[Apologetics] A Severe Mercy

[Stuart D. Gathman]

Since the WMD showdown with Saddam Hussein started, I have been praying for
Saddam's soul.  I am no saint, and I don't remember very often, but
occasionally I have remembered to do so.  So it was with great anticipation
that I read this account of his execution
[http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53570]:

  At 2:30 a.m. he performed his final religious ablutions, kneeling and washing
  his hands, face and feet.

  He then sat on the edge of his iron-cot bed and began to read the Quran. It
  had been a gift from his wife, sent to him at the outset of his trial. But
  only after the court's death sentence had been passed had Saddam begun to
  study it.  

It is a severe mercy to know the time of your death.  Until his death sentence,
Saddam had not considered the state of his soul.  But impending death brings
great clarity and focus.  Now he was turning to a book that to this point had
been a political tool for his own ends.   According to an observer:

  He began to tremble and his eyes filled with what one observer called "his
  terror at impending death. For the first time he was feeling what so many
  others had done facing execution from his actions."

I cannot help but think that this new found fear was genuine, and properly
placed (though he did make one more political jab, saying, "Palestine is
Arab").  His fear of God was the beginning of wisdom, and he turned to the
Quran as the only way he knew to turn back to the God he had cynically used.
Oh that he could have had a Bible instead, and had hope as well as fear.   But
I had a twinge of joy at the evidence that my meager prayers had been answered,
and perhaps his repentance was real.

So many well meaning people are offended by the death penalty.   Yet, it is
divinely authorized for violent crimes just after the flood, and applies to all
nations.   It is a mercy as well as a judgement.  For commiting a violent crime
leaves such a stain upon ones soul, that true repentance may never happen
without the motivating grace of death.

"It is appointed unto man once to die," and death came by sin for all of us
through the first sin of Adam.  Death is a judgement, but it is also a mercy.
It is the Spirit that quickens us to new Life, but it is Death that finally
separates us from all sin, that we may live ever after before God with new
bodies and pure souls.

-- 
	      Stuart D. Gathman <stuart at bmsi.com>
    Business Management Systems Inc.  Phone: 703 591-0911 Fax: 703 591-6154
"Confutatis maledictis, flammis acribus addictis" - background song for
a Microsoft sponsored "Where do you want to go from here?" commercial.