Is the DEATH sentence Biblical, or should America end it completely?

[Zaac]

Hi folks, I haven't been here for a long as another forum and fighting the final stage of MS has kept me busy.

The Death Penalty is a much disputed and seldom addressed from the whole of scripture. To get anywhere with the issue there are points that must be taken into consideration and must, in any good Bible Study, never be ignored.

The Bible, our Christian versions, is of a single context, all the way from "In the beginning..." through the very last verse of The Revelation of Jesus 22. And from this knowledge shown to me through my twenty-six years of study by the Holy Spirit during my private Time with God comes my First Rule of Hermeneutics; No scripture, collection of scriptures nor any passage of scriptures can ever be clearly understood without the light of all other scripture shinning on it/them.

Since I have been away for years let me explain further the basis for my opinion here. There are two components of a Christian Bible, the Bible and the only God ordained, God breathed or inspired twenty-seven Commentaries giving us Life Application of the Bible that Jesus wrote and taught from, the first sixty-six books or the Old Testament.

Hey Bill. Glad you're back with us. Will be praying for your health issues.

I think I'm kind of confused here. You say the "first" sixty-six books as though you believe there are additional books that should be included in the Bible. Can you clarify? Thanks.

Now, today we have a tool that never is mistaken, DNA Testing and it is conclusive proof of guilt or innocence. In the Ten Commandments, written by the very finger of the Son of God before His incarnation into the body of the human, Jesus (John 1:1-3), we are given, Thou shalt not murder. Then in genesis 9:6 we find the son of God commanding us that if a man sheds the blood of another man, we are to kill him.

I believe , again, when you take the Bible as a whole and allow it to hold it's integrity from start to finish, that Gen. 9:6 was for that pre-Christ time frame and to those people.

We can't very well take the whole of Scripture into account and reconcile the command to love our neighbor as ourselves, or how we are to forgive many times over, or how we are ALL guilty of breaking EVERY commandment if we break one, if we purport that we still have the right to kill those who have killed another.

The whole of Scripture simply does not support that.

The law didn't go away. But it was completed and The Cross showed us why doing the cultural things that the Israelites did to keep themselves set apart from the heathen cultures around them AREN'T what would set us apart post-Cross.

Post cross, it is the love of Jesus and HIS Holiness that should set us apart.

It is the love of Jesus that extends mercy when anyone wants to take the life of another for any reason.

It is the love of Jesus that says forgive that person no matter how many time they have wronged you.

It is the love of Jesus that says I'm going to help the widows, the poor, and the orphaned.

It is the love of Jesus and what HE did on the Cross for all who would be saved that should compel us to ALWAYS show the same kind of grace and mercy when it comes to advocating life for EVERY situation, not just with the unborn.

I often tell people that it's really easy to know when an understanding is or is not of God.

An understanding that IS of God is NOT going to author confusion by contradicting another understanding or action of God. The only time it does, is when men's opinions have entered into the understanding.

There's simply no way, IMO, to look at The Cross and see any situation where Christ would expect His followers to do anything but show grace and mercy for the lives of those whom a worldly government gives the okay to kill.

 

[TCassidy]

I haven't been here for a long as another forum and fighting the final stage of MS has kept me busy.

Welcome back. By "final stage of MS" I assume you mean Secondary Progressive? I was diagnosed with Remitting/Relapsing MS about 10 years ago. I (literally) feel your pain. Hang in there, Brother. God has a cure for MS. It involves a resurrected body and a relocation to the Heavenly City but it is a 100% effective cure.

 

[Zaac]

Christians should abhor justice?

How do you figure killing someone who SCRIPTURE says has broken the same laws as YOU is justice when you don't get the same thing for breaking the same laws?

Justice is killing babies.

Nope. But justice certainly isn't killing adults either.

Got it.

Obviously you do not "got it".

Now, if the administration of this board can suffer a temporary lapse into honesty and ban your infanticidal butt . . .

They'd have to suffer the same to ban your hypocritical, homicidal butt..Eek

 

[Zaac]

Welcome back. By "final stage of MS" I assume you mean Secondary Progressive? I was diagnosed with Remitting/Relapsing MS about 10 years ago. I (literally) feel your pain. Hang in there, Brother. God has a cure for MS. It involves a resurrected body and a relocation to the Heavenly City but it is a 100% effective cure.

AMEN TC!!!

 

[th1bill]

Hey Bill. Glad you're back with us. Will be praying for your health issues.

I think I'm kind of confused here. You say the "first" sixty-six books as though you believe there are additional books that should be included in the Bible. Can you clarify? Thanks.

LOL! Will you believe that little man inside my head, the one that keeps my file in order, fell off the loading dock and broke both legs? I meant sixty-nine books, the incorrectly named, Old Testament.

I believe , again, when you take the Bible as a whole and allow it to hold it's integrity from start to finish, that Gen. 9:6 was for that pre-Christ time frame and to those people.p/quote]

But such an issue here! You say "I believe" and you offer no scriptural support and that is elevating one's self to be equal with or superior to the scriptures, I cannot go the there because of what God said in Duet 4:2 and Rev 22:19. Until Jesus walks through that gate in Jerusalem that has been concrete sealed by Islam, the Bible is the Final Court of Arbitration for every human on this world. If the Bible says it, I believe it and if it does not say it, it ain't true or, else, it don't matter.

I seek neither to be rude nor to start an altercation but I stand, flat-footed on the scriptures.

We can't very well take the whole of Scripture into account and reconcile the command to love our neighbor as ourselves, or how we are to forgive many times over, or how we are ALL guilty of breaking EVERY commandment if we break one, if we purport that we still have the right to kill those who have killed another.

The whole of Scripture simply does not support that.

Once again you offer me your personal opinion and in the glaring light of scripture, it lacks real weight. Love and kill? I did not hate the Viet Cong and I did not hate the NVA but I blew holes in them before they blew them in me... I killed them even though I wish they had converted and gone to be there, waiting for me in Heaven.

Love or the lack thereof has nothing to do with justice and without Justice there is no love, only self survival. And as much as the modern day New Testament and New Covenant Believers abhor the thought, God is a Just God and He will punish, eternally, all who do not, completely, submit to Him. And Jesus/God in the flesh of a man did not remove the death penalty, no instead, in John 14:15 He instructed us that if we love Him we will, not can choose to, but will obey His commands.

Now this matters, in John 1:1-3 we see that Jesus is the Son of God and that there is nothing in the Creation He did not do. Jesus gave to us Genesis 9:6, it is one of His commands we must obey if we love Him.

The law didn't go away. But it was completed and The Cross showed us why doing the cultural things that the Israelites did to keep themselves set apart from the heathen cultures around them AREN'T what would set us apart post-Cross.

Post-cross? Once again you offer me opinion and my "opinion" is equal to yours so we must go where you seem to not want to go, to the Bible and in twenty-six years of study I have found no contextual support for your ideas. And post-cross, really? Abraham and everyone Jesus released from Paradise that day were saved by nothing but faith, faith in a Savior never seen but, instead, looked forward to. Nobody was saved by the Law, the law is two things; 1. The perfect Word Illustration of the Perfect God we are to strive to become like and 2. The Teacher that teaches us how sin ridden we are. Before or after there is and was only grace.

 

[th1bill]

Welcome back. By "final stage of MS" I assume you mean Secondary Progressive? I was diagnosed with Remitting/Relapsing MS about 10 years ago. I (literally) feel your pain. Hang in there, Brother. God has a cure for MS. It involves a resurrected body and a relocation to the Heavenly City but it is a 100% effective cure.

Hello TC,
Yes, Secondary Progressive and my Neuro was so disappointed when my two year death sentence passed about six years or so back and I was still driving my electric chair around. Two Neuros have told me I have this because I volunteered for three Vietnam tours and was sprayed with so much defoliant but, HEY, I volunteered for the experiment, did I not?

My pain is awful and because of the opioids the Constipation is, did I say, incredible? I know why I would never want to do Opium now. Wow, the education I have gotten in the past seventy-one years. I will keep your condition in my prayers also, and may God bless youand yours.

 

[th1bill]

They'd have to suffer the same to ban your hypocritical, homicidal butt..Eek

Is that statement Christian?

 

[Aaron]

How do you figure killing someone who SCRIPTURE says has broken the same laws as YOU is justice when you don't get the same thing for breaking the same laws?

By that reasoning, how do you justify any penal code?

 

[TCassidy]

My pain is awful and because of the opioids the Constipation is, did I say, incredible?

Yep. Some days I think I am single handedly keeping Exlax in business.

 

[Zaac]

By that reasoning, how do you justify any penal code?

We weren't talking about penal codes. We're talking specifically bout the death penalty.

I fully expect the WORLD to mete out its own brand of "justice". I expect Christians to support that which is aligned with God's word. And post-Cross, taking the life of another for a crime committed is not justice.

I mean seriously. This is the same government that says it's okay to crack open a baby's skull and suck him out of his mother's womb.

 

[righteousdude2]

Hello TC,
Yes, Secondary Progressive and my Neuro was so disappointed when my two year death sentence passed about six years or so back and I was still driving my electric chair around. Two Neuros have told me I have this because I volunteered for three Vietnam tours and was sprayed with so much defoliant but, HEY, I volunteered for the experiment, did I not?

My pain is awful and because of the opioids the Constipation is, did I say, incredible? I know why I would never want to do Opium now. Wow, the education I have gotten in the past seventy-one years. I will keep your condition in my prayers also, and may God bless youand yours.

I feel for both you and TC. I suffer from peripheral neuropathy, brought about by both diabetes and a major injury to the L-2 through S-1 that result in spinal surgery to avoid paralysis. The surgery was over 12 hours, and involved fusion and metal instruments that remain . That surgery was 1991.

The neuro problems are progressive, and the pain is severe enough to warrant me using gabapettin and morphine. I don't know if you have tried probiotics and baked beans plus as much fiber through oatmeal and granola as possible, but it has helped to counter the constipation.

Like zaac offered, I too will hold you up in prayer my prayers. TC has been on my prayer list since I discovered his battle with MS. As a one voc rehab counselor, I know just how serious MS is. I guess we all, have a life sentence hanging over our heads, but so many folks suffer while they wait that new and improved body in glory. And that is what I join in praying with you for, that your suffering be less. Shalom.

 

[Aaron]

We weren't talking about penal codes. We're talking specifically bout the death penalty.

And "penal" and "penalty" aren't related concepts at all.


I get to tell this story again:

When I was in college, a series of forums were held concerning the U.S. Constitution (the bicentennial thereof coming up and all). One debate was titled Capital Punishment and the Constitution. When the discussion turned to the constitutionality of the death penalty, the moderator said, this debate is titled Capital Punishment AND the Constitution, it's not about the constitutionality of capital punishment!

He was met with a stunned silence by the panelists and the audience.

You remind me of that moderator. Thumbsup

 

[evenifigoalone]

Biblical, yes, but I am not in support of it in the here and now because it's actually been shown to not be an effective crime deterrent, and ends up costing a lot in taxpayer $$. http://janda.org/c10/statisticsnews/NoDeathPenalty.htm

 

[Zaac]

And "penal" and "penalty" aren't related concepts at all.

You need to look at what a penal code is. We weren't talking about a penal code. We're talking about ONE thing: the death penalty and whether or not there is Biblical justification for Christians to support it.

I get to tell this story again:

When I was in college, a series of forums were held concerning the U.S. Constitution (the bicentennial thereof coming up and all). One debate was titled Capital Punishment and the Constitution. When the discussion turned to the constitutionality of the death penalty, the moderator said, this debate is titled Capital Punishment AND the Constitution, it's not about the constitutionality of capital punishment!

He was met with a stunned silence by the panelists and the audience.

You remind me of that moderator. Thumbsup

I get to tell this story again: YOUR CONSTITUTION is not part of the word of God. I don't particularly care what your Constitution says where God has already spoken.

 

[th1bill]

Yep. Some days I think I am single handedly keeping Exlax in business.

Have the "worms" began to crawl under your skin yet, some days I want to claw the skin off my body to kill the imaginary turkeys. I've been fighting this ever since 1970 but i have better than seventy scars on my brain now but hey, they have admitted I have a brain. :0

 

[th1bill]

Biblical, yes, but I am not in support of it in the here and now because it's actually been shown to not be an effective crime deterrent, and ends up costing a lot in taxpayer $$. http://janda.org/c10/statisticsnews/NoDeathPenalty.htm

Brother,
I have seen the phoney stats that prove what you say but stats are so easily twisted that by forty i gave them to File thirteen, permanently. In practical experience however ihave watched the crime rate per capita grow cout of control in the nation when and since we have chosen not to obey God.

 

[Alcott]

Biblical, yes, but I am not in support of it in the here and now because it's actually been shown to not be an effective crime deterrent...

No deterrent? How many more buildings is Timothy McVeigh going to bomb?

 

[Aaron]

You need to look at what a penal code is. We weren't talking about a penal code. We're talking about ONE thing: the death penalty and whether or not there is Biblical justification for Christians to support it.

. . . and that's why they call him "Sly Old Fox!" Roflmao

I get to tell this story again: YOUR CONSTITUTION is not part of the word of God. I don't particularly care what your Constitution says where God has already spoken.

Ehdden 'e great, folks! Jus' ain' got dem ears tuned fo' lissnuhn. Ah's tells a story 'bout critters, an' 'e's thinkun beer bottles. Whistling

 

[Rolfe]

Ehdden 'e great, folks! Jus' ain' got dem ears tuned fo' lissnuhn. Ah's tells a story 'bout critters, an' 'e's thinkun beer bottles. Whistling

Reading this was like beginning to learn another language. *laugh*

 

[TCassidy]

Have the "worms" began to crawl under your skin yet

I'm more at the "red hot ice pick stabbing my feet and legs while my hands and arm are getting electric shocks" stage.

My auditory nerves have been compromised greatly limiting my hearing and my optic nerves also greatly limiting my vision, especially at night. Gives me a good excuse to stay home and watch Netflix.