God Said Capital Punishment

There is a place called Paradise where the Son always shines in a beautiful postcard sky, and where nothing “shall by any means hurt you,” (Luke 10:19). It’s time to head back to Paradise where all things work together for our good (Romans 8:28) and where the revelation of exciting life grows day by day (Proverbs 4:18) and is only completed when a born-again believer leaves this earth and sees Jesus Christ face-to-face. Because these principles are totally true and because I am applying myself to the Word of God with my might, I can confidently say that today is the best day of my life and tomorrow will be better.

Even as one is born into salvation through the blood of Jesus Christ, that same one’s circumstances must be born-again as well. The conversion of circumstances takes place by the same process by which we are saved. One fully surrenders to the authority of God’s Words and then confesses that good principle, in faith, believing. Concerning salvation, it is written in Romans 10:10:

For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

Even apparently bad circumstances are converted to our good through this perfection process. This understanding and the application thereof is the fulfillment of Deuteronomy 11:21:

That your days may be multiplied, and the days of your children, in the land which the LORD sware unto your fathers to give them, as the days of heaven upon the earth.

This place called Paradise—a paradise as real as it was in the Garden of Eden—is a place where only one voice is heard—God’s voice. If you have not yet surrendered your life to Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, if you have not yet been born-again, click on to “Further With Jesus” for entry.  NOW FOR TODAY’S SUBJECT.

GOD SAID, Exodus 20:13:

Thou shalt not kill.

GOD SAID, Genesis 9:6:

Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.

MAN SAID:  According to former California Governor, Pat Brown Sr.: “The principle fact is that the death penalty has been a gross failure. Beyond its horror, it has neither protected the innocent nor deterred the wicked.”

Now THE RECORD. Many argue erroneously that the Bible is in contradiction concerning the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” because the principle of capital punishment is commanded in the same Bible. Here, however, a definition of words is essential. Just most words have more than one meaning, so it is with the word kill. For example, the word dog has more meanings than the one referring to a canine. It could also mean “a spiritually perverted person.” The first sentence in Noah Webster’s definition of kill is: “To deprive of life, animal or vegetable, in any manner or by any means.” According to its definition, killing would include taking a life in the business of judgment as well as taking a life by murder. These two deeds, of course, are vastly different from one another. The act of murder is defined as: “To kill a human with premeditated malice.” Any student of the Scriptures would surely be aware of the Biblical differentiation of taking a life in judgment versus in the act of murder. Numbers 35:16:

And if he smite him with an instrument of iron, so that he die, he is a murderer: the murderer shall surely be put to death.

One must understand that God, the Creator of life, reserves the right to take life in judgment. The book of Revelation is filled with coming last day judgments of Satan and his carnal followers when the final destruction will result in the blood of the judged flowing all the way up to the horses’ bridles (Revelation 14:20). Romans 13:3-5 reads:

3 For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same:

4 For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.

5 Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake.

And then in I Timothy 1: 9-10:

9 Knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers,

10 For whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for menstealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there by any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine;

Under the law, most of the sins mentioned above incurred the judgment of death.

Secondly, it is important to note that one who is guilty of shedding the blood of another, when his life is forfeited in judgment, becomes guilty of taking his own life. The scriptures say, “his blood shall be upon him,” (Leviticus 20:9-17).

It is not God who is against capital punishment, and there is certainly no contradiction.

When God says “Yes,” you can be certain that the champions of disobedience will say “No,” and so it is also concerning the matter of capital punishment. In 1972, capital punishment was banned in the United States but reinstated by the Supreme Court in 1976. During the abolishment of the death penalty in the U.S., the murder rate increased 100%. Human Events published the following statement by J.L. Jones: “The idea that capital punishment ‘deters no one’ does not explain the rapid rise of homicides in America while the death penalty was virtually outlawed. Deterrent or not, it effectively eliminates the possibility of a repeat crime.” [End of quote]

Concerning repeat crimes, this following excerpt is from the 1988 Standard Law Review: “Of the roughly 52,000 state prison inmates serving time for murder in 1984, an estimated 810 had previously been convicted of murder and had killed 821 persons following their previous murder convictions. Executing each of these inmates would have saved 821 lives.” [End of quote] God’s commandment of capital punishment is correct.

The uninformed and those who simply contend that capital punishment is valueless (because God commanded it) continue to claim it is not a deterrent, and that’s in the face of considerable information to the contrary.

In Human Events, M.S. Evans said: “Nearly all the evidence we have shows capital punishment is a general deterrent to deadly crime.”

The State of Delaware executes more people per capita than any other state in the union and has a murder rate one sixteenth that of Washington D.C.—which has the highest violent crime rate in America.

This following paragraph was found in the book Capital Punishment: “In 1976, the U.S. Supreme Court argued for both sides of the issue. In Gregg v. Georgia, the high court took the position that we may ‘assume safely that...the threat of death has little or no deterrent effect (on murderers) who act in passion.’” But for murders that were well thought out, “the death penalty is...a significant deterrent.” [End of quote] One particular study shows that convicted criminals, at a ratio of five to one, believe that the death penalty would deter them from murdering their victims.

The following passage is from a paper prepared by Dudley Sharp titled, “Death Penalty and Sentencing Information In the United States:” “The most conclusive evidence that criminals fear the death penalty more than life without parole is provided by convicted capital murderers and their attorneys. 99.9% of all convicted capital murderers and their attorneys argue for life, not death, in the punishment phase of their trial. When the death penalty becomes real, murderers fear it the most.”

Defeated on the “non-deterrent” front, the anti-death penalty proponents drop back to their second line of defense: wrongful death. It must first be noted that to be sentenced to death and to actually be put to death is an arduous process filled with precautions against wrongful death. Again, Mr. Sharp: “To punish with death, each one of the 12 jurors must agree with the prosecution in each of five specific areas. A death sentence requires that the prosecution must prevail in 60 out of those 60 considerations, or 100%. To avoid death, the defendant must prevail in only 1 out of those 60 considerations, or 1.67%. If convicted and sentenced to death, the inmate may then begin an appeals process that could extend through 23 years, 60 appeals and over 200 individual judicial and executive reviews of the inmate’s claims.”

According to the ACLU death penalty campaign statement, as reported by The New American, “A review of death penalty judgments over a 23-year period found a national error rate of 68%,” [End of quote] The New American responded to this study as follows:

Correction: The major media reported this highly publicized Columbia University study uncritically when it was first released in 2000. But Reg Brown from the Florida governor’s office exploded it: “The ‘study’ defines ‘error’ to include any issue requiring further review by a lower court.... Using the authors’ misleading definition, the ‘study’ does, however, conclude that 64 Florida post-conviction cases were rife with ‘error’—even though none of these Florida cases was ultimately resolved by a ‘not guilty’ verdict, a pardon, or a dismissal of murder charges.” Brown noted that even political overturning of death penalty cases added to the figure. “The nearly 40 death penalty convictions that were reversed by the California Supreme Court during the tenure of liberal activist Rose Bird are treated as ‘error cases’ when in fact ideological bias was arguably at work.” Paul G. Cassell of the Wall Street Journal explained how the 68 percent figure is deceptive: “After reviewing 23 years of capital sentences, the study’s authors (like other researchers) were unable to find a single case in which an innocent person was executed. Thus, the most important error rate—the rate of mistaken executions—is zero.”

Again, The New American article engaged the claims that the death penalty is racist. It reads:

The claim that the death penalty unfairly impacts blacks and minorities is a deliberate fraud. The majority of those executed since 1976 have been white, even though black criminals commit a slim majority of murders. If the death penalty is racist, it is biased against white murderers and not blacks. According to the U.S. Bureau of Statistics, blacks committed 51.5% of murders between 1976 and 1999, while whites committed 46.5%. Yet even though blacks committed a majority of murders, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reports: “Since the death penalty was reinstated by the Supreme Court in 1976, white inmates have made up the majority of those under sentence of death.” Whites continued to comprise the majority on death row in the year 2000 (1,990 whites to 1,535 blacks and 68 others). In the year 2000, 49 of the 85 people actually put to death were whites.[End of quote]

God’s perfect commandment in this imperfect world does at least the following:

1. It deters murder.

2. The families whose loved ones have been slain see the final chapter of their terrible ordeal written, and the book closed.

3. Innocent blood is accounted before God.

The God of the Bible is perfect and His judgments are true. The commandment of capital punishment is just another proof that God is.

GOD SAID in Exodus 20:13:

Thou shalt not kill.

GOD SAID, Genesis 9:6:

Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.

MAN SAID:  According to former California Governor, Pat Brown Sr.: “The principle fact is that the death penalty has been a gross failure. Beyond its horror, it has neither protected the innocent nor deterred the wicked.”

Now you have THE RECORD.



References:

King James Bible

Bender & Leone, Criminal Justice, Greenhaven Press, p 138.

Evans, M.S., Human Events, February 3, 1980.

Hays, S.R., Capital Punishment, The Rourke Corporation.

Sharp, D., Death Penalty & Sentencing Information In The United States, www.prodeathpenalty.com.

Stanford Law Review, November 1988, p 153.

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