Posted on 10/10/2009 8:17:48 AM PDT by Saije
Ron DiFrancesco was at his desk at Euro Brokers…on the 84th floor of the South Tower of the World Trade Center…when the plane struck the North Tower...It was 8:46 am on September 11, 2001… A few minutes later...the second plane struck…
DiFrancesco is normally unflappable. He is a broker in a high-stakes business that demands steel nerves. But he is also slightly claustrophobic, and with the intensifying smoke, he began to panic…Then, something remarkable happened: “Someone told me to get up.” Someone, he says, “called me.” The voice, which was male but did not belong to anyone in the stairwell, was insistent: “Get up!” It addressed DiFrancesco by his first name and gave him encouragement: “It was, ‘Hey! You can do this.’ ”…it was more than a voice — DiFrancesco had a vivid sense of a physical presence nearby.
He had the sensation that “somebody lifted me up.” He felt that he was being guided: “I was led to the stairs. I don’t think something grabbed my hand, but I was definitely led.”…As far as anyone can tell, DiFrancesco was the last person out of the South Tower…before it came down…
DiFrancesco’s encounter may sound like a curiosity, an unusual delusion of an overstressed mind or a testament to his faith. But over the years, the experience he described has occurred again and again…to mountaineers, divers, polar explorers, prisoners of war, solo sailors, shipwreck survivors, aviators, and astronauts. All have escaped traumatic events only to tell…similar stories of having felt the close presence of a companion and helper…that offered a sense of protection, relief, guidance, and hope…that there was some other being at his or her side, when by any normal calculation there was none… There is a name for the phenomenon: It’s called the Third Man factor.
(Excerpt) Read more at mensjournal.com ...
My family knows a man who has been blind since birth. He told my father a story that happened when he was a young boy. He was on a ferry with his mother & the ferry started sinking. Somehow, he got separated from his mother & found himself in the water alone, with absolutely no idea where to go.
He said her heard his dead father’s voice, guiding him to the shore, telling him what direction to swim. He made it to the shore okay.
Well, when I hear stories of 9-11 I feel anger and hatred.
Anger towards the democRATS that allowed it to happen, and hatred towards the muslim rats that did it.
Some people will go to so very much trouble to avoid acknowledging God. Why they are so determined to avoid considering this possibility is beyond me.
Thanks for the post. This looks like something I’d like to read. It has positive reviews on B&N.
This sounds similar to a story an aquaintance who was in the Murrah building in OKC tells. At the next desk a man approached her desk mate and said it was time to go home. He held his hand out so the woman stood up, visibly surprised. She took the man’s hand then the building blew up. The aquaintance said the man wasn’t anyone she recognized, he was dressed oddly, but afterwards she couldn’t say why. The desk mate died in the explosion and no unknown men were found in the wreckage. To this day, she feels that the man was an angel or the Lord.
God gives everyone the chance to come to Him - right up until the moment they die. I believe that He is just making his presence known to believers and non-believers.
That is a riveting story.
There is a name for the phenomenon: It’s called the Third Man factor. ..... also known as Divine Intervention or Guardian Angels.
It gave me goosebumps when she was telling it. She prefaced her remarks by saying before the building blew up she wasn’t a believer in God.
The article more or less attributes the third man to psychology. But they don’t discuss the aspect of it where someone is being helped to do something, like being lifted up, or where they are being guided somewhere they wouldn’t have known to go.
Exactly. And even if it is a chemical change in the brain, God makes chemical changes in brains.
In fact God makes the chemicals. And the brains.
They always forget that.
Jesus left the tomb without rolling away the stone, without even unwrapping that in which he had been enshrouded and laid to rest. The 'Him' went to some where/when from our commonly sensed where/when. His physical body was transformed in such a way that He in the body left the stone tomb. He appeared from this where/when to visit several times with His Disciples before ascending to Heaven. During visitation prior to ascension, He ate before witnesses.
The body has layers of life simultaneously happening, cells sensing a collective purpose, co-ordinating activities, and even perhaps sensing light and dark patterns (see 'Cell Intelligence'). To a cell in the finger, a cell in the toe is as far separated as a person standing in San Fran is from a person sitting in New York ... yet man has discovered a means by which these two can transmit data to each other and co-ordinate actions.
We have been told that we are body, soul, and spirit. All three are in some way an expression of aliveness at varying levels of complexity in spacetime terms, yet each level is likely restricted by characteristic spacetime limitations. Jesus, with His resurrection, showed us that aliveness in spirit is able to transcend the limitations operating over cellular and mental aliveness.
BTTT
Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
—But who is that on the other side of you?
God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble.
Psalm 46:1
Thanks for the ping!
Sometimes survival is just numbers or even just dumb luck.
And when it is the plan of a higher power...we’ll know for sure later on.
As for the incident in the lead article, I’m sure Sam Harris
(atheist advocate of the “God Part of The Brain” concept) might say
this was a case of “The God Part of The Adrenal Glands”.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
