By Tim Binnall
Firefighters in West Virginia surveying the damage from an inferno that had gutted a church over the weekend were astounded when they discovered that a bevy of Bibles and crosses had somehow survived the conflagration unscathed. The remarkable find was reportedly made early Sunday morning after the Coal City Fire Department helped to battle a blaze that had engulfed the Freedom Ministries Church in the community of Greenview.
Upon entering the building, the team of rescue workers was stunned to see that every Bible inside the church had apparently made it through the harrowing ordeal undamaged. Posting pictures of the amazing sight to Facebook, the department noted that the fire had, at one point, been so hot that they were actually forced to pull personnel from the building for their safety. The temperatures were so extreme, they explained, that everything inside should have been reduced to ashes.
However, they marveled "not a single Bible was burned" and also revealed that none of the crosses inside the church fell victim to the blaze either. While skeptical observers may offer a prosaic explanation for the odd nature in which the objects survived the fire, but one can't help but notice that the case in West Virginia is merely the latest in a series of eerily similar events involving religious items surviving massive infernos, including a painting of Jesus at a Massachusetts church, a trio of icons in Serbia, and a number of statues which were found intact after wildfires swept through Tennessee.