December 11, 2024

What happens in Damascus doesn’t stay in Damascus.

The Assad family has ruled the ancient country of Syria for over 50 years. For many it has been a reign of terror. Government officials from police to prison guards could abuse the citizens with impunity since they were empowered by the king. Political prisoners had no rights of due process or legitimate courts to appeal their cases to. Many were sentenced to decades of imprisonment with trials that lasted about 2 minutes. If you were a prison guard who delighted in torturing the prisoners and making their wasting lives a hellish existence, you had every reason to think that you were protected from retribution. Then came the uprising 2.0.

The first version of this rebellion occurred when Obama was President. When the rebels started to make some gains, Assad responded by using chemical weapons on his own people and by some accounts killed upwards of 500,000 people. The world acted shocked in words, but yawned in deeds. Assad appeared to get away with doing whatever he wanted. His prisons were infamous centers of torture and death.

Last weekend Assad ran for his life (flew to Russia actually). His palace has been ransacked, his fleet of exotic cars revealed, but best of all, the prisons have been opened. In the coming years it will be hard to hear the stories that will come from these underground caverns of evil. Many will not want to know. When you stop and think about what one human being is capable of doing to another, it is truly astonishing and frightening. Much of what has happened in Damascus is going to be known around the world.

Now the tables are being turned. Those who inflicted terror are now running for their lives. They fear the accountability, the retribution, the payback when what they did in secret is laid bare. Some will get caught, but the sheer amount of offenders and offenses will likely be too much for any system of man to assure the serving of justice. There will be some who escape the consequences of their actions, but only for a time. Romans 2:16 speaks of the day when according to the gospel, God will judge the hearts of men by Christ Jesus.

Justice is not always served in this life. When it is, it is a preview of the perfect justice exercised by the perfect Judge to come. You may remember the poem that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote during the American Civil War.

I heard the bells on Christmas Day

Their old, familiar carols play,

    And wild and sweet

    The words repeat

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Then from each black, accursed mouth

The cannon thundered in the South,

    And with the sound

    The carols drowned

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent

The hearth-stones of a continent,

    And made forlorn

    The households born

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And in despair I bowed my head;

"There is no peace on earth," I said;

    "For hate is strong,

    And mocks the song

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:

"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;

    The Wrong shall fail,

    The Right prevail,

With peace on earth, good-will to men."

Even so come again, Lord Jesus.

Bob

Sunday’s text:  Isaiah 9:6-7