I noticed Sala was using humour to distract us – nothing offensive, but using that Pacific Island giggle to try and brush off the seriousness of what we were trying to portray. Thankfully we were able to keep focus enough to get him to agree that he would not end up in a good place on judgement day based on his own goodness. From what we could tell, God did not soften his heart, but we pray that the seeds of doubt would claw at his heart. We passed Sala later. I threw a checking question at him, but he was back to his giggly self. All we can do is keep him uplifted in prayer.

Like all of us, he failed the good person test miserably. His response was that God is forgiving. This is a natural fall-back for those who understand little about how justice works. You would never expect a judge to just forgive someone for their crimes. God should be the ultimate example of a perfect judge, well, because He is the perfect God!

His heckles went up, and his self-righteousness flared at me when he knew he was in trouble. He said who was I to judge him I said I wasn’t, I was just telling him what the Bible said. We went back and forth a bit, and he was getting angrier. His partner sensed this, and grabbed his arm. At this stage I thought it was better to diffuse the situation and let them go – but not without asking him to read the Bible, specifically the Gospel of John. He mumbled something I didn’t hear and walked off in a huff.

"We hugged, and when we separated, I just held onto his arms and implored him not to throw away his eternity just because he couldn’t believe in an ‘unjust’ God. He will still have to give an account to him on judgement day regardless. He said he would consider it, and I pray he does."

I asked Ben if he is not a good person, where should God send him after he dies. He said he should send him to hell. Then something broke inside Ben, and he started to cry uncontrollably. I asked him if he was OK. Through his tears he said “I never knew how bad the things I did looked to God, and what that meant for me. I don’t think anyone should go to heaven”. It was a vulnerable moment. It would have been easy to destroy him with more truth about how bad he was, so I had to tread carefully.