CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

And I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.

—Revelation 20:4

600 The Death Penalty

The American public has consistently backed capital punishment. In a Gallup Poll in 1976, 65%, approved of it. But bet ween 1966–76, no executions occurred in the US. The Supreme Court, in a 5-to-4 decision, abolished capital punishment in June 1972. Death row now has about 450 inmates.

However, since the Supreme Court’s decision over 32 of the 50 states have voted to restore the death penalty. On May 25, 1979, John A. Spenkelink, a 30-year-old drifter, who committed murder, was put to death in the electric chair in Florida. The US Supreme Court refused to delay his death. He was the first person to be executed in the US since Gary Gilmore in 1977. Gilmore had actively demanded to die and was executed in Utah under the firing squad.

601 The Guillotine

Records show that the last person to be publicly guillotined in France was the murderer Weidmann in 1939. Bible revelation shows that this form of capital punishment will be revived when Anti christ sets up his world kingdom at the Great Tribulation.

602 Hot Seat Got Cold Reception

One of our most bitterly fought laws was the New York State statute, passed on June 4, 1888, that substituted the electric chair for the gallows. Its chief opponents were certain public utilities which believed the use of electricity in executions would have a bad effect on the millions who, in those days, were still afraid of it.

So the validity of the law was attacked unsuccessfully in several courts on the grounds that electrocution was “cruel and unusual punishment” and therefore its adoption violated the U. S. Constitution. These attacks stopped two years later when experiments on animals proved that such a death was “immediate and absolutely painless.”

Meanwhile, manufacturers refused to sell the necessary materials to the man who was to build the chair, making it necessary for him to have a friend in Brazil buy the equipment and ship it back to the United States.

Finally, on August 6, 1890, the apparatus went into service in Auburn prison with the execution of Willie Kemler who, paradoxically, had eagerly looked forward to this day when he would go down in history as the first man in the world to die in the electric chair.

—Freling Foster

603 20 Minutes Between Eternity

A colored man Jim Williams got his freedom after the officials who were supposed to pull the switch of his electric chair would not do it. The story:

In 1926, after he had been strapped in the electric chair of the Florida State Penitentiary, Jim Williams waited for 20 minutes. Both the warden and the sheriff tried to get the other to pull the switch. Williams was unstrapped and returned to his cell.

For having been subjected to this form of torture, Williams’ sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. Eight years later, he was fully pardoned after saving two lives on the prison farm.

604 Death On Prime Time

Pastor Paul Tinlin of the 250-member Evangel Assembly of God Church in Schumburg, Illinois, is getting a lot of press attention in the midwest. It all started when Tinlin, 41, wrote a letter to a local newspaper disagreeing with an editorial that praised the Supreme Court for in effect striking down the death penalty.

His letter stirred up sharp reaction prompting a stiffer stance by Tinlin. “There should be swift and sure justice for those who kill—and that should be public execution, and the execution should be on prime-time TV,” declared the minister. “We’ve got to start letting society see life for real,” he explained to a Chicago reporter. “Society should know that killing isn’t like on TV shows where the victim gets up and walks away when the show is over, that when real people get killed they are dead.”

Tinlin told his questioning 12-year-old daughter that seeing executions on TV “would probably make me sick, that it would be gruesome.” But, said he, “murder is also gruesome, and society has to start taking it seriously.” He cited a verse in Genesis: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed.” Maybe, he said, it’s time for God’s harvest law to be followed.

—Christianity Today

605 Emperor On Electric Chair

The Emperor Menelek II of Ethiopia used an electric chair as his royal throne for many years. How come? During the late 1890s, the Emperor was told of the new method of executing criminals in the United States by electrocution. So he ordered three electric chairs from the States. But alas, he forgot that electricity had not yet been introduced into his country. To save his investment, he appropriate the same as his royal chair.

See also: Deaths ; Martyrdom ; Persecution.