A few days ago, on our way back home from visiting a dear Christian friend who was suffering from cancer, I, together with my family (my mom and dad, my wife and son, an adopted 2-year old cousin, and three other companions) were prime witnesses to a gruesome crime of murder. While our vehicle was leisurely burning rubber against the highway of the province of Pangasinan, a green Toyota Corolla in front of us suddenly swerved uncontrollably before it stopped. At first, we just thought that something went wrong with the car. But to our surprise, a man who seemed to have been hostage by the people in control of the car jumped off the trunk of the car. Two men quickly got off the front seats of the car with one of them holding a .45 caliber gun. It was at this point that we got scared, realizing that we could be caught in the middle of a cross-fire. My dad, who was driving, right away turned left to a vacant lot, giving the impression to the man with the gun that we do not want any part of what he was about to do. The man then ran after the man that got off the trunk of their car and shot the poor guy three times at his back. The poor man instantly fell to the ground dead. The gunman, before riding their car, to be sure that the man was really dead, shot the bloody man one more time, this time to the head. The car sped off fast to no where. All of these in the middle of the afternoon with us, including my six year-old son, seeing every detail of this bloody scene.
All of us were left aghast with what we saw. Not even in my wildest imagination did I expect to witness such an act of horror. I had experienced being held-up before together with my brother and sister by criminals during my college days. That experienced was so traumatic for me that it left me sleepless for a couple of days. But this… this was different! I never saw anyone die before until this experience. I believe I can hold my emotions well seeing a person slowly dying of some illness. But seeing someone’s life abruptly ended because of another’s cruelty really evoked strong emotions from me. I was suddened. I was afraid. I was so sad for the victim. But most of all, I was really so angry seconds after the crime happened. The first words that came out of my mouth were “Thank God there’s hell”. I was so furious with the cruelty of the criminals. I wanted them to die at that instance so that they can right away experience the wrath of God in hell. My heart was pumping hard because of what I saw. I experienced some mild chest pains but never told anyone with me so as not to add worry to the emotions each of us were already experiencing. An hour after what we saw, when all of the strong emotions slowly subsided, God started talking to me and made me realize several things.
God reaffirmed to me the fact that hell is reasonable. To say that God is merciful and forgiving, and that punishing someone in hell contradicts his loving nature becomes totally unacceptable after seeing the beastly behavior of the criminals that killed that helpless victim. Do you think these people deserve kind treatment after what they did? I bet you won’t even dare invite them to your birthday celebration. If you feel disgust towards these people, what more a just and holy God. God can never let such people in heaven. Justice must be demanded for the crime that was committed. In the court of God, justice is served when a sinner is punished, and in our case, that punishment is in hell. To say that God will never send anyone to hell totally run against sound reason.
In the minutes after witnessing the crime, I couldn't accept that Jesus likewise died for these criminals. At that moment, I wanted God to exclude them from the list of people He made his sacrifice for. If given the chance to share the gospel to these criminals someday, my mind was saying during that moment that I'd rather pass by them than give them a gospel tract. I wanted them to go to hell. Then God showed me that I was feeling the same way as Jonah after he preached to the people of Nineveh. He regret sharing to them God's message of repentance. He would have wanted that God destroy these sinful people. Then God made me recall how He gave Jonah a gourd to give him some shade from the hot sunlight while sitting outside of the city of Nineveh and how He let a worm kill that gourd the next day, making Jonah angry. Then God told him, "If you showed pity to the gourd that died to which you had no part of creating, so why should I not have pity with 120,000 people I, myself, made, who cannot discern right from wrong?" I then realized that God's sacrifice is for everyone and was designed to exclude no one. This is why the Scriptures tell us that "God is not willing that any should perish (2 Peter 3:9)" and that "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son… (John 3:16)".
And because God's sacrifice is for everyone, including the most hardened criminal, I have now fully realized how amazing God's love really is. It's so easy to love someone who is lovable and endearing. But it will take God's kind of love to show love to someone who is anything but lovable. That’s one peculiar thing that separates God from mankind… His ability to show love even to someone who has insensitively hurt Him with transgressions of His Laws. The Bible explains how this love was shown… "But God demonstrated his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (Rom. 5:8)".
I remembered the apostle Paul. He called himself “the chief of sinners”. Why? He was likewise a murderer like the criminals I saw. But he was different. His victims were the very Christians God entrusted the preaching of His life-saving gospel to. He really took the offensive against God. And yet, God saved him. All of us humans know how hard it is to love someone who has hurt us. But God did it. A song explains well God’s kind of love that He gave to us…"It took a miracle to put the stars in place. It took a miracle to hang the world in space. But when He saved my soul, cleanse and made me whole, it took a miracle of love and grace." Yes. God's love to mankind when He sent Jesus to die for us at the cross is a great miracle because it is beyond what man’s mind can ever conceive.
After realizing this, I was dumbfounded. From someone who was angry and had so many questions to God hours before, I was left worshipping God in my mind. I was silently singing praises to God the rest of the trip back home. I now had a deeper understanding of Him that I never had in my years as a Christian. Before, I already knew that God had loved us beyond the kind of love that we, as humans can give. But that knowledge was only in my intellect. Now, I know more about that love because God has made me experience it when He made me realize that if I was that criminal, He still will offer His sacrifice to me as a way for me to evade sure punishment in hell. I can never ever fathom that love. I’m just so glad and thankful that I was a recipient of it.
About thirty minutes to our home, I talked to my son who was sitting at the third row of my parent’s vehicle. Knowing pretty well that my son saw everything, I was worried that he might realize many things about the experience incorrectly. But I didn’t really know what to tell him. Will I tell him that this was something ordinary? Nope. That will only scare him about life. Will I tell him that what he saw was just an act from a movie that was being shot? No, no, no. My son is intelligent enough to know from our reactions what’s reel and what’s real. Besides, I’ll be lying if I tell him that. The only thing I told him was this… “Son, you saw how wicked people are. That’s the reason why we should continue sharing the gospel to people so that God could change them and save them from going to hell.” We have in our hearts the only cure to man’s wickedness… Jesus. Until we share to them how they can have Jesus in their lives (repentance towards God and faith on Jesus Christ --- Acts 20:21), man will continue to drown deeper into their sinful state.
The only way we can live safer in this world is if everyone that surrounds us would have Jesus in their lives. God is the only one that can change sinners. That’s why we must never stop sharing the gospel. Don’t dare leaving your home without a pack of gospel tracts to be given out to the person you sit beside with in the bus or to the person you walk pass by on your way to work or to school. You’ll never know if the person you will share the gospel to is the next criminal who is about to commit a crime or the next victim of a crime. And so, before they add to their sins, or before they plunge to an eternity of punishment, let’s give them the gospel.
Lastly, I’ve realized that a modern gospel message that says “God loves you”, and one devoid of the talk of sin and hell will never work well on a hardened sinner. Why? Simply because the ingredients to salvation are repentance and faith. If we will eliminate the talk of sin then what is there to repent of? We must show these sinners how angry God is with what they are doing and how He wants justice to be served for all the gruesome sins they have committed. 2 Corinthians 7:10 tells us that “godly sorrow works repentance to salvation…” Salvation cannot be received unless repentance takes place. Consequently, repentance will never take place unless a godly kind of sorrow is experienced. But first of all, man must be shown his sins before he can experience godly sorrow. And so, a no-talk-of-sin approach just so we can avoid “offending” the person we are witnessing to can never accomplish repentance. Repentance is not as simple as saying “sorry”. It is more than that. True repentance involves a great amount of shame on the sinner’s part that he decides to, once and for all, turn away from sin and from now on, follow Jesus in his life. Talk of sin using the Ten Commandments wounds a person to the point of helplessness. But the thing is, when this feeling of helplessness is achieved, the person now becomes ready for the cure and the gospel becomes that medicine that heals his wounds because he now learns that Jesus has paid for all his sins in a great show of love and sacrifice at Calvary 2000 years ago.
I have so many things to thank God for in our recent experience. First, I’m glad He did not let my family be caught in the gun fire that might have wounded, or worst, killed any of us. Second, being the only witnesses, I thank God that the gunman did not turn to us and killed us also so that there won’t be any witnesses to his crime. Third, He never allowed that the car of the criminals did not breakdown or else, they would have ran to us, hi-jacked our vehicle to make it their get away ride. In that event, they might have asked my dad and mom to vacate the front seats, or just killed them to have the seats for themselves and took off with us as their new hostages. Or, they could have just killed all of us. But praise the Lord for His protection!
But most of all, I thank God for the things He had made me realize about Him and the life that I have right now. I have a deeper appreciation of His love now than ever. I now fully know why it was called “Amazing Grace”. I now have a renewed passion to share the gospel to more people as I can, to any one, regardless of what they’ve done in the past, knowing that God likewise made His sacrifice for them. Yes, now I fully know, that God so loved the world.
All of us were left aghast with what we saw. Not even in my wildest imagination did I expect to witness such an act of horror. I had experienced being held-up before together with my brother and sister by criminals during my college days. That experienced was so traumatic for me that it left me sleepless for a couple of days. But this… this was different! I never saw anyone die before until this experience. I believe I can hold my emotions well seeing a person slowly dying of some illness. But seeing someone’s life abruptly ended because of another’s cruelty really evoked strong emotions from me. I was suddened. I was afraid. I was so sad for the victim. But most of all, I was really so angry seconds after the crime happened. The first words that came out of my mouth were “Thank God there’s hell”. I was so furious with the cruelty of the criminals. I wanted them to die at that instance so that they can right away experience the wrath of God in hell. My heart was pumping hard because of what I saw. I experienced some mild chest pains but never told anyone with me so as not to add worry to the emotions each of us were already experiencing. An hour after what we saw, when all of the strong emotions slowly subsided, God started talking to me and made me realize several things.
God reaffirmed to me the fact that hell is reasonable. To say that God is merciful and forgiving, and that punishing someone in hell contradicts his loving nature becomes totally unacceptable after seeing the beastly behavior of the criminals that killed that helpless victim. Do you think these people deserve kind treatment after what they did? I bet you won’t even dare invite them to your birthday celebration. If you feel disgust towards these people, what more a just and holy God. God can never let such people in heaven. Justice must be demanded for the crime that was committed. In the court of God, justice is served when a sinner is punished, and in our case, that punishment is in hell. To say that God will never send anyone to hell totally run against sound reason.
In the minutes after witnessing the crime, I couldn't accept that Jesus likewise died for these criminals. At that moment, I wanted God to exclude them from the list of people He made his sacrifice for. If given the chance to share the gospel to these criminals someday, my mind was saying during that moment that I'd rather pass by them than give them a gospel tract. I wanted them to go to hell. Then God showed me that I was feeling the same way as Jonah after he preached to the people of Nineveh. He regret sharing to them God's message of repentance. He would have wanted that God destroy these sinful people. Then God made me recall how He gave Jonah a gourd to give him some shade from the hot sunlight while sitting outside of the city of Nineveh and how He let a worm kill that gourd the next day, making Jonah angry. Then God told him, "If you showed pity to the gourd that died to which you had no part of creating, so why should I not have pity with 120,000 people I, myself, made, who cannot discern right from wrong?" I then realized that God's sacrifice is for everyone and was designed to exclude no one. This is why the Scriptures tell us that "God is not willing that any should perish (2 Peter 3:9)" and that "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son… (John 3:16)".
And because God's sacrifice is for everyone, including the most hardened criminal, I have now fully realized how amazing God's love really is. It's so easy to love someone who is lovable and endearing. But it will take God's kind of love to show love to someone who is anything but lovable. That’s one peculiar thing that separates God from mankind… His ability to show love even to someone who has insensitively hurt Him with transgressions of His Laws. The Bible explains how this love was shown… "But God demonstrated his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (Rom. 5:8)".
I remembered the apostle Paul. He called himself “the chief of sinners”. Why? He was likewise a murderer like the criminals I saw. But he was different. His victims were the very Christians God entrusted the preaching of His life-saving gospel to. He really took the offensive against God. And yet, God saved him. All of us humans know how hard it is to love someone who has hurt us. But God did it. A song explains well God’s kind of love that He gave to us…"It took a miracle to put the stars in place. It took a miracle to hang the world in space. But when He saved my soul, cleanse and made me whole, it took a miracle of love and grace." Yes. God's love to mankind when He sent Jesus to die for us at the cross is a great miracle because it is beyond what man’s mind can ever conceive.
After realizing this, I was dumbfounded. From someone who was angry and had so many questions to God hours before, I was left worshipping God in my mind. I was silently singing praises to God the rest of the trip back home. I now had a deeper understanding of Him that I never had in my years as a Christian. Before, I already knew that God had loved us beyond the kind of love that we, as humans can give. But that knowledge was only in my intellect. Now, I know more about that love because God has made me experience it when He made me realize that if I was that criminal, He still will offer His sacrifice to me as a way for me to evade sure punishment in hell. I can never ever fathom that love. I’m just so glad and thankful that I was a recipient of it.
About thirty minutes to our home, I talked to my son who was sitting at the third row of my parent’s vehicle. Knowing pretty well that my son saw everything, I was worried that he might realize many things about the experience incorrectly. But I didn’t really know what to tell him. Will I tell him that this was something ordinary? Nope. That will only scare him about life. Will I tell him that what he saw was just an act from a movie that was being shot? No, no, no. My son is intelligent enough to know from our reactions what’s reel and what’s real. Besides, I’ll be lying if I tell him that. The only thing I told him was this… “Son, you saw how wicked people are. That’s the reason why we should continue sharing the gospel to people so that God could change them and save them from going to hell.” We have in our hearts the only cure to man’s wickedness… Jesus. Until we share to them how they can have Jesus in their lives (repentance towards God and faith on Jesus Christ --- Acts 20:21), man will continue to drown deeper into their sinful state.
The only way we can live safer in this world is if everyone that surrounds us would have Jesus in their lives. God is the only one that can change sinners. That’s why we must never stop sharing the gospel. Don’t dare leaving your home without a pack of gospel tracts to be given out to the person you sit beside with in the bus or to the person you walk pass by on your way to work or to school. You’ll never know if the person you will share the gospel to is the next criminal who is about to commit a crime or the next victim of a crime. And so, before they add to their sins, or before they plunge to an eternity of punishment, let’s give them the gospel.
Lastly, I’ve realized that a modern gospel message that says “God loves you”, and one devoid of the talk of sin and hell will never work well on a hardened sinner. Why? Simply because the ingredients to salvation are repentance and faith. If we will eliminate the talk of sin then what is there to repent of? We must show these sinners how angry God is with what they are doing and how He wants justice to be served for all the gruesome sins they have committed. 2 Corinthians 7:10 tells us that “godly sorrow works repentance to salvation…” Salvation cannot be received unless repentance takes place. Consequently, repentance will never take place unless a godly kind of sorrow is experienced. But first of all, man must be shown his sins before he can experience godly sorrow. And so, a no-talk-of-sin approach just so we can avoid “offending” the person we are witnessing to can never accomplish repentance. Repentance is not as simple as saying “sorry”. It is more than that. True repentance involves a great amount of shame on the sinner’s part that he decides to, once and for all, turn away from sin and from now on, follow Jesus in his life. Talk of sin using the Ten Commandments wounds a person to the point of helplessness. But the thing is, when this feeling of helplessness is achieved, the person now becomes ready for the cure and the gospel becomes that medicine that heals his wounds because he now learns that Jesus has paid for all his sins in a great show of love and sacrifice at Calvary 2000 years ago.
I have so many things to thank God for in our recent experience. First, I’m glad He did not let my family be caught in the gun fire that might have wounded, or worst, killed any of us. Second, being the only witnesses, I thank God that the gunman did not turn to us and killed us also so that there won’t be any witnesses to his crime. Third, He never allowed that the car of the criminals did not breakdown or else, they would have ran to us, hi-jacked our vehicle to make it their get away ride. In that event, they might have asked my dad and mom to vacate the front seats, or just killed them to have the seats for themselves and took off with us as their new hostages. Or, they could have just killed all of us. But praise the Lord for His protection!
But most of all, I thank God for the things He had made me realize about Him and the life that I have right now. I have a deeper appreciation of His love now than ever. I now fully know why it was called “Amazing Grace”. I now have a renewed passion to share the gospel to more people as I can, to any one, regardless of what they’ve done in the past, knowing that God likewise made His sacrifice for them. Yes, now I fully know, that God so loved the world.
