9/11 Survivor Cried Out to Jesus as The World Trade Center Collapsed All Around Him

Audio By Carbonatix

Sujo John still remembers what the skies looked like on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, in downtown Manhattan: sunny and bright, with blue stretching across the horizon. It was the kind of picture-perfect morning you’d choose for a walk, a trip to the park or simply enjoying the outdoors.

“It was a clear, cloudless day,” he says now.

John worked for a telecommunications company on the 81st floor of the World Trade Center’s North Tower— just a short distance from his wife, who was employed by a global financial services company on the 71st floor of the South Tower.

He arrived at his desk early that morning and even had time to attend to a personal matter, sending an email to a friend from his home church saying he was sensing God’s calling on his life. He acknowledged that he had been “chasing” material possessions—and was beginning to realize that his priorities needed to change.

“I need to chase after God,” he wrote.

Soon, John would be relying on that faith in ways he never could have imagined.

At 8:46 a.m., al-Qaeda terrorists crashed American Airlines Flight 11 into the North Tower, striking floors 93 through 99—only about a dozen floors above John’s desk. Instantly, countless people in the tower were killed, as well as the 76 passengers and 11 crew members.

“I could see a huge crater. Picture twisted steel and cable, and as the building is swaying, we thought we're gonna die,” John told Crosswalk Headlines.

“And that's when someone rallies us and says, ‘We've got to beat this fire,’ and he challenges us, and we follow him, and we make our way to the nearest stairwell.”

John, though, still didn’t realize the scale of what had happened, assuming it was a small commuter plane that had accidentally struck the building.

“No one could actually fathom the fact that a jetliner would be hijacked.”

John and his co-workers made it to the stairwell, where the magnitude of the disaster quickly came into focus: Thousands of people were streaming down the stairs, all trying to escape the burning tower. Amid the chaos, John’s thoughts turned to his wife, who worked in the South Tower and was four months pregnant. He tried calling her, desperate to know if she was safe, but cell phones were not working.

Soon, the disaster would take an even more terrifying turn when John and those around him heard a second explosion. John and his co-workers, though, had no idea what had happened —and he had no way of knowing whether his wife was safe.

Then someone in the stairwell received a message on a pager: The other tower had been hit, too. It was United Airlines Flight 175 that had crashed into the South Tower, striking floors 77 through 85.

“So we start running down. We passed hundreds of firemen, policemen that were going up,” John said.

The sight of first responders heading toward danger as everyone else fled has remained with him ever since.

“They showed the world what this country is made up of, that there are men and women willing to lay down their lives so that others could still be around. They were living out what is said in the Bible, right? Greater love has no man than he who lays down his life for his friend.”

John even remembers a sobering detail about some of the New York City firefighters he passed — men who would be among the 343 FDNY members who died that day.

“We high-fived them, saying, ‘You guys are real heroes.’

“[Then] we continued our way down. It felt like it was taking forever.

“And we get to this level, which is called the plaza.”

The World Trade Center plaza was a large open-air space between the complex’s buildings.

“[But] we're still in the building, and when you look on our left, that's when we see this picture of just devastation, bodies and body parts of people that jumped out of the building, or of people in those planes. Part of the debris of the plane was lying there in that plaza.

“People are breaking down, and that's when this fireman says, ‘Don't look on your left. Turn on your right. Go down this escalator,’— which was still working. ‘It will take you to the concourse level, one more level down. That's the street level, and then get out these burning towers.’”

John got to the concourse level —but he didn’t begin making his way home as the fireman had urged. Instead, he began walking toward the South Tower to search for his wife.

He had just reached a revolving door when the world around him suddenly began to shake.

“The glass is shattering. I thought it was a bomb, but this was not a bomb. This was the South Tower imploding and going down. I come to terms with my eternity at that moment, and I said, ‘God, if I'm going to die, where will I go?’”

John said his thoughts immediately returned to his teenage years in his native India.

“I felt God taking me back in time [to] age 15, Calcutta, India, when on bended knee, I asked Jesus to come into my life, and I had this peace that if I were to die, I would make it to heaven.’”

In those few seconds, John also urged those around him to secure their eternity.

“I felt the Lord saying, ‘These people that are with you, where are they going without me?’ So I start crying out to Jesus, and I prayed with those 15-20 people to call upon the name of the Lord, which they did.”

Soon, John was buried beneath soot, ash and dust. Once again, he thought he was on the verge of death — this time unable to breathe.

Then, suddenly, a hero emerged.

“I feel someone pull me, and I begin to pull him, too. This turns out to be an FBI agent. I asked him, ‘Do you know Jesus?’ And he said he did, and we both told each other we're going to die. And that's when something miraculous happened —a red light flashing [amid] the smoke. It's a flashing light coming out of an ambulance from the street level.”

John followed that light, while the FBI agent —Leonard W. Hatton —walked back into the chaos to rescue people from the North Tower. Moments later, Hatton died when that tower, too, collapsed.

“He was the only active FBI agent to have died.”

John had God — and Hatton — to thank for his life. He believes God’s providence was at work in his wife’s survival, too.

“I'm out of the debris, thinking, ‘God, why did you spare my life? For sure, my wife is dead.’ But unknown to me —known to God — she was late to work by a couple of minutes.”

John’s wife was on her way to work that morning on the train when the first plane struck the North Tower. Train operations were halted. The two finally reconnected that night —each until that moment believing the other one had perished.

A total of 2,977 people died on 9/11, including 2,753 at the World Trade Center. John believes God spared his life for a greater purpose.

“People started calling me around this country to come and speak. And I'd never done public speaking, and I don't have a ministry background. I have a business background, [but] I started seeing people getting saved every time the story was being told on, on television and as I was speaking.”

He eventually founded YouCanFreeUs, an international human-rights organization that combats human trafficking.

“Deep within me was this burden now to challenge America and remind them that this country has been founded on nothing less and nothing more but the gospel. And so that kind of purpose had its benefit of healing me, but also seeing what God was doing with my story.”

Listen to Crosswalk Talk’s full interview with 9/11 survivor Sujo John here.

Photo Credit: ©Jose Jimenez/Primera Hora/Getty Images

Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, the Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel. 

Listen to Michael's Podcast! He is the host of Crosswalk Talk, a podcast where he talks with Christian movie stars, musicians, directors, and more. Hear how famous Christian figures keep their faith a priority in Hollywood and discover the best Christian movies, books, television, and other entertainment. You can find Crosswalk Talk on LifeAudio.com, or subscribe on Apple or Spotify so you never miss an interview that will be sure to encourage your faith.