Retribution

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.

Hannah Payne was sentenced to life in prison in December of 2023 for the 2019 shooting death of Kenneth Herring. Payne was officially convicted of felony murder, malice murder, aggravated assault, and false imprisonment.

During the original incident, Payne chased down Herring after witnessing a hit-and-run involving him and another driver on Riverdale Road.

"I just seen her outside hitting on the window. And that’s what made me just grab my phone," recalled Cameron Williams, a truck driver who recorded footage of the interaction. This evidence eventually aided the prosecution in Payne’s conviction. Williams said that he saw Payne "yelling, hitting on the window, hitting on the door.”

According to authorities, Payne initially called 911 after witnessing the traffic incident, but ignored the advice of the dispatcher who told her not to follow Herring’s car. After pursuing Herring, she got into a confrontation with him, and eventually shot him, fatally wounding him in the stomach. Because of the footage, prosecutors were able to isolate images of Payne holding her gun, standing next to Herring’s truck.

Payne later told police that Herring had shot himself with her gun; the jury, however, did not agree with her version of events. It took them only two hours of deliberation before they rendered a guilty verdict. During the sentencing, Payne fought back tears as Judge Jewell Scott handed down her life sentence with a possibility of parole.

“Mr. Herring was a human worthy of saving,” the prosecutor said, when petitioning the court for the maximum allowable sentence. “He had a family to go home to.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Incidents of road rage are becoming all too common as people struggle with mental health issues, the deterioration of society, and taking justice and retribution into their own hands in this age of lawlessness.

For most people, a drive home from a day out is rather uneventful, but most people are not Christopher Young. Young was spotted by Portland police officers driving a gray Audi without a license plate, and one of them thought the Oregon DMV Trip Permit in the window looked a little fishy. After running the number and determining it was fake, officers followed Young in traffic, and eventually decided to pull him over. This prompted Young to flee. Police then began a high-speed pursuit in which Young “drove into oncoming traffic, ran multiple red lights, nearly collided with multiple motorists and at one point drove onto a sidewalk,” according to court documents.

Police eventually apprehended Young at his home. Upon securing a warrant for the property, they discovered the VIN on the Audi had been painted over, there were several other stolen cars on the property, and that Young was in possession of firearms, at least one fake ID, and tools associated with car theft.

Young currently faces 51 counts of criminal charges, including identity theft, forgery, possession of a stolen vehicle, and reckless driving.

Possible Preaching Angle:

There's no way to outrun justice or the truth; God's desire for righteousness in the earth is so unrelenting there's no point for anyone trying to lie, cheat, or steal their way to prosperity. It won't work ultimately.

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.

In a novel by the British mystery writer P.D. James, a detective shares a common sentiment, saying, “I don’t go for all this emphasis on sin, suffering, and judgment. If I had a God, I’d like him to be intelligent, cheerful, and amusing.” In response, her Jewish colleague says, “I doubt whether you would find him much of a comfort when they herded you into the gas chambers. You might prefer a God of vengeance.”

Theologian J. Todd Billings comments on this quote:

A God without wrath is a God who whitewashes evil and is deaf to the cries of the powerless. A student of mine who grew up in a gang culture and had many whom he loved taken from him by violence told me with profound honesty that “If God will not avenge, I am tempted to avenge.” Precisely because God is a God of love, he is also a God of holy wrath.

Drive three and a half hours north of Turkmenistan’s capital, into the flat, seemingly empty desert. In the middle of nowhere, you’ll see it. Bright orange flames rise out of an infernal abyss, licking the night sky. The air at the pit’s edge is thick and hot, like standing too close to an erupting volcano. It smells faintly of propane, and it is loud, like a jet engine revving up. Welcome to the Gates of Hell—at least until its devilish blaze is snuffed out.

In January of 2022, Turkmenistan’s President announced plans to extinguish the decades-old conflagration in the chasm. He cited safety concerns for those living nearby as well as economic loss as valuable methane gas burns off into the atmosphere. But he didn’t specify how he would put out the immense fire—perhaps by filling in the crater or diverting the gas elsewhere.

People have been trying to put out the crater’s fires since they first ignited—whenever that was. No one even knows exactly how or when the crater formed. The most widely circulated story about the crater says it formed in 1971 following a drilling accident. The Soviets were drilling in the desert for natural gas, when the drilling rig collapsed into the earth. Hoping to burn off the methane gas that floated up from the newly formed crater, the Soviets lit it on fire. They thought it would burn off the methane in a day or two. Five decades later, the crater’s still burning.

It’s rumored the Soviets tried to stop the blaze several times. But the fiery hellscape has continued to burn, drawing more and more tourists each year. The crater’s growing popularity is largely thanks to the internet and viral photos of the unearthly phenomenon.

But it may be harder to stop the flames than just pouring a bunch of sand into the pit. Explorer George Kourounis said, “As I was digging into the ground to gather soil samples, fire would start coming out of the hole I just freshly dug because it was creating new paths for the gas to come out of the crater. So even if you were to extinguish the fire and cover it up, there’s a chance that the gas could still find its way out to the surface and all it would take is one spark to light it up again.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

This deadly manmade fire may one day be extinguished. But the real fires of hell will burn forever according to the Lord’s own words as he described the Lake of Fire, the destiny of the unsaved.

In the town of Merced, which is named after the Spanish word for “mercy,” a bumbling robbery attempt was quickly brought to a merciful end. According to authorities, Stephan Stanley began breaking the glass in the jewelry department of a JC Penney store in Merced Mall. He was grabbed by two nearby men in the store, who attempted to hold him down to prevent him from getting away with any merchandise. Angered at their intervention, Stanley tried to use pepper spray against his sudden captors, but instead he sprayed himself.

Temporarily incapacitated by his own pepper spray, Stanley was easily subdued, and was eventually arrested on suspicion of robbery, assault with a deadly weapon, and drug charges. He was subsequently booked into Merced County Jail, where he is unlikely to receive much in the way of mercy.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Justice will come to those who break God’s law, some sooner than is expected. “He that digs a hole will fall into it” (Ecc. 10:8).

Author/speaker Christopher Ash asks, “What are we to make of the Bible’s passages that seem to speak quite straightforwardly of blessings following obedience and curses following apostasy?” Ash urges that a distinction be made between the general truth of such sayings and absolute “every case” truth. He offers the following illustration:

Suppose an earthquake struck a well-planned place like Manhattan, with its clear and ordered grid of streets. If I wanted to go from A to B after the earthquake, I would in general still be best advised to go by the main roads. But whereas before the earthquake that would always be the best route, now I might find both that the main road has been blocked and also that some building has collapsed to open up some unplanned route.

It is a little like this with the created order after the disruption of the fall of humankind. In general, keeping God’s commandments and living in line with the created order will bring peace and prosperity. In general, for example, if I am honest and work hard, I will do better. But not always. And the final proof that righteousness pays will not come until the final judgment, when the disruption will be put right and the creation reordered as it ought to be.

While seeking to better understand the nature of aggression, David Chester of Virginia Commonwealth University, along with Nathan DeWall of the University of Kentucky, started studying revenge. They discovered that a person who is insulted or socially rejected feels an emotional pain. The area in the brain associated with pain was most active in participants who went on to react with an aggressive response after feeling rejected. Chester said, “It’s tapping into an ancient … tendency to respond to threats and harm with aggressive retaliation.”

In a follow-up study he was surprised to find that emotional pain was intricately yoked with pleasure. That is, while rejection initially feels painful, it can quickly be masked by pleasure when presented with the opportunity to get revenge. It even activates the brain's known reward circuit, the nucleus accumbens. People who are provoked behave aggressively precisely because it can be a rewarding experience. Revenge really can be sweet.

Possible Preaching Angle:

In contrast to the desire of our old nature, God wants believers to forgive those who harm them, love their enemies, and pray for those who persecute them so that we show the world what God is like.

The Dutch Defense Safety Inspection Agency launched an investigation about an F-16 fighter that suffered damage from 20-millimeter cannon fire during a routine training exercise. The problem? The damage came from its own cannons.

The aircraft is equipped with a Vulcan Gatling gun, which can fire over 6,000 rounds a minute. Those rounds travel at a muzzle velocity of 3,450 feet per second. But the aircraft is capable of flying much faster. So what appears to have happened is that, after a burst of rounds were fired from the aircraft, the pilot accelerated and collided with those rounds while still in mid-air. At least one of them struck the side of the F-16’s fuselage, and parts of a round were ingested by the aircraft’s engine. The F-16’s pilot managed to land the aircraft safely at Leeuwarden Air Base.

Potential Preaching Angles: God’s Word promises that we will reap what we sow. Be careful and just in your actions, lest the consequences become your own downfall.

Timothy Keller writes “In A Reason for God”:

In Christianity God is both a God of love and of justice. Many people struggle with this. They believe that a loving God can't be a judging God. Like most other Christian ministers in our society, I have been asked literally thousands of times, "How can a God of love be also a God of filled with wrath and anger? If he is loving and perfect, he should forgive and accept everyone. He shouldn't get angry."

I always start my response by pointing out that all loving persons are sometimes filled with wrath, not just despite of but because of their love. If you love a person and you see someone ruining them—even they themselves—you get angry. As Becky Pippert puts it in her book Hope Has Its Reasons:

Think how we feel when we see someone we love ravaged by unwise actions or relationships. Do we respond with benign tolerance as we might toward strangers? Far from it. . . . Anger isn’t the opposite of love. Hate is, and the final form of hate is indifference. . . . God’s wrath is not a cranky explosion, but his settled opposition to the cancer . . . which is eating out the insides of the human race he loves with his whole being.

The Bible says that God's wrath flows from his love and delight in his creation. He is angry at evil and injustice because it is destroying its peace and integrity.

President Mobutu reigned as the dictator and President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1965 to 1997. But after global political changes, Mobutu was forced out of power and the country collapsed and descended into conflict and chaos. British pastor Mark Meynell tells the story of his good friend Emma, who witnessed many atrocities committed against his friends and family members. He and his wife and three daughters fled east on foot. Weeks later they arrived in Uganda as refugees, with nothing. After a few months of a miserable existence, he walked past a local seminary and sensed that the Lord was calling him to ministry. The family had been living in one room, without water or electricity, and enough to pay for one meal every two days.

Meynell said that one evening they met in the seminary's tiny library and started talking. As Emma opened his heart and shared the story of the violence and injustice he had witnessed, he started to openly weep, despite the fact that African men never cry in public. Then Emma said these sobering words, "You know Mark, I could never believe the gospel if it were not for the judgment of God. Because I will never get justice in this world. But I couldn't cope if I was NEVER going to see justice done."

Meynell commented, "We in the West often recoil from God's justice for a very simple reason: We've hardly had to suffer injustice. But most people around the globe recognize that God's justice is praiseworthy and great. Of course his mercy and redemption are even greater, but we need his perfect justice as well."

A hunter was hospitalized after a goose fell from midair and landed on him.

Robert Meilhammer, 51, was out hunting with three others when his party noticed a flock of Canada geese flying overhead. From a blind, one of the members of the group fired a shot that struck one of the birds. In a burst of tragic irony, the trajectory of the plummeting goose aligned perfectly with Meilhammer's location, striking him directly. The impact left injuries to his face and head, including the loss of two teeth.

It was a "really unusual, freaky accident," according to Maryland Natural Resources Police spokeswoman Candy Thomson, who said the goose was approximately the size of a small turkey. "He's lucky," she added. "Those birds weigh a lot, and falling back down to earth, they're going to pick up a lot of speed. It's gonna leave a mark."

Obviously, hunting accidents like these are no better for the hunter than they are for the goose. Sources are unclear, however, as to how good they may be for the gander.

Potential preaching angles: Be careful what you ask for, you might just get it. You reap what you sow. Those who take the sword will perish by the sword.

After a long night and day of marching, Lee and the exhausted Army of Northern Virginia made camp just east of Appomattox Courthouse on April 8. Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant had sent him a letter on the night of April 7, following confrontations between their troops at Cumberland Church and Farmville, suggesting Lee surrender. The Southern general refused. Grant replied, again suggesting surrender to end the bloodshed. Lee responded, saying in part, "I do not think the emergency has arisen to call for the surrender of this army," though he offered to meet Grant at 10 the next morning between picket lines to discuss a peaceful outcome.

Having watched the battle through field glasses—Lee then said, "Then there is nothing left for me to do but go and see General Grant, and I would rather die a thousand deaths." But meeting General Grant at the Mclean house, Lee said "We are pressed and are ready to surrender. What are your terms?"

Surprisingly it wasn't judgment. It wasn't prison. It wasn't retribution … The terms were to stop fighting and to start living. Give up your weapons, go home and plant your fields. The soldiers who hadn't eaten in days were given meal rations, horses and mules to plow fields. The war was over but for many people, life had just begun.

In 1971, the Afghan government gave a fledgling band of Christians permission to plant a church in Kabul. It was the only Christian church building permitted on neutral soil in Afghanistan. The Afghan government permitted this place of worship only for use among the foreign community; it was never to be used by the Afghan people.

One Sunday morning, only three years after the sanctuary's dedication, soldiers arrived and began to hack away at the wall between the street and the church building. One gentleman in the congregation went to Kabul's mayor and prophetically warned, "lf your government touches that house of God, God will overthrow your government!" The mayor responded by ordering the congregation to turn over their church for destruction, thereby eliminating the need for the Afghan government to pay compensation.

"This building does not belong to us but to God," the people of the church replied. "We can't turn it over for destruction." And they proceeded to serve tea and cookies to the soldiers who were destroying their place of worship.

On Tuesday, July 17, 1973, the Afghan soldiers completed their destruction of the church building. That very night, King Mohammed Zahir Shah, who had ruled for forty years, was overthrown in a coup, and the 227-year-old monarchy in Afghanistan came to an end forever. The rest of that story is told in the history books.

Editor's Note: This story is relayed from eyewitness accounts in a short biography of that church's pastor, a missionary and then a seminary professor named J. Christy Wilson.

On September 2, 1990, a murder occurred in New York City that horrified the nation. The Watkins family from Provo, Utah, a father and mother with their two barely grown sons, had come joyfully to the city for a long-anticipated trip to attend the US Open tennis matches. While waiting on the subway platform for the train to Flushing Meadows, the family was assaulted by a band of four youths. The older of the two sons went to his mother's rescue as she was being kicked in the face, and he was killed in the attempt. The judge, Edwin Torres, sentenced all four attackers to life without parole, the toughest sentence possible in New York at that time, and in doing so issued a striking statement expressing grave alarm for a society in which "a band of marauders can surround, pounce upon, and kill a boy in front of his parents [and then] stride up the block to Roseland and dance until 4 a.m. as if they had stepped on an insect. [These acts were] a visitation that the devil himself would hesitate to conjure up. That cannot go unpunished."

It makes many people queasy nowadays to talk about the wrath of God, but there can be no turning away from this prominent biblical theme … If we are resistant to the idea of the wrath of God, we might pause to reflect the next time we are outraged about something [much smaller than a murder but still worthy of our anger]—about our property values being threatened, or our children's educational opportunities being limited, or our tax breaks being eliminated. All of us are capable of anger about something. God's anger, however, is pure … The wrath of God is not an emotion that flares up from time to time, as though God has temper tantrums. It is a way of describing his absolute enmity against all wrong and his coming to set matters right.

Tim Keller says:

In one of my after-service discussions a woman told me that the very idea of a judging God was offensive. I said, "Why aren't you offended by the idea of a forgiving God?" She looked puzzled. I continued, "I respectfully urge you to consider your cultural location when you find the Christian teaching about hell offensive." I went on to point out that secular Westerners get upset by the Christian doctrines of hell, but they find Biblical teaching about turning the other cheek and forgiving enemies appealing.

I then asked her to consider how someone from a very different culture sees Christianity. In traditional societies the teaching about "turning the other cheek" makes absolutely no sense. It offends people's deepest instincts about what is right. For them the doctrine of a God of judgment, however, is no problem at all. That society is repulsed by aspects of Christianity that Western people enjoy, and are attracted by the aspects that secular Westerners can't stand.

Why, I concluded, should Western cultural sensibilities be the final court in which to judge whether Christianity is valid? I asked the woman gently whet her she thought her culture superior to nonWestern ones. She immediately answered "no." "Well then," I asked, "why should your culture's objections to Christianity trump theirs?"

Incredible perseverance paid off for a team from the International Justice Mission in Cebu, Philippines. After an eight year legal struggle, two traffickers were finally brought to justice.

The difficult case began in 2008, when a teenage girl and two young women were recruited and ferried to work at a brothel on an island far from their home. When they arrived and realized they had been trapped and would be forced to provide sexual services to customers, they escaped.

International Justice Mission, a Christian organization founded on God's Word and the power of prayer, offered aftercare services to help the two girls settle back into the rhythms of life in freedom, and took up what would turn out to be nearly a decade-long battle for justice. As the case moved to trial, it highlighted what was broken in the justice system. Hearings were frequently cancelled when a key party—the judge, the defense counsel, a witness—failed to show up. The courts were backlogged, and hearings would be rescheduled three or four months apart.

The trial was painstakingly slow, but IJM social workers were encouraged by the progress they saw in the lives of the two young women. After spending time in aftercare homes for sex trafficking survivors, both young women moved back into supportive communities where they are now thriving. Finally in November 2016, IJM announced: "On November 14, 2016 two traffickers were sentenced to 20 years in prison. This conviction brings closure and affirms these survivors of their worth. It also sends a message to other brothel owners and traffickers across the Philippines—justice will be served, no matter how long it takes."

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Justice; Injustice—This illustration shows how all followers of Jesus should fight for justice for the oppressed. (2) God's justice; God's wrath—But it also shows how imperfect human justice is. We long for the day when "justice will be served" not just by human courts but by the Living God.