Saved by a Bomb
“For the Lord is coming to judge the earth. With righteousness He shall judge the world, and the peoples with equity.” [Psalm 98:9]
Fabian von Schlabrendorff was born in Germany in 1907. Though he trained as a lawyer, he eventually joined the German army before World War II. Realizing that Adolph Hitler was insane and destroying Europe, he joined the resistance. On March 13, 1943, during a visit by Hitler to an army center headquarters in Russia, Schlabrendorff smuggled a time bomb onto an aircraft meant to carry Hitler back to Germany. The bomb did not detonate, and even though Schlabrendorff was able to retrieve the bomb without being detected, he was eventually arrested after a second assassination attempt.
Schlabrendorff was sent to a Gestapo prison where he was tortured, but he refused to give any details of his own or others’ involvement with the resistance. Early in 1945, Schlabrendorff was brought before a Nazi court. The evidence against him was weak, but the judge, Roland Freisler, was infamous for handing down death sentences in almost every case. In fact, in his three years on the court, Freisler was responsible for as many death sentences as all the other judges combined over the eleven years the court existed. However, while Schlabrendorff waited for his trial to begin, an American air raid bomb hit the courthouse. The judge was killed, still holding Schlabrendorff’s file.
A month later, when Schlabrendorff’s trial was rescheduled, a different judge actually acquitted him, but he was still shuffled from one concentration camp to another until U.S. forces liberated his camp in May of 1945. In a unique twist of fate, he became a judge in the very country where he stood trial for treason.
The Bible teaches that a similar reversal of roles will happen again. Jesus was once condemned to death in an unfair trial, but we know that when He comes again, it will be as a righteous judge. As Peter told Cornelius, “It is [Jesus] who was ordained by God to be Judge of the living and the dead” (Acts 10:42). But Peter didn’t stop there, because the best news of all is that our judge is also our redeemer: “Whoever believes in Him will receive remission of sins” (Acts 10:42,43). Why not trust your case to Him?
