SEE FOR MYLES AND MYLES AND MYLES

The death of the Reverend Myles Munroe in the rainy mists and the junkyard of the Grand Bahama Shipyard on Sunday last just about 5:10 p.m. sucked all the oxygen out of the news cycle last week. The week seemed set for yet another round of rows about Haitians and illegal immigration to this country but all of that changed in the instant of that crash.

The words of Dr. Kendal Major MP,  the Speaker of the House and one of his acolytes, were typical of how it all unfolded.  He was relaxing at home watching TV and then the phone began to ring.  The question was it true?  His daughter was crying because she thought that he was on the plane. Some thought Andrew Young the former US Ambassador to the UN was on the plane.  Some said it was not Rev

. Munroe’s plane.  Some said that it was a plane coming out of Bimini.  All idle speculation.  It turned out in the end that it was a Lear 36 Executive Jet.  It was Rev. Monroe’s plane. He was on the plane and  all who were on board with him perished and died.

The videos and stills started to circulate immediately.  That is the culture; some of them graphically showing the dead bodies.  Then the questions began: who, what where, when and why.  The Minister of Transport Glenys Hanna Martin kept the Prime Minister briefed throughout the evening. All the officials could say was that an investigation would be done into the crash but it was clear that all on board the jet had perished.

Then the mysticism and the second guessing began.  Whose fault was it?  Did Rev. Munroe push his pilot to take the flight in circumstances that were unsafe, particularly when the news came back that Bahamasair had made two approaches in the same weather minutes before and turned back to Nassau? Was there enough fuel on board to fly back to Nassau?  Did the pilot make an error, because it appears that he was flying too low and not in the proper approach path? 

Did Rev. Munroe predict his death?  Did he see it coming?  Did the Lord ordain this to happen?

Of course it is human to engage in speculation and to ask questions, particularly with something so gruesome and involving people that we knew and loved and who we had come to expect were invincible.  It just didn’t make sense .  But then when you think about it, nothing about life really makes sense.  Why are we here?  How did we get here?  We just don’t know.

Religion is an invention to help us make sense of these questions and provide some answer where science cannot explain the facts. The Book of Job supplies the answer for all questions that cannot be answered: the Lord gives and the Lord takes away said Job, having lost inexplicably all his family and possessions. Blessed be the name of the Lord, he concludes.  In other words, that’s life.

There is no mystery here then.  There was no ordaining or foretelling.  There was no prediction.  The evidence is that all that occurred in that shipyard last Sunday was a  simple accident.  A jet flying too low, in bad weather, into an airport without navigational aids for bad weather, crashed into a crane.  A jet going at hundreds of miles an hours, meeting a stationery steel barrier can only have one result.  The Trib says that it took seconds; they felt nothing and it was over.  One report says that Reverend Munroe had sent a text message to say the plane was about to land.  Another report says that Rev, Munroe was on the phone with one of those waiting to meet him to say they were landing and then the silence.

A formal investigation is being done, led by the Bahamian authorities but because it was a US registered aircraft also by the United States authorities.  We will get the story of what happened and should wait before speculating.

Last Sunday when Reverend Munroe got on that jet to fly to Freeport from Nassau, from all accounts he did what he usually did.  He got on plane which was his own plane. He had flown it before.  He was with pilots that he trusted. He had no reason to suspect bad maintenance or that bad weather would be a problem. The evidence is this was just an accident.  Accidents in life happen, even to famous people. 

As for the thinking that he predicted his death.  Preachers always talk about death.  They are always preparing us for death and they talk about their own death.  Not too much stress should be put on that either.  It was an accident.

In the midst of life is death.

Now for the future.  He has left his daughter and a son Myles Munroe Jr.  Dave Burrows, the former youth pastor appears to be filling in in the short term as the face of the Bahamas Faith Mission, the Reverend’s church.  What we know is that we must get over the funeral and the memorials before moving forward about the business of the church.  But it is heartening to hear them all say, we have lost a visionary leader but not the vision.

May he Rev. Myles and his wife Ruth: Rev. Richard Pinder; Rev. Lavard Parks and his wife Radel and son Jonathan including one en ventre san mere the two pilots Stanley Thurston and Farkhan Cooper    ;  the American passenger Diego De Santiago all rest in eternal peace. Amen.

Number of hits for the week ending Saturday 15^th November 2014 up to midnight:903,027

Number of hits for the month of November up to Saturday 15^th November 2014 up midnight:1,621,634;

Number of hits for the year 2014 up to Saturday 15^th November 2014 at midnight:12,676,929.