It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Heb 10:31).Osama bin Laden will have a bit of a surprise this morning: no lakes of wine; no endless stream of virgins; no pat on the back from his inspirational prophet; no utterance from Allah of ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant” (in Arabic). No, today he stands in the fearful presence of YHWH, and the wages of sin is death. Osama Bin Laden has committed one or two sins of some considerable magnitude, was quite unrepentant, and did not accept Christ as his Lord and Saviour. His Grace therefore suspects that things might be a little warm for Osama today. His lake of wine will be a lake of fire: his tongue will burn and his thirst will never be quenched. The only virgins he’ll meet will be the worm variety, for the pit of Hell is a place of decomposition and destruction; of weeping and gnashing of teeth.
On his many journeys across the Middle East, Bin Laden probably never visited the Valley of Hinnom just outside Jerusalem. But he’s enjoying the view today. And it’s not the sort of place from which you’d want to send a postcard or an inspirational video exhorting your Muslim brothers to martyr themselves. It is an awful place of burning sulphur, rotting carcases and dead men’s bones. Bin Laden has gone to the place prepared for the devil and his angels, where the beast and the false prophet will be, to be tormented day and night for ever and ever.
And to those who do not agree with His Grace’s rather literalist understanding of the afterlife, he does not care: he feels better for having conveyed a sense of what it must be to fall into the hands of the living God, without the hope of the salvation of Christ. There is no obituary to write for Bin laden, other than ‘good riddance’. He has reaped simply what he sowed. Justice has been done. The world is all the better for his passing.
