A Moment When Everything Changes

In the blink of an eye, a momentous event can change your life forever. Writing in the journal Cognition (Volume 5, Issue 1, 1977, pp. 73–99), psychologists Roger Brown and James Kulik coined the term “flashbulb memory” to describe the emotionally charged moments—positive or negative—that because of their intensity become imprinted on our consciousness. Using the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, as their key example, they showed that when we form such memories, we don’t just remember intensely the moments that spurred them. We also remember with unusually vivid clarity what we were doing—and even where we were—at the instant when we formed the memory.

Some powerful moments touch us as individuals, while others leave their indelible mark on an entire community or nation—or the whole world. But as modern society becomes ever more fragmented, we should not be surprised that such collective memories seem far less common. So, let’s take a moment to look back at what may be America’s most powerful and widely shared flashbulb memory since the Kennedy assassination. September 11, 2026, will mark the 25th anniversary of the shocking day when 19 members of the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda hijacked four commercial airliners, killing 265 passengers on those planes and more than 2,700 in the buildings struck by the crashing aircraft.

A Shock and a Mystery

Workers were rushing to their offices on what began as a typical Tuesday morning in lower Manhattan, the commercial hub of New York City. Delivery workers on bicycles shuttled their cargo along car-clogged streets. Shoppers and tourists filled the sidewalks.

Suddenly, at 8:46 a.m., the deafening sound of a crash came from above. An aircraft had slammed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center (WTC). The building caught fire, and everyone above the 91st floor in the 110-floor building was trapped inside.

But what had happened? It was a mystery at first. News organizations sent camera crews, and soon every major television network was airing the shocking live image of the burning tower. Analysts trying to offer comment on the event were at first puzzled—a commercial airliner would have been flying thousands of feet above the WTC towers, and any small plane flying at low altitude in the nearby Hudson River air corridor surely couldn’t have damaged the tower so extensively—or could it?

At 9:03 a.m., the answer came suddenly during live coverage of the burning North Tower. While television commentators were speculating on-air, a jetliner sped into view and crashed into the WTC’s South Tower, causing a massive fireball to emerge as the plane cut through the building. Instantly, one thing was clear—whatever was happening, this was no accident.

After the Second Plane Hit

Writing in The Guardian on September 18, 2001—a week after the attack—essayist Martin Amis described the power of that moment when the plane crashed into the South Tower. “It was the advent of the second plane, sharking in low over the Statue of Liberty; that was the defining moment. Until then, America thought she was witnessing nothing more serious than the worst aviation disaster in history; now she had a sense of the fantastic vehemence ranged against her.”

One crash might have been a tragic accident, but two crashes had to be a pattern, a plan. And as Amis described, this was a moment that profoundly changed how Americans saw the world and their place in it. Yet it would take some time for all the details to emerge.

The al-Qaeda terrorists that morning had commandeered two commercial jets scheduled to fly from Boston to Los Angeles—American Airlines Flight 11, which crashed into the WTC North Tower, and United Airlines Flight 175, which crashed into the WTC South Tower. Two other planes joined in the attack—Los Angeles-bound American Airlines Flight 77, which was hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon building in Washington, DC, and United Airlines Flight 93, which was also steered toward the District of Columbia before its passengers attempted to wrest control from the hijackers, who then crashed the plane into an empty field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

In a little more than two hours—from 7:59 a.m., when Flight 11 took off, to 10:03 a.m., when Flight 93 plowed into the ground—a small band of terrorists deeply wounded the U.S.A.’s pride and power.

Disaster Televised Live

Estimates suggest that more than 20 million Americans were watching live television on the morning of September 11, 2001, when they saw Flight 175 crash into the WTC South Tower. By that evening, according to Pew Research and Nielsen data, more than three-quarters of American households had seen video footage not just of the planes’ impact but of the WTC towers falling to the ground.

Some who watched the plane hit the tower compared their shock to what they felt after the Kennedy assassination. But there was one big difference. There were only a few live witnesses to Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, 1963—just the crowd along the roadside when his motorcade passed by. Most heard the news via radio, from the first report that Kennedy was shot to the news an hour later that he was dead. But thanks to the immediacy and reach of live television, millions across America—and around the world—together felt in one brutal moment on September 11, 2001, that their world would never be the same.

Today, when many recall the Kennedy assassination, they remember Abraham Zapruder’s famous film showing the gruesome aftermath of a bullet striking the President’s head. But it would be many years after the assassination before the public would see the Zapruder film. For many who mourned Kennedy’s death on November 22, their strongest personal memory was formed two days later when Jack Ruby shot alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald during live television coverage viewed across the nation—and it became clear that the answers to many important questions had died with Oswald.

Yes, Americans felt a sense of shared catastrophe after the assassination, but Presidents had been killed before. When Ruby murdered Oswald on live television, millions at once felt shocked by an utterly unprecedented event. Indeed, we can draw a close parallel with the September 11 events. It was a catastrophe when the first plane struck the WTC, but viewers’ worlds changed forever when the second plane hit the tower.

A Nation Challenged and Fragmented

By the time President George W. Bush signed into law the USA PATRIOT Act on October 26, 2001, giving the federal government increased power to conduct covert surveillance on American citizens, the U.S. military had already begun to deploy troops to fight terrorist cells based in Afghanistan.

More than 7,000 soldiers would go on to die in Afghanistan and Iraq, and as many as 50,000 would come home seriously injured. But unlike those in the Vietnam War, the thousands of soldiers who died after September 11 were volunteers, and their deaths did not spark such protests as did the deaths of Vietnam draftees. To the average American, the greatest effect of the terrorist attacks was felt at home in the form of increased security measures, especially around travel—a series of small inconveniences, not further flashbulb moments.

What else changed between 1963 and 2001? When Brown and Kulik in 1977 published their findings about flashbulb memories, the Kennedy assassination was still fresh in most Americans’ memories, and most people relied on daily newspapers and three national television networks for their news. Today, fewer than a quarter of Americans can remember the Kennedy assassination, nearly half are too young to remember the September 11 attacks, and our media environment has both expanded and fragmented. News is available around the clock from a multitude of television networks, and from myriad websites, podcasts, radio broadcasts, and newspapers.

With such media fragmentation as exists today, a flashbulb moment shared powerfully by one small segment of society may go unnoticed by the wider society. So, will we ever again share such a widespread flashbulb memory, whether negative or positive? The answer is yes!

In the Twinkling of an Eye

You may have encountered the popular idea of a sudden “secret rapture” of faithful Christians. But just as some intense flashbulb memories may not be quite accurate—human minds often embellish those memories with details beyond what they truly experienced—this widely held idea about the prophesied end-times is incorrect.

Faithful Christians blinking away in an instant would certainly gain the world’s attention—pilots leaving abandoned planes to crash, surgeons leaving patients to die on the operating table, parents leaving their children orphaned. But this popular “rapture” idea does not align with what the Apostle Paul wrote to the followers of Christ in Corinth: “Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed—in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality” (1 Corinthians 15:51–53).

This event that Paul described will become a momentous flashbulb moment for followers of Jesus Christ, but it won’t be a moment of chaos. The prophesied last trumpet will mark a moment of joyous triumph after three-and-a-half years of fulfilled end-time prophecy. Daniel 11 and Revelation 12 tell us of this time, ending with the year-long “Day of the Lord,” during which Christians who have fled to a place of safety will be protected—on the earth—from the persecutions and terrors around them, before they meet their Savior upon His return. And at the instant when Christ returns, “He is coming with clouds, and every eye will see Him” (Revelation 1:7).

That is wonderful news ahead! A time is soon coming when centuries of faithful disciples of Christ will in one glorious moment rise from the dead and realize their dream of meeting the returning Christ, joined by His faithful disciples who are alive at His return. They will be transformed at that moment—born into the Kingdom of God and readied to serve the returned Christ when He establishes that Kingdom on planet Earth. It will be a moment like no other moment before. Of that moment, we read that “when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory’” (1 Corinthians 15:54). God speed that momentous day!