By Tyler Henderson · Published September 11, 2026 · Updated September 13, 2026
9/11 Christian Perspective
On the morning of September 11, 2001, the invisible became horrifyingly visible.
At 8:46 in the morning, American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
Seventeen minutes later, United Airlines Flight 175 struck the South Tower.
At 9:37, American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon.
Then, at 10:03, United Airlines Flight 93 crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers and crew fought back against the hijackers.
By the end of that morning, nearly 3,000 people had been killed.
Twenty five years later, we remember the photographs, the smoke, the collapsing towers, the firefighters running toward buildings while thousands ran away, and the faces of people who left home that morning expecting an ordinary Tuesday and never returned.
Those were the visible events of September 11.
But Christians should also recognize that something deeper was being revealed.
Because Scripture teaches us that behind the wars we can see, there is another war we cannot.
The War Behind the War
Paul wrote something remarkable to Christians living in ancient Ephesus:
“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers…”
— Ephesians 6:12
The Ephesian Christians understood visible conflict.
They lived in one of the great cities of the Roman Empire, surrounded by competing religious loyalties, political power, economic interests, magic, idolatry, and the enormous influence of the Temple of Artemis.
Yet Paul told them that the deepest battle taking place around them could not be understood merely by looking at the people involved.
“We wrestle not against flesh and blood.”
The terrorists who hijacked those airplanes on 9/11 were real people.
Their decisions were real.
Their guilt was real.
The people they murdered were real.
Christian teaching about spiritual warfare does not remove human responsibility for evil. It actually helps us understand why this kind of evil can become so horrifying.
People can believe lies and lies can reshape what people love, what they hate, what they justify, and eventually what they are willing to do.
September 11 showed the world what can happen when hatred is discipled by lies.
Men boarded airplanes believing murder could be righteous.
They believed innocent people could become acceptable sacrifices for an ideology.
They believed evil was good.
And they acted accordingly.
That is where the words of Jesus become terrifyingly relevant.
The Father of Lies
In John 8:44, Jesus describes the devil with two characteristics that belong together:
He is a murderer, and he is the father of lies.
This connection should not be overlooked.
Jesus connects deception with destruction.
The devil lies.
Human beings believe those lies.
And eventually lies produce death.
This pattern stretches across the entirety of Scripture.
The serpent did not physically force Eve to take the fruit. He deceived her.
The enemy’s weapon was a lie:
Did God really say?
From the opening chapters of Genesis, the strategy is visible. Distort what God has said. Make what is evil appear desirable. Make rebellion appear reasonable. Make destruction look like freedom.
And then let human beings act upon the lie.
That is why Christians should never treat truth as something trivial.
Ideas have consequences.
Lies have consequences.
What we believe eventually affects how we live.
And sometimes, what human beings believe determines whether other human beings live at all.
September 11 was not merely an attack involving airplanes and buildings.
Before there were hijacked airplanes, there were hijacked convictions.
Before murder became an action, murder had been justified in the mind.
Before the world watched towers fall, lies had already convinced men that killing thousands of strangers could somehow be righteous.
The visible attack began long before 8:46 that morning.
Flesh and Blood Are Not the Enemy
But this is precisely where Christians must listen to the rest of Paul’s warning.
If we believe there is an invisible war, we can make the dangerous mistake of looking at another human being and deciding:
There is my enemy.
Paul refuses to allow it.
“Our struggle is not against flesh and blood.”
Not against an ethnicity.
Not against a nationality.
Not against a neighbor.
Not even ultimately against the person who hates us.
Human beings can participate in evil. They can commit atrocities. But the Christian must never confuse a human participant in the battle with the ultimate enemy behind it.
This understanding radically changes how Christians fight.
Immediately after describing principalities, powers, and spiritual wickedness, Paul describes the Christian’s armor.
Truth.
Righteousness.
The gospel of peace.
Faith.
Salvation.
The Word of God.
Prayer.
Those are strange weapons if our primary enemies are other people but they make perfect sense if our battle is ultimately against a kingdom built upon deception, sin, hatred, and death.
We fight lies with truth.
We fight hatred without becoming hateful.
We confront darkness without becoming dark.
That is spiritual warfare.
When Ordinary People Stood
And yet, September 11 also gave us a powerful picture of resistance.
The passengers aboard Flight 93 began receiving information about what had happened to the other airplanes.
Gradually, they understood.
Their plane was not simply being hijacked.
They were part of something larger.
There was a plan and once they recognized it, ordinary people made an extraordinary decision.
They resisted.
We may never know exactly what target the hijackers intended to strike, but we know they never reached it.
Flight 93 crashed into a Pennsylvania field.
Everyone aboard died as the larger plan failed.
There is something profoundly moving about that moment.
They could not undo what had already happened in New York.
They could not save themselves.
They could not know whether they would succeed.
They simply understood that evil had a plan and decided they would not cooperate with it.
Twenty five years later, perhaps that is something Christians desperately need to remember.
The invisible war does not require us to become paranoid.
It requires us to become discerning.
Twenty Five Years Later
There are still lies.
There is still hatred.
There is still violence.
There are still ideologies capable of convincing human beings that other human beings are disposable.
And there is still an enemy whom Jesus described as a murderer and the father of lies.
The scenery changes.
The kingdoms change.
The technology changes.
The arguments change.
But the conflict remains remarkably familiar.
Truth against deception.
Love against hatred.
Life against death.
The Kingdom of God against the kingdoms of darkness.
September 11 reminds us that invisible things eventually become visible.
What people believe eventually becomes what people do.
That is why Christians cannot afford to surrender truth.
We cannot afford to become comfortable with lies simply because they are culturally convenient.
We cannot fight hatred by learning to hate.
And we cannot become so consumed with flesh and blood enemies that we forget Paul’s warning about the battle behind the battle.
Twenty five years ago, ordinary people aboard Flight 93 realized that something larger was happening around them and they stood.
Perhaps the question for us today is much simpler:
Will we recognize the battle happening around us?
And when lies advance, will we stand for truth?
When hatred spreads, will we refuse to participate?
When darkness presents itself as light, will we recognize the difference?
Not with vengeance.
Not with hatred.
Not by declaring flesh and blood to be our enemy.
But with truth.
Righteousness.
Faith.
Prayer.
The gospel of peace.
And an unwavering allegiance to Jesus Christ.
Because September 11 showed us something Scripture had already told us:
There are visible events.
There is an invisible war.
And the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the world always collide.
Author Bio
Tyler Henderson is an Ordained Bishop with the Church of God (Cleveland, TN), pastor, Bible teacher, and creator of Kingdoms Collide. He has more than a decade of experience in leadership and ministry. His teaching focuses on reading scripture within its larger biblical, historical, and cultural context as he follows people, churches, places, and themes across the biblical canon rather than examining individual passages in isolation.
Through Kingdoms Collide, Tyler combines close study of scripture with historical research to explore how the original world of the Bible can illuminate the connections already present within the biblical text. His approach is guided by a simple principle: History serves scripture. Scripture serves Christ. Christ transforms us.
The Depth Here Comes From Studying Scripture Through the Kingdoms Collide Methodology
To study Acts, Ephesians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, 1 John, and Revelation in more of an interconnected way, check out our season on Ephesus. Every episode has a podcast that tells the narrative story of scripture alongside the ancient world and the first century believers that received the scriptures. Additionally, every episode has free devotional resources, free Bible study resources, free teaching guides, and many useful maps/infographics to go along with the story/scripture. The episode list is always growing as new episodes become available on Tuesday at 4am EST, so check back often.