Question:
I am extremely disturbed by the Gainesville brutal murders of five college students. I was wondering (if they weren’t Christians already) if God would let them go to heaven. It seems like a childish question, however, I am kind of confused. These people were robbed of their lives and dignity at the tender age of 19 or 20. Because God’s so loving, wouldn’t He feel bad that everybody was treated with such cruelty and spare them of some suffering from Satan?

Answer:
Jesus said, clearly and emphatically, “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). The only way God can “spare” anyone from eternal suffering is by their being born again.

We must remember that God is not only “love” (1 John 4:8, 16), but He is also “light” (1 John 1:5), which means that He is holy and that He cannot allow sin to enter into His presence. His hatred of sin was revealed immediately after sin entered the world, for as soon as Adam and Eve sinned, God had to expel them from earthly paradise. Just so, God cannot allow men or women to enter His heavenly paradise (heaven) in their sinful state which they are in by nature. They need a new nature, one that is holy and cannot sin. As soon as one repents of his/her sins and believes on the Lord Jesus Christ, he/she is given a new nature (see John 3:6b; 2 Peter 1:4) and is made fit for the presence of God. It would not be possible for God to allow people into heaven without this new birth (see John 8:21; Revelation 20:15; 21:27 JND translation).
Let me add that we can be assured that those college students who may have died without being born again were given ample time and opportunities to turn to God. “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” (Genesis 18:25). It is sad that they were cut off so early in life, but we can rest in the fact that God, Who is absolutely fair towards all men, gave them a chance to act on truth He has given men. And if they refused His truth, He knew that to add more years to their lives would not have made any difference.
One more final thought: We can surely believe that as God witnesses the atrocities of men (such as the Gainesville murders), He does so with grief and sorrow. When He witnessed the wickedness of men in Noah’s day, we read that “it grieved Him at His heart” (Genesis 6:6). When the Lord Jesus was here walking this earth, He was a “man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3), and this was, no doubt, because of the terrible acts of sin (and their results) that He saw. He is the same today (Hebrews 13:8; James 1:17), so His attitude toward sin and its horrible consequences remains the same. But even though this be the case, He still cannot spare the sinner who dies without having been born again. For as we noticed above, God’s nature is one of absolute holiness, and He must act righteously (consistent with His nature) in all that He does.