Hulk Mad!

I received an email tonight.

This email though, was a forward that the sender thought might be helpful to local pastors. The email proceeded to list several artists, musicians, and personalities that had "died before their time" and link their deaths with the "wrath of God." It used texts from all over the Scriptures to point to the tragic deaths of these people created in God's image and basically revel in what the writer saw as the certainty that they now burn in the unquenchable fires of hell.

I just don't get it.

No, I guess I do, and it makes me mad, because that's not the way Jesus would have reflected on the lives and deaths of these people or any other person who died outside the Kingdom of God. Jesus was headed to His death at the hands of sinful people, but as he looked over the city, He said this:

34 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killer of prophets,
abuser of the messengers of God!
How often I've longed to gather your children,
gather your children like a hen,
Her brood safe under her wings—
but you refused and turned away!

Luke 13:34 (MSG)

Why would Jesus long to gather killers and abusers?

16 "This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. 17 God didn't go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again.
John 3:16-17 (MSG)

He loves them.

I can remember reading once about D.L. Moody's conversation with a person who was thrilled to preach on hell and excited to see the wicked get their just reward. Moody looked at the man and said, "Never ever preach about hell, unless your eyes are filled with tears over those who willfully go there."

Why rejoice? Why boast? If we got what we deserve, we'd split hell wide open.

Such emails and the motives behind them are far, far from God's grace. And the person far from God reads them and sees what are supposed to be people of grace rejoicing over their fall. No wonder people turn away.

/rant off

tears...