Posted on 04/25/2017 6:42:20 AM PDT by Roman_War_Criminal
The Bible clearly supports the death penalty for those who commit cold-blooded murder.
At one point, Arkansas was scheduled to put eight murderers to death in 11 days, before its lethal injection drug reaches its expiration date. Is this, as many are arguing, an unChristian thing to do? A piece in Christian Today includes this incendiary headline, “Christian campaigners horrified by Arkansas execution.” This headline is written as if that is the only acceptable “Christian” position to take.
The article makes reference to “the state’s rush to the death chamber,” apparently mindless of the plain legal fact that these men were all sentenced to die more than 19 years ago. They each had received a fair trial before a jury of their peers, had the assistance of counsel, and were able to face their accusers in open court. Objective observers will hardly see any “rush” to judgment here.
In fact, it’s quite the other way round. Martin Luther King, Jr. quoted a phrase that probably originated 2000 years ago, to the effect that “justice delayed is justice denied.” The families of these victims of brutal homicide have been waiting for justice for as long as 27 years and seven of them still have not received it. Justice denied, indeed.
So the short answer to our question is no, executing murderers for the crime of taking an innocent human life is not an unChristian thing to do. In fact, it’s the other way round. It would be unbiblical and unChristian not to carry out the death penalty for cold-blooded murder.
The Bible, in both the Old and New Testaments, prescribes the death penalty as a legitimate tool of God-ordained government. In Genesis 9:5-6, God himself says:
“From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.”
God clearly and unmistakably delegates to man, to civil government, the authority to take the life of a man who would efface the image of God by taking the life of someone made in his image without just cause.
Lest one think this is an antiquated, out-of-date, Old Testament concept, the apostle, speaking for Christ, says the same thing in different words in the New Testament book of Romans. “If you do wrong, be afraid, for he (the civil magistrate) does not bear the sword in vain; for he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out wrath on the wrongdoer” (Romans 13:4, emphasis mine). The sword, of course, is an instrument of lethal force.
Now a few nights ago, Arkansas executed Ledell Lee, a man who had been on death row since 1993 for beating Debra Reese to death with a tire iron.
He savagely beat Mrs. Reese 36 times with the tire iron her husband had purchased for her to use as a weapon of self-defense. Lee was arrested less than an hour after her senseless beating death trying to spend some of the $300 he had stolen from her in the attack.
Lee had been released on parole just 10 weeks before her death. DNA also linked him to the abduction and death of 22-year-old Christine Lewis, who was beaten, raped, and strangled. Prosecutors dropped that case only because Lee had been sentenced to death for Mrs. Reese’s murder.
Here are some of the grisly details of the murders committed by the other seven defendants who are slated to die. Because of activists who continually seek to pervert the course of justice, these criminals may escape the death penalty altogether.
1. Bruce Earl Ward, 60, has been on death row since 1990 for the strangling death of 18-year-old female clerk Rebecca Lynn Doss, whose lifeless body he dumped in the men’s room of the Little Rock convenience store where she worked. Ward had earlier been convicted of murder in Pennsylvania in 1977, which means if justice had been done in 1977, Ms. Doss could be today a happily married woman with children and even grandchildren of her own. Our process of justice is so cobbed up Ward had to be convicted three times for the death penalty verdict to stick. Justice delayed for 27 years is justice denied.
2. Don William Davis, 54, murdered Jane Daniel of Rogers, Arkansas with a .44 caliber revolver he found in her house after breaking into her home. Her husband came home to find the lifeless body of his wife lying a pool of her own blood. Davis has been awaiting execution since 1990. Justice delayed for 27 years is justice denied.
3. Stacey E. Johnson, 47, is scheduled to die for killing Carol Heath in 1993. He beat her, strangled her, and then for good measure slit her throat. Justice delayed for 24 years is justice denied.
4. Jack Harold Jones, Jr., 52, murdered bookkeeper Mary Phillips in 1995 while robbing the accounting office in which she worked. Mrs. Phillips was found naked from the waist down with the cord from the office coffee pot tied around her neck. Jones left Mary’s daughter Lacy for dead, but Lacy woke up as police photographed her. Justice delayed for 22 years is justice denied.
5. Marcel Williams, 46, suffocated young mother of two Stacy Errickson to death in 1994 after raping her. Williams abducted her when she stopped for gas, and forced her to drive around extracting $350 from various ATM machines. Police found her hosiery and her lunch cooler at a storage facility, then found her body, beaten and bound, in a park some two weeks later. Williams confessed to the killing and the jury took just 30 minutes to hand down the verdict. Justice delayed for 23 years is justice denied.
6. Jason F, McGehee, 40, was the lead attacker in beating 15-year-old Johnny Melbourne Jr. to death in 1996 for telling police who was behind a northern Arkansas theft ring. The boy was beaten and tortured in one house, then bound and taken to an abandoned farmhouse where he was strangled while his hands were bound with an electrical cord. Justice delayed for 21 years is justice denied.
7. Kenneth Williams, 38, was originally sentenced to life in prison for the 1998 murder of college cheerleader Dominique Hurd. After he was sentenced to life rather than to death, he actually taunted Dominique’s family in the courtroom. Less than a month after his conviction for her murder, he escaped prison by hiding in a container of hog slop. Once out, he killed Cecil Boren and stole his truck. He then ran into a water-delivery truck, killing the driver, during the police chase that led to his capture. Justice delayed for 19 long years is justice denied.
The Bible is also clear that when civil government allows people to skate for decades after having been justly convicted of murder, the result is that more and more innocent people will die as the restraint of the law against violence becomes an increasingly meaningless and theoretical concept.
As Solomon put it, “Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of the children of man is fully set to do evil” (Ecclesiastes 8:11).
Is executing eight cold-blooded killers in 11 days an unChristian thing to do? Hardly. The only unChristian thing would be not to do it.
——There is nothing immoral about executing murderers, however, I don’t want our government to have the power to execute people. ——
So what entity should carry out justice ?
Vigilant groups ?
No it’s not. God advised killing those who took lives. That’s His commandment on the issue.
6. Do Not Murder
Dennis Prager
Prager University
It is not murder to kill in battle, to kill in legitimate defence of one's own life or the life of another, or to kill those judged to be truly wicked.
In the entire history of the Church since Jesus Christ, as well as Protestant Churches after 1517, they have never denied the right of civil authorities to implement the death penalty - of course, as long as it is done justly, with great caution, and attention to any mitigating circumstances, and when evidence is without doubt.
I have no problem with execution as a punishment allowed by scripture. The Apostle Paul validates that in Romans 13.
However, I do believe an man innocent of a murder he has been charged with should not be executed.
I want all executions to have the standard of absolute proof and not just “within a reasonable doubt”.
You don’t get do-overs on executions.
I am not talking here about whether there is an argument over the classification of the type of murder, over whether it was in commission of a feloney, etc. The issue for me is simply did Charge Person A commit charged murder A.
Absolute proof is proof that allows for no other possible conclusion to be reached.
>The Bible, in both the Old and New Testaments, prescribes the death penalty as a legitimate tool of God-ordained government.
There’s the central problem with your thesis.
This is not a God-ordained government, and only a dangerously psychotic and likely criminally insane person would think it was.
“All too often they pick a vulnerable person, ram the case through, and execute him all for the higher glory of their career.”
Given the above article, and many other cases like those, and the very few actual executions due to bleeding heart liberals and the “justice” system they’ve co-opted (always crying for the murderer rather than the victim) - how often does your scenario actually happen?
So, what is the solution? I gave mine. Kill them.
I am for the death penalty. Allowing them to live simply poisons further those in prison and risks the safety of the nation ....
Murder is what is prohibited, not killing.
Capital punishment, I do believe, is covered clearly in Romans 13:
(ESV)
Submission to the Authorities
13 Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. 2 Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. 3 For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, 4 for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. 5 Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God's wrath but also for the sake of conscience. 6 For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. 7 Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed.
They were hanged.
A person who kills another human being willingly does not have the right to live.
An eye for an eye.
The death penalty is not murder; it is justice.
Here is the major problem, especially an error made by those of the liberal mindset:
Christian values are to be practiced by governments - not by individuals.
The truth is the opposite: Christian values are to be practiced by individuals - BUT NOT BY GOVERNMENTS.
Government’s purpose is clear in Romans 13: to protect its citizens and punish behavior by individuals that is harmful to its society.
Hence governments MUST PUNISH evil behavior - and that includes the death penalty. The government does not have the right to forgive - it must execute justice or it fails in its major reason for existing. Only individuals can forgive - and should.
When government does not execute justice, its society and the individuals in it are harmed and suffer. As in Chicago.
Liberals hate Christianity - because it demands Christian virtues on their part. But they love to apply Christian virtues to government, as it satisfies their deceived consciences in thinking they are thereby virtuous - while they totally refuse any individual requirement that they practice Christian virtues themselves.
Liberals are the ultimate hypocrites.
Blacks are not afraid of the death penalty anymore. My 200 year old “slabery’
And this is a critical point. Liberals love to blur the lines between individual responsibility and state responsibility.
As John Wayne said in “The Longest Day”:
“Send ‘em to Hell!”
The Bible clearly supports slavery
I remember reading that book. Some truth as there are gang bangers and such who have killed scores but no proof. Four serial killers playing cards is a BIT over the top as they’re usually in lock down for the duration but I haven’t seen everything.
I'd like to get those protestors outside the gates with their signs and sacred bleeder lines and let them live inside the razor wire for a week. All of them would change their tune.
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