Near-assassinations give us food for thought. God can intervene. But does he? Consider the following.
After the Battle of the Monongahela on July 9, 1755, a 23-year-old soldier wrote a letter to his brother in which he wrote: “But by the almighty providence of God I was protected beyond all human probability or expectation, for four bullets pierced my coat, and two horses were shot under me. Yet I escaped unhurt, although my comrades were exposed to death on all sides.”
This soldier was none other than George Washington, the first President of America.
“I shouldn’t be here,” Donald Trump told the crowd on the first day of the 2024 National Republican Convention. “If I half turn, it’ll hit me in the back of the brain,” he said. “The other way, (the bullet) goes right through (the skull). … The odds of me turning perfectly are probably one-tenth of 1%.” He turned all the way around at one point to look at immigration data on a screen. Was Trump’s near-death pure luck, or was it in some way an act of divine intervention?
The bullet came within an inch of killing the presidential candidate. He felt protected, however, because, as he told the world, “I had God on my side.” But he also said, “I was lucky.”
On March 30, 1981, John Hinckley Jr. shot and nearly killed President Ronald Reagan.
“I was lucky,” Reagan recalled. “The bullet that hit me ricocheted off a rib and lodged in my lung, just inches from my heart.”
Could this encounter with death also be a matter of pure luck?
Reagan, who was not a particularly religious person, considered his survival to be part of God’s plan. During his recovery in the hospital, he prayed to God for help, but also began to pray for his would-be assassin. After returning to the White House, he told Cardinal Terence Cooke, “I have decided that the time I have left belongs to Him.”
On May 13, 1981, Mehmet Ali Agca fired two shots in St. Peter’s Square, hitting Pope John Paul II. As the Pontiff was taken to hospital, he later recalled: “The moment I fell… I had this vivid premonition that I was going to be saved.”
His large intestine was perforated and he had five wounds in his small intestine, which required a five-hour operation to heal. The bullet that hit the Pope was poisoned and missed the main abdominal artery by a fraction of an inch. The Pope should have died.
John Paul was convinced that his life was saved through Mary’s intercession.
“One hand fired, the other guided the bullet,” he later said. In a poem he wrote: Stanislawabout a bishop of Krakow who would soon die a martyr’s death and was confronted with the murder of his son: “If the word does not convert, then the blood will.”
The narrow escape from death led to Reagan and John Paul II becoming spiritual brothers.
In October 1954, a Muslim Brotherhood gunman shot but missed Egyptian Gamal Abdel Nasser during a speech. Nasser, who would be elected president two years later, remained defiant and electrified the crowd with an impassioned statement recorded on tape: “I will live for you and die for your freedom and honor,” he said. “Let them kill me,” he said, his voice rising. “I don’t care as long as I have instilled in you pride, honor and freedom.” His near-death experience increased his zest for life.
In 2016, assassination plotters nearly killed Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. They shot at his location in the Turkish holiday resort of Marmaris. Shortly after the incident, he described his survival as a “gift from God.”
On October 14, 1912, a former saloon owner named John Schrank shot President Theodore Roosevelt. The bullet lodged in the president’s chest after piercing his steel eyeglass case and a thick, single-fold 50-page copy of his speech entitled “Progressive Cause Greater Than Any One.” The bullet did not reach his lung.
The 26th President of the United States refused to be hospitalized and assured his audience that he was fine. His first words to the assembled crown were: “Friends, I ask you to be as quiet as possible. I don’t know if you fully understand that I was just shot – but it takes more than that to kill a bull moose.”
Since the medical examiners concluded that it would be dangerous to remove the bullet, they decided that there would be no harm in leaving it in place. Therefore, Roosevelt carried the bullet with him for the rest of his life. Roosevelt later said of the bullet, “It doesn’t bother me any more than if it were in my vest pocket.”
In 1704, George Frideric Handel refused to leave his post as conductor during a performance of Johann Mattheson’s opera Cleopatra. A heated argument ensued, and the enraged Handel and Mattheson began a sword fight. Handel was almost killed when a sword thrust aimed at the heart struck a large metal button in Handel’s coat, preventing his death. In later years Handel composed the Messiah, while Matteson translated Handel’s biography into German.
God’s intervention in near-assassination attempts cannot be proven by any empirical test. We also know that the assassination attempts on Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and Kennedy were successful. Where was God in these cases? We know there is a God, and the New Testament reminds us that God intervenes in the lives of his creatures. Undoubtedly God played a role in some of the cases described above, although we cannot be certain in any of the individual cases.
In the case of George Washington, his coat with the four bullet holes is on display in the Smithsonian. Washington himself described his sparing as divine providence.
Pope John Paul II was absolutely convinced that God intervened in his own near-death experience. One indication that God wants a particular person to stay alive can be found in the way that person lives and acts when given a second chance at life.
