Life and Death Locked Up in a Cell

For Whoever Observes the Whole Law, But . . . 

We have never met Brenton Tarrant, nor are we likely to do so.  He is the first to be sentenced to life imprisonment without parole in New Zealand--that is, Tarrant must literally spend the rest of his natural life in this world locked up in a cell.  His egregious acts of mass murder necessarily have attracted the most severe penalty "on offer" in the present judicial system of New Zealand, as it were. 

Christians will be thinking long and hard about all of this.  But Christians will be thinking differently from atheists, agnostics, and Unbelievers of all sorts and stripes.  They will also have a distinct view from Islamic folk. 

Christians will be conscious of the fact that Brenton Tarrant has been spared the most extreme form of judicial punishment available in this life: that is, the death penalty.  Secondly, Mr Tarrant may well live another sixty or seventy years in his cell.  That existence might lead to his atonement and forgiveness--but only if Tarrant repents of his horrendous sins and turns to Christ, believing in His mercy and cleansing. 

Thirdly, Christians will be acutely aware that Tarrant's evil is replicated to some degree or other in the lives and attitudes of every Christian that has ever lived, or ever will live.  We look at him and see ourselves.  There have been times when we have lost control of our tempers and sentiments to the extent of wishing evil upon others.  The wishing of evil upon others makes us guilty of that every act itself.  So, as we consider Mr Tarrant, we end up being condemned with him because to some extent we share his evil. 

Doubtless there are many who would find such thoughts to be offensive.  "How dare you say that I am like that evil man" would be the natural response.  Well, Christians are commanded to measure themselves by standing alongside Christ Himself, not alongside Mr Tarrant.  Unless we are like Christ in all regards, we are as doomed as Tarrant is.  "For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it" [James 2:10].

May God have mercy upon us all.

Reversing the Divine Sentence Upon Us All

Meditation From Hosea

In the second chapter of Hosea we read:

And I will sow her for myself in the land.  And I will have mercy on No Mercy, and I will say to Not My People, "You are my people" and he shall say, "You are my God."  [Hosea 2:23]

E. B. Pusey writes:

So God's mercies again overflow His threatenings.  He had threatened to Israel, that he (Israel) would be unpitied, and no more His people.  In reversing His sentence, He embraces in the arms of His mercy all who were not His people, and says of them all, that they should be my people and beloved.  At one and the same time, was Israel to be thus multiplied, and pity was to be shown to those not pitied, and those who were not God's people were to become His people.

At one and the same time were those promises fulfilled in Christ; the one through the other; Israel was not multiplied by itself, but through the bringing-in of the Gentiles.  Nor was Israel alone, or chiefly, brought into a new relation with God.  The same words promised the same mercy to both Jew and Gentile, that all should be one in Christ, all one Jezreel, one Spouse to Himself, one Israel of God, one Beloved; and that all, with one voice of jubilee should cry to Him, "my Lord and my God."

. . . . when God thus anew called them His people, they by His grace would obey His call, and surrender themselves wholly to Him.  For to say "my God" is to own an exclusive relation to God alone.  It is to say, my Beginning and my End, my Hope and My Salvation, my Whole and only God in Whom Alone I will hope, Whom Alone I will fear, love, worship, trust in, obey and serve, with all my heart, mind, soul and strength; by God and my All."  [The Minor Prophets: A Commentary.  Volume 1: p.41.]

Reading The Signs

Like the Merchants of Babylon

Douglas Wilson
Blog & Mablog

Some friends have drawn my attention to a piece that N.T. Wright wrote for Time on the coronavirus here. Another friend of mine has already replied to him here, and just like my friend I agree that the article was better than the headline, which was gobsmackingly bad. But the article itself was still a swing and a miss.

So there are lots of things going on in my world right now, so let me limit myself to just two rejoinders.

The first thing to say is that it is not a coherent response to argue that we cannot know what God is up to with the coronavirus, and then turn around and assume in the nature of our response that we have some idea of what it means. Either we know or we don’t know. And if we don’t know, then we don’t know if lament is the appropriate response. There is an assumed meaning in lament, and you can’t have that meaning if you don’t have any meaning. Jews who had a promise of a return from exile, and a sense of their own vocation as a people, could lament their absence from Jerusalem. But the merchants of Babylon could not lament in this sense — all they can do is wail over their losses (Rev. 18:19).

The Scriptures teach us that disaster comes from the hand of God. “Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? Shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?” (Amos 3:6). Wright is fully correct to say that God Himself laments; He does. But the great mystery for us concerns how God laments those things which He Himself decreed would come to pass. So we do not say that God laments. We must say that the sovereign God laments.

Daily Meditation

Facing a Crisis of History

Ligonier Ministries

In Luke 12:49–57, Jesus told His disciples that He had not come to bring peace, but division. He told them that He was bringing a baptism of fire to the earth, warning the crowd to flee the wrath to come.

This was the great moment of crisis in history. It was a time of urgency that swept the earth with the appearance of Jesus. Jesus’ coming to this planet in the fullness of time was a time of division, judgment, and separation.

It was a time of personal choosing, when eternal destinies were at stake. Everyone who encountered Jesus had to make a choice, to stand with Him or against Him. Thus, since the time of Jesus’ first appearance, the world has been gripped in a kind of crisis that will continue until the last great crisis, the last judgment.

How do men encounter Jesus today, thus facing their own crisis of history? Jesus is in heaven, but men and women encounter Him through His people, the church. The church is His body and His herald. The fiery baptism Jesus came to bring fell in one sense at Pentecost to ignite the tongues of His people so that they might bring the crisis of decision to all men.

Knowing these things should make us urgent in our proclamation of His name and make us insistent that the generation of our day be exposed to the Lord of lords.

Coram Deo

What are you doing to proclaim His name to this generation? Pray about the role God would have you fill.

Passages for Further Study

Luke 12:49-53

Daily Meditation

Respecting God’s Judgment

Ligonier Ministries

One of the most poignant episodes of the judgment of God occurred in the Old Testament case of Eli. Eli was a judge and priest over Israel. He was, for the most part, a godly man. But his sons were wicked and profaned the house of God. Eli rebuked them but did not fully restrain them. God revealed to Samuel that He would judge the house of Eli:

“Behold, I will do something in Israel at which both ears of everyone who hears it will tingle. In that day I will perform against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house, from beginning to end. For I have told him that I will judge his house forever for the iniquity which he knows, because his sons made themselves vile, and he did not restrain them.” (1 Sam. 3:11–13)

When Eli persisted in asking Samuel what God had said, Samuel finally told him. When Eli heard the words, he said: “It is the Lord. Let Him do what seems good to Him” (v. 18).

What seemed good to God was to punish the house of Eli. Eli recognized the Word of God when he heard it because he understood the character of Him whose word it was. A God before whom we need to have no fear is not God but an idol made by our own hands.

Coram Deo

Eli said: “It is the Lord. Let Him do what seems good to Him.” Can you make this affirmation from the depths of your heart in difficult times as well as good times?

Passages for Further Study

1 Samuel 3:10
1 Samuel 3:18
Psalm 115:4

Daily Meditation

Rejecting Kingdoms of This World

Ligonier Ministries

Augustine stood by the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. He had heard of the hordes of barbarians that were moving as a juggernaut against Rome and the empire. The reports were ominous and foreboding, lending little reason for hope of the survival of the Roman culture.

Augustine said a prayer in three parts. In the first part, he implored God to save the empire. In the second part, he asked for grace to accept the destruction of civilization as he knew it, if that should be the will of Providence. In the third part, he asked that in either case he might be permitted soon to die and enter his eternal rest.

Permanence and security cannot be found in the structures of man. Concrete crumbles. Glass shatters. Steel melts. When God says “No!” the cities and kingdoms of men come to ruin. God simply will not tolerate man’s quest for autonomy—his lust for idols of his own making. No city, no nation, no culture can survive the judgment of God.

Coram Deo

Spend some time in prayer today for your city, state, and nation.

Passages for Further Study

Revelation 11:15
Psalm 145:11
Psalm 145:13

Daily Meditation

Respecting God’s Judgment

Ligonier Ministries

One of the most poignant episodes of the judgment of God occurred in the Old Testament case of Eli. Eli was a judge and priest over Israel. He was, for the most part, a godly man. But his sons were wicked and profaned the house of God. Eli rebuked them but did not fully restrain them. God revealed to Samuel that He would judge the house of Eli:

“Behold, I will do something in Israel at which both ears of everyone who hears it will tingle. In that day I will perform against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house, from beginning to end. For I have told him that I will judge his house forever for the iniquity which he knows, because his sons made themselves vile, and he did not restrain them.” (1 Sam. 3:11–13)

When Eli persisted in asking Samuel what God had said, Samuel finally told him. When Eli heard the words, he said: “It is the Lord. Let Him do what seems good to Him” (v. 18).

What seemed good to God was to punish the house of Eli. Eli recognized the Word of God when he heard it because he understood the character of Him whose word it was. A God before whom we need to have no fear is not God but an idol made by our own hands.

Coram Deo

Eli said: “It is the Lord. Let Him do what seems good to Him.” Can you make this affirmation from the depths of your heart in difficult times as well as good times?

Passages for Further Study

1 Samuel 3:10
1 Samuel 3:18
Psalm 115:4

Daily Meditation

Planning for Eternity

Ligonier Ministries

What will the future be like? What will your income be in five years? What will your health be like in three years? Will civilization be safe for your children and your grandchildren? We ask questions like these, even if only to ourselves. Businesses and ministries also plan for the future, including five- and ten-year plans.

Do you have a two hundred-year plan? Obviously, you expect that you will have died by the end of that period.

What will your death have brought you? Job asked it this way: “If a man die, shall he live again?” (Job 14:14).

The Gallup Poll on Religion in America indicates that the majority of professing Christians believe in life after death. Most of those, however, reject any real idea of hell. The arguments for a heaven without a hell are based primarily not on sound biblical exegesis but on human sentiment. People simply prefer not to believe in hell. It is a subject very few can discuss dispassionately. Yet to deny the reality of hell, one must stand firmly opposed to the unambiguous teaching of Jesus.

Consider the parable of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16:19–26. This passage clearly indicates a great chasm between heaven and hell. It is unbridgeable. Where we are in eternity is where we will be in two hundred years. It is where we will be in two thousand years and in two million years.

The very point of this parable is that people are reluctant to heed the biblical warnings of a judgment that truly is final, with all further appeals exhausted (Luke 16:27–31).

Coram Deo

Spend a few minutes today reflecting on your future. What are your plans for your immediate future? What are your long-range plans? Have you made your eternal plans?

Passages for Further Study

Luke 16:22–25

Daily Meditation

Eternal Punishment

“There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. For God shows no partiality” (vv. 9–11).

- Romans 2:6–11

Ligonier Ministries

If we ever go before a judge, one of the things we want most is for the justice he administers to be impartial. We are looking for judges to make their ruling based solely on the evidence at hand and not to show favoritism to our accuser. Sadly, we know that this desire is not always realized. There are corrupt judges even in the best systems of justice devised by human beings.

We can be sure, however, that one Judge is always impartial and deals only with the facts, namely, our God and Creator. As Paul says at the conclusion of today’s passage on the coming day of judgment, “God shows no partiality” (Rom. 2:11).

That might appear to be good news, but if we read further in Romans, we see that God’s impartiality should instill fear in human beings. Paul says that God will give “glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good” (2:10), but then in 3:9–20 he makes it clear that no one (except Christ) fulfills that condition. “None is righteous, no, not one” (3:10). When we go before God on the day of judgment, we know He will be impartial, and our only hope will be if we are covered in the righteousness of Christ (vv. 21–26; 2 Cor. 5:21). The Lord will take works into account when issuing His verdict of eternal life or eternal punishment. If we rest on our own works, eternal punishment will be our end. But if we rest on the works of Christ by faith alone, we will enjoy eternal life.

That some will receive eternal punishment does not mean everyone in hell endures the same punishment. God is just, and He will judge people based on the revelation they know. The person who dies never having heard of Christ will be punished for sinning against God’s revelation in nature, not because he never heard of Jesus. Those who had heard of Christ but rejected Him will be judged also for that sin. Throughout Romans 1–2, Paul drives home the point that we are judged by the revelation we have.

People will also be judged according to the degree of their sin. Although the slightest sin is enough to merit eternal punishment, the degree of suffering is not the same for all who receive eternal punishment. Scripture assumes degrees of sin and punishment. For example, in the Mosaic law, some sins merit the death penalty and some do not. In the New Testament, there is a love that covers a multitude of sins—a multitude of transgressions. Other sins, however, can merit excommunication (Matt. 18:15–20; 1 Peter 4:8).

Coram Deo

Eternal punishment is a sobering reality. All who stand before God on judgment day on the basis of their own works will find themselves under eternal condemnation. The people around us who do not know Christ are on their way to hell. Thus, we must pray for the salvation of non-Christians whom we know, and we must be prepared to share the gospel with them.

Passages for Further Study

Isaiah 66:15–24
Revelation 20:11–15

Signs of an Apocalypse

When God Gives Them Up

Evil is not a constant.  Like all things human, it waxes and wanes.  One of the clearest passages in this regard is Romans 1: 18-32.  This passage describes and prescribes what Van Til called the integration into the void.

All men, apart from those quickened to life by the Spirit of God, suppress the truth to some extent or another.  God's existence, glory, power, and wisdom is overtly displayed to all men.  But men, in rebellion against God and lusting after their own glory and power, suppress these self-evident truths.  At that point, things become much worse, for the Scripture says when men attempt to suppress God it is so egregious a response that He gives them up.  [Romans 1: 24].

The first sign of a culture in the throws of being abandoned by God is an increase in lusts and "dishonouring their bodies".  Then comes a rise in homosexuality.

For this reason God gave them up to dishonourable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature;  and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.   [Romans 1:26, 27]

Clearly Western civilization is in the throes of divine desertion.

Beware the Unintended Consequences

Funereal Lamentations

There is an ancient saying: when you sow to the wind, you risk reaping the whirlwind.  It is a metaphorical warning.  Another variant of the same sentiment is, what goes around comes around.  These patterns are manifestations of God's justice at work in the world.  

The lesbian worldview has been promoted as a glorification of the sisterhood.  Women within and amongst themselves are complete.  But now the whirlwind has come.  The sisterhood risks being struck down and brought to nothing by trans-genderism.  The latter is the self-same wind to which numerous women have sown over the years.  But this time the wind has returned in an altered garb and it tears at the paper-thin fabric of lesbianism.  It is showing it has the will and desire to make lesbianism null and void.

Once the lesbian movement could count on the socially liberal, the Chattering Classes, for support.  No longer.  They have abandoned the celebration of lesbianism and moved on to the next cause, the next iteration.  The next iteration is tearing down whatever constrains and binds.  It  is tearing down the protections and constraints and ideologies of lesbianism.  Beware the unintended consequences.  There is always a whirlwind following the wind.

A bill that would make it easier for people to change the gender on their birth certificate will put women and girls in danger, the Lesbian Rights Alliance Aotearoa says.

A Nation From Whom God Has Turned His Face

Our Enemy Is Within The Walls

New Zealand's record on family violence is so bad, we are told, that it makes us one of the worst countries in the OECD.  The matter is complex, deep rooted, and inter-generational. As a nation it appears we have no way out.

The Women's Refuge Chief Executive Officer, Dr Ang Jury says that family violence is a constant in New Zealand society.

It is estimated that responding to family violence accounts for 41 per cent of a frontline police officer's time.  However, the Ministry of Justice victims of crimes survey estimates only about 25 per cent of domestic violence is reported.

Police data reveals the total number of family violence investigations during the past decade has also risen rapidly - a rise Dr Ang Jury, the chief executive of Women's Refuge, says is far outgrowing what could be attributed to just population increases.  [NZ Herald]

The numbers of family violence police investigations increases annually.

Total number of family violence police investigations
• 2007 - 69,729
• 2008 - 73,280
• 2009 - 79,257
• 2010 - 86,764
• 2011 - 89,884
• 2012 - 87,639
• 2013 - 95,061
• 2014 - 101,955
• 2015 - 110,126
• 2016 - 118,910

Any trend observable, do you think?

False Charges That Make No Sense

Hate Speech Charges Are Nonsensical


There are plenty of folk, it seems, who think that the following indicative sentence is hate speech: "if anyone is a homosexual (or supports, encourages, promotes, or defends) homosexuality and refuses to repent of his sin and turn to the Lord Jesus Christ, seeking His forgiveness, that person will fall under God's eternal judgement."

The Bible is God's eternal and inerrant revelation to mankind.  At least Christians believe so.  Its testimony and indictment of homosexuality is clear and plain, along with every transgression of the Ten Commandments.  It is also clear that if any man, woman, or child repent (or turn away) from sin and seek God's forgiveness and mercy as offered to them by the Christ, the Saviour of the world, their sins will be forgiven and they will inherit eternal life.

To express such things, we are now told, is hate speech.  This is a strange allegation indeed.

The Long Dark of Moria

God's Poetic Justice

The notable theologian, R. C. Sproul passed into glory several months ago.  This event has--as often happens--stirred up greater interest in his life, teaching and writing.

Here is an example of classic "R.C." as he was known.  He is commenting upon Romans 1: 24: [Therefore, God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.]

This verse makes a strange statement, but if we note the pattern of God's judgment in sacred Scripture, we see that a form of poetic justice tends to emerge in God's punitive measures.  By poetic justice I mean that God's punishment is perfectly matched to the sin.  In other words, there is a kind of identity between the particular type of sin and the particular type of punishment.  Let me explain.

I Will Make Them a Horror

When God Becomes Weary of  Relenting

The Prophet Jeremiah was serving the Lord in the last days of Judea, before the Babylonians came down and destroyed Jerusalem.  He has been called the weeping prophet because of his lamentations and cries over the destruction that he knew was coming.

In Jeremiah 15, the prophet declares God's sentence upon Judah:

I will appoint over them four kinds of destroyers, declares the Lord: the sword to kill, the dogs to tear, and the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth to devour and destroy. And I will make them a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth because of what Manasseh the son of Hezekiah, king of Judah, did in Jerusalem.  [Jeremiah 15: 3-4]

God declares that He will not relent because of what King Manasseh had done nearly one hundred years previously.  Manasseh, son of Hezekiah, had provoked God in a way so grievous that it "locked and loaded" God's wrath upon Judah.  And this, we may add, in the face of Manasseh's subsequent captivity at the hands of the Assyrians, then release, followed by his repentance and relative faithfulness.

The Nameless Dead

Backward Elements

The year is 1933.  Peasants in the Soviet Union were being re-located from the West into Siberia.  The Grand Chessmaster had decreed that they be sent East to populate the barren wastes of the frozen tundra.  They were being sent to the island of Nazino, in the Ob River.

The island of Nazino is a totally uninhabited place, devoid of any settlements . . . . There were no tools, no grain, and no food.  That is how their new life began.  The day after the arrival of the first convoy, on 19 May, snow began to fall again, and the wind picked up.  Starving, emaciated from months of insufficient food, without shelter and without tools . . . they were trapped.  They weren't even able to light fires to ward off the cold.  More and more of them began to die . . .

On the first day, 295 people were buried.  It was only on the fourth or fifth day after the convoy's arrival on the island that the authorities sent a bit of flour by boat, really no more than a few pounds per person.  Once they had received their meagre ration, people ran to the edge of the water and tried to mix some of the flour with water in their hats, their trousers or their jackets.  Most of them just tried to eat it straight off, and some of them even choked to death.  These tiny amounts of flour were the only food that the deportees received during the entire period of their stay on the island . . . . [Anne Applebaum, Gulag: A History of the Soviet Camps (New York: Penguin Books, 2003),  p.88.]

When people are murdered, the Bible speaks of their blood crying out from the ground to the Living God.  [Genesis 4:10].  Two hundred and ninety five nameless, unknown-to-us people died that first day.  Unknown to us; known to God.  Their lifeblood still cries to Him.

But this black day was just the beginning.