Sujo John bears the classic attributes of the insider 9/11 operative. As a peripatetic actor with only a scant back-stop, he pops up in the role of recent immigrant, newly married, and freshly hired by a firm---never publicly named, but said to occupy offices on the 81st floor in the World Trade Center's North Tower---just a few months before the cataclysmic and catalyzing false-flag attacks there brought three towers down. Unlike many others in an often fluid cast of participants, who could either disappear as imaginary fatalities after short runs as real-world business characters, or remain in the limelight in the roles of "survivors," whose membership provide the ersatz reality to what were often merely Computer-Generated identities, fictions told second-hand by an utterly mesmerized, if not fascistically controlled mass media.
Sujo, despite a high floor placement near the North Tower's death zone, seems to have been groomed for a special suvivorship status as a Christian hero. Armed with fabricated 9/11 horror stories, his long-running and lucrative speaking career aimed at Evangelical and Fundamentalist church-goers is in service to a covert controlling organization, but his narrative has so many holes it resembles a Swiss cheese that smells like a Limburger.
And unlike Col. Brian Birdwell, who faked his own burn injuries at the Pentagon bombing on 9/11, but who otherwise seems motivated by a legitimate, if misguided, religious conviction as he follows a similar career, executing the millennial eschatology of hidden masters, there would appear to me to be a much deeper level of deception in the ploy of Sujo John, whose "Christian ministry" is likewise based on lies, fakery, and deception, but also seems absent any true belief or sincerity beyond a mercenary desire, and the thrall of the diabolical.
Sujo has occupied space for the past ten-plus years at the heart of a militant American/Israeli ideology that created the occasion of September 11th themselves, with its evident planning component designed to initiate religious revivalism, if not having actually war-gamed the coming Apocalypse itself. Designed to manipulate and overwhelm believers in Christian love and pacifism, or Jewish truth and justice for that matter, the power of a tiny few organized in an unholy alliance of Zionist and New Testament warmongers conspired against their third branch of Abrahamic co-religionists, and corrupted the morals, values and inherent meaning that most humans aspire to.
A video below of Sujo John's performance of his standard stump speech on the Christian Broadcasting Network, televised September, 2010, with a transcript of the appearance following, represents the absolute nadir of this movement; the moment when the poorly scripted lies become so self-evident; when the substandard form of this controlled reality is revealed as the hack job it is; when our eyes open to the distinctions between a post-traumatized generation which 9/11 transformed, and the legions of minions who conceptualized and undertook this evil as tools for a lower class of powerful beings.
Videos and transcripts of several other presentations of his same 9/11 narrative, which Sujo gave later in 2011, follow the 2010 version. Apparently, a light is dawning in the conspirator's camp as well, as some of the egregious logical fallacies from 2010 are later addressed or amended---but just not enough to plug the leaks in a sinking story, which likely had remained unchallenged and static since 2002. But the ill-conceived and executed contributions of third-rate talents who were relegated to the periphery of an otherwise sterling production, had their faults obscured until now behind the larger psychological effects that traumatized the public's consciousness.
Sujo John: September 11, 2001...A Survivor's Story - CBN.com, 8:17 minutes,
Uploaded by CBNonline on Sep 10, 2010,
He was inside of Tower 1 when the first plane hit. Now, nine years later, Sujo John spreads the Gospel of a God who saves...The Christian Broadcasting Network CBN,
TRANSCRIPT:
LIVE IN STUDIO:
TERRY MEEUWSEN: In February 2001, Sujo John and his new wife, moved to the United States, with just $50 in his pocket. Soon, Sujo said, he was living the American dream, because he landed a great job, working at the World Trade Center.
VIDEOTAPE:
SUJO: When death stares at your face. what is going to stare right back at your face, is where you're going, and where your destiny is.
MALE ANNOUNCER: Sujo John is a survivor---a living miracle. His office was on the 81st floor of Tower One of the World Trade Center. He had landed an excellent sales job with a firm there, but he says, something was stirring deep inside.
SUJO: That morning of September 11th, as I sat down on my cube on the 81st floor, I felt a sense of emptiness, a voidness in my life, which I'd never experienced before. And I wrote an email to a friend of mine who goes to my home church in New Jersey, I said, "Tom, something's happening to me this morning. I know there's a call of God upon my life. But I don't find any opportunity for ministry." I sent that email at 8:05 on September 11th from my office. I had no idea that in the next 40 minutes this great tragedy would happen. God would spare our lives.
MALE ANNOUNCER: The first plane smashed into the floors just above Sujo's office.
SUJO: I just barely, you know, got out of my seat when this loud explosion goes up, and one part of our office caught on flames, and there was small flames all through.
MALE ANNOUNCER: He, and others made it to the stairs. On the way down, Sujo could only think of his wife Mary, who was pregnant with their first child.
SUJO: I began the descent with a very heavy heart, very heavy, because my wife works in World Trade Two.
MALE ANNOUNCER: Then a second plane hit Tower Two. Sujo eventually made it safely out of the building. Moments later, Tower Two collapsed.
LIVE IN STUDIO:
TERRY: Please welcome back to The 700 Club, World Trade Center survivor, Sujo John. It's wonderful to have you.
SUJO: Thank you. It's an honor to be on your program.
TERRY: What an incredible story, but before we get to 9/11, I want to mention that something happened in your family when you were growing up in Calcutta, India. Tell me about that.
SUJO: I was raised in a Christian home, but when I was about nine years of age, a tragedy hits my home. My only sister dies of leukemia. And that got my really bitter and angry at God. If you are this God, you spoke that everything comes into existence, you are the author of life, and anything that is good, you are the source, then why is there death, why is there suffering?
TERRY: So, when you talked about, in the video piece that we saw, when you talked about feeling empty inside, though you had a sort of a shell of a belief, you had never really come to the place of answering those questions for yourself, have you?
SUJO: Well, actually, at age 15, right after, you know, a few years after my sister died, I was introduced to, ah, ah, the love story of Jesus Christ through an American missionary, who explained to me how Christianity was not a religion, but it's friendship with God. So, yes, I was a believer, but, you know, I was one foot in the world and one foot in the church, and knowing that I'm...if I were to die I would go to heaven, but, in a way, doing my own thing---chasing stuff. And that's what was going on in my life just before 9/11.
TERRY: On that morning, you were doing business with what you felt in your heart---you'd sent this email to a friend, expressing your discontent with yourself, really, at that point, and where you were at. What were you feeling, what was going through your heart and mind?
SUJO: You know, I had arrived in America in February, 2001, and in a matter of six or seven months, I'd landed this great job, everything was going well. My wife was four months pregnant, and, ah, I'd did the damage of reading this book, Prayer of Jabbaz, which....
TERRY: ...Ah, I read it myself, had the same thing happen.
SUJO: ...which just messed me up. And so I'm saying, God, there's got to be more than what I'm going through. All I find myself doing is going to church Sunday after Sunday, and going through the motions of church life. And so I wrote that email that morning, and I'm on the 81st floor, looking out the window, seeing this glorious view of the Lady with the Torch, and these emotions running through my mind: "God, you know my story, I came here with nothing, but now so blessed, but I know there's a call of God upon my life. God, I want to be of use of you." And that, those were my thoughts, running through my mind just before the plane crashed into the World Trade Center.
TERRY: I think all of us wonder what it was like for people who were in that building at the time of the crash. What did you think? You feel this jolt, you hear this amazing explosion, you see fire. What went through your mind?
SUJO: We hear this incredible explosion, and someone on our floor actually saw the plane come in.
TERRY: Oh, they did?
SUJO: But we thought it was a small plane, and the building shook violently, we had no idea then that it was a terrorist attack. We all thought that it was a small commuter plane, the pilot probably had a cardiac arrest or something, and it crashed into the building, but as jet fuel spread to our floor, and as walls were caving down, and as we saw a huge crater right above us, we could actually see, ah, you know, ten or fifteen floors right above us---a picture of just twisted steel and cable.
TERRY: So, Sujo, how did you get out of there?
[CLUMSY EDIT]
SUJO: We fought our way through the fire, you know, we looked for the stairwell, and we get to the stairwell, and it was kind of crowded with thousands of people running down the stairwell. But one thing in common, though, the fear of death written on every face. And we started running down that stairwell, and it took me more than an hour to come down 81 floors, and ah, and I came down 81 floors and went to the South Tower to look for my wife.
TERRY: Yeah.
SUJO: Because my pregnant wife would work on the 71st floor of the South Tower, and anyway Terry, that's when my story begins. I'm 15 or 20 feet away from the building, when I hear this incredible explosion, and I thought it was a bomb, but I soon realized this is not a bomb. The building I had just approached, the South Tower, was finally imploding and going down.
TERRY: Wow. You were praying with a man right before the North Tower went down, tell me about that, before it collapsed. What happened to that guy? Did you ever see him again? Did you ever...
SUJO: Well, I was able to pray with about 15 or 20 people, right as the building...
TERRY: Really.
SUJO: ...the South Tower was collapsing, and I saw screaming, and I asked those 15 or 20 people to call upon the name of the Lord. And the most incredible thing happens---not one tried to argue with me, not one called upon any other God, or tried any other form of religion or faith, because the name of Jesus is so powerful.
TERRY: So, here you are---your tower has been hit and it's collapsing; you hear this explosion in the second tower where your wife is. How did you find her?
SUJO: Well, later that day, you know, after I was pulled out, later that day, ah, and I'd spent many hours thinking she was dead, my cell phone rings, and ah, when I picked up that call, it was my wife on the other side.
TERRY: Ah!
SUJO: She was late to work. She got in the building, but then the North Tower is hit, so she is pushed out of the building. And she spends all these hours thinking I was dead, and I had spent all these hours thinking she was dead.
TERRY: You know, you talk about how you had had an opportunity to come to America. you were acquiring stuff, living the American dream, had a great, great job. How has your life changed since your eyes were, sort of spiritually and physically, opened by this whole experience?
SUJO: Terry, watching people die changed my life forever, and that night I realized, 19 hijackers full of hatred for America and everything this country stood for, attacked this country, and close to three thousand people died, and what hit me hard was the words in the Bible that says, if a thief comes to steal, kill and destroy, and I said, God, if the terrorists were willing to die for a cause that they believed in, how guilty am I, of, not living for the greatest cause on earth, the cause of Jesus Christ, and I wanted to be a preacher of the good news of Jesus Christ, and looking back, it's been nine years this weekend, and we've seen, God's given me the opportunity to take the gospel to millions of people around the world, in over 450 cities, and in America, I feel I'm called as a missionary to this nation, and the stories are a tool that brings in the unchurched, that might not go into a church setting.
TERRY: Yeah, I think of Romans 8:28, how God promises that all things work together for good to those that love him, and how the tragedy that you witnessed, and the near loss of your wife and child and your own life, has now turned into this amazing work, where your sharing the good news of who Jesus Christ is with others, and especially here in the United States. I want to say, if you want to hear more of Sujo's story, we have just skimmed the surface, check out his DV, it's called...his DVD. It's called Out of the Ashes, you can find out how to get a copy by logging onto CBN.com. It's well worth taking the time to see. We're going to be back---thank you Sujo so much for being with us. We're going to be back with more of the 700 Club right after this.
9-11, Ten Years Later: Sujo John - CBN.com,, 12:39 minutes,
Uploaded by CBNonline on Sep 1, 2011
Sujo John's Testimony - Out of the Ashes, 41:22 minutes,
Uploaded by yourlivingmanna on Jan 12, 2012
About yourlivingmanna:
"This Ministry serves the multitudes of people those who are hurt, lost, broken and misled. We also focus on those who are after the truth with a great burden. Let the Living Manna have an opportunity to go in and grow within you so that you may see a constant change in your life by the power of Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour."
3:19 I thought my calling was in business, I got degrees in business. In January of 2000, I would meet a young girl who was born in India, but she had moved with her family when she was really young to America. We meet, get married, and in February of 2001, we get ready to move to America. February was an interesting season of my life now, getting ready to move to a country where I had never been. I had heard a lot about America, watched a lot of popular American stuff on television, and, and tried to glean some of what America was all about through the lenses of movies and literature, but moving to this country would be such a different experience. As I get ready to leave Calcutta, India, a challenge I had to deal with was, I had just got married, spent all my savings on a wedding and a honeymoon, had enough money now to be buying two air tickets, and so when I said goodbye to my family in Calcutta, I just had $50 in my wallet. So I left Calcutta, India with $50, two bags, land up in New York City. A cold day in New York City. God had an interesting experience for me that day, because growing up in India, all my dreams was always to see snow, and I land up in New York City right in the middle of a blizzard.
4:35 I quickly realized that everything would be very different in this country. I was raised in a different way, used to a different culture, and so it was kind of fascinating my first few days, weeks getting adjusted to the life in America. But the biggest challenge that I would deal with was, hey, I'm married, I have a wife, God, I need a job. I need some money to get going in this nation. So here begins my quest for a job, my search for a job,. Two weeks and nobody wants to talk to me. Often the response to me is, hey, you're new in this country, get used to life in America, then come try us, maybe we'll give you a job. But God had something so amazing in store for us. Two weeks roll by, third week starts, and there is a job fair at the World Trade Center. So I show up at that job fair, and by then my wife had just found work at the World Trade Center, she had started working on the 71st floor of the South Tower. So, I'm now engaging with this young recruiter at this job fair, and she begins to tell me how her company, they office out of the World Trade Center, on the 81st floor of the North Tower. When I heard those words I just felt, really, you know, really blessed, I said, wow God, if you can make this happen, it would be so cool to go to work with my wife every day in the morning at the World Trade Center. This place where the world comes to do business. The interviews went well, and, and, and a week following all those interviews, I get a call saying hey, you've landed the job. Here I am, on this American dream, chasing stuff, and for sure, on my first few paychecks, I take in, I found myself now slowly being resigned to chasing the stuff that America has to offer. Time goes by really quickly and a few months roll by, and something really exciting happens in our family, and my wife is now pregnant. She's, she's pregnant, and we're so excited planning and dreaming about this child that's going to come into our life.
6:36 It's September, 2001, everything going so well at work, and in fact, I'm making great money, my wife is great...making great money, we're buying stuff around us, preparing our home for this baby that's going to come, but right in the middle of all that, I would often feel a gentle voice speaking to me: what are you doing with your life in America. And my response to that gentle voice would be, God, I find myself just chasing things, instead of chasing the things that are on your heart. I happen to pick up this book, called The Prayer of Jabbez, and I said, God, it would be really cool if you could do something with my life. I'm tired of chasing stuff. If you could turn Jabbez's life around, could you do that with me.
7:22 September 11th, 2001, a beautiful, clear day on the East Coast, and I remember leaving home in Northern New Jersey and getting into New York City, for what I thought would be just another day. I get to work, I get to the 81st floor of the North Tower. I make my way to my cube, and now I'm looking out the windows of these towers, and I get to see this glorious view of the Lady with her Torch, and I'm saying, God, wow, my life has taken such an incredible turn. You've blessed us both with great jobs, a child on the way. But God, this morning, my heart cries, would you do something with my life, I know there is a call of God upon my life. I really want you to use me. So now I'm on my computer, I decided to write an email, and again, this stuff is heavy upon my heart, so maybe I should share this, this feeling that I'm feeling right now with a friend of mine, a prayer partner in my home church. And I decided to write an email to my friend in my church in New Jersey with these words: "Hey Tom, something is happening to me this morning. There is a call of God upon my life. I want God to use me. Would you pray for me? Let go of that email at 8:05, the morning of September 11th, 2001, from my office.
8:35 Little did I know then, the next 40 minutes or so, this great tragedy would happen. God would spare our lives, and hear I am, sharing with you a story of God's protection and providence. It's now 8:48 in the morning. I'm standing by this, by this fax machine, and I'm trying to get some documents out to our office in Philadelphia, when everything suddenly changes. I hear this incredible roar, and for a moment I thought my eardrums would burst. You probably were tuned into your radio then, or you probably saw this happen on your television set that morning. This was American Flight 11, flying coast to coast, from Boston to L.A., this huge jet, had come crashing into our tower. The plane struck a few floors above us, but part of the debris of the plane tears in through our floor. Fire breaks out on our floor, walls around us caving down. As I look up I can see a huge crater, I can actually see ten floors directly above us.
9:36 There were about 28 of us in that office and all we could do was, we hit the ground, with our faces flat on that carpet, and as I am lying there, I'm saying, God, if this building is going to go down with me, am I never going to see my wife again, am I'm never going to see the child she's carrying. Oh God, I may never see my parents that live in Calcutta, India. These thoughts just racing through my mind. Jet fuel, smoke, spreading all around us. And now I hear someone from our floor get up, and his cry is, "hey gang, let's get out of this place, let's fight our way through this fire, let's make our way toward the stairwell." So we start fighting our way through the fire. We make our way toward the stairwell, but before we could get to that stairwell, we would have to cross this place where the elevators were. Now the elevators were right in the middle of these towers, the jet fuel had come down the elevator shafts, and balls of fire now shooting out that place. So we kind of had to scrap our backs against the walls that were right behind us, so that we could avoid this fire. We now make our way onto that stairwell. Thousands of people now on that stairwell. The stairwell is not too broad, it's good enough for us to be running down in two files. One thing in common for all those people who were coming down with me--the fear of death written so clearly on everyone's face. I looked at my watch and realized that it's past 8:45 in the morning, and that now reminds me that my pregnant wife is always at work by 8:40 on the 71st floor of the South Tower. And I'm saying, God, if my wife has made it all the way to her building, then there is no way she is going to come down all those flights.
11:24 I'm trying to reach her through my cell phone; I borrowed the phones of other people that were running down those flights with me, but now the cell phones wouldn't work, because the networks were completely jammed. We now hear the explosion. Now you saw that on your television sets too. This is the second plane now crashing into the second tower. We started running down that stairwell. As we continued our descent down, our hearts were very heavy when we, on the 43rd floor and the 44th floor, when we began to see these brave firemen and policemen, one by one, these men, trying to make their way up. And we would ask ourselves, why are they going up? We had seen fire on almost every floor. We had no idea then, that these brave men were literally walking up to their death.
12:12 Now friend, the story of September 11th, 2001, in a lot of ways, is about 19 hijackers full of hatred, that came and captured four commercial airlines, crashed two of them into the World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon, one crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. And the world may look at world...at the tragedy, and the focus might be on Al Qaeda, but let me tell you, when that tragedy happened, there were brave men that faced the worst form of evil you can imagine. And they face it now with hatred, they faced it with unconditional love for humanity. These men, laying down their lives, wanting to make sure that people like us are still around to be sharing our story. So if you have firefighter or policemen watching this, God bless you, and thank you for being a hero in your community.
13:03 We passed all those men. It took me more than an hour to come down all those flights. I get to this level which is called the plaza. Now if you've been to the World Trade Center before the tragedy happened, you would know that the plaza was an open space right in between these towers, surrounded by the World Trade Center. [EDIT] It's a place where people who work in the building hang out at lunch and after work. It's a place of life, a place of exuberance, but now this place of life had been quickly turned into this place of death. Hundreds of bodies of people that had jumped out of the building, all around us. The engine of American Flight 11 lying right in the middle of that plaza. And you can only imagine the pain and the horror that ran through our minds as we watched this scene all around us. A fireman comes running to us with these words: "Please avoid this horrible scene on your left; turn on your right, and go down a few more flights, this will take you to the lowest level of the World Trade Center, and once you get there, find your way out of this burning building. So I make my way down those few flights, which gets me to the lowest level of the World Trade Center. It's the Concourse level, where you can have an...through it you can have easy access under the street level. I find all these people being let out of all these exits, but I thought of walking towards the South Tower, thinking, if my wife has not made her way up into her building, then she could be standing somewhere near that building looking for me. And in a way, friend, that's when my story really begins.
14:37 I get close to the South Tower, and suddenly I realize that the ground around me is shaking. It felt like an earthquake, I felt like I was being sucked into some kind of vacuum, there was this incredible roar. For a moment I thought it was a bomb that had imploded in front of us, but I soon realized that this was not a bomb. The very building I'd approached, the South Tower, was finally imploding and going down. And now I come to terms with my mortality. And now there is a cry from deep within my soul, God, if I am going to die here, where am I going? Have I lived a life that's pleasing in your sight? Or have I tried to live my life my way? It was a moment of fear, desperation. When that moment of fear and hopelessness, I felt the Lord speak His peace over me. And I felt the Lord remind me of that event that happened in my life, age 15, responding to a message of an American missionary in Calcutta, India. And I felt the Lord saying, Sujo, because of your walk with me, if you die here, you're going to make it to this place called heaven. That is the greatest experience I've ever had in my life. The greatest peace and the greatest joy that I could ever have in my life was in that moment of turbulence, confusion, and pain, and loneliness, when God gives me this glorious peace, of this place called heaven. And I love talking about heaven, because, folks, that's the hope of this whole message that we are all about. Heaven, this glorious place, that He's preparing for those that have turned to a relationship with Him.
16:10 In fact, Jesus talked a lot about heaven. In John 40, he shares that with his disciples. He was trying to prepare them for the fact that soon He would leave this earth, but there would be hope for them after he would be gone. [John 14:1-6] So He says, "do not be troubled. Trust in God and trust also in me, and my father's house, there are many rooms, and if were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, then words of Jesus, not the words of the Southern Baptist Convention, or a Methodist church, or a charismatic church, or whatever affiliation you're from, the words of Jesus read in some Bibles, read in my ancient Bible, He says, I will come back and take you to be with me so that also may be where I am going. So, this piece of heaven that just owns me, and now there are other words of the Bible that speaks to my heart, Romans 10:13, whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord, shall be saved.
17:07 Now folks, growing up in India, I was always a kind of closet Christian. If you'd ask me about what I believe in, or why I do some things, or why I avoid some things, then maybe I will engage with you in a spiritual conversation, otherwise, I'm not one of those guys to talk about Jesus all the time.
17:24 And now these words are playing on my mind. And as the Lord speaks His words upon my heart, I realize that there were a group of 15 or 20 people that were quickly gathering around me. In fact, we huddled together, I'm on top of men and women, there were men and women on top of me, and I felt the Lord saying, these people that are with you, where are they going without Jesus, and at that moment, I begin, I realized, that this is my time to speak up for Jesus. These people that are with me, and me, we are facing death, but if they don't know Jesus, where are they going to go and spend eternity? So I started crying out, Jesus, and I asked those 15 or 20 people that are with me to call upon the name of the Lord. And I want you to know that something amazing happened. Not one tried to call upon any other God, or tried any other form of religion or faith, how could they? Because there is only one name under all of heaven and earth, by which we can be saved, and that's the sweet, matchless name of Jesus.
18:23 The last few minutes I have been sharing with you my story about how I faced death, of how a building was collapsing around me, and I want to pause here for just a moment because I realize that some of you, as you watch this story, you're walking through some real stories in your life. And friend, I don't know your story. It could be a marriage situation, it could be something with your finances, something in your relationship with your spouse, boyfriend---here's an encouragement for you as you watch this: God's aware of your story. In your storm, in that trial, if you will call upon His name, that's how a piece of God can flood your soul. A piece of God just hit me so hard. And then it didn't matter whether I was going to live or whether die. We prayed for a few minutes. Here's a deafening noise as this building going down. We all started moving from that huddle. I'm about 15 or 20 feet from that huddle, my face flat on the ground, lying there. And I realize I'm being buried in debris, in debris, soot, glass, all kind of stuff fall on me, and I'm thinking: great God, I'm going to die here, but I really hope that my death can be less painful; I hope something soft hits me. I'm buried with all this stuff, I thought I was going to die because I could not breathe, I was choking on the soot and the smoke that was all around me. After what, 15 or 20 minutes, I'm kind of surprised that I'm still alive, tried to get up, I'm plastered with soot and ash, glass, all around me, could not breathe. I decided to feel my way back to that place where I prayed with those people, don't they realize that those 15 or 20 people that I prayed with, they did not make it out alive,. Their bodies were smashed and crushed. I said, God, they just called upon your name and how come they not make it? And I felt the Lord saying, Sujo, they made their peace with me in their dying moments, and they're resting with me in my presence.
20:15 My Bible says, what shall profit a man [Mathew 16:26] if he gains the whole world, and loses his soul. If I could paraphrase that for you: you chase success, and success shows up at your doorstep. You chase fame, popularity, wealth, and it's arrived for you. You gain it all--lose your soul. Man, what would be your profit?
20:39 I looked around, one man alive, this is an F.B.I. agent. I reached my hand out to him, and he reached out his hand to mine. We locked our hands together and I asked him this question: are you a Christian? He said he was. And we started praying, saying, God, if it is your will, show us a way out of this place. We both knew time was short, we were both struggling to breathe. As we continued praying something miraculous happened. A red light, now flashing through all that smoke and soot that was all around us. And I turned to this man and I say, I see a flashing light, which means that's the street level. We have to somehow make our way towards that light. We started walking towards that light, feeling our way through that, all that debris that was around us. We get to this place, where we, where the light becomes really clear. It's a flashing light that's coming out of an ambulance. But that ambulance is now crushed. But the front body of that ambulance is still standing, and that light is still flashing.
21:36 Friend, there is an encouragement that God has for you from this part of my story. As you watch this, you're looking at your life and saying, "I put my trust in people and they've slipped away. I thought my life would end up a certain way. I thought my marriage would work out in a different way for the better, but things are going in a different direction. I have news for you: there is a light watching out for you. In the darkest experience in your life, in the darkest moment in your life, if you will allow that light to shine on you, watch how that light will take you from that place of hopelessness. Your bitter, your lonely, you can't find a reason to be waking up the next morning, yes, God can pick you up from that place of just brokenness and despair, and He can lift you up and take you to this place of comfort and hope. He will take you to this place where you can begin to dream again, where you'll begin to hope again. And that's what the name of Jesus can do for you.
22:41 This man and I we decided, our best bet would be getting close to one of those streets, so we're making our way towards there, when suddenly, this F.B.I. agent, he let go of my hand with these words: "you go on ahead, I got to go back and get more people." That was my last exchange of words with this man. I start running ahead, this man decides to turn back, and start, and starts running, starts running into the North Tower. The North Tower, although it was the first building to get hit, it was still standing.
23:13 A couple of minutes passed by. The ground is shaking again, an incredible roar, turn back to realize the North Tower is now collapsing. I said, God, I hope this brave man, he makes it out alive. This is a story of an incredible American hero, who runs back to be looking for more people. He died that day. He's left behind four young children, and a grieving wife from New Jersey.
23:44 I'm out of the debris. I'm sitting right in the middle of one of the streets of New York City, saying, God, why did you spare my life. The towers don't exist anymore, just smoke, dust, ash, rising out of Ground Zero. I'm saying, God, why did you spare me, for sure my wife is dead. For sure the child she is carrying is gone. I find myself all alone, sitting in one of the corners of, in one of the streets of New York City. And I felt very impressed now to walk into one of the stores that's right across from me. As I walked into the store, a young girl from the store, she comes up, she pulls me into the store, starts removing glass from my hair, and she says, let me call your family for you, and I said, what family? I think my wife is dead. She picks up my phone, starts going through my numbers, the numbers stored in my cell phone, my cell phone rings for the very first time that day in this girl's hand. She hands me back the phone. I flip my phone and I see my wife's caller ID, and I cannot believe it. And I'm saying, God, this can't be her. It's someone else calling me with the news that, hey, your wife is dead. I picked up that call thinking that that would be the worst news of my life, but when I said hello, it's my wife on the other side. Her life was spared.
25:02 We meet each other late that day. It was an amazing moment, one moment of truth when we truly now believe that each of our lives were spared, it was almost magical, but we knew that it was a great plan of God. As we hugged and cried with each other she shares with me her story, she wanted to go to work early that day, but that morning she gets delayed by a couple of minutes. She comes into the World Trade Center by the last train that would make its way that morning into the building. By then the North Tower is hit, so she is pushed out of the building, she gets out, hundreds of men and women, joining hands, jumping out of the building, many bodies landing close to where she is. But God had a plan for her. A young girl comes up out of nowhere, grabs her arm, and says, I gotta take you to a place of safety. Takes her to an apartment in Manhattan, and the really amazing part was, this turned out to be a follower of Jesus. This young girl picks up a Bible and starts reading scripture encouraging her. God has sent an angel to my wife when she needed encouragement the most.
26:05 They took me and my wife to a place to decontaminate us. They let us go past midnight. When I got home the first thing I did was calling my parents who lived in India. They had watched this whole thing on CNN, and they were mourning, thinking we were gone. A family of neighbors, a whole neighborhood had gathered home, and they were trying to comfort my family..parents, and now in the middle of all that we get to call them, and let them know that God has miraculously spared our lives.
26:31 Before that night before we tried to get any sleep. Me and my wife, we just knelt down, and fell down by our bed, and I said, God, this day has truly changed my life forever. This horrible day where so many died, where we came so close to facing death. This horrible day, you've used this day in my life to teach me some amazing truths. Most important thing that I've learned, God, is that you never know what a day could have in store for you, or for your family.
27:05 I was someone, I took time for granted, opportunities for granted, doing my own thing, chasing stuff. Trying to go up, the ladder in corporate America. And secondly, I said, God, this was done, in the name of a religion. 19 hijackers, they were willing to die and murder all these people for a cause that they believed in, and as a follower of Jesus Christ, I know where that cause has come from, The cause has come from the pits of hell, and it's to the pits of hell this cause will return.
27:38
I am Second - Sujo John, 9:33 minutes,
Uploaded by iamsecondHQ on Aug 29, 2011,
September 10, 2010, The Cross Timbers [TX] Gazette, Out of the Ashes, Sujo John, Written by Nancy Matocha,
This article was originally published in the Sept. 2007 issue of The Cross Timbers Gazette.
Every person of faith struggles at one time in his life to find deeper meaning, and a young Christian immigrant from Calcutta, India was no exception. New to the United States, Sujo John and his wife Mary were an American success story, with well-paying jobs in New York City and a new home just across the river from Manhattan.
In February of 2001, he and his wife both had secured good positions and good salaries in neighboring buildings in downtown Manhattan. But the success left John feeling empty.
Six months after his arrival, early one morning at his office, John said he sent an email to a friend from church asking his friend to pray for him because while he was enjoying financial and material success, he said, spiritually, there was a "deep vacuum."
The email was sent at 8:05a.m.— the date, Sept. 11, 2001.
God, it is said, works in mysterious ways, but for Lantana residents Sujo John and his wife Mary, the mystery of what God wanted for them vanished in the smoke and debris of that terrible day.
After the first plane hit John's building, Tower 1 of the World Trade Center, from the 81st floor, with fire blazing, jet fuel spilling and fuselage in the office, he tried and failed to phone his wife in Tower 2.
A co-worker led John and the rest of the workers to the stairwell. "If there had been no lights, I think thousands would have panicked and stampeded," said John.
It would take them an hour to descend the tower, and John had to be constantly talked out of re-entering the building to try to reach his wife, then in her fourth month of pregnancy, by an office phone. Finally, he could wait no more, and somewhere around the 40th floor, he left the stairwell to begin the futile attempts to call her. But soon after, he heard fireman and policeman yelling for him to get out and he snapped to the realization that it was time to move.
"It's a sight I'll never forget: when we were running down, they were running up," he said.
None of this is when John's story begins, by the way. No, his story started, he said, when "I'm fifty feet from the building and hear this incredible roar, and it was the building going down—the South Tower going down. And I said God, 'You got me down 81 floors, but death is ahead of me.'"
In the dark cloud of dust and with debris falling all around him, John huddled with a dozen or so other survivors and together, he said, they prayed. They then dispersed to find safety in the pitch-black cloud of dust; most of the others, he thinks, were killed by falling debris.
But John and a man, who said he was an FBI agent, saw the red flashing light of a crushed ambulance and made it out of harm's way. The agent, who John later found out to be Leonard Hatton, went back into the darkness to help other survivors escape and did not make it out alive.
Meanwhile, John's wife Mary, who worked for Morgan Stanley in Tower 2, was late to work that morning. "I thought I'd lost my mind thinking that my wife was dead," said John.
Instead, she was standing in the plaza of the World Trade Center watching bodies fall out of the tower. She was on her way in to find him when a stranger—and now a good friend—convinced her to turn around and wait in her apartment. "That's what makes this country so great—the best just came out of people that day," said John.
Uptown and hours later, it was almost 5:00 p.m. when John's cell phone rang with Mary's name showing on the display. Until he heard her voice, he didn't believe it was really his wife, that she'd survived the worst attack on American soil.
Before the dust from the towers settled, Sujo and Mary had already cut a new path for their future. "After two months, God really changed the course in our lives," he said.
With some mentoring from his pastor, Don James at Bethany Church in Wyckoff, N.J., John set out to tell the message of his faith. "It was hard—-Sujo was new to the nation, new to the culture, just married, and to venture all of that in one whack, leaving a job and going into speaking—-it would be scary for me-—but I think my rule with Sujo was if God is in this, you're not going to fail," said James.
Today, John has two children, Jeremy and Sophia, and is on the road weekly traveling the country and the world to spread his message of hope. The central location of the Dallas / Ft. Worth area cuts down on plane time. That along with the cost of living and family-friendly neighborhood brought him to Texas.
"I want to use our story as a tool to challenge people about faith," said John.
Internationally, nationally and here in his adopted home state, he has done just that. His evangelistic ministry has turned thousands of hearts towards Christ.
"We thoroughly enjoyed hosting Sujo John and hearing his story," wrote Pastor Kevin Evans of Flower Mound's Valley Creek Church in an email. "He is a compelling young man with a message every American should hear. Our church family was inspired and encouraged."
"Thousands died on this fateful day," said John. "We will all have to go one day. It is appointed for all men to die once. We are here to challenge the world with the question 'Do You Know Where You Are Going?'
"So much has happened in our world since this tragic day. This country has been in war and thousands have laid down their lives in Afghanistan and Iraq to make America safe. May we never forget their sacrifices. They did not die in vain."
Read more about Sujo John’s incredible story of faith and survival at www.sujojohn.com.
Anne Rice: 'I Quit Being a Christian', 2:38 minutes,
Uploaded by ABCNews on Aug 11, 2010,
The popular author explains her Facebook post to ABC's Dan Harris.
August 11, 2010, ABC News, Anne Rice: Best-Selling Novelist Explains Catholic Church Exit, by Dan Harris and Wonbo Woo,
Anne Rice has never been one to mince words.
When her novel "Interview With the Vampire" was made into a movie, she publicly declared her dissatisfaction with lead actors Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt (although she later changed her mind).
These days, from her home near Palm Springs, Calif., Rice regularly posts reviews of books, records and movies on Amazon.com. She also maintains a very active Facebook page -- on which she recently posted something rather incendiary.
"Today I quit being a Christian," Rice wrote. "I'm out."
She went on to call Christians, as a group, "quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious and deservedly infamous."
"I reached a point where I felt that I couldn't be complicit any longer in the things that organized religion was doing. I really saw it as a fairly simple repudiation, you know? I was exonerating myself," Rice said in an interview with ABC News. "I was saying, 'Look, when you -- when you see the persecution of gay people by the Mormon Church or the Catholic Church, I'm not part of this. I'm out. I don't support this anymore. When you see the oppression of women. I'm not part of it. I'm stepping aside. This follower of Christ is not part of that Christianity.' That's really what I thought to say."
Anne Rice: From Catholic to Atheist to Committed Catholic
Rice was raised in a strict Catholic household in New Orleans, but she became an atheist at age 18 and identified that way for most of her adult life. In fact, her vampire novels were written from an atheist perspective.
"My vampire characters are always talking about the question of, 'We don't know anything about God. We don't know anything about the devil. What are we doing? What -- you know, is life worth it? Can we live a meaningful life?' I thought I was talking about the way things were. That there was no God. That there was no devil. And that it was tough. It was hard. We were living in a basically meaningless world where there were no answers and never would be. We would die without ever really knowing why we had been here."
"I mean the vampire for me was perfect metaphor for the way I felt," Rice said. "Like a lost soul roaming in the darkness without God. And I poured a lot of my despair and my unhappiness and my grief for my lost faith into those books."
In 1998, she says she experienced a conversion.
"That sudden realization that I truly believed in God, that I was not an atheist, that maybe I'd never been an atheist, that I'd believed in God and I wanted to go home through the doors of my childhood church. The Catholic Church was the only church I'd ever known. And I -- I knew there would be complications. I knew it would be difficult. I knew there were probably things that the church taught that I would find very hard, but at the moment of that conversion I was really convinced that it would all work out," she said.
For the last 12 years, she lived as a committed Catholic, surrounded by religious statues, artwork and hundreds of Bibles. Instead of writing about vampires, she switched to writing about Christ and angels, in books like "Of Love and Evil," the latest in her "Songs of the Seraphim" series, which comes out this fall.
She said even though she knew she might struggle with the church's stance on social issues, she wasn't prepared for how frustrated she would become.
Anne Rice: 'Several Last Straws' With Catholic Church
"I think there were several last straws. The pope going to Africa and saying that condoms were not a good idea in the fight against AIDS. I found that outrageous, embarrassing, humiliating, frightening. The bishop of Phoenix, Ariz., Thomas Olmsted, publicly condemning a nun Sister Margaret McBride because she OK'd a life-saving abortion for a dying mother in a Catholic hospital," Rice said.
"The fact that my church, which I had supported over the years as -- you know, private -- how shall I put it -- I know. I supported it. Let's say that. I put my money where my mouth was. And that church then spent millions to come in to the state of California and deprive gay citizens of their civil rights to same-sex marriage? That was shocking. That was humiliating. That was the last straw. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles paying $660 million to the victims of clergy abuse? What does that say about organized religion? And finally, the pressure built up, the toxic anger built up, the confusion built up and I thought, 'I have to get out this. I want God to be the center of my life and somehow I'm in bed with the devil.' Trying to get up and get out," she said.
Part of her frustration, she said, came from the fact that her son Christopher is gay.
"I was for gay rights long before Christopher was born," Rice said. "But of course, it makes me sensitive to what is going on."
"I mean, it causes great moral discomfort when your church is calling homosexuality gravely disordered. And when they're spending money, maybe money that you, yourself contributed to fight -- to support Prop 8 [California's voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage], I mean, I can't emphasize how demoralizing that is to me. Why millions of dollars in church funds spent on persecuting these people publicly. I don't get it. I think it's wrong. I think it's evil," Rice said.
"I think the persecution of gays is evil. I think it's evil," she said. "I think it's gratuitous and it's evil."
To be clear, Rice said she is still a follower of Christ. She said she reads the Bible and prays every day just by herself. She said there were aspects of being an active Catholic that she would miss.
"I will probably miss the ritual, the liturgy, going to Mass, going to holy communion, but I really couldn't go anymore," she said. "I was too angry. I was too confused. That clergy abuse scandal, the defensiveness of Catholics about that scandal, their anger at not wanting to hear about it, not wanting to know what had happened with priests abusing people sexually and then being transferred to parish -- from parish to parish, I mean all of that was too much. I was -- I was sitting in church in a beautiful environment with beautiful music wanting to pray and I was too angry and too confused to be there. I had to leave. It was coming between me and God to be in that church. And the church should be the place that helps you get close to God."
Rice said her anguish over this decision will work its way into her books.
"It's tragic, but when you find yourself lying for God, something's really wrong," she said. "And for me to go on saying that I was a Catholic and for me to go on being in that church, or in any church, really, worrying about what they teach and what they do socially and what they might do politically, et cetera, et cetera, that was lie. I can't do that."
Anne Rice: Critics Speak Out
In the meantime, her announcement has generated an enormous response in newspapers, on blogs and on cable TV.
In a country where a growing number of people -- now 17 percent -- say they have "no religion," Rice's story touched a nerve.
Though Rice said the e-mails and Facebook messages she's received have been overwhelmingly supportive, she's had critics.
In a statement Aug. 6, the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights called Rice's decision a tragedy.
"Anne Rice started as a believing Catholic; then she quit the church; then she rejoined the church; now she has quit again. All of this is amusing as it is sad, and would be of no interest to the Catholic League save for her parting shots at the Catholic Church," league president Bill Donohue said.
"I'm familiar with Bill Donohue and the Catholic League," Rice said. "I received many wonderful, generous e-mails from the priests that I've known over the years. Many kind, generous e-mails that just say, 'We're praying for you. We hope you come back. We hope you change your mind.' And I'm very moved by that response and I take it more to heart than anything said by Bill Donohue and the Catholic League."
Rice said there are plenty of people involved in organized religion who are doing positive things. But she said that she -- like a growing number of Americans -- is out.
"I did what I felt I had to do for my conscience, but. obviously, this has implications for the group. Let's hope and pray something good will come out of it."
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