I woke up startled. The date was November 18, 2001, it was still dark outside. My mind was confused. “Did I wake earlier and fall back to sleep? What was that? Was it a dream, a vision! Did I actually hear those words or dream them?”
Thinking back to Tuesday, September 11th was just another day for me to hunt through the employment ads in the local Orlando, Florida newspaper, or so I thought. I turned on the TV to get the current news.
“Good grief! A plane just crashed into that building!”
The announcer said it was New York City. Was this a movie on the current news channel? That was strange. I witnessed a large explosion and heard the announcement. I sat stunned not moving from the TV.
I immediately called my son at work in Maryland. “Mom, we just heard and the guys are hooking up a TV right now, gotta go!”
I phoned my daughter anxious for someone, anyone to tell me this was not happening.
“I can’t believe it,” she said, “we’ll talk later.”
I called my good friend Ginger, a secretary at the University of Florida. “We just plugged in the TV.” She sounded anxious and out of breath. “Get back to you tomorrow.”
I sat alone in the living room stunned, staring at the television as the announcer said another plane crashed into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. My nerves were on edge; this painful gnawing in the back of my mind would not leave me alone.
I had conversations with God, most of them were one sided with me doing all the talking. This time I wanted Him to tell me what was going to happen next. I needed to know, but not sure why. Most of my answers came when I fasted and prayed.
Everyone in the country was on an edge and why not? Since that dreadful day on September 11th our lives would never be “normal” again. We would never take for granted our sense of being safe.
Now we were told, “Be more alert.” I thought to myself. “How does one become more alert?” Is there training manual ‘out there’ somewhere that will give us directions?
We lived in the safest country on earth, or so we thought. Politicians in the government were now constantly telling us on the TV, “Go about your business.” How could it be business as usual any longer?
Never knowing when the next strike would come. This November morning was different for me. Three words stuck in my mind ‘spectrum,’ ‘nuclear’ something or other, and ‘bin Laden.’
Did I hear that second word correctly? Nuclear holocaust! “No, no, that can’t be correct.”
I was working myself into a panic. This was not the first time I’d had a warning dream, but it was the most recent. Now, the question that haunted me was, “What am I going to do with it?”
I decided to drive to my daughter’s house and ask what she thought of this strange information.
“Mom, what does it mean?”
“It’s a warning,” I said, “I just don’t know how these three words are connected.”
“Okay, it’s a warning.” Her voice becoming pitched with sharp skepticism. “So what are you going to do with it? No one will listen to you.”
She was probably right, what did I know? Surely other folks have gotten some sort of message maybe had a sixth sense into future events.
Later that week, I briefly mentioned the words to a friend. Debbie was a little sarcastic. “People get warnings every day about one thing or another, it’s probably just on you’re mind you had a dream and this is the result of that stress.”
“No,” I said to myself, “this was more than a dream.”
The quiet voice inside me said I would find the answer at the public library. I looked up one of the search engine web sites and typed the letters S – P – E – C – T – R – U – M. To my amazement up came a list.
“Hmmm, this first one looks interesting.” Okay, get the arrow on that word and pop it open see what it has to say.
The front page of a magazine came up – IEEE Spectrum.
“Well, that’s the first word.” I was not amazed, I was astounded! I located the second word at the bottom of the web site page, it said nuclear power!
I was gradually becoming alarmed at where I thought this might be headed. I had no idea “IEEE Spectrum” was the name of a popular engineering magazine.
As I scrolled down, toward the bottom of the same page I noticed the title of an article, “Unconventional Nuclear Weapons.” The second word. I could not believe it! I opened the article.
There it was the third word . . . Osama bin Laden. The article suggested how nuclear weapons could be used against the public in several different ways. Was it a message from God? Did it mean the next terror attack would be a nuclear explosion? Is it actually a warning message?
Do I have some sort of encouraging word or thought from God? I wish I could say that I did.
Maybe the words written in II Timothy 3:1 will give us a clue. “But know this, in the last days perilous times shall come.” I do know for certain that God has given us critical insight into the future.
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Scripture: New King James Version (NKJV)
A copy of the original article is in my personal file.
Article in the IEEE Spectrum Magazine, November 2001 – www.spectrum.ieee.org