Award-winning actor Morgan Freeman has thanked fans for their prayers after he experienced a freak plane accident while traveling to Pastor Joel Osteen's Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas.
According to ABC affiliate KTRK, the 78-year-old "Bruce Almighty" actor planned to fly to Houston to work on his forthcoming project, "The Story of God," which is in production there. However, while traveling on Saturday, Freeman's private plane had to make an emergency landing after it hit an armadillo shortly after take off from a Mississippi airport.
According to the Daily Mail, the actor's plane ran over the animal as it was taking off, puncturing two of its tires and forcing the twin-engine aircraft to land at an airport in Tunica, Mississippi. Freeman and his pilot were unharmed.
"Appreciate the concern and prayers for our safety. Thank you," Freeman wrote on his official Facebook page following the incident. "In case you haven't heard - sometimes things don't go as planned. On our way to Texas yesterday (to film a segment of 'The Story of God'), a tire blew on takeoff which caused other problems. But thanks to my EXCELLENT pilot Jimmy Hobson we landed safely without a scratch. (I cannot say the same about my plane)."
The actor eventually made it to Houston where he worshiped at Lakewood Church and met with Osteen.
According to Variety, Freeman will visit a variety of religiously significant locations across the globe and learn about rituals from cultures around the world for "The Story of God."
Some of the locations the "Shawshank Redemption" actor will visit in the show include the Vatican, Stonehenge, and dozens of others.
"The story of God is one of the greatest mysteries and most important ideas in the world," the actor told Variety in July. "For me, this is a personal and enduring quest to understand the divine, and I am humbled by the opportunity to take viewers along on this incredible journey."
The series, which will air in 171 countries and 45 languages sometime in 2016, will also include Freeman's opinions on God as he shares his personal observations from the "back of a taxi leaving the Vatican or hiking through the Guatemalan jungle on the way to an abandoned Mayan temple."
"I'm primarily interested in why, what is the why of it," the Academy Award-winning actor told Reuters in October while filming in Jerusalem. "I haven't found any answers yet. We're still in production."
In the past, Freeman has expressed skeptical views on religion, telling The Wrap that he doesn't believe an omnipresent creator is watching over the Earth, but rather God was created by man, The Blaze reports.
"Well, here's a scientific question: Has anybody ever seen hard evidence? What we get is theories from our earlier prophets," he said. "Now, people who think that God invented us think that the Earth can't be more than 6,000 years old. So I guess it's a question of belief. My belief system doesn't support a creator as such, as we can call God, who created us in His/Her/Its image."
Freeman added that it was "hard" to say whether he was an atheist or agnostic because he thinks "we invented God."
"So if I believe in God, and I do, it's because I think I'm God," he said.
