“Can a man take fire to his car, and his Bible not be burned?” That’s not precisely what Proverbs 6:27 says, but that scenario played out in real life after a fire consumed an SUV in Virginia, inexplicably leaving a Bible intact.

According to officials, crews with Rustburg Volunteer Fire Department in Campbell County responded to the fire just after 3 a.m. on July 25, where they found a Chevy Equinox ablaze along the northbound U.S. 29. Images posted on the department’s Facebook page showed the SUV “totally burned out,” including significant damage to the body, doors, roof, and bumper. Even the car’s frame showed signs of buckling.

Photos of the Bible showed the pages slightly burnt around the edges but otherwise still legible.

“I feel God is protecting firemen at scenes. I felt He protected these people,” Lt. Eric Spitzer with the Rustburg Volunteer Fire Department told WSLS 10. As striking as the images are, it’s not the first miraculous story of a Bible surviving a fire in the United States.

Firefighters in West Virginia acknowledged God’s power after a devastating fire in March 2019 burned down a local church but spared all of the Bibles inside. The fire department wrote in a Facebook post about the fire that destroyed Freedom Ministries Church, “Picture this, a building so hot that at one point in time, firefighters had to back out. In your mind, everything should be burned, ashes. Not a single Bible was burned, and not a single cross was harmed!! Not a single firefighter was hurt! Prayers for the pastor and the congregation today.”

A Bible that is approximately 150 years old survived two church fires in Wisconsin, including one from earlier this month, with the pastor declaring it “truly a work of God.” Springs United Methodist Church of Plover recently endured a devastating fire, destroying the building and leaving the old Bible unharmed. The Good Book had previously survived a church fire in the 1950s at St. Paul’s Methodist Church in downtown Stevens Point.

But perhaps the most remarkable story of a fireproof Bible comes from Jerry Bowyer, a financial economist and president of Bowyer Research, who shared in a 2016 op-ed for The Christian Post the previously untold story of an unburned Bible at a 9/11 crash site. The story concerns the discovery of an “unburnt Bible among the smoldering and disintegrated wreckage” of Flight 93 near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Bower wrote, “This is real. But it’s not just a ‘miracle,’ which is to say, a wonder from God meant to inspire us by telling us that He was there that day. It is what the New Testament called a sémeion, a sign, which is to say a message to His people.”

“I believe it is a message about what kind of age we are in, why we are in that kind of age, and what will happen to our nation if we (like the ‘man of God’ in chapter 14) are unfaithful to our calling,” he added.