A lightning strike that ignited a 150-year-old Baptist Church in Massachusetts on Tuesday night destroyed almost the entire structure – except for a life-size painting of Jesus Christ that fire-fighters found miraculously intact.
FoxNews.com is reporting on the inferno that spread through the First Baptist Church in Wakefield. The steeple was apparently struck by lightning during powerful thunderstorms that rolled through the Greater Boston area on Tuesday evening.
Interim pastor Norm Bendroth told local media that he was just settling down to watch the Boston Red Sox take on the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series when he saw “a fireball in the sky.”
“It just went up like a tinderbox. It’s a building built in 1870 and it’s a balloon-style so one the fire starts you know the whole building just went up quickly,” he said.
Fire crews did all they could to save the building but the extent of the fire was too great.
“When the windows were all aglow — every stained glass window was aglow — it looked like you were looking into hell. It was just an awful, awful sight,’ former parishioner Susan Auld said, according to the Daily Mail.
A meeting had been taking place in the church at the time of the lightning strike but everyone got out safely. There were no injuries reported.
It wasn’t until the next morning when crews were picking through the remnants of the building when they discovered the painting which had been hanging just inside the door of the church. It depicts Jesus in a white robe with his pierced hands extended. It survived untouched except for a few drops of water.
“It’s a beautiful sign of hope and a reminder that Jesus is with us,” church member Maria Kakolowski told Boston 25. “I am personally just taking it as a sign and a reminder that the Jesus, the Christ that we serve is still alive and even though our church building is gone, our church is here. The God that we serve is still here.”
Church officials issued a statement expressing gratitude that no one was hurt and thanked the fire department for battling the seven-alarm blaze.
“We know that we serve a God who specializes in restoring brokenness and who can bring beauty even from ashes,” they wrote. “So we move into the future with trust, hope, and gratitude.”
A GoFundMe page was created to help the church.
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