Avoiding Sentence

The refusal of serial child murderess Lucy Letby to attend her sentencing and hear the testimony of her victims’ families produced a unity in the Commons to have the law changed. Thomas Cashman, killer of nine-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel in Liverpool in August 2022, similarly refused to hear sentence passed. These murderous malaperts defy the dignity of the courts and add insult to their victims’ families' already gigantic burden of pain. It would seem that they currently enjoy to right to hide in their cells to avoid the shame of sentence; they certainly denied their victims the right to avoid the violence of their wicked hands. I hope the law is changed, and I hope they are dragged to court, if needs must, to hear justice as well as to receive it. The great judgement of our God will suffer no absentees, shirkers, deniers or sick-notes. In Revelation 6:15-17 (New King James Version), we read:

And the kings of the earth, the great men, the rich men, the commanders, the mighty men, every slave and every free man, hid themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains, and said to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of His wrath has come, and who is able to stand?”

Suffice to say, the mountains and rocks shall fail to oblige. Heavenly justice cannot be evaded as neatly as earthly justice, and more terrifying a prospect does it present. Thankfully, the ferocious Lamb from whom those unrepentant sinners would hide is a wonderful Saviour and loving Deliverer to all who come to him with a sorry heart and believing spirit.

On yonder glorious height,

King Jesus does appear,

Upon the judgment-seat,

With millions at his bar;

Behold the awful Judge is come,

To fix their everlasting doom.

Sinners must now come forth

And stand before the Lord,

Whose word they scorned on earth,

Whose children they abhorred;

Then speaks the Judge, “Ye sinners, go

From my blest face to endless woe.”

But now, my soul, behold

That host at his right hand;

O see the blood-washed world

Boldly before him stand;

How pleased they look, how bright they shine,

While Jesus cries, “These, these are mine!”

“These are my holy race;

These did resound my fame;

These prized redeeming grace;

These loved and feared my name;

And these shall now ascend with me

To mansions of eternal day.”

-R. Burnham, Gadsby’s Hymns, No 494