear you say, "I've never been hijacked by terrorists, or held hostage in a civil war, or in a building hit by hijacked planes. " Maybe not, but have you ever driven down a two-lane road and thought about that truck that passed you in the opposite direction, your combined speeds over a hundred miles an hour. Put that together with the number of times you've been distracted while driving only to look up just in time to avoid an accident. No, the distance between life and death is very small. So is the distance between heaven and hell. I know where I'm going when I die because the real turning point in my life was not September 6, 1970 or September 11, 2001 – it was May 25, 1997, the day I met Jesus. What about you, have you met Jesus?