Ukraine kills Russian general in Moscow scooter bombing

Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, head of the Russian Armed Forces’ Radiological, Chemical, and Biological Defense Troops, was killed in a Moscow bombing early this morning. Ukraine said it killed Kirillov along with his assistant with a device planted in a scooter.

According to Ukraine, the general ordered the use of banned chemical weapons in Ukraine. In October, the UK sanctioned Kirillov for overseeing the deployment of “barbaric chemical weapons in Ukraine.” The UK also said he had been a “significant mouthpiece for Kremlin disinformation” and had been spreading lies to mask Russia’s abhorrent behavior.

When I saw the news, I immediately thought about Israel’s campaign in September to assassinate Hezbollah leaders through the use of exploding walkie-talkies and pagers. Israel has also reportedly assassinated Iranian nuclear scientists and other officials, often using clandestine methods.

“You thought that I was one like yourself”

It is human nature to assume that we are safe if we are in surroundings we consider secure. We run to shelters in a thunderstorm and go to hospitals when we are sick.

Of course, lightning can strike the building we are trusting for safety, and illness and death can find us wherever we are. Complacency in unsafe places makes us even more unsafe.

This is true not only with regard to our physical health but also with our eternal souls.

The psalmist warned: “Our God comes; he does not keep silence; before him is a devouring fire, around him a mighty tempest. He calls to the heavens above and to the earth, that he may judge his people. . . . The heavens declare his righteousness, for God himself is judge!” (Psalm 50:3–4, 6).

However, the Lord stated that such judgment is not always immediate: “You give your mouth free rein for evil, and your tongue frames deceit. You sit and speak against your brother; you slander your own mother’s son. These things you have done, and I have been silent; you thought that I was one like yourself” (vv. 19–21a).

Then came God’s stunning response: “But now I rebuke you and lay the charge before you” (v. 21b).

With this result: “Mark this, then, you who forget God, lest I tear you apart, and there be none to deliver! The one who offers thanksgiving as his sacrifice glorifies me; to one who orders his way rightly I will show the salvation of God!” (vv. 22–23).

“The day of the Lord will come like a thief”

The Bible is replete with such warnings of divine judgment against human sin. Why, then, are we so tempted by the sin of presumption?

One factor is our tendency to assume that what has not happened in the past cannot happen in the present.

The German theologian and historian Ernst Troeltsch popularized the theory that historians should believe an event to have occurred in the past only if it could occur in the present. If miracles, for example, do not occur today (in the historian’s opinion), they did not occur in the past, no matter how well they are attested in Scripture and other sources.

The same reasoning works in the other direction: If an event has not occurred in the past, we can assume that it will not occur in the present. Since, for example, God has not brought divine judgment against sinful humanity in ways predicted by Scripture, we assume we can be confident that he will not actually do so today.

Or so we think.

However, God judges in a variety of ways:

• He permits the consequences of misused freedom, which explains much of the suffering in our broken world.
• He uses the natural order of our world to reinforce the moral order, reminding us through nature of our finitude and frailty.
• He uses human agency to effect his divine will, as we see throughout Scripture (cf. Isaiah 45:1–7) and human history.

One day, he will return to our fallen world as King of kings and Lord of lords to bring judgment and righteousness (Revelation 19:11–16). He waits only because he is “not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). But “the day of the Lord will come like a thief” (v. 10), and no one but God knows when that day will come (Matthew 24:36).

The Lord could come back to our world before I finish writing this article. Or he could come for me, bringing me through death into eternity (John 14:3).

I have only today to be ready. The same is true for you.

“When the author walks onto the stage”

The assassination of the Russian chemical weapons head illustrates a warning given to humanity millennia ago: “Be sure your sin will find you out” (Numbers 32:23). No place is safe from the sight and judgment of our omniscient and holy Lord.

This is why “now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2). We are promised no other.

C. S. Lewis was right: “When the author walks onto the stage the play is over.” When this happens,

It will be too late then to choose your side. There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up. That will not be the time for choosing; it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realized it before or not.

Now, today, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It will not last forever. We must take it or leave it.

Choose wisely, today.