{"id":465,"date":"2007-08-13T20:10:00","date_gmt":"2007-08-13T20:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/bibleandculture\/2007\/08\/fire-and-ice.html"},"modified":"2007-08-13T20:10:00","modified_gmt":"2007-08-13T20:10:00","slug":"fire-and-ice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2007\/08\/fire-and-ice.html","title":{"rendered":"Fire and Ice"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
My grandfather was a fireman, indeed he was the fire chief in Wilmington N.C. Here is a wonderful oxymoronic ice sculpture of a fire man. What makes this one especially poignant is that this is an image from 9-11 from a fireman involved in quenching the blaze at the World Trade Center and rescuing those that he could. Utterly exhausted, you see him here sitting down, holding the flag, and being held up by an angel. <\/p>\n

This reminds me of an episode from my childhood that involved my grandfather and me. It was a hot humid summer night and the fire bell went off in his house in Wilmington in the wee hours of the morning. My grandfather jumped into his fire clothes and rushed down the stairs. The bell was so loud, and was next to my bedroom, and I had to be peeled off the ceiling when that thing rang. It would have awakened the dead. Grandfather jumped in the red cruiser with the light on top and head off to an apartment fire. I couldn’t sleep after that. This was B.C. (before air conditioning) and I was sticking to the sheets anyway. <\/p>\n

Hours later he returned exhausted and smelling of smoke. I asked him what happened. He had gone into the blazing inferno and rescued a child upstairs, but not without having the floor collapse under him and him miraculously walk out the front door unharmed. I imagine that same angel was leaning on Pop that night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My grandfather was a fireman, indeed he was the fire chief in Wilmington N.C. Here is a wonderful oxymoronic ice sculpture of a fire man. What makes this one especially poignant is that this is an image from 9-11 from a fireman involved in quenching the blaze at the World Trade Center and rescuing those…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":199,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nFire and Ice - The Bible and Culture<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2007\/08\/fire-and-ice.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Fire and Ice - The Bible and Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"My grandfather was a fireman, indeed he was the fire chief in Wilmington N.C. Here is a wonderful oxymoronic ice sculpture of a fire man. What makes this one especially poignant is that this is an image from 9-11 from a fireman involved in quenching the blaze at the World Trade Center and rescuing those…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2007\/08\/fire-and-ice.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Bible and Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-08-13T20:10:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_MCBNSn1DlAU\/RsDzObum43I\/AAAAAAAAAMM\/2OHtgZpEelA\/s400\/GetAttachment.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Ben Witherington\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Fire and Ice - The Bible and Culture","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2007\/08\/fire-and-ice.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Fire and Ice - The Bible and Culture","og_description":"My grandfather was a fireman, indeed he was the fire chief in Wilmington N.C. Here is a wonderful oxymoronic ice sculpture of a fire man. What makes this one especially poignant is that this is an image from 9-11 from a fireman involved in quenching the blaze at the World Trade Center and rescuing those…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2007\/08\/fire-and-ice.html","og_site_name":"The Bible and Culture","article_published_time":"2007-08-13T20:10:00+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_MCBNSn1DlAU\/RsDzObum43I\/AAAAAAAAAMM\/2OHtgZpEelA\/s400\/GetAttachment.jpg"}],"author":"Ben Witherington","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2007\/08\/fire-and-ice.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2007\/08\/fire-and-ice.html","name":"Fire and Ice - The Bible and Culture","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2007\/08\/fire-and-ice.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2007\/08\/fire-and-ice.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_MCBNSn1DlAU\/RsDzObum43I\/AAAAAAAAAMM\/2OHtgZpEelA\/s400\/GetAttachment.jpg","datePublished":"2007-08-13T20:10:00+00:00","dateModified":"2007-08-13T20:10:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/d1fd6c7893819eabc624db38ecfd8426"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2007\/08\/fire-and-ice.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2007\/08\/fire-and-ice.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2007\/08\/fire-and-ice.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_MCBNSn1DlAU\/RsDzObum43I\/AAAAAAAAAMM\/2OHtgZpEelA\/s400\/GetAttachment.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_MCBNSn1DlAU\/RsDzObum43I\/AAAAAAAAAMM\/2OHtgZpEelA\/s400\/GetAttachment.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2007\/08\/fire-and-ice.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Fire and Ice"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/","name":"The Bible and Culture","description":"All Things Biblical and Christian","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/d1fd6c7893819eabc624db38ecfd8426","name":"Ben Witherington","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/75e\/75ec11e1916a2008bc4cc638a0a0de2fx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/75e\/75ec11e1916a2008bc4cc638a0a0de2fx96.jpg","caption":"Ben Witherington"},"description":"Bible scholar Ben Witherington is Amos Professor of New Testament for Doctoral Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary and on the doctoral faculty at St. Andrews University in Scotland. A graduate of UNC, Chapel Hill, he went on to receive the M.Div. degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. from the University of Durham in England. He is now considered one of the top evangelical scholars in the world, and is an elected member of the prestigious SNTS, a society dedicated to New Testament studies. Witherington has also taught at Ashland Theological Seminary, Vanderbilt University, Duke Divinity School and Gordon-Conwell. A popular lecturer, Witherington has presented seminars for churches, colleges and biblical meetings not only in the United States but also in England, Estonia, Russia, Europe, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Australia. He has also led tours to Italy, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Jordan, and Egypt. Witherington has written over thirty books, including The Jesus Quest and The Paul Quest, both of which were selected as top biblical studies works by Christianity Today. He also writes for many church and scholarly publications, and is a frequent contributor to the Beliefnet website. Along with many interviews on radio networks across the country, Witherington has been seen on the History Channel, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, The Discovery Channel, A&E, and the PAX Network.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/author\/bwitherington"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/199"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}