Wrath of God

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 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.

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.

In 1996 two military strategists, Harlan Uliman and James Wade, started advocating a more focused approach to war. Uliman and Wade argued for engaging the enemy with an overwhelming show of force that will destroy "the adversary's will to resist before, during, and after battle." They titled their book Shock and Awe.

Shock and Awe, also known as Rapid Dominance, is defined as "a military doctrine based on the use of overwhelming power, dominant battlefield awareness, dominant maneuvers, and spectacular displays of force to paralyze the enemy's perception of the battlefield and destroy its will to fight." The goal is to render your opponent impotent by using "superior technology, precision engagement, and information dominance."

Shortly before the first Iraq War, Uliman described what would happen with this Shock and Awe approach: "You're sitting in Baghdad and all of a sudden you're the general and 30 of your division headquarters have been wiped out. You also take the city down. By that I mean you get rid of their power, water. In 2,3,4,5 days they are physically, emotionally and psychologically exhausted."

In response to human sin and evil, God could have used Shock and Awe. He could have employed Rapid Dominance to crush us with his "overwhelming power, dominant battlefield awareness, dominant maneuvers, and spectacular displays of force." Instead, the God of all authority and power, chose a radically different strategy: redemptive love, being delivered into the hands of sinners and then laying down his life at the cross. No wonder Paul had to acknowledge "the foolishness of the cross."

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.

In Fleming Rutledge's new book, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ, she acknowledges the difficulty that modern people have with the concept of God's wrath. Nevertheless, she writes, "there can be no turning away from this prominent biblical theme." But forget the Bible for a moment: don't we have wrath, too? Rutledge writes:

A slogan of our times is "Where's the outrage?" It has been applied to everything from Big Pharma's market manipulation to CEOs' astronomical wealth to police officers' stonewalling. "Where the outrage?" inquire many commentators, wondering why congressmen, officials, and ordinary voters seem so indifferent. Why has the gap between rich and poor become so huge? Why are so many mentally ill people slipping through the cracks? Why does gun violence continue to be a hallmark of American culture? Why are there so many innocent people on death row? Why are our prisons filled with such a preponderance of black and Hispanic men? Where's the outrage? The public is outraged all over cyberspace about all kinds of things that annoy us personally—the NIMBY (not in my back yard) syndrome—but outrages in the heart of God go unnoticed and unaddressed.

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—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. It does not have the maintenance of privilege as its object, but goes out on behalf of those who have no privileges. the wrath of God is not an emotion that flares up from time to time, as though God had temper tantrums; it is a way of describing his absolute enmity against all wrong and his come to set matters right.

Somewhere in Eastern Europe, an SS officer watched languidly, his machine gun cradled, as an elderly and bearded Hasidic Jew laboriously dug what he knew to be his grave. Standing up straight, he addressed his executioner. "God is watching what you are doing," he said. And then he was shot dead.

What Hitler did not believe, and what Stalin did not believe, and what Mao did not believe, and what the SS did not believe, and what the Gestapo did not believe, and what the NKVD did not believe, and what the commissars, functionaries, swaggering executioners, Nazi doctors, Communist Party theoreticians, intellectuals, Brown Shirts, Blackshirts, Gauleiters, and a thousand party hacks did not believe, was that God was watching what they were doing.

And as far as we can tell, very few of those carrying out the horrors of the twentieth century worried overmuch that God was watching what they were doing either.

A series of contemporary superhero movies present super bad guys who at times demonstrate a biblical view of sin but the wrong cure for our sin. These super-villains understand that human beings are flawed sinners, but their solution is almost always the same: wipe out every human being without mercy and without lifting a finger to redeem a fallen human race.

For instance, in the original The Matrix movie, Agent Smith calls humanity "a virus." "Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet," he proclaims, "You're a plague, and we … are the cure." In the 2010 movie the Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, the super-villain Owlman wants to destroy the cancer called humanity (and all of existence and all living beings) by destroying Earth.

In the 2005 Batman Begins movie, the villain Ra's al Ghul, the leader of the League of Shadows, tells Batman: "Gotham's time has come. Like Constantinople or Rome before it the city has become a breeding ground for suffering and injustice. It is beyond saving and must be allowed to die. This is the most important function of the League of Shadows. It is one we've performed for centuries."

And later on when the two face each other once again, he says: "The League of Shadows has been a check against human corruption for thousands of years. We sacked Rome. Loaded trade ships with plague rats. Burned London to the ground. Every time a civilization reaches the pinnacle of its decadence we return to restore the balance."

In The Dark Knight Rises, the bad guy Bane tells Batman that he has come to carry on the League of Shadows' mission in the wake of Ra's' death. Batman prevented their attempt in Batman Begins, but Bane has returned to finish the job by mercilessly wiping out Gotham.

Possible Preaching Angles: In popular culture, those who bring justice to the earth are without mercy or sorrow, and they do not offer redemption. How different is the God revealed to us in Scripture. He judges sin with perfect justice, but in his love and mercy he has also offered the way of salvation—through the life and death of his own beloved Son.

British evangelist Rico Tice says, "Loving people means warning people." He illustrates with the following personal story:

I was once in Australia visiting a friend. He took me to a beach on Botany Bay, so I decided I had to go for a swim. I was just taking off my shirt when he said: "What are you doing." I said: "I'm going for a swim." He said: "What about those signs?" And he pointed me to some signs I'd not really noticed— Danger: Sharks! With all the confidence of an Englishman abroad, I said: "Don't be ridiculous— I'll be fine." He said: "Listen mate, 200 Australians have died in shark attacks— you've got to decide whether those shark signs are there to save you or to ruin your fun. You're of age—you decide." I decided not to go for a swim.

[Many of the words about hell found in the Bible] are all straight from Jesus' lips. And they're a loving warning to us. The reason Jesus talked about hell is because he does not want people to go there. The reason Jesus died was so that people wouldn't have to go there. The only way to get to hell is to trample over the cross of Jesus. That is a great motivator for our evangelism.

Three researchers from the U.S. and Israel decided to test the legal adage that justice equals "what the judge ate for breakfast." The research team tracked the rulings of eight judges in over 1,100 parole-board hearings over 10 months. The results overwhelmingly led them to the following conclusion: the chances of a prisoner being granted parole depended on the time of day that the judge heard the case. To put it bluntly, the judges'—who had an average of 22 years of experience—ability to make decisions was about as reliable as a kindergartner who needs a snack break.

Prisoners' odds for getting their parole granted started out high in the morning right after breakfast. About 65 percent of the prisoners were granted a parole. Then for the next few hours, the chances of getting a favorable parole hearing started to plummet. This was followed by a cycle of peaks and valleys that repeated itself throughout the day. Prisoners' chances of parole leapt back up to 65 percent at two distinct times: right after the judges' mid-morning snack and again after lunch.

One blogger concluded: "The law, being a human concoction, is subject to the same foibles, biases and imperfections that affect everything humans do"—biases like a bad mood or even breakfast.

Possible Preaching Angles: Our expressions of wrath and judgment are always flawed (which is perhaps one reason why we're turned off by the wrath of God). God alone can deliver perfect, unbiased, impartial justice on the earth.

The phrase "Be afraid, be very afraid" was a tagline from the 1986 horror flick The Fly. Google the phrase and you'll get about 183 million results for that phrase. But the trick is to be appropriately afraid of the right thing. What people commonly fear is not always what should be causing that spike of adrenaline. Here are some examples:

Are you afraid to fly? You have a 0.00001 percent chance of dying in an airplane crash. On the other hand, the car insurance industry estimates that the average driver will be involved in three or four car crashes in their lifetime and the odds of dying in a car crash are one to two percent.

Are you afraid of heights? It's the second most reported fear. Your chance of being injured by falling, jumping, or being pushed from a high place is 1 in 65,092. The chance of having your identity stolen is 1 in 200. Do you fear being killed by a bolt of lightning? The odds of that happening are 1 in 2.3 million. You're much more likely to be struck by a meteorite—those lifetime odds are about 1 in 700,000.

How about dogs? They're bark really is worse than their bite: Your chance of suffering a dog bite is 1 in 137,694. On the other hand, your chance of being injured while mowing the lawn is 1 in 3,623. How about sharks? You're much more likely to be killed by your spouse (1 in 135,000) than a shark (1 in 300 million). Won't ride a roller coaster? If you have the patience to stand in the line, the chance of a roller coaster injury is 1 in 300 million. But if you play with fireworks on the Fourth of July, you're really playing with fire: the chance of injury is 1 in 20,000.

In an interview, actress and social activist Susan Sarandon talked about having long-given up on "organized religion." Sarandon who "nurtures her spiritual self" by practicing meditation had this to say on what drove her away from the church:

I was in trouble from the very beginning in school, not because I was a rebel but because I asked what were deemed to be inappropriate questions. I remember in third grade being told that the only people who were really married were those married in the [church]. I said, "Then, how were Joseph and Mary married, because Jesus didn't create the church till later?" Original sin didn't make any sense to me … And, as I got older, a wrathful God didn't make any sense, or a God that would condemn someone to hell for their sexual orientation.

But at the close of the interview, Sarandon confessed, "The only thing I'm really afraid of is death. I still haven't gotten to the point where I think that's cool."

On February 27, 2012, 17-year-old T. J. Lane from Chardon, Ohio, burst into his school's cafeteria and started gunning down classmates. Lane shot and killed three students, but if it wasn't for the courage of Coach Frank Hall, many more students could have died that day.

The funny thing is that Hall doesn't consider himself to be a courageous hero. The 6'1", 350-pound football coach admits that he has plenty of fears. He hates confrontations; he's afraid of heights, roller coasters, and scary movies; and he jumps through the ceiling when his kids sneak up on him. On one level, Coach Hall is more of a teddy bear than a fighter. Hall summarizes his coaching code in two sentences: "Every kid is someone's pride and joy, or wants to be someone's pride and joy …. I keep thinking, How would I want my kid to be treated?—and then I treat them that way."

But Frank Hall believes that there's one word that defines his life calling—protector. So as the shots rang out on that February morning in the Chardon High School cafeteria Frank Hall knew what he had to do. Hall, a follower of Christ who felt the hand of God through the ordeal, responded with courage in the face of danger. As students cringed under desks, Hall charged at the gunman, his voice booming, "Stop! Stop!" T.J. Lane, the 17-year-old shooter, was thrown off-guard by Hall's charge. Lane shot and missed as Hall dove behind a soda machine.

When Jen Sprinzl, a 51-year-old secretary, rushed out of the office to follow the bangs, Lane pointed his gun in her face. Hall had four adopted sons at home—two African-American, two bi-racial—that he didn't want to leave fatherless, but once again he rose up and bellowed, "NO!" Then he charged at Lane, who wheeled and started running. Police finally found Lane on a wooded road, shivering and wearing a t-shirt with the word KILLER on it. When they asked him why he'd run away, he said, "Because Coach Hall was chasing me."

In a later interview, Hall said, "I know, it sounds crazy, but in all honesty, I really didn't think about anything … I just reacted …. As a society, we cannot lose our outrage when these kinds of tragedies happen. We can't just get to the point where we accept these kinds of things as just part of our lives, now. We have to make sure we, as a people, don't accept it … we can't!"

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Protection—either God's protection of us or our call to be a protector of others; (2) God's Wrath; Wrath—It's an imperfect picture of God's wrath, but it does capture the way God charges into evil and sin with appropriate passion and even anger; (3) Spiritual warfare—Being willing to engage in the spiritual warfare that is raging around us.

Strangely enough, the 'wrath of God' became a news item. Here's what happened: A Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) committee wanted to add the contemporary hymn "In Christ Alone" to their new hymnbook. But only under one condition: they wanted to remove the line "the wrath of God was satisfied." The authors of hymn refused to grant permission and the committee rejected the hymn.

Russell Moore followed the controversy and wrote an article in which he said, ‘I'm hardly one to tell Presbyterians what they ought to have in their hymnals. But the Gospel is good news for Christians because it tells us of a God of both love and justice. The wrath of God doesn't cause us to cower, or to judge our neighbors. It ought to prompt us to see ourselves as recipients of mercy, and as those who will one day give an account. If that's true, let's sing it.’

The hit TV show Breaking Bad follows the story of Walter White, a mild-mannered chemistry teacher who, after receiving a terminal diagnosis, turns to cooking crystal meth to provide for his family. As he develops a taste for the trade, Walt slowly turns into a bold but degenerate thug. But the show doesn't soft-peddle the consequences of sin. The show's creator, Vince Gilligan, said, "If there's a larger lesson to Breaking Bad, it's that actions have consequences …. I feel some sort of need for biblical atonement, or justice, or something."

In one of the most memorable scenes of season four, the biblical implications of Gilligan's vision become clear. Walt's younger accomplice Jesse Pinkman commits murder and then attends a Narcotics Anonymous meeting in hopes of finding relief. After Jesse shares a thinly veiled version of his crime, the group leader counsels self-acceptance. "We're not here to sit in judgment," he says, to which Jesse explodes:

Why not? Why not? … If you just do stuff and nothing happens, what's it all mean? What's the point? … So no matter what I do, hooray for me because I'm a great guy? It's all good? No matter how many dogs I kill, I just—what, do an inventory, and accept?

It's not surprising that Vince Gilligan believes in hell and judgment for human sin. He said, "I want to believe there's a heaven. But I can't not believe there's a hell."

Clifton Williams was headed to the courthouse in Joliet, Illinois to support his cousin, who was going to be sentenced. At the precise moment that Judge Daniel Rozak was reading the sentence, Clifton let out a loud yawn. Because of that ill-timed yawn, the judge cited Clifton for contempt of court and handed down a sentence of six months of jail time.

Ironically, his cousin, who was scheduled to be sentenced, only got probation. But Clifton, who went to court to support his cousin, would go straight to jail. In the aftermath of this story, discussions ensued on cable news channels about judicial power, about Judge Rozak's history of passing down extreme contempt charges, and even about the nature of yawning. Clifton's father argued that a yawn is an involuntary action. The prosecutor in the courtroom that day said, "It was not a simple yawn—it was a loud and boisterous attempt to disrupt the proceedings." Was Clifton's yawn a premeditated first-degree offense? Will the truth about the yawn ever emerge? However innocuous or flagrant the yawn, Clifton Williams probably wishes he would have held it in.

In the end, Clifton only served a few days of the six-month sentence. But after the case was over the question still lingered: Was the judge's penalty excessive? Some people reacted with disbelief; others were outraged, but almost everyone (except Judge Rozak) agreed that the punishment did not fit the crime. Of course the judge had the authority to hand down a contempt sentence against Clifton. Judges have broad discretion under the law on the issue of contempt charges. But was the judgment fair? Was it just?

Possible Preaching Angles: God, wrath of; Judgment; Hell—For many people in our culture, the wrath or judgment of God seems about as arbitrary and capricious as Judge Rozak's contempt ruling. In other words, they think that God's punishments do not fit our crime. Use this illustration to identify with people's assumptions but then to point to the true nature of God's justice and God's rulings.