A little over a year ago, the Western world was shocked by the news that Norwegian militant Anders Behring Breivik detonated a car bomb at the government headquarters building in Oslo and then, dressed as a police officer, invaded and opened fire at the annual summer camp of the governing Labor Party’s youth wing.

This monster managed to kill eight people and injure over 200 with the bombing. Then he slaughtered 69 people, most of them teenagers, at the campsite on Utoya Island. The youngest victim was 14.

During a 10-week trial this summer, Breivik confessed to the attacks, giving gruesome details of the bombing and his military-style assault on the innocent teens. Prosecutors sought to have Breivik declared insane, which would have committed him to a mental hospital. Breivik fought against a declaration of insanity because he felt the prosecutors were attempting to cover up his political views.

On August 24, Breivik was declared sane and sentenced to be incarcerated from 10 to 21 years for the mass murder of 77 people. This is the maximum sentence allowed by Norwegian law. Breivik was delighted with the verdict because it characterizes him as a political terrorist, not a psychotic mass murderer. Breivik carried out the two atrocities to draw attention to his belief that Muslim immigration is destroying European society.

FoxNews.com reported that at the sentencing Breivik apologized in court to “militant nationalists” for not having killed more than 77 people.

Even though Breivik will not spend time in an insane asylum, the New York Times reported that he “will live in prison outside Oslo in a three-cell suite of rooms equipped with exercise equipment, a television and a laptop, albeit one without Internet access.” If Breivik is not considered a threat after serving his sentence, he will be released from prison in 2033 at the age of 53.

Now that the trial is over and the sentence has been handed down, the tiny nation hopes to return to a state of peace and calm.

Yet, the Guardian reported, “The verdict of the most high-profile criminal trial in Norway since Nazi collaborators were prosecuted following the Second World War is certain to provoke a strong response.”

Most of that strong response will likely come from the United States.

Norway sees itself as a gentle country with a collective commitment to values like tolerance, nonviolence and merciful justice. Norway no longer has the death penalty and considers prison more of a means for rehabilitation than retribution.

Norway and most of the rest of Europe view American justice as too harsh. So, even though shocking to American thinking, survivors of the attacks and relatives of the victims welcomed the ruling.

Although Norwegian judges can indefinitely add five-year extensions to his sentence, isn’t it fair to ask whether justice was done in Norway? Isn’t a 21-year prison term an extremely light sentence considering that 77 people were murdered and over 200 people injured?

Would not a death penalty verdict stop others considering committing a similar crime? Norway is likely to have a future full of even more vicious crimes.

We live in a world where national governments are fearful of enforcing law. Only just law enforcement will bring us true peace.

Here is a quote from an article we published in the Philadelphia Trumpet in the year 2000:

To understand how the death penalty can be a blessing, one must have God’s perspective on human life. Human death means nothing to God except a temporary sleep (1 Corinthians 15:51-55), because God can resurrect humans from the grave! If we understand the resurrections, then we can see how the death penalty is one of the greatest acts of love there can be—even toward the condemned criminal!Imposing and carrying out the death penalty stops the example of lawlessness in society that can corrupt other human beings into following the same wrong ways of violence and murder. Swiftly carrying out the death penalty also prevents the murderer from continuing in a downward spiral of ever deepening rebellion against God’s law. The longer such a person is allowed to live, the more deeply entrenched will become his evil habits and twisted and corrupted human nature, all of which must be changed when the person is resurrected to physical life in the second resurrection!The merciful God will even resurrect Attila the Hun and Adolf Hitler, along with every serial killer and mass murderer who has ever lived! Once resurrected, all those who did not receive the truth of God in their brief human life (the vast majority) will have their first opportunity to have an open mind and receive God’s truth!Every human being only gets one opportunity to respond to God’s truth! Just because a person has lived does not mean he or she understood God’s truth. Those who didn’t will receive their one opportunity in the second resurrection!That is how the death penalty can be implemented in love! It deters others in this life from committing offenses worthy of the death penalty. And it prevents a murderer or violent career criminal from continuing in his wrong and worsening ways and more firmly establishing habits that must be broken when he has his opportunity to receive God’s truth.

Read our article “The Merciful Death Penalty” for God’s view on capital punishment. Also write for or download a free copy of our booklet No Freedom Without Law.