No escaping evil

He will execute judgment among the nations, filling them with corpses; he will shatter chiefs over the wide earth. – Psalm 110:6

The nations will be filled with corpses, when Jesus returns to execute judgment. By his hand, leaders of nations, kingdoms and tribes along with all their followers who themselves have littered their lands with murdered and mutilated bodies, will be mercilessly destroyed when God comes to avenge his name and his people. And those who call on his name will rejoice.

Is this the “turn the other cheek” Jesus? One and the same. Though he is loving, he is also just, and without him there would be no ultimate justice meted out on all who have terrorized, tortured, and killed with desperately evil intents.

Scarcely a day goes by without a new report of men, women, and children being savagely slaughtered by wicked, power-driven, devilish men somewhere in the world. Brutal dictators are killing off their own people and cleansing their cadre of all who pose a threat to their power. Homicidal Muslim terrorists who prefer not to blow themselves up along with their victims, burn them alive, hack them to death, or shell their neighborhoods with chemical agents. The 21st century is on track to surpass the 20th as the most murderous of all.

And that’s saying a lot. I’m working my way through Paul Johnson’s Modern Times, a chronicle of world history from the 1920s to the 1990s, and suffice it to say it’s not on anyone’s “Best books for the beach.” The true tales of man’s inhumanity to man in the 20th century do not make for light reading. Though the back alley drug murder; the jealousy-fueled, love triangle murder-suicide; and every senseless mass shooting are all evil, the grand-scale killing of innocents by tyrants is evil unapologetic, unhidden, and undeniable in its pernicious presence in every part of the globe.

Many are familiar with the atrocities committed by Lenin and Stalin, Hitler and Mao…the millions tortured and murdered under their rulership and by their directives. Though they may have killed and destroyed in greater numbers, they were certainly not the only mass-murderers of the 20th century. Massacres abound throughout the pages of Modern Times. In just one of multiple examples on the African continent, Johnson records the violence and bloodshed during the decolonization of Algeria from France in the 1950s and 60s. And on just one page of this bloody chapter, these two accounts:

“The end came in March 1962, in an orgy of slaughter and intolerance. The Muslim mob, scenting victory, had already sacked the Great Synagogue in the heart of the Casbah, gutting it, ripping the Torah scrolls, killing the Jewish officials and chalking on the walls ‘Death to the Jews’ and other Nazi slogans.”

Then, referring to Muslims who had served with the French: “Only 15,000 had the money and means to get out. The rest were shot without trial, used as human mine-detectors…made to dig their own tombs and swallow their military decorations before being killed; some were burned alive, castrated, dragged behind trucks, fed to the dogs; there were cases where entire families including tiny children were murdered together.”

Evil is ubiquitous throughout time and territory. Jesus judges but he came first to save, and only he has the remedy for the evil and sin sickness that is in each one of us. But for those who reject and oppose him and happily do the bidding of the evil one, there is retribution awaiting…and it will be decisive.

Is death justice enough for those who love it and traffic in it? If there is no Hell, there is no justice. When Jesus returns to establish his kingdom and destroy evil, the wicked will be wishing that death were the end.

It is not.