Bible survives teens' car explosion: 'It was untouched, unscathed'
Two sisters narrowly escaped their Jeep just moments before it caught fire and exploded, leaving the car completely charred. But when a firefighter went back to look inside the vehicle, he found a Bible, in pristine condition, that miraculously survived the flames.
Joelle Shock, 19, and Sevyn Shock, 15, who are from Felda, Fla., were on their way to Fort Myers on June 27 when their 2000 Jeep Liberty began acting up.
Sevyn tells Yahoo Lifestyle that the car stopped, so she and her sister pulled over on the side of the road. When it started smoking and smoke began to fill the interior, her older sister, Joelle immediately said to her sister, “we need to get out.”
“The car just like burst into flames, the car was on fire,” Sevyn recounts. “We had some guys come over, and they had small extinguishers. They started spraying it, but the car wouldn’t go out.”
The explosion was too big for them to put out, so the local fire department intervened.
“They were there in 15, or 20 minutes, and sprayed the whole thing down,” Sevyn says. “And when they opened the doors, water just started pouring out the doors.”
Sevyn said that while the car was wrecked, a firefighter asked “is there anything in the car you guys think you need?”
The two immediately remembered that Joelle’s Bible was still in the car, and assumed that it wouldn’t have made it out. “We were like, ‘There’s no way this Bible’s going to be OK,’” says Sevyn.
To their surprise, they looked up to see another firefighter walking towards them, Bible in hand.
“It was the first thing they brought out,” Sevyn says.
The Bible, which had been lying on the front seat, somehow made it through the explosion without a scratch.
“It was in a case, and the case was soaking wet, and it was melted and had plastic all over it,” Sevyn tells Yahoo Lifestyle. “We opened it, and Joelle took the Bible out, and it was untouched, unscathed — it was in perfect condition.”
The 15-year-old says she thinks the Bible made it out, and help came for them because of God.
“God sent those men as angels to show he’s watching over us,” Sevyn says. “It was crazy — we had nothing, we only had our phones and we called our mom.”
The sisters’ mother, Julia Sutherland, told the Fort Myers News-Press that she gives each of her children a nice Bible when they turn 18.
“It was really important to [Joelle], and that the fireman took the time to get back in there and grab that for her, showed that he cared,” Sutherland said.
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