We had an interesting discussion the other night at a Bible study I was leading. It was completely off topic, but that's how things go. One of the participants was very adamant that God wouldn't send anyone to hell. In that person's opinion, a loving God would never do such a terrible thing, so everyone must be going to heaven. We never got around to discussing whether or not this included people like Saddam Hussein or Hitler, or other people who committed even greater atrocities against mankind.

Of course a good part of the discussion revolved around trying to get this person to realize the error in believing that everybody, no matter what they did during their lifetime, would get into heaven. Our concern was that this kind of thinking could lead some people to think that they can continue to sin and never have to worry about judgment. But if you really think about it, very few people think about eternity and how their choices will affect them, so it was all probably a moot point.

I think that it's easy for us to believe that hell is a necessary deterrent, but at the same time we also realize that God doesn't want to send anyone there. The inescapable fact is that the Bible clearly teaches that hell is real, and that people will be going there. There is a judgment that we all have to face, and for those who die without Christ, they will stand before God and be judged based on what they believed.

Like many people I saw some of the video clips from the trial of Saddam Hussein. It seemed a bit odd to me that he was allowed to show such disrespect toward the judge. I would have thought that they would remove him from the room, or gag him. But there was something else about him yelling at the judge that bothered me. It almost felt like he was saying the things he knew he should say, but with no real conviction (sorry, bad pun :-) about what he said.

Perhaps he realized that nothing he said or did would make any difference, but that he needed to say something. After all, there were TV cameras in the room and it was his last chance to tell his followers to reject the current rulers, and the American invaders, and incite them to continue wreaking havoc. And in that sense, I felt that it was wrong to broadcast his defiance to the world.

When the day comes, and we all stand before God and give an account of our lives, no one will be talking back to Him. There will be no hiding, and no arguing, because everything about our lives, even the thoughts that we had, will be laid out before us. In a very real sense we will be standing there, open and naked, before a Holy God. The evidence will be overwhelming, and for those who have not found forgiveness in Christ, it will be condemning.

But are earthly courts and judges as reliable and thorough?

I have to admit that my feelings about the trial of Hussein were somewhat mixed. It isn't that I thought that he didn't deserve to be executed. And it certainly had nothing to do with my stance on the death penalty, because I believe that people who commit murder should be executed. In one sense the punishment fits the crime, and in many ways our forms of execution are relatively humane, unlike the manner in which some people kill their victims.

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