Judgment

A man robs a bank. How does the governor of his state and the bank president feel about this guy? The bank president is extremely upset. He wants to tear that man to pieces. In contrast, the governor of the state is not angry like the bank president. As a matter of fact, what if the governor or the police magistrate or the judge knows the man who was the robber? They might even like the guy. But when a man has broken the law, the state is opposed to him. It's a judicial wrath.

Judicial wrath. That means that man can't vote, run for office, and can't buy or sell or set up a business. He's under a ban. There is a settled opposition of the state to him until the debt is paid. And if you're a judge or the governor and you know the robber, you don't have to have any vindictive feelings, but you are opposed to him.

When the Bible talks about the wrath of God, it's talking about God's settled opposition to evil. The way the government has to oppose the law breaker until the debt is paid. The judge might say, “Oh, I hate to see what this poor guy has done to himself. I knew his family. I knew his father. He's robbed the bank. How awful. But we have to uphold the law, otherwise we won't even have a society here. I am opposed to you. I'm after you. I'm pressing you.”

That is what the Bible says is the wrath of God. It's a settled opposition. We were all built by him. We were all created by him. We owe him everything. We should dedicate everything to him. We want to go and live our own lives, our own way. We want to be our own masters. That's wrong. That's law breaking. And God is opposed to us until the debt is paid. God's wrath isn't crankiness. It arises out of a love of truth. It arises out of a love of righteousness, of standards.

As we are approaching or living in the last days, it is obvious that the times are becoming more and more evil. Which single event or series of events will signal a point of no return? How far along are we right now by repeatedly "cutting the strings"? Who is culpable? This Pursuit of Wonder video has over 500,000 views and over 2,000 comments.

"Imagine a ball, hanging from a large number of thin cotton strings. The ball is 1,000 pounds. Each individual string can only hold approximately 5 to 10 pounds without breaking, but with around 200 strings attached, the ball is held up. Now imagine, one by one, the strings begin to get cut. After the first string is cut, nothing happens. After the 2nd, the 3rd, the 10th, the 20th, still nothing happens. But as the number of total strings reduces, the likelihood that the next cut string will cause everything to fall, increases.

"Eventually, if no more strings are added, one string will be the final string, when the weight will no longer be withstandable and all the other strings will begin to snap. The whole system collapsing. Though it will appear to be this one string, one cut, one act, that is the cause of everything falling. Of course, each prior cut string will have been equally relevant. We will simply only know how close we were, how much damage we had caused, after that last string is cut.

"For many of us this is what today's world can often feel like. Humanity constantly and fervently cutting and adding strings to hold up a very heavy world, each of us watching, fretting and hoping that everything will sustain, that no one will cut that last string."

In a remarkable 1988 article, the British atheist philosopher A. J. Ayer, architect of a philosophy known as logical positivism, recounted his own near-death experience (NDE)., Ayer choked on a piece of smoked salmon, causing his heart to stop beating for four minutes. But Ayer astonished his medical team by recovering and then telling them about an extraordinary experience. “I was confronted,” he recalled, “by a red light, exceedingly bright, and also very painful even when I turned away from it. I was aware that this light was responsible for the government of the universe.”

One might expect that such an experience would prompt an atheist to reconsider views on God’s existence. But not Ayer—at least not publicly. “My recent experiences,” he wrote, “have slightly weakened my conviction that my genuine death, which is due fairly soon, will be the end of me, though I continue to hope that it will be. They have not weakened my conviction that there is no god.” He was ready, in other words, to admit the universe might be more complex than he originally thought, but not to the point of questioning its supposed godlessness.

Yet in a curious twist, another account suggests that Ayer did reconsider the question of God’s reality. Jeremy George, the attending physician, later reported that Ayer had told him privately, “I saw a divine being. I’m afraid I’m going to have to revise all my various books and opinions.”

A man and a woman in Tennessee were arrested when they attempted to sell stolen goods at a pawn shop. 30-year-old Jeremy Watts and 24-year-old Jessica Heady tried to sell two PlayStation systems along with controllers, video games, and DVDs. The only problem with their plan was that the goods happened to be from the house of the pawnshop owner.

The owner, Edward Dial, said that he recognized the items and when he went home to check, saw that his home had indeed been burglarized. Watts and Heady were arrested and charged with aggravated burglary.

Possible Preaching Angle: Sin can be a tempting choice when the victim is faceless and nameless. But in reality, that's never the case. Sin always has a victim, as David says in Psalm 51:4 "Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight."

Imagine a savvy organization that does a leveraged buyout and buys a company, and the company is losing money. It's awash in red ink. What does the company do? The takeover buyer knows that this company that it's bought is just full of incompetent management. Management stinks from top to bottom.

So, what do you do? Fire them all? Block them out? Put in new people? Is that illegal? No, the buyers have that right. Is that impractical? No, they have the power. It's smart.

In the biblical story God comes to us. Because he's powerful, he's got the right to blot us out. Why? Because look at the world. It's incompetent. Morally incompetent from top to bottom. He's got the power, so it's not impractical. He's got the holiness. He's got the right, but thank goodness he's also got the mercy, because if he was just powerful and holy, he would do what any good company would do who has just bought out another company that's incompetent. Every head rolls. Fire them all! They have the right; they have the power. It's the smart thing to do. But God's also merciful, so he will restore us. He will redeem us. He'll cut the head off of our sin instead of cutting the head off of our bodies and that's the reason…the hymnwriter said, “for his mercies endure, ever faithful, ever sure.”

Journalist Lance Morrow won the National Magazine Award for an essay— “The Case for Rage and Retribution”—written on Sept. 11, 2001. His opening in that essay captured the national mood as well as reflecting Morrow’s sense of good and evil:

For once, let’s have no ‘grief counselors’ standing by with banal consolations, as if the purpose, in the midst of all this, were merely to make everyone feel better as quickly as possible. We shouldn’t feel better. For once, let’s have no fatuous rhetoric about ‘healing.’ Healing is inappropriate now, and dangerous. There will be time later for the tears of sorrow. A day cannot live in infamy without the nourishment of rage. Let’s have rage.

Possible Preaching Angle:

When preaching the imprecatory psalms, remember they are not about personal vengeance, but prayers focused on God’s justice, sovereignty, and protection. These psalms express a longing for justice from those oppressed by enemies of both God’s people and God. God promises divine justice for His people: “Will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night?... He will see that they get justice, and quickly” (Luke 18:7–8; cf. Rev. 19:2).

Constructed during the early 18th-century during the reign of Sultan Ismail bin Sharif, the Kara Prison is a vast subterranean prison in the city of Meknes, Morocco. Its most unusual feature is that it lacked doors and bars, but it’s believed that no one ever escaped.

Its inescapability despite lacking bars and doors was due to its complex labyrinth-like design. It was named after a Portuguese prisoner who was granted freedom on the condition that he constructed a prison that could house more than 40,000 inmates.

The entrance is located in Ismaili Qasba, but the labyrinth goes on for miles. Some believe it’s roughly the size of the city itself. According to legends, a team of French explorers attempted to discover the vastness of the prison and never returned. Each hall of the dungeon contained several corridors, which led to another hall, into another, then into another.

As time went on, the prison was discontinued and was utilized as a storage facility for food. Today, a portion of the former prison is open to the public, but its true extent is still unknown.

Possible Preaching Angle:

While this Moroccan prison may have claimed to be escape-proof, it is certain that there is no escape from hell. An inescapable horror of black darkness (Jude 1:4,13), eternal fire (Matt. 25:41), undying worms (Mark 9:44, 48), and everlasting destruction (2 Thess. 1:9) await those who reject Christ.

A recent study by The Washington Post has revealed a startling number of cases where innocent people have been accused or arrested for crimes because they were identified through a faulty deployment of AI-driven facial recognition software.

Katie Kinsey is chief of staff for the Policing Project at the NYU School of Law. According to Kinsey, such software is often used to analyze low-quality, grainy surveillance photos or images, and as a result perform demonstrably worse in real-world situations compared to laboratory tests involving crystal-clear, high-resolution images.

Additionally, police often succumb to a phenomenon known as “automation bias,” where people tend to believe that machines or computers are less biased and more trustworthy. This phenomenon, combined with other identification techniques with limited efficacy like witness testimony, often create scenarios where officers hastily jump to conclusions without doing their due diligence. Sometimes officers fail to account for the possibility that innocent citizens might bear physical similarities to criminal suspects. Other times, they rely on the facial recognition hit without using other forensic evidence for confirmation.

For example, a medical entrepreneur named Jason Vernau spent three days behind bars after being arrested for check fraud after police used facial recognition to ID him as a bank customer. In this case, the software was correct; Vernau had been in the Miami bank where the fraudulent check was deposited, but he was there to deposit a legitimate check. Had officers done even a cursory examination of his financial documents, or the time stamps in the security footage, they would’ve ruled him out as a suspect.

“This is your investigative work?” That’s what Vernau asked the detectives who questioned him. “You have a picture of me at a bank and that’s your proof? I said, ‘where’s my fingerprints on the check? Where’s my signature?’”

After Vernau was released, prosecutors later dropped the case, but Vernau said he is still working to get the charges removed from his record.

Possible Preaching Angles:

This story highlights several themes that resonate with biblical narratives, particularly concerning justice, false accusations, and the dangers of relying on flawed systems or human biases.

There is a brilliant short interview on Patheos with Os Guinness based on his book, A Free People's Suicide. Guinness argues that America may be on the road to a slow death by suicide.

Guinness said,

The title [of the book] goes back to Abraham Lincoln. “As a nation of free men, either we will live free for all time or die by suicide.” Strong, free nations always bring themselves down. That's going to be America's problem. It won't come down from foreign challenges but by internal corruptions, and in this case by the corruption of freedom.

Guinness also adds, "This is explicitly not a partisan issue. ... The framers had a vision of freedom which … was not only negative freedom from but also a positive freedom to be. American freedom now is almost exclusively freedom from—freedom from interference or freedom from constraint."

Editor’s Note: See also historian Will Durant's observation that “A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

History is filled with the evidence that nations which forsake godly principles and embrace sin will face severe consequences.

Michael Meyden, a 57-year-old father was sentenced to two years in prison for spiking fruit smoothies with a prescription sedative during a sleepover, in an attempt to make his daughter and her three friends go to bed. After Meyden dosed the girls, two of them blacked out, leading the third girl to text her mother in a panic, leading to the discovery of the incident. The girls were taken to Randall Children’s Hospital where they tested positive for benzodiazepine. Meyden pleaded guilty to three counts of causing another person to ingest a controlled substance, a felony.

The three 12-year-old victims and their mothers spoke in court, expressing their deep sense of betrayal and lasting harm.

One girl said, “Adults are not people I can simply trust anymore. They are people who scare me and make me think twice: What if they were to hurt me the same way as Mr. Meyden?”

Another girl, whose best friend is Meyden’s daughter, tearfully stated, “I trusted him because he was my best friend’s dad. He abused that trust.”

The third girl directly addressed Meyden, saying, “I am disgusted by the look of your face and your actions and all that you have done. You are horrible and I will always hate you for what you have done.”

“You played Russian roulette with my child’s life,” one mother told Meyden. She detailed how her daughter, “barely five feet tall and on a good day 70 pounds soaking wet,” had dangerously high levels of the drug in her system.

Another mother condemned Meyden’s behavior, stating, “No decent parent feels the need to drug their own child and her friends. No decent parent puts their hands on drugged and unconscious young girls without nefarious intent.”

Meyden explained he had spiked the smoothies because he wanted the girls to sleep so he could rest, but admitted he was overly fixated on getting them to bed. “My whole life is destroyed,” he lamented. Judge Ann Lininger acknowledged his remorse but emphasized the severe impact of his actions, telling him he had “created some tremendous wreckage through your decisions.” She praised the victims for their bravery and pursuit of justice, describing them as “strong, articulate young women who experienced an unfathomable injustice.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

This is an example of how extreme selfishness can lead to behavior that harms others resulting in a dramatic betrayal of trust that children place in those in authority over them such as parents, teachers, or church leaders.

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, telecom companies have left behind a sprawling network of cables covered in toxic lead that stretches across the US. The toxic lead exists under the water, in the soil, and on poles overhead. As the lead degrades, it is ending up in places where Americans live, work, and play.

The lead can be found on the banks of the Mississippi River in Louisiana, the Detroit River in Michigan, the Willamette River in Oregon, and the Passaic River in New Jersey. The metal has tainted the soil at a popular fishing spot in New Iberia, Louisiana, at a playground in Wappingers Falls, New York, and in front of a school in suburban New Jersey.

There’s a hidden source of contamination—more than 2,000 lead-covered cables—that hasn’t been addressed by the companies or environmental regulators. These relics of the old Bell System’s regional telephone network, and their impact on the environment, haven’t been previously reported.

Lead levels in sediment and soil at more than four dozen locations tested exceeded safety recommendations set by the US Environmental Protection Agency. At the New Iberia fishing spot, lead leaching into the sediment near a cable in June 2022 measured 14.5 times the EPA threshold for areas where children play. “We’ve been fishing here since we were kids,” said 27-year-old Tyrin Jones who grew up a few blocks away.

For many years, telecom companies have known about the lead-covered cables and the potential risks of exposure to their workers, according to documents and interviews with former employees. They were also aware that lead was potentially leaching into the environment, but haven’t meaningfully acted on potential health risks.

Possible Preaching Angle:

In the same way, unconfessed and unaddressed sin or wounds from our past can leach toxins into our body and into the body of Christ.

Ride sharing apps (like Uber and Lyft) ratings have become almost meaningless. A recent report says, “Confusion over what constitutes 5-star behavior for certain services, combined with the guilt of potentially hurting someone’s livelihood, has people defaulting to perfect scores. Ratings padding is particularly rampant for services involving personal interactions. Everyone is ‘above average’ on some apps—way, way above.”

A customer named Mike Johnson has endured some awkward Uber rides. He once held his nose throughout a trip because the driver was carrying chopped-up Durian—the world’s smelliest fruit. Another time, he was stuck in the back seat while a driver bickered with her boyfriend. Yet another driver tried to sell him a Ponzi scheme. He rated each one five out of five stars.

Johnson explained: “They all seemed like nice people. I didn’t want them to be kicked off the app over my bad rating,” the 33-year-old New Yorker said. “Isn’t 5 stars, like, the norm?”

Ratings are so inflated that Lyft drivers whose scores dip below 4.8 out of 5 stars are asked to boost their performance. Drivers under 4.6 risk getting deactivated.

Possible Preaching Angles:

1) God is not afraid to tell us the truth about our sin. 2) Christians should resist this rating inflation and be willing to speak the truth in love to one another.

Is there really an afterlife? While most people think humans will never be able to prove what happens after death, half of adults still believe their spirit lives on—somewhere.

The new survey of over 1,000 people in the United Kingdom, finds 50% of respondents believe in an afterlife. Of this group, 60% believe everyone experiences the same thing when they die—regardless of their individual beliefs. However, two in three believe scientists will never be able to tell us what really happens when someone passes.

Regardless of whether people think they’re going to heaven (55%) or worry their life choices could end up sending them to hell (58%), the poll finds 68% of all respondents have no fear of what comes next. Overall, one in four think people go to heaven or hell, 16% believe they’ll exist in a “spiritual realm,” and 16% believe in reincarnation.

No matter what happens after death, respondents are confident it’ll actually be an improvement over their current life. The poll finds adults think heaven provides people with a chance to recapture the things they’ve lost throughout their life.

The vast majority (86%) think the afterlife involves a sense of peace and 66% describe it as a place of happiness. Three in five adults believe there will be no more suffering when they die.

However, respondents think there are a few conditions people need to follow in order to reach this peaceful realm. Over four in five people (84%) say you have to live a good life and be a generally good person to reach heaven. One in three claim you have to place your faith in a higher power to reach the afterlife and one in five say it requires you to confess all your sins.

Possible Preaching Angle:

This survey was taken in mid-life when old age and illness are seen as far away. When one gets closer to the end, it is likely many of them will change their opinion, or fall deeper into denial with the help of Satan who wants to soothe them with lies.

A man from Georgia found himself in shock after being handed a speeding ticket totaling a staggering $1.4 million. Connor Cato was pulled over in September for driving at 90 mph in a 55-mph zone, resulting in the citation.

Cato says he knew he would be paying a hefty fine for driving so fast, but even taking that into account, the amount seemed excessive. “‘$1.4 million,’ the lady told me on the phone. I said, ‘This might be a typo’ and she said, ‘No sir, you either pay the amount on the ticket or you come to court on Dec. 21 at 1:30 p.m.’”

Eventually, city officials clarified that the amount was not the actual fine but rather a placeholder generated by the e-citation software used by the local court. The official statement from the City of Savannah stated, “The programmers who designed the software used the largest number possible because super speeder tickets are a mandatory court appearance and do not have a fine amount attached to them when issued by police.”

Savannah city spokesperson Joshua Peacock told the Associated Press that the citation’s value was not meant to intimidate or coerce individuals into appearing in court, explaining that the actual fine is subject to a cap of $1,000, along with additional state-mandated costs. Furthermore, Peacock assured the public that the court is actively working on revising the placeholder language to prevent any further confusion or misunderstanding regarding the nature of the citation.

Still, Cato was not the only person riled up by the big-ticket citation. In a recent editorial, The New York Post called it a metaphor for “the absolute state of the social contract we make with our elected officials and their administrative henchmen.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

People don’t always understand the eternal consequences of their behavior, but there is a shocking day of judgment coming. At that time many will face the consequences of violating God’s laws and there will be no mercy. However, God is merciful “not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Pet. 3:9). At the present time, God uses consequences to awaken people to the penalty of disobedience (Heb. 12:4-12).

Claude Vincent Griffin, 33, was arrested in early June after being identified in security footage of a burglary at a phone repair shop. Griffin was seen breaking the glass of a display case and pocketing several items. His feeble attempt at avoiding identification was foiled when the cardboard box he was wearing on his head tipped over and fell off.

Once Jeremias Berganza, the owner of Irepair Tech, saw Griffin’s face on the security footage, he immediately began asking around the shopping plaza if anyone had seen the man. Griffin was spotted shortly thereafter drinking with friends outside a nearby liquor store.

Police responded to Berganza’s call and arrested Griffin, charging him with grand theft, burglary, criminal mischief, cocaine possession, and resisting an officer without violence. According to Berganza, Griffin stole 19 iPhones and about $8,000 in cash, totaling about $15,000 in losses.

Possible Preaching Angle:

A thief might think that their disguise will protect them. But eventually, all masks will be stripped off and all deeds will be revealed before God’s throne of justice.

When a local man was carjacked at a Sunoco gas station recently, he probably had no idea the perpetrators would be caught and his car recovered so quickly.

The man had just finished pumping his gas and was entering his car when the two teens approached and demanded his keys. After the man yielded, the two teenagers were baffled by the car’s manual transmission. Unable to put the car in gear, they instead exited the vehicle and ran.

The two teenagers were arrested for the attempted car theft after police chased them on foot. They were charged with carjacking and conspiracy to carjack.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Those who disregard God’s standards for honesty and truth and try to lie, cheat, or steal their way to riches, will ultimately end in judgment, whether immediately or ultimately.

It was the height of summer in the UK and then the sky darkened. On the evening of July 21, 2021, hailstones the size of golf balls fell from the sky, smashing windows and battering cars.

While the hailstorm was unusual in its severity, it was mild compared to a hailstorm that struck Calgary in Canada in June 2020. Hailstones the size of tennis balls caused damage to at least 70,000 homes and vehicles, destroyed crops and left the area facing a $940 million repair bill.

And climate change is altering the pattern of hailstorms. In the last three years in Texas, Colorado, and Alabama, the records for largest hailstone have been broken, reaching sizes of up to 6.2 inches in diameter. Hail damage in the US now averages more than $10 billion a year.

Hail forms as droplets of water are carried upward into a thunderstorm. Updraughts carry them into parts of the atmosphere where the air is cold enough to freeze the droplets. Moisture from the air accumulates on the outside of the drops of ice as it moves through the air, causing the hailstone to grow in onion-like layers.

Hailstones of less than 1 inch diameter typically fall at 25-49 mph. But downbursts can feature vertical windspeeds of 156-179 mph with correspondingly destructive hail. The heaviest hailstone ever recorded fell in Bangladesh in 1986, weighed 2.25 lbs. The hailstorm killed as many as 92 people and injured 400.

But just how big can a hailstone get? Experts now estimate the largest possible hailstone at 10.6 inches across or "bowling ball sized.” Meteorologist Matthew Kumjian of Pennsylvania State University said, “Strong 'supercell' thunderstorms produce the world's largest hailstones. So, the strongest of these storms today is probably capable of producing a supergiant stone.” It's clear that the really big stuff is likely to still keep hurling down at us. All we can do is prepare, and find a decent shelter.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Throughout Scripture God has used hailstones as a form of judgment upon his enemies. This will be particularly true in the end times when hailstones weighing 100 pounds each will bring devastating judgment to the earth. “And men cursed God for the plague of hail, because it was so horrendous” (Rev. 16:21).

Hannah Beswick had a morbid fear of being buried alive, and this dread was not entirely irrational. Her young brother John almost had his coffin lid closed over him when a mourner attending John’s supposed death noticed the eyelids of the “dead body” flickering. On examination, the family physician confirmed that John was still alive. John regained consciousness a few days later, and lived for many more years.

Such incidents were not uncommon during the period in which Hannah Beswick lived—late 17th to mid-18th century. In fact, cases of premature burial have been documented well into the late 19th century. These are gruesome tales—urban legend or otherwise—about victims falling into the state of coma, and then waking up days … later to find themselves entombed.

The Scottish philosopher John Duns Scotus (1266-1308) was reported to have been buried alive after one of his occasional fits of coma was mistaken to be the loss of life. After his tomb was reopened, years later, his body was found outside his coffin. His hands were torn and bloody from the attempted escape.

On February 21, 1885, The New York Times gave a disturbing account of a man identified as “Jenkins,” whose body was found turned over onto its front inside the coffin, with much of his hair pulled out. There were also scratch marks visible on all sides of the coffin's interior.

Another story reported in The Times on January 18, 1886, tells about a Canadian girl named "Collins," whose body was described as being found with the knees tucked up under the body, and her burial shroud “torn into shreds.”

After the incident with her brother, Hannah was left with a pathological fear of the same thing befalling her. She asked her doctor to ensure that there was no risk of premature burial when her time came. She demanded her body be kept above ground and regularly examined for signs of life until it was certain she was dead.

Possible Preaching Angle:

This is a gruesome illustration but one which can realistically apply directly to the horrors of hell. The terrifying reality of the unsaved awakening after death in the inescapable horror of conscious eternity in hell cannot be ignored. We must be realistic in our view of both heaven and hell, and be compelled to preach the good news of God’s saving grace to a lost and dying world.