Near-assassination attempts make us pause. God can intervene. But does he? Consider the following.
After the Battle of Monongahela on July 9, 1755, a 23-year-old soldier wrote a letter to his brother in which he said, “But, by the all-powerful dispensations of God, I have been protected beyond all human probability or expectation, for I had four bullets through my coat, and two horses shot under me, yet escaped unhurt, although death was leveling my companions on every side.”
That soldier was none other than George Washington, America’s first president.
“I shouldn’t be here,” Donald Trump told the crowd on the first day of the 2024 National Republican Convention. “If I only half-turn, it hits the back of the brain,” he said. “The other way [the bullet] goes right through [the skull]. … The chances of my making a perfect turn are probably one-tenth of 1%.” He made a full turn to look at data concerning immigration displayed on a screen. Was Trump’s brush with death a matter of mere chance, or was it, in some sense, an act of divine intervention?
The bullet came within a quarter of an inch from 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 bounced off a rib and lodged in my lung, an inch from my heart.”
Could this brush with death also be a mere matter of luck?
Reagan, who was not an especially devout person, considered his survival as part of God’s plan. While recovering in a hospital, he prayed to God for help but also began to pray for his would-be assassin. After he returned to the White House, he told Cardinal Terence Cooke, “I have decided that whatever time I have left is for Him.”
On May 13, 1981, in St. Peter’s Square, Mehmet Ali Agca fired two shots, hitting Pope John Paul II. As the Pontiff was rushed to the hospital, he later recalled, “At the very moment I fell … I had this vivid presentiment that I would be saved.”
His colon had been perforated and there were five wounds in the small intestine, requiring five hours of surgery to repair. The bullet that struck the Pope, which was poisoned, missed the main abdominal artery by the merest 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, and another guided the bullet,” he would later say. He had stated in a poem, Stanislaw, about a soon-to-be martyred bishop of Krakow confronted with his assassination, if “the word does not convert, blood will convert.”
The narrow escapes from death led Reagan and John Paul II to become spiritual brothers.
In October 1954, a gunman of the Muslim Brotherhood fired at Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt during a speech but missed. Nasser, who would be elected president two years later, was defiant and electrified the crowd in an impassioned statement that was caught on tape: “I will live for your sake and die for the sake of your freedom and honor,” he said. “Let them kill me,” he said in a rising voice. “It does not concern me so long as I have instilled pride, honor and freedom in you.” His brush with death intensified his zest for life.
In 2016, assassination plotters came close to killing Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. They fired on his location in the resort town of Marmaris, Turkey. Shortly after the incident, he referred to his survival as “a gift of God.”
On Oct. 14, 1912, a former saloon keeper by the name of John Schrank fired at President Theodore Roosevelt. The bullet lodged in the president’s chest after passing through his steel eyeglass case and a thick, single-folded 50-page copy of his speech entitled, “Progressive Cause Greater Than Any Individual.” The bullet had not reached his lung.
The nation’s 26th president declined going to the hospital and reassured his audience that he was all right. His opening comments to the gathering crown were, “Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. I don’t know if you fully understand that I have just been shot — but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.”
Since medical examiners concluded that it would be dangerous to remove the bullet, they decided that it would do no harm to leave it in place. Therefore, Roosevelt carried the bullet with him for the rest of his life. Concerning the bullet, Roosevelt would later say, “I do not mind it any more than if it were in my waistcoat pocket.”
In 1704, George Frederick Handel refused to leave his conductor’s post during a performance of Johann Mattheson’s opera Cleopatra. A fierce quarrel ensued, and the enraged Handel and Mattheson began a duel with swords. Handel was nearly killed when a sword thrust went for the heart but struck a large metal button in Handel’s coat, thus preventing his death. In later years, Handel went on to compose the Messiah, while Matteson translated Handel’s biography into German.
God’s intervention in near-assassination attempts is not something that can been proven by any empirical test. We also know that in the cases of Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy, the assassination attempts were successful. Where was God in these instances? We do know that there is a God and the New Testament reminds us that God does intervene in the lives of his creatures. No doubt, in some of the instances described above, God did play a part, though we cannot be certain in any of the particular cases.
In the case of George Washington, his coat with the four bullet holes is on display at the Smithsonian. Washington himself described his being spared as Providential.
In Pope St. John Paul II’s case, he was absolutely convinced of divine intervention in his own near-death experience. An indication that God wills that a particular person should remain alive might be found in how that person lives and acts when he is given a second chance at life.
