R.C. Sproul

I remember the bombing episode that took place in April of 1995 in Oklahoma City where terrorists took this huge bomb in a highly crowded federal office building that included a daycare center

and detonated it.

And the nation watched the news reports of this in horror.

And this was one of those rare occasions where the news media, rushing to bring fresh information to the viewers, would bring in unedited tapes.

and the usual shield we have from gory reports of violence in the world were absent on that occasion.

Who can forget the picture of the policeman carrying the baby and handing it over to the fireman and then later to realize that the infant had died?

And I was interested in listening to the adjectives and the language that the news reporters groped for to give an adequate description of the degree of heinousness of this crime.

I heard one newsman say that this was an inhuman, satanic act.

And another newsman said, wait a minute, we have to realize that people are capable of this kind of atrocity.

But there was a national sense of outrage, and particularly because children were included in this incident.

Somebody said to me, why children?

Why would anybody kill children?

What's the purpose of terrorism?

And I said, the purpose of terrorism is obvious.

It's to terrorize.

It's to bring people to a state of fear.

that will cause them to react in ways by which those who are perpetrating this can control their responses.

That's what terrorism is all about.

But again, the questions were how could something of the enormity of this tragedy take place in a universe that is governed by a holy God?

How can God allow such a disaster to take place?