March 7, 2016 show with Dr. Ron Gleason on “The Death Penalty on Trial”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century Gospel Minister George Norcross in downtown

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania and the rest of humanity living on the planet earth who are listening via live streaming.

This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Monday on the seventh day of March 2016 and it is my honor and privilege to welcome back to the

Iron Sharpens Iron program somebody who has quickly become a favorite guest of mine,

Dr. Ron Gleason. We just recently had, in fact last week, Dr.

Gleason on the program to discuss God and guns, the

Christian's right and duty to defend self and family, and today we have him back on the program to discuss

The Death Penalty on Trial, which is actually a book that he has written, published by Nordskog Publishing and the full title is

The Death Penalty on Trial, Taking a Life for a Life Taken, and it is my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron, Dr.

Ron Gleason. Thank you Chris, it's great to be back with you. And for our listeners who missed the last broadcast,

Dr. Gleason is pastor of Grace Presbyterian Church, which is a

PCA church or a congregation within the Presbyterian Church in America and that is a conservative, historically reformed, and theologically

Calvinistic denomination. When people hear the word

Presbyterian in this day and age, unfortunately, depending upon where you live in this country or in the world for that matter, you may immediately be thinking of some very liberal mainline and even, dare

I say, apostate church, but that is certainly not the case with the PCA and with Grace Presbyterian Church.

And briefly, let our listeners know, even though you've done this before, but for our new time listeners, let our listeners know something about Grace Presbyterian Church.

Well, as you pretty well summarized it for us, Chris, Grace Presbyterian Church is a traditional

Presbyterian Church in the line of John Knox from Scotland.

At Grace, we exercise what I like to call the ordinary means of grace, that is to say, we preach the word, expository sermons, we pray the word, we read the word, and we sing the word.

So just from that summary, I hope everybody gets the impression that the word of God is central in our lives.

We take it as the infallible, inerrant, and instructive word of God that guides us and guards us.

And once again, greet our co -host again today, pastor, or should

I say, I keep saying pastor, Reverend Buzz Taylor, who is not currently pastoring.

I don't want to give any reason for fury and anger from your congregation by calling you pastor, but he's a member of a

PCA congregation, Reverend Buzz Taylor, but he has in the past been a pastor at a number of different churches that ran him out of town on the rail.

I'm intimately associated with the left foot of fellowship. If you could greet one another,

Buzz and Dr. Gleason. Well, Dr. Gleason, it sure is good to be on with you again. It's great to be back with you, and apparently this is a program not for the faint of heart,

Buzz. Was he easily offended? That's true, too, yes. Well, I got to hand it to Chris.

He requires that even his designated driver be ordained, so that's good.

Either that, or he has the gift of discouragement. Well, this is a very important book, another book worthy of our attention, especially perhaps during an election season when we are watching the

Republican and Democratic primaries on the television with various reactions from across the board, those who are leftists all the way over to the other extreme of those on the right, people watching with bated breath, many of us disappointed, frustrated, angry.

Some of us have even given up and do not plan to vote. If there are certain people elected, or should

I say chosen to represent the Republican Party in the primaries or when the primaries are completed, but the death penalty is obviously something that not only divides liberals from conservatives or Democrats from Republicans, because you actually have people on both sides that you may have

Democrats who are in favor of the death penalty and Republicans who are not, so it's not even that easily determined, but you do even have some disagreement amongst those who profess to be

Christians and even evangelical Christians. I'm assuming that because of the heated debate over the death penalty that has existed for quite a long time in this country, that is one of the reasons for the genesis of this book, but if you could explain why in fact you wrote it.

Well, that was certainly part of it, that we have had these debates, and as I had said on the previous program, my desire as a

Christian ethicist is to put into the hands of the man and the woman in the pew a book that is not long, it's not going to be heavy, it's not going to be 400 or 500 pages where people look at it and moan and roll their eyes, but it's going to be in a readable size, readable format that within under 200 pages will be able to give you a lot of ammunition, let you know how the arguments run both ways, whether it's from a secularist or from a

Christian position, and to engage those arguments and attempt to give biblical answers as to why

I say what I say. So I'm not trying to go out and say you must take my standpoint on this, but what

I do want to present serious thinking Christians with, I want to present them with the

Word of God, and I want them to interact with the Word of God, and then based on what they read from Scripture, that they will make their decision based on what

Scripture says, and not necessarily on what they feel or what they have heard in the past.

You know, it never ceases to amaze me sometimes that I will be engaged in a conversation with one of my brothers or sisters in Christ, and I will quote something from the

Bible about God, for example, and their response is invariably, oh

God would do that, and I think I just read that it says God would do that, but what happens is

John Calvin once said that man is just an inveterate idol factory, that we're constantly creating idols and conjuring up in our hearts and in our minds who

God is and what he would do and what he would not do, and I think the most important thing that we can do as Christians is to be very attentive listeners to what the

Word of God says. If I bring a set of presuppositions to the

Bible, and I more or less enforce that grid on the

Bible, making God to say what I want him to say and do what I want him to do and like what

I want him to like, then I'm not going to be an attentive listener. So all I'm trying to accomplish in this book and any other book that I write by God's grace is to let

God's Word speak, and then let God's people prayerfully consider whether it's true or if it's false, and if it's false you want to jettison it.

If it's true, I would hope that a serious Christian would want to incorporate that into his or her lifestyle.

And let me give our listeners our email address if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own regarding the death penalty for Dr.

Ron Gleason. Our email address is chrizarnsen at gmail .com, c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com.

Please include at least your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

USA. And please, unless it's involving a personal or private matter, perhaps you have a loved one who is on death row or something and you just don't care to identify yourself, you may remain anonymous, but if it's not involving a private matter, please at least give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence.

And before I move forward with the discussion, I just wanted to announce the very wonderful news to our listeners that our topic of discussion last week on gun control has led to what looks like the publishing of a manuscript of yours on that topic by one of the sponsors of Iron Sharpens Iron, Zod Brown Christian Books.

Indeed, and I was very delighted. I received a telephone call, I believe two days after the interview from Mike Adosh in Alabama, and we're in the throes of getting the manuscript into publication format, and I hope very soon that it will be out.

And I heard from Michael that there is a good possibility that it will be made into a movie starring

Ollie Ringwall and Fats Waller. I'd like to let our listeners know to keep your eye open and keep revisiting solid -ground -books .com.

That's the website for Solid Ground Christian Books. Solid -Ground -Books .com for updates on that book being released in print.

And now going back to our topic at hand, the death penalty, it seems that a lot of the debate stems from how much is rightly to be brought forward from the old covenant into the new, or from the days before the earthly ministry and death and resurrection of Christ to our current day in the 21st century, because most people would recognize and admit that the death penalty was something established in God's law in the

Old Testament, but there seems to be a difference of opinion on whether or not that is a law that would be perpetual through our modern day, and if you could comment on that.

Right. I think that is a great question, and it really strikes at the heart of the matter, and that is, how do we interpret those things from the

Old Testament as New Testament Christians? Now, I will tell you both rightly and up front,

I do not believe that the Old Testament is law and the

New Testament is grace only. So, for example, if one goes to the preface or the prologue to the

Ten Commandments, they read this way, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt out of the house of bondage.

That is the whole introduction, and so basically I take that to mean this. Before the

Lord God Almighty begins to give us a list of do's and don'ts,

He announces to us that He has saved us by grace, and so there is grace abounding in the

Older Testament. I think just a cursory reading of the Book of Psalms or a cursory reading of the prophecy of Isaiah will drive that point home to us with a vengeance.

By the same token, when the Lord Jesus in John's Gospel, for example, in what we call

His Farewell Discourse, the chapters 13 through 16, begins to instruct

His disciples more definitely about who He is and how

He wants us to be. Numerous times in the chapters 14 and 15, we will read words to this effect,

If you love me, you will keep my commandments. So there is more than sufficient law in the

New Testament, and there is more than sufficient grace in the Older Covenant.

So, my view is, I take the Two Testaments, the

Older Covenant as well as the New Covenant, as a unity, as one book.

The Lord has told us to call these 66 books, the

Book, the Bible. And so I believe that there are many, many principles that are still solidly in effect.

If the listeners would go to a text such as Exodus 34 verse 28, it talks in there about what is called, we call it the

Ten Commandments, or we call it the Decalogue. But basically, what Moses tells us in Exodus 34 is that these ten words are just that.

They're ten words of the covenant. That's the literal translation from Hebrew, the ten words of the covenant.

And I believe that God deals with His people in covenant relationships. So, what is that?

What is a covenant for people who are unfamiliar with that term? A covenant,

God's covenant, is a relationship that God establishes with man and guarantees by His Word.

The covenant, therefore, is based upon God's faithfulness and God's trustworthiness with a view to His promises.

And that being the case, I am convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt, if we learn to view

Scripture as that covenant relationship, then we will be able to better understand how the

Older and Newer Covenant fit together. However, having said that, let me qualify one more thing, because this is important.

There are obviously things that are altered from the

Old Testament to the New Testament. I'll give one example that's, I think, fairly simple, and that is

Passover. Passover was celebrated once a year, and then that is no longer the case.

We don't, as New Testament Christians, we don't celebrate Passover. What do we celebrate? We celebrate what we call in my tradition the

Lord's Supper. And in the Lord's Supper, we celebrate it more frequently than once a year.

It was instituted by the Lord Jesus in the New Testament, but there's a relationship between Old Testament Passover and New Testament Lord's Supper.

And we would have the same types of things with the various laws. Obviously, in the

Old Testament, Israel was a theocracy. That is to say, religion and state were one.

And that being the case, the laws that were applied, and since we're talking about the death penalty, for example, adultery.

It was a classic case in where if a man and a woman were found to be in an adulterous relationship, and by way of kind of a sidebar, please let me make this point, it is not an affair.

That's a euphemism that the secularists use. The Bible repeatedly and very clearly calls it adultery.

But in that case of the adulterous relationship, if the witnesses were brought forward and the case were established, they were put to death.

Now, in the New Testament, that's not necessarily the case. It isn't the case at all.

The state does not punish adultery by the death penalty, nor does the church.

The church in the New Testament setting no longer has the power of the sword.

Romans 13, one through seven, is very, very clear that the state has its responsibility and the church has hers.

And I recall vaguely a statement that Martin Luther made in the same context where people were saying, well, you don't have the death penalty anymore as the church.

And Luther said, no, that's true. We don't. But we have something that's even more powerful than the death penalty.

People looked at him with a kind of a quizzical look like, well, what could that be? And he said, it's excommunication.

So what would happen, for example, in the New Testament church today, if there were an adulterous man or woman or both in a particular congregation, then we are instructed not to put them to death.

But if they are found guilty and if they remain unrepentant, then they are to be excommunicated from the church with a view to restoring them, getting them to repent and have them restored.

So there are some changes, but there are a lot of things that are still the same. And if we have time,

I'd like for us to get into one of the texts that I believe is foundational for all of this in the

Old Testament. And it's in Genesis 9. It's right after the flood. Noah and his family are outside of the ark and God makes a very clear pronouncement about what is supposed to go on there.

And it goes, it reads pretty much like this. And for your life blood, I will require a reckoning from every beast

I will require and from man, 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.

And one of the things that one of the texts in the

New Covenant that I'm assuming you would believe is a primary text proving that that Old Testament mandate still stands is in Romans 13, 1 through 7.

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. Therefore, whoever resists the authorities resists what

God has appointed. And those who resist will incur judgment for rulers are not a terror for good conduct, but to bad.

But you have no fear of the one who is in authority, then do what is good and you will receive his approval for the, for the one.

Let's see, I missed my place here. Would you have no fear of the one in authority, then do what is good and you will receive his approval 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. Therefore, one must be in subjection not only to avoid

God's wrath, but also for the sake of conscious or because of this, you also pay taxes for the authorities are ministers of God attending to this very thing, pay to all what is owed them taxes to whom taxes are owed revenue to whom revenue is owed respect to whom respect is owed and honor to whom honor is owed.

So I'm assuming that that would be something that would confirm in the New Testament from the very pen of the

Apostle Paul that that law and those laws in the Old Testament regarding the death penalty, at least for certain crimes are not abrogated.

Precisely. And that's a great word. Abrogated is precisely the word that fits that. And I would add to that one more text, which is the sixth commandment.

If you, if the listeners have a Bible that fights the sixth commandment, as you shall not kill, just take a pen and write through that because the actual word there in Hebrew is murder.

So the sixth commandment is really about murder. And one of the points that I make emphatically throughout the book is that all murder involves killing and taking a life, but not all killing is murder, especially when it is received

God's approval. So if the listeners go to keep it simple, if the listeners would make a good study of Genesis chapter nine, the verses five and six, the verses one through seven that you read from Romans 13 and the sixth commandment,

I think that would be a great leg up on how they could come to understand why the death penalty is so important for us and for our time.

And I would add to that that in the older covenant, there was a particular refrain, if you will.

And the refrain went something like this, when a particular egregious sin that warranted the death penalty was being imposed, the

Lord would speak and say, and thus you will purge the evil from your midst.

Now there are, there is a lot of evil in our world today. Some of it is camouflaged, other evil is just frontal and brutal, but nonetheless it is there.

And one of the, I think most disparaging things that has happened in our society is that we have refused to purge evil from our midst.

We have people who have committed multiple crimes of great, that deserve capital punishment.

And we have come to the conclusion that it's really the loving, nice, polite thing to do not to purge the evil from our midst.

And so our society is subject now to a great deal of this evil that is no longer waiting in the shadows for us.

It's coming out and it's being forthright and it's confronting people every day.

And I think we need to heed what God teaches us in his word. He's put it there for a purpose.

He's put it there for our good. So whether it's the individual who's reading this, or whether it's society that is talking about it, discussing the matter, if God says, and this boils down,

I think, to what I will say is one of the most necessary things for Christians today, and that is to be in the possession of a biblical life and worldview.

And at the very least, there are probably more. I'm going to give six things to the listeners that I think are essential for them to have in their life a worldview that is thoroughly grounded in Scripture.

It will be your view of God, your view of man, your view of society, your view of knowledge, your view of truth, and your view of ethics.

And all of those things need to be grounded in Scripture because we're going to come against a society that is not

Christian, and we need to bring forth our presuppositions that we draw from Scripture, and we need to confront the world with its presupposition and show them that the biblical worldview is far and away the best worldview because it comes from God.

I'm going to, before we go to a break, I'm going to ask you a question, and then you'll have time to ponder it during the break and answer when we return.

But my question is for you. We seem to both be in agreement, and it is fairly clear from the words of the

Apostle Paul that the death penalty is something that is appropriately and properly carried through to the

New Covenant to this very day. But the question I have for you is, under what terms or for what crimes would the death penalty be applicable today, in your opinion?

And is there only one answer to that? Do you believe that the Word of God gives liberty to varying cultures and nations who have varying forms of government to apply the death penalty in different ways as long as it wasn't something that was a clear violation of a biblical command or mandate?

Perhaps you could think about that when we go to a break right now. And if you'd like to join us on the air as well with your own question, our email is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. And please, as I said before, give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the good old

USA. We'll be right back with Dr. Ron Gleason and the death penalty on trial right after these messages.

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That's wrbc .us. Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, for am

I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man,

I would not be a servant of Christ. Hi, I'm Mark Lukins, pastor of Providence Baptist Church. We are a

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Welcome back, this is Chris Arnson. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours is

Dr. Ron Gleason, and we are discussing his book, The Death Penalty on Trial, Taking a

Life for a Life Taken. If you have questions of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. And basically, before the break,

I was asking you, in light of the fact that we both seem to be in agreement that the death penalty is something carried over from the old covenant law through the new covenant and is applicable today, even in the 21st century, and my question was, but is there a difference from the old to the new regarding what crimes where one may rightly apply that very severe and final penalty, if you will, and if there is also liberty to answer that question differently amongst various nations and various governments as long as a clear mandate of scripture is not violated?

Right, that's a great question. And to begin with the first, is there a difference now between what was a crime in the

Old Testament and what would not be considered a crime but would be considered an egregious sin in the

New Testament? I would say yes, and that one example would be the example we talked about before the break, which would be adultery in the older covenant.

Adultery because of the egregious nature of the sin, the violation of the covenant made between man and woman in the marriage vows and all of that, that was punishable by death.

In the New Testament, the church no longer has the power of the sword, but the church does have the power of excommunication.

It's quite possible that when I say that, people will think I'm from the planet Zork, because church discipline is,

I mean, it's just something that people don't hear about anymore. And with a great deal of the church hopping that goes on today, if for example, let's say hypothetically, it was discovered in a congregation that a couple had been committing adultery and the leaders stepped in and said, well, we need to do something about this in terms of church discipline.

In all likelihood, they're just going to say, well, you know what? This is none of your business.

And if they would leave, they will disappear. And so here you have these two people that have committed this horrible sin of adultery.

They don't believe it's the church's business, and it is.

But then they go to another church, they have not repented, and these people now go to that other church and they begin to take the

Lord's Supper there. According to what I read in Scripture, every time they take the bread and the wine, they are eating and drinking judgment upon themselves.

So there is that difference. And so the New Testament church does not view adultery as a crime punishable by death, but it views it as a sin that needs to have the application of church discipline to restore the center, the whole purpose of any type of church discipline, whether it's simply the two people sitting down and saying, you know, brother or sister, you shouldn't be doing this.

This is what the Word of God says. And that's a form of church discipline. We typically think of excommunication immediately, but that's really way down the road.

But eventually, if that happens, it all goes back to what

I mentioned in my first text, and that's the Genesis 9 text. I do think that it is seminal, I think it's pivotal for understanding what this is.

Because the reasoning, the rationale that is given by God is why the blood of man is to be, there is to be retribution for an intentional murder of one being of another is because God made man in his own image.

So that's not going to change from Old Testament to New Testament. We confess as Christians that man as man, whether he or she admits it or acknowledges it or not, is created in the image of God.

And there is a very true psychological sense, and a number of the commentators that I read when

I was doing my research for the book made this same point, that when one person murders another, they are truly and really striking at the

Creator and not just the creature. And so this whole idea of man having this special place in all of creation, that as Christians we must understand that there is a sanctity of life in general based on the fact that we are all created in the image of God.

Now the other part of your question, which I thought was an excellent question Chris, has to do with I guess what we would call today contextualization.

And it has to do from going from one country to another country and their laws.

Now obviously each country will probably, as a sovereign nation, will make its own laws.

But I do believe at the same time that the contents of the

Ten Commandments are stretched right across the board and applied to any and all whether they are saved or not saved.

Let me explain what I mean by that. In the Old Testament we're told of God's destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

And of course the question there is, did God judge Sodom and Gomorrah by a different standard of righteousness than he did for his people?

And the short answer of course is no, he didn't. There's one standard of righteousness from God.

And in my own tradition in the Presbyterian Church in America, when we discuss in the

Westminster Confession about the law of God, we confess that it applies to all whether they are believers or non -believers.

This is a universal ethic. This is God's universal gift of the ten words that he has spoken, not only telling us about his nature and his character, but how he expects all of us to be.

So if we just think about this this way, when we come to the New Testament, Paul in particular,

I'm just going to focus in on Paul for a moment. Paul writes to Greeks, Paul writes to Romans, and Paul writes to the churches in Asia Minor.

And it's in 1 Corinthians in particular that the Apostle says, and this is what

I write to all the churches. In other words, there is a universality about these things.

And I think by extension we can make the same point when it comes to the death penalty.

Does God have a standard for people living in the United States regarding the death penalty?

Yes. Is that the same standard that he holds Canadians to? Yes. Is it the same standard he holds the

Dutch to? Yes. Or the Germans or the Polish? Yes, yes, yes. And so it goes that way down the line.

So I believe that what we have in Scripture is God's word to his entire creation, but most specifically it's to his church.

The church should be the one who most clearly speaks out about these issues.

And I think it's really sad that for the longest time the church has been more concerned with entertaining than it has been with explaining to the world.

It used to be that the church was the conscience of the world. And that if the world was out going crazy, at least the church would say, no, this is not what you're supposed to do.

No, this is what God wants marriage to look like. No, this is what God wants child rearing to look like.

No, this is what God wants obedience to look like. But lately I would say we have, in the last two generations, we have lost, we have lost those generations because the church no longer stands up as church.

The church looks, acts, dresses, speaks pretty much like the world today.

And when you have that phenomenon, you're back into the Old Testament in 2 Samuel, 1 and 2

Kings. Well, I'll give you a couple examples of specifics of what

I mean. If a nation believes in the death penalty, it will most certainly have first and foremost in mind the death penalty for murderers.

But would it be inappropriate for a nation, even our own, to want to adopt that as a penalty, death or capital punishment as a penalty for pedophilia?

And that actually, this nation has in the past used the death penalty towards traitors against this nation who were spies for the communists and so on.

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg immediately come to mind. Traitors such as the execution of Private Slovak, if you remember.

But if you could, are these appropriate ways for a government, does a government or any government have the liberty in God's eyes to use the death penalty for things such as that?

Yes, I would answer that one, yes. And as I write about in the book, it used to be that not only in the

Old Testament, but in former times, rape, conviction of rape was punishable by death, as was kidnapping, because it was looked at as not only a violation of the

Sixth Commandment, but as a violation of the Eighth Commandment as well, that is people stealing.

And so, yeah, I believe that if a nation put its collective heads together and came up with some death penalties for things such as that, as long as they were mentioned in the

Word of God, that you could derive your principles from the Word of God, that that would be totally acceptable. Now, what about the manner in which the death penalty is brought about?

You and I, I believe, judging from what you have said, would vehemently oppose the execution of someone for theological heresy.

Right. And we would look at that as a dark spot or a blight upon the record of our mutual hero,

John Calvin, because he consented to the governing authorities in Geneva to executing the heretic

Miguel Servito, Michael Servitus, who was opposing the Trinity. But Calvin also begged or pleaded with the authorities not to burn him alive, and was pleading with them for a more humane method of execution, which fell upon deaf ears, and he nonetheless,

Servitus or Servito, was burned at the stake. Now, do you think that there are any biblical prohibitions to a means by which any given governing authorities choose to put someone to death?

That's a great question, and when I began to do the research for the book,

I read a number of Christians and non -Christians alike that used certain examples as inhumane.

And when I started looking at it, I went back to the Old Testament way of the community, really administering the death penalty.

Do you recall what that was? You're referring to stoning to death.

Exactly. I had my microphone on mute. So it was stoning, and people were saying, well, we need to have something that's really humane.

I don't think we have to go out of our way to be inhumane, and I'm not trying to be sarcastic when

I say this, but in a very real sense, because it was stoning, which

I gather was probably not the most pleasant way to be put to death, maybe not even the second most pleasant way to be put to death, that God thought that the taking of a life of a human being by premeditated murder was such an egregious sin that he prescribed stoning to death.

And that was a horrible way. I think probably in modern societies,

I would certainly not advocate burning. I think burning is horribly gross, and at the same time, we know from the

Old Testament in particular that death by burning in the Old Testament was a really clear sign of judgment, and that the person was an apostate.

So what are the other means that are available to us? Well, various nations have used various things, and in the history of the

United States, we have used hanging. In the case of treason, we have used firing squad.

In some certain cases, there has been the electric chair, and most recently, it's lethal injection.

In my home state of California, there are all types of objections that are being raised about the pain that the recipient experiences with lethal injection.

As I have looked at it, and as I have studied it, the insertion of the needle is probably not any more painful than when you and I go to have our blood drawn for a physical or something along those lines.

But here's what I think we need to keep in mind. The word murder is a six -letter word, but as I did my research for the book, and I read case after case after case of murder,

I just could not put those cases into the book because they were so grotesque.

The things that people did to other human beings to take their lives was just beyond the pale.

At that particular point, as I read some of the very gruesome details of how people were put to death by their assailants,

I have to admit that my compassion waned. The very fact that somebody was experiencing some discomfort from a needle being inserted into their vein did not register very highly.

Yes, and of course, the Church of Rome would probably be the experts on being inventors of evil when it comes to the methodology of torture and death that they devised over the centuries.

Yes. And one of the things I do want to get to, especially for the last hour,

I want to get to eight secular objections to the death penalty and five

Christian objections to the death penalty. But before we do that, there are certain things that I think give me reason for pause when it comes to the death penalty, although I am an advocate of it.

I have heard about trials where the defendant is really in a kangaroo court of sorts and really has been railroaded because all the evidence is circumstantial.

And you see even evidence that some of that circumstantial evidence has been tampered with and so on.

And even you have physical evidence with blood and so on being planted and all kinds of things, weapons being planted.

And you have dirty cops at times doing all kinds of horrible things to make sure the suspect or the accused is found guilty.

And in the Old Testament, correct me if I'm wrong, was there not a requirement in Deuteronomy that there be two or three witnesses?

In fact, let me see. Deuteronomy 17 .6. We have on the evidence of two witnesses or three witnesses, he who is to die shall be put to death.

He shall not be put to death on the evidence of one witness. And we have in our day people being put to death with no witnesses.

So I mean, do you think that's a legitimate reason for one to say, now wait a minute, maybe we shouldn't be too hasty with this?

Yeah, I think there's a short answer. And I was going to go directly to Deuteronomy 17, so you beat me there.

So that's good. I think that's a classic case. And I think it's very important for the listeners to make a study of what is said in Deuteronomy 17.

I deal with it in the book, but it's very pertinent. And the very fact, I believe it was harder to convict someone of murder in the

Old Testament than, as you just said, as there is in our time, even though we have substantially more and better technologies that were present in the

Old Testament. So yeah, there's no need, nobody is, I think with this concept of the death penalty,

I hope nobody's rushing out and saying, well, let's just put to death as many people as we can.

But the point here is, if there is sufficient conclusive evidence, then the death penalty should be applied.

But at the same time, if there isn't, we should not be trying to jury rig everything so that just people we don't like are put to death.

That's why I believe it's so important that nations, wherever they are, go back to the

Word of God, because with the Word of God as our foundation, I mean, obviously

God is the creator of everything, including government. And where what we find in the

Older Covenant constantly is the fact that people will violate the

Word of God, and as they violate the Word of God, then the rulers are then condemned by God.

And that's, I think, what has happened in our society today. Either we have the one extreme where people are not put to death at all.

I think the last count out here in California, we had somewhere in the neighborhood of 670 people on death row that have been convicted with substantial evidence of murder, but people don't want to take the next step and actually engage in the execution of these people.

And then the other extreme would be people who execute people because of the color of their skin or because of the language that they speak, or a thousand and one different other things.

And those two extremes have to be avoided at all costs. And we have both heard of a number of cases where people who were truly innocent, but who were on death row, have been pardoned very shortly before their sentence was to be carried out, their death sentence, because DNA evidence or other things that were not available years ago have come to the surface, and the person has been exonerated of all crimes.

Doesn't that make, shouldn't that make us very cautious about the manner in which we believe the death penalty should be pursued?

It should make us cautious. And at the same time, it should, what we read to revert to Deuteronomy 17 again.

There's a particular case, and this is, I'm just going to summarize that. There's a particular case that's really hard, it's brought before the judges and the priests, and they deliberate on that case.

And I believe, among other things, what Deuteronomy 17 is telling us is that in a fallen world, justice executed by man will not be 100 % perfect.

I don't care who you are, I don't care how liberal or how conservative you are, it simply will not happen.

We are fallen creatures living in a fallen world. And so there have to be standards and prescriptions that we follow, and we follow faithfully, and we follow with, not with a view to color of skin, or race or anything like that.

The old idea of justice is blind, that either it is right or it's wrong.

And I think that's what the judges back in Deuteronomy 17 did, and at the end of the day, they came up with a decision.

Was it infallible? No. But there isn't anything infallible in a fallen world.

But that should not be the lead for us then to say, well, there's no, we can't be infallibly sure every single time, 100 % of the time, and so therefore we should never execute those people who have committed murder.

I mean, that would be to fly in the face of everything that we know from the older and the newer testament.

And I guess that you could even use a just war as an example.

No one is ever going to be able to guarantee that innocent civilians are killed in a just war.

And even for the police to legitimately use their firearms in public while pursuing a criminal, that, there is no guarantee that an innocent bystander will not be accidentally killed.

You remember, no, exactly. You remember the raid on Entebbe? Yes. Okay, and there was...

It was Idi Amin, correct? What's that? Idi Amin Dada? Yes. And when the

Israelis went in, the Air France passengers that were captured, who were the good guys, the

Israelis went in, they were taking out the bad guys, and one of the passengers jumped up in joy and caught a bullet and died.

And so that, I mean, you moan that fact, but was it worth it for those people to go in there and try to save those people that were being held captive?

Yes. And so just war is just another one of those things. We live in a fallen world.

It's being restored by God. And to the best of our ability, we should follow God's words and his leadings and all that we do.

But we can't go with the idea that it's going to be 100 % every time we do it.

We're going to be going to a break right now. When we return, I'd like us to go into your answers to eight secular objections to the death penalty, and also answers to five

Christian objections to the death penalty. And if you'd like to join us on the air, those of you listening, with your own question for our guests, and we do have a couple of listeners who have already submitted questions, thank you for patiently waiting.

Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. That's C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

Don't go away. We're going to be right back after these messages with more with our guest,

Dr. Ron Gleason, and his book, The Death Penalty on Trial, Taking a

Life for a Life Taken. Do not go away. We're coming right back.

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arnson. If you just tuned us in, our guest for the last hour and the hour to come today is

Dr. Ron Gleason. We are discussing his book, The Death Penalty on Trial, Taking a Life for a

Life Taken. And our email address, if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, is ChrisArnson at gmail .com.

ChrisArnson at gmail .com. Before we go into the eight secular objections to The Death Penalty and your responses to them, and then, of course, five

Christian objections to The Death Penalty and your responses to those, my co -host,

Reverend Buzz Taylor, has a question. And being an enormous fan of the late Dr.

Greg Bonson, I'm surprised that he has kept his mouth shut for the entire time I've been on the air.

I have to admit, the competition here is really stiff to get a word in. But actually,

I wanted to mention something just slightly off, but yet pertinent, and that was, it was one week ago today, of course, we had our guest,

Ron Gleason, and I'm talking about gun control, and you left a cliffhanger for us to get him back, which was The Death Penalty.

And I just want to say you have left another cliffhanger that, you know, Chris, we're going to have to have him back to talk about those six aspects of a

Christian world in light view now. Okay, keep going, I can come up with more and more and more.

We're never going to let you get off of this program, I'll tell you what, you're going to be a co -host before you know it. But this is a very interesting subject, and I'm so glad that we were able to have you back to talk about this.

And this is part of the reason I'm so quiet is because I'm listening. And this is just great to hear you talk about these things.

I have a few things that I just were wondering about myself. You hear some of the objections, like for example,

David committed murder, but was not executed. You know,

Kane was not executed when he killed Abel. How do you answer to these things? Yeah, those are great questions.

And you mentioned Greg, I had the privilege of knowing Greg when

I first came out to California. In fact, I was at the hospital, getting ready to visit him the day that he died.

I was talking to his parents when the doctors came down and said that Greg had survived the operation well, that they thought was going to be his last operation, that he had come through with flying colors, but immediately after that, he did pass into glory.

And Greg and I, I remember over lunch talked about this quite a bit. And I don't think there's any easy answer to this.

The only thought that I've been able to come up with Kane and with David, there was a kind of a divine intervention with Kane, by virtue of the fact that God graciously allowed him to leave the presence of Adam and Eve and the rest of the family of God, and then to take his family to a place called the

Land of Nod. And interestingly enough, in Hebrew, that word means wandering.

That he was now placed into a land of wandering. And immediately after that, what we see and hear in Genesis 4 is

Lamech doing his so -called sword song, where he escalates what

God has said. So he becomes man -centered and said, well, you know, if Kane is going to be revenged seven times, for me it's going to be 70 times seven.

So we begin to see the rise of secular humanism with that particular aspect of that.

But in the same thing with David, David performed two egregious sins, the adultery with Bathsheba and being complicit in the murder of Uriah.

And in that instance, the only thing I've been able to come up with was there was a divine intervention, because David was

God's anointed king, that that sin after being confessed was covered by God, and David was allowed to be that king, because it was through the line of David when we,

I mentioned at the beginning of the program, the notion of God's covenant relationship.

We see that in Genesis 9 with Noah, and then in Genesis 12 and 15 in particular, we see it with Abram, who in Genesis 17 becomes

Abraham, and then through Isaac and Jacob, then through Moses, then through David to Christ.

So I'm guessing that had to be a better, bigger, redemptive historical purpose for that.

But I think it's important, both Chris and Buzz, that we do not take those two exceptions as the norm.

Yes, and even although the church in the apostolic era was in no place of political authority, it is interesting that the apostle

Paul was spared by God a death penalty for his horrific crimes as soul of Tarsus when he rounded up men and women to be executed for their

Christian faith. Well, you also have Paul writing specifically in 1

Corinthians 6 where he's talking about all the different sins, and he says, such were some of you, and of course murderers are in there.

Yes, excellent, excellent point. You actually had an excellent point. Thinking back to David, I'm just wondering too, you know, about the fact that he was the king who had the right to send

Uriah into battle, and technically speaking, even though it was malice in his heart, it was, shall

I say, all in a day's work sending a man. But it would not be ambushed, like, I mean, that was not a typical kind of a thing there where a leader is sending out his most prized military...

I wasn't excusing David, totally. No, no, I think that's really, really true, and you think of somebody,

Manassas, for example, Manassas rather, he ruled for 55 years, and as they say out here in California, he was a bad dude.

I mean, he's 55 years, and at the end of his life, it's not given to us in the

Book of Kings, but in Chronicles, we're told he became a believer, and you wonder, well, how could that be?

He just did all of these bad things. He led Israel into all kinds of idol worship and cold prostitution and all of this.

How could that be? And the ultimate answer, I think, for any of that is that God is gracious.

The same thing is true in Genesis 6, where it talks about Noah.

We don't know much about Noah. I mean, he was, I guess he was an okay guy, but it says in Genesis 6, and God found favor, or Noah found favor in God's eyes, and literally the word there in Hebrew is hein, which is the

Hebrew word for grace, that God gave Noah grace, and so I think, and again, with these very clear exceptions that we look at those types of exceptions, and in the 1

Corinthians 6 text, I think it's talking about people who used to be non -believers who engaged in all kinds of things, including murder, but now as a believer, they should know better.

They should know better about murder, they should know better about homosexual relationships, and on and on and on the list goes.

Well, I knew there was some good reason that I had Buzz as my co -host. Sure, of course. But anyway, let's move on to those, because we are rapidly running out of time.

Even though we've got 50 minutes left, that can go by in a bullet, like a bullet, and if you could go through some secular objections and your rebuttals to them, and then move on to the

Christian objections. Yeah, I had to hit some of the high points on this.

These are the chapters 6 and 7 of the book for the people who want to get the book and read the book.

I'll start with objection number two from the secularists, and that is that capital punishment is arbitrary and irrevocable.

I would agree with half of that. Capital punishment is irrevocable.

Once it happens, you can't, there's no undo button on, it is a done deal.

That is arbitrary, there may be, I guess as you were mentioning earlier,

Chris, some isolated examples of where there was, the trials were kangaroo courts, or they were arbitrary.

But in general, I think in the United States that the trials are, the people try to be fair.

I do believe that there's still this sense of the rule of law that has not been completely eradicated from the hearts and the people.

That it is irrevocable, it really is quite clear.

Once the person is put to death, then you cannot call them back.

So there's an air of finality to that. But at the same time, that would be true of the

New Testament when the death penalty was applied, and going back to Romans 13 again, and then in the

Old Testament when the death penalty was applied, that was the case as well.

And so as I mentioned earlier, with the whole idea of man being created in the image of God, we as Christians are to have a view of sanctity of life, but it is not to be, as one of my ethics professors taught me in Holland, it's not to be an absolute view of the sanctity of life.

That is to say, there are certain instances where, in the case of someone who has committed a murder, that we absolutely acknowledge that he is made in the image of God, to the extent that we will not put him to death when

God says that person should be put to death. On maybe a more emotional level, there would be the case of a loved one who is on a machine keeping them alive.

Do we want to keep that machine plugged in, knowing that our loved one is a believer, knowing where they're going to be when they breathe their last?

Do we want to keep them on that machine artificially forever, just because of the view that they are made in the image of God?

So we have a very high view of human life because of the image of God and man, but it's not an absolute view.

So I would take that to be one of the solutions for that.

And why don't I take this time to take one of our listener questions.

We have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who says, do you think it's ever appropriate to pardon someone guilty of murder when clear and irrefutable evidence of their conversion or repentance and remorse has been demonstrated in prison, especially if the loved ones and family of the victim approve of such an action?

I think that's a good question because you do hear about circumstances where even the family of a victim may, either just because they're opposed to the death penalty or because they believe the person has truly demonstrated repentance and remorse, they think that they'll be a productive member of society and they have on occasion even rallied to stop the death sentence from going forward.

What is your opinion on that kind of a thing? Yeah, that's a great question and I was going to get to that because that's one of the

Christian objections. That if, let's say, a person has committed a murder, it was verified that they were in fact the ones who committed it.

They went to prison, they became a Christian in prison. Should they be allowed then, because they have confessed this sin,

God has forgiven them of this sin, should they be allowed then to re -enter society?

No. And it's not, let me qualify, whether the family involved has a change of heart and asks for this, it's really not up to them because ultimately

God has spoken. And where as human beings we may make all kinds of decisions and say all types of things.

What really matters most, I said to the congregation a couple of weeks ago as I started a sermon

I'm preaching on through Isaiah, we're in Isaiah 55, and I started out with a quote that was found on the desk of the late

John Murray in 1976 and it began this way, the truth is paramount.

And what Murray meant by that was God's truth is paramount. As a matter of fact, the first volume of his collected writings is called

The Claims of Truth. And so in these instances of the execution of a human being,

God does not come to us and say, is this okay with you guys? Is this fine with you?

How about if we do this? He simply says, this is what you are to do. Again, the text in Genesis 9, 5 through 11 is not composed of two verses that are suggestions.

Those are mandates. And so irrespective of what we may think or feel or anything like that, the execution is to take place.

Now, if we understand that the person is truly a believer, let's say hypothetically, this person truly made a bona fide profession of faith in Christ, and they are truly believers, where are they going to be immediately after their execution?

They are going to see Jesus face to face. And so I think that the most important thing is, is that God's justice is done.

And that we know with assurance, just as we would know with any of our loved ones who are truly believers.

I did a memorial service Saturday at our congregation for our oldest member, who was 91.

And I quoted from the Westminster Shorter Catechism, question and answer 37.

What benefits do believers receive from the resurrection upon death?

And the answer goes like this. At death, the souls of believers are made perfect in holiness and do immediately pass into glory.

And their bodies, being still united with Christ, do rest in their graves until the resurrection.

I think that's a great hope. And I think the Westminster Divines, putting their collective heads together, came up with a near genial answer to the whole question of what happens to us at death.

And I thought that was just a beautiful answer, that our souls are made perfect in holiness, and they do immediately pass into glory.

And I think that kind of seals the deal for me. In fact, I just providentially yesterday saw an interview with a death row inmate before he was executed.

He was a death row inmate in Texas. He was on death row for killing a police officer.

And this young man became a Christian in prison while on death row.

And the beaming look of acceptance and peace that he had with his sentence, he had a beaming smile, and it did not retract at all from his remorse and repentance over doing such a horrible crime.

I don't mean to give the wrong impression that he was smiling. But he was smiling facing death.

And the interviewer said, what's the last thing that you're going to be thinking before you die in that death chamber?

And he said, I'm going to heaven. And he had this authentic, beaming, radiant smile.

And he was fully accepting of this penalty, did not complain about it or oppose it, believed it was the best thing to bring closure to all involved, not only the victim's family, but even his own children, to see that a harsh penalty should be acted out upon somebody guilty of a horrific crime like that.

So it was really a remarkable interview that I saw.

Yeah, I agree. And I think that brings into word just what

I was trying to articulate myself, that I corresponded with a number of prisoners, many of whom were murderers and who were on death row.

And one of the things that you don't have to convince them of is total depravity.

No, seriously, they understand what they did was part of just being a depraved person.

And yet many of them are open to hearing the gospel. But I'm willing to wager if we began as Americans to allow people out of prison as soon as they made their profession of faith in Christ, we'd have a lot of professions.

And I'm sorry that if I interjected that listener probably. That was great.

That was perfect. I thought it did apply for both a secular objection and a

Christian objection, because there are those who are non -Christians who look at rehabilitation as a reason.

But if you could continue, because I don't want us to run out of time before we get to more of these rebuttals to objections.

Well, another one that we hear from our society a lot is that executions give society the message that human life no longer deserves respect.

And I had to gag almost when I did that one because it's not just executions that gives society the message that human life no longer deserves respect.

How about abortion? Right. How about euthanasia? But to take that back to a biblical perspective,

I understand from scripture that when God pronounced the death penalty, it had to do with purity.

And not that human life didn't deserve respect. It was that the person that had committed the murder had usurped his or her position.

Normally it was a man who did it. And that human life is being respected primarily by taking the life of the person who goes in and does such a heinous crime.

And by the way, Arnie, you've got a surprise coming to you. You're getting a free copy of The Death Penalty on Trial by Dr.

Ron Gleeson, compliments of the publishers Nordskog Publishing. And we want to thank

Jerry Nordskog and the folks over at Nordskog Publishing, Pauline and everybody over there for providing these free books to give away to our listeners.

We have a receive one. Shoot us an email as soon as you can.

And I'd like to give a plug to their website, nordskogpublishing .com. N -O -R -D -S -K -O -G -publishing .com.

And I hope I'm pronouncing your last name right, Jerry Nordskog. Yep, that's it. Okay, great.

Wonderful people. And I'm assuming that's a Scandinavian name? Yeah, I don't know. It could be. Thank you very much.

And God willing, you'll be getting that book in the mail shortly. And we have a couple of other listeners already waiting with bated breath to have their questions asked and answered.

But if you could move on to some more objections. Yeah, well, the one that I'm going to go to now is pretty much the one that we just did.

It's just a variant on there. And that is decent and humane societies do not deliberately kill human beings.

Again, there's the difference between killing and murdering. Do decent and humane societies murder human beings?

You bet. The number of abortions that have been performed in the United States amounts to at the time of President Ronald Reagan, and so it's exponentially higher now.

During the time of Reagan's administration, the number of abortions was 27 times higher than all the casualties of all

Americans in all the wars we've ever fought. So yeah, we pride ourselves as Americans on being humane societies, and yet we have no compunction at all about murdering innocents in the womb, young people, young babies created in the image of God who have no defense, either against mom or against the physician.

So I think that's just an awful one. Another objection is, and I kind of laugh or at least smile when

I had read this one, capital punishment has not been proven to be an effective deterrent.

And I smiled in the sense that, yeah, it actually is, because the person who is put to death is not going to do that crime again.

But think about this for a second. In the Old Testament Scriptures, it says more than once about a particular egregious sin, and all

Israel will see and they will be afraid. And basically that's saying there is a deterrent, and Israel will not do that.

Now when you read that, does that mean that 100 % of the people 100 % of the time will look at that execution taking place and think,

I'm never going to do that. There are always going to be people who will think they'll never get caught.

And I can do this and I can get away with that. The same thing is true today.

And yet, there is a sense where I think in general, when people began to understand that if I do this, the possibility of me being put to death is very good.

I'm not going to spend 30, 40 years on death row watching cable

TV and working out in a state -of -the -art gym. I am going to be put to death rather immediately.

It will probably act as a deterrent for a large number of people.

And I think that's what we have to keep in mind when we do these things. God prescribes it, and so it will be a deterrent for that one person.

They will never do such a heinous act again. And they won't even be able to do it in prison by killing another inmate.

Well, you know, I think it's wanting to see justice done that one of my favorite

TV shows is Columbo. When he's on the case, they're going to be caught.

But I just wanted to mention one other thing that came up to me when you were talking about the abortion issue.

Since we're on the subject of capital punishment, that I think needs to at least be said, and that is there are some, of course, who take it upon their own hands to be the judge, jury, and executioner in the matter of abortion where they feel it is okay to shoot an abortionist simply because he has murdered.

A vigilante. Vigilantism, yes. And obviously you're saying that that is an unbiblical act.

Yeah, it's unbiblical from both the Old as well as the New Testament.

In the Old Testament, it was forbidden. In the book of Romans, you read from chapter 13 at the end of chapter 12, we were told once again, the

Old Testament principle, we are not to avenge ourselves. And then that just kind of is the run up to what

Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is going to say in chapter 13, in the first seven verses, that we are not to avenge ourselves.

God has instituted that there are magistrates, government officials, who are now tasked with doing that.

And so we are not to do those types of things. That person has become a murderer himself or herself.

Usually, again, it's a guy who does it. And so, yes, that person has become a murderer.

And Christians are not to do that. The Bible is very explicit. It's very clear that's not what we're to do.

And it is ironic and absurd that the leftists who are pro -abortionists and anti -death penalty mock us for being against abortion and in favor of the death penalty.

They think that our position is absurd. But we're the ones that believe in protecting innocent life and executing guilty murderers.

Their position holds no water at all. I mean, it's absurd and it's insane, actually. Well, it is.

But you'd be surprised. Maybe not. But you might be surprised at the number of times I've done radio interviews on the book.

And that's exactly the question that a caller in will say, how can you be anti -abortion and pro -death penalty?

And I will say, well, that's fairly simple once you stop and think about it. To be pro -life means that there is this human being in the womb, created in the image of God, who has done nothing.

And that life is to be protected. Whereas when you're dealing with a murder case, and again,

I could not say either on the air or even in writing, just the horrific nature of some of the crimes, now you have someone who is convicted of committing a heinous, horrific crime.

And if you don't know the difference between those two, you have some very deep issues that you need to deal with.

Because most murderers have planned their murders, and they don't expect to get caught.

And the murders are terrible and horrific and gruesome and grisly.

And the innocent person in the womb has done nothing. And it is interesting that for the last several occupants of the

Holy See in Rome, an office that I reject, but in fact any

Bible -believing Christian should wholeheartedly reject. Amen. But the Popes of Rome, at least the last several of them, have taken that liberal or leftist stance that since we are pro -life, we should be pro -life even when it comes to guilty murderers.

But I can't help but say this, brother, though. I do rest my head a little more peacefully on my pillow every night when

I know that the Popes are against the death penalty, knowing of their history, if you know what

I'm saying. No word on that yet, and there's a chapter in the book on the history of the death penalty going back to the early church, going through people like Thomas Aquinas and people like that.

Aquinas was a very strong proponent of the death penalty. Augustine was a proponent of the death penalty.

But you mentioned the Pope, and that is a good segue into the last objection, and that is the number of people, and there are people,

I won't mention any names, but on Fox News, who will say the death penalty is too good, and so what a person needs is to spend a lifetime thinking about this.

In fact, if you could pick up right on that thought when we return, because we have to take our last and final break.

And this is your last opportunity to join us on the air with a question at ChrisOrenson at gmail .com.

We'll be right back with our guest, Dr. Ron Gleason, after these final messages.

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Linbrook Baptist Church on 225 Earl Avenue in Linbrook, Long Island is teaching God's timeless truths in the 21st century.

Our church is far more than a Sunday worship service. It's a place of learning where the scriptures are studied and the preaching of the gospel is clear and relevant.

It's like a gym where one can exercise their faith through community involvement. It's like a hospital for wounded souls where one can find compassionate people and healing.

We're a diverse family of all ages, enthusiastically serving our Lord Jesus Christ in fellowship, play, and together.

Hi, I'm Pastor Bob Walderman and I invite you to come and join us here at Linbrook Baptist Church and see all that a church can be.

Call Linbrook Baptist at 516 -599 -9402, that's 516 -599 -9402, or visit linbrookbaptist .org,

that's linbrookbaptist .org. Welcome back, this is Chris Arnzen, and if you just tuned us in for the last 90 minutes in the next half hour to follow, our guest has been and will be

Dr. Ron Gleason. We're discussing his book, The Death Penalty on Trial, and I don't know if it escaped either you,

Ron, or Buzz here, but what I meant in my last comment about resting my head peacefully on my pillow knowing that the papacy is against the death penalty,

I'm talking about a resurgence perhaps in the future of persecution of Protestants is what

I actually meant by that. But you were saying that there is a secular objection that might even be a

Christian objection, that a life sentence is even more of a harsh sentence than an execution would be.

Yeah, and again, I don't want to be wiser than God.

He writes at the conclusion of his letter to the Romans in chapter 16, he speaks of God as God only wise, the only wise

God, and so when God says, this is what is good and this is what

I want, I learned from Psalm 119, God is good and He does good.

And because of that, His truth is paramount over everything.

Let all others be liars, but God is true. And so I don't care who you are, or how many books you've written, or how smart you think you are.

I had a very wise professor who told me one time that the only thing all the letters before and after your name tells anybody is how long it took you to get out of school.

And so I think it's really important for us to say God's truth is paramount.

And if God says this is good, it's a good thing for society, it's a good thing that we do this, then it's good.

I don't care who says the opposite. And so whether it be the

Pope, or whether it be a news commentator, or a conservative news commentator, it really matters little and nothing.

Because the most important thing is what God says about this. And I believe that in the text that I gave from Romans, or that you gave from Romans chapter 13, that I gave from Genesis 9 and the 6th commandment, that those are sufficient groundwork and fundamental principles where we can go and say, this is what

God says. I can say this with assurance that God says this. And because He says it, it's true.

End of story. Now that we transfer over to the objections by Christians, I just want to squeeze in another listener question.

We have B .B. in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who wants to know, do you believe that the story of the woman caught in adultery in John chapter 8 is something that was actually a part of the

New Testament canon? Many of the scholars I've heard discuss this matter are saying that this was only found in later manuscripts.

And therefore, I was wondering if it should be taken seriously as an argument against the death penalty, since it seems to be used quite often to prohibit or oppose a

New Testament or New Covenant death penalty. Right. Great question. Thanks for sending that in.

I'm the one that believes that it was not in the original manuscripts.

And if you read any reliable translation, it will make a note that this was not in the earlier manuscripts, but came in through a later family of text.

And I would say the same thing. I would hold to a shorter ending to the Gospel of Mark because rather than the longer ending.

So I guess long story short, I would say that I believe that is a spurious text.

And of course, even if it were a part of the the God -breathed word, there is not a murderer here in that story.

Right. It's the woman who's caught in adultery. Right. And so if you could move on with Christian objections.

Okay. Well, we have a number of pacifists and the primary objection that I read is, and you hear this often, about the ethic of Jesus.

And so these people would argue that Jesus' ethics and teaching eliminates the need for capital punishment.

I would just mention a few names. John Howard, the late John Howard Yoder, Brian McLaren from the

Emergent Church, Ron Sider, Myron Augsburger, David Gashee, Glenn Stossett, Jim Wallace, and a host of other liberals who would argue that where Jesus, there's this ethic of Jesus who is meek and mild and wouldn't hurt a flea.

And so therefore, we are to, we don't have to administer the death penalty. My response to that is, look, the ethic of Jesus was no different than the ethic of Yahweh in the

Old Testament. Yes. Jesus says in John chapter 6, I came to do the will of him who sent me.

Who sent him? The father sent him. And so the father's will is clearly laid out for us in the

Old Testament. And the other part of it is, I think we really run the risk of pitting the

Bible against itself if we think for one minute that the ethic of Jesus was any different than the ethic of Paul, or the ethic of Isaiah, or the ethic of Luke, or the ethic of Jeremiah, or any of the other writers,

Moses, and the list goes on and on. So to try to posit an ethic of Jesus that in some sense is very different from what we have in other parts of the scripture,

I think is dangerous to say. Yeah. It was in the New Testament where the apostle

Paul even said, if I have done anything worthy of death,

I refuse not to die. Yeah. Yeah. Let me quickly squeeze in another question from Christopher in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who asks, how do we differentiate to the very common objection to capital punishment's support of Christians that we are behaving no better than Islam?

Well, in the first place, I would disagree with that thesis.

I know that there are those on the TV show, The View, which I must admit I have not watched, but I've read about it.

And I think it was Rosie O'Donnell who compared Christians with Islamic terrorists.

And if you believe that that's the case, I have a bridge in Brooklyn. I mean, that is just such a patently absurd argument.

I know it's maintained by a lot of liberals. And even Bill Maher looks at that as an absurd.

Bill Maher is another classic case in point. But that simply is not the case.

I believe that as Christians, what we are told in scripture is so antithetical to what we find in really in any other religion.

I don't want to single out Islam, but in any other religion, it's just totally different.

And we are to be those who, as much as we can, are at peace with everybody else.

And as I began to just look at the numbers of bombings, for example,

I noticed that it wasn't the Swedes that blew the airplanes into the

Twin Towers. Basically, the Christian religion has been a religion of peace.

And the Christians are, by and large, very peaceable people. We don't go around.

I can't think in the recent past, say the last 50 years, of any

Christian that has cut off somebody's head because they didn't become a

Christian. So I think there are just major differences. And for us to begin to compare

Christianity to Islam, or that Christianity has its own faults, obviously, it's not that Christianity has its own faults.

It's that Christians are still sinners, and that Christians are dealing with their sins every day.

And as the Puritan John Owen said, if you're not killing sin, it's going to be killing you.

And I just want to let our last two listeners who emailed questions, I want you to know that you are receiving free copies of this book,

The Death Penalty, on trial as well. So if we don't have your full mailing address, please get it to me as soon as possible.

If you could move on to another... Yeah, some of those we touched on in a previous question about the ones coming to Christ on death row, how should we deal with them.

The other one that's related is that rehabilitated murderers could do much that is good.

The emphasis there, I think, is on the word could. We also have to deal with the whole idea of this little thing called recidivism.

And unfortunately, the recidivism rates, which means that people who have committed crimes like this have gone out and committed crimes again.

We had that happen in California not too terribly long ago, where someone was let out because somebody thought it was a good thing to do, and within 48 hours they had murdered again.

So I think we have to have a very realistic view of the radicality of sin.

Our word radical comes from a Latin word, radix, which means root, and that sin has permeated to the very core of the life of an individual.

And apart from the grace of God, there is no hope. There's going to be no hope, no salvation apart from Christ, no hope apart from the grace of God.

So I would kind of look at that one that way. And then the last one that I dealt with in the book has to do with the

Deuteronomy 17 text again, executing someone in error. And again,

I think people need to understand that there's just nothing 100 % except God in a fallen world.

God is the only being that is 100%. God's word is the only word that is 100%.

The rest of it is just the wisdom of man. And we're trying to, sometimes we end up trying to play

God, and that's why I believe that every Christian, irrespective of their upbringing, of whatever denomination they're in, they must hold tenaciously, not just to a formal view of the infallibility of the word of God, but to a practical view of how that word functions in their lives every day.

We do have Harrison in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, who says, I'm sorry if you have brought this up and I missed it, but how do you handle the objection from some

Christians who may say we should never rob a lost individual of the opportunity to repent?

Because if we believe in the death penalty as Christians, we are hastening their entrance into hell.

Well, that's a great question, and it's totally legitimate, and I would say, wouldn't it be the case that the same principle would have applied in the

Old Testament, that God could have said, don't put this murderer to death because we don't, well, you don't know down the road what he or she is going to do.

But God took that into account, and even with all of those things that we like to think of in our society as being kind and gentle and nice,

God has pronounced, no, you don't need to do that. What you need to do is simply follow what I tell you to do, not what you can conjure up that might happen or could happen down the road, but this is what

I want. But let's say it works the other way. Let's say that we're trying to be kind, we're trying to be gentle, we're trying to be nice to this person, and this person murders again.

Whose blood, do we have blood on our hands for allowing that to happen?

And disregarding what God has so clearly said, and this is one of the things, Chris and Buzz, that I think is so crucial for 21st century

Christians, is that we take God at his word. Psalm 1, 19, 105, your word is a lamp unto my feet.

And so we are able to see where we're supposed to be going because we all lose our way constantly, and we need

God's word to guide us, and we need God's word to guard us. And if God says,

I want you to purge evil from your midst, then that's what we are to do.

We're not to take delight in that, we're not to do anything other than just do it the way that God says it's supposed to be done.

Yes, yes. And another facet of that too though is how many people when they witness, you know, the first things out of their mouth is, if you were to die tonight, you know, if you were to walk out in the street and get hit by a bus, you know, would you be ready, you know, to meet

God? Well, at least in the case of capital punishment, the person knows when he's going to die.

Yes, he knows when the bus is coming. Yes. Yeah. We do have an anonymous listener who wants to know, as a

Christian, is it ever appropriate to pray that the life of a loved one on death row is spared?

You, sure. Look, I think you can pray, the whole idea of prayer is that we pour out our hearts to God.

And it could very well be that because God is our loving father, that he would say yes.

It could very well be because God is our loving father that he could say no. And it could very well be because God is our loving father that he could say not now.

So, but I do believe that if there is a person who is a known convicted murderer,

I'm not certain that it's a good thing to pray against what God has clearly said.

I don't think that's true of anything, let alone of a murderer. And it is interesting that you even have professing

Christians who will speak about things like the death penalty as if they are innately evil.

It's as if they are totally ignorant of the fact that God is the one that designed it. Even if you take a view that it's not applicable for the new covenant or our present day, to say that it's evil is ridiculous because God is the one that ordained the death penalty.

Clearly, if you believe in the inerrancy of scripture and you believe that the Old Testament is a part of the canon,

God has no bloopers. Right. And that's a great point because I think it's important for Christians to keep in mind that there are, in the book that God has told us to call the

Bible, there are in fact 66 books. Virtually every denomination confesses that, that the canon of the

Bible is comprised of 66 books. And we often act as if there are only 27 or fewer.

And I really want to make sure, since we only have 8 minutes left, I want to make sure that you summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners before they leave the program today.

It's such an important subject as this. Yeah, I think the important thing that I want the listeners to take away from this is the fact that the death penalty is not a matter of our feeling.

I have people talk to me about their gut -level feelings, and what

I've basically come to the conclusion of is that gut -level feelings are about 18 inches below the brain.

And at the beginning of Romans chapter 12, Paul talks to us about our spiritual worship and reminds us that we are not to be conformed to the world, that we are to be transformed as Christians by the renewing of our minds.

And it is imperative that if we want to know the mind of God, we must use our own.

And what God has given us in Scripture is His revealed will.

And He wants us to go to that source constantly. Martin Luther, the old reformer, used to say every

Christian ought to read through the Bible at least twice a year.

Now obviously, Luther didn't have an iPad or an iPhone. He didn't have TV so he couldn't watch shows like Columbo.

Terrible disadvantage. And so he didn't have the distractions that we have now.

But as a pastor, when I encounter someone who is dealing with, let's say they've hit a bump in the road with their marriage, or they are trying to decide some ethical issue, the first question

I ask them is, would you tell me please about your Bible reading? And would you tell me please about your prayer life?

And as often as not, eyes tend to drop, head tends to drop, and they begin to mumble something along the lines of, well, it's not what it should be.

And my response to that is, if we cannot take the

Bible that we confess to be infallible and inherent, and if we cannot read through the

Bible at least once a year, then we need to rethink our priorities.

Because the Bible is God's blueprint for all of life.

It's God's blueprint for our life. And as such, we should be going to it constantly.

There was a man named Mark Knoll who used to teach at Wheaton, who is now at Notre Dame.

And he wrote a book entitled The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. And very early, probably on first or second page of that book,

Knoll writes, the real scandal of the evangelical mind is that there isn't much of one.

And I think that's a terrible indictment against us. And it ought not to be true. But I'm beginning to believe more and more that it is true.

Because when I talk to, and I'll just use one example here, when I talk to Christians who tell me that they are

Christians, the conversation will go this way. Well, I'm a Christian, but I think same -sex marriage is okay.

And my immediate response to them is, what text or text from the

Bible convinced you that that's the right thing to believe? And I would say that about any ethical subject, whether it's death penalty, guns, abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality, drug addiction, alcohol abuse, whatever it happens to be.

I think that's a very important question for us to ask our selves constantly. What text or text from the

Word of God has convinced me that this is the correct thing to do?

And that is what I think is important for all of our ethics as a

Christian. We talk in our Christian circles today a lot about what we call practical

Christian living. And yet, I'm convinced that by and large, we're not sure what that is.

And a lot of that has to do with the fact that when I talk to people who tell me they're Christians, and I say, where do you find the

Ten Commandments in the Bible? They look at me with the deer -in -the -headlights look.

And if they can tell me, and I ask them, what are those commandments? I'm more than pleased if they can give me three or four, and not in any particular order.

But I'm also convinced that if you and I want to live practical Christian lives, we can do no better than going to the

Word of God in its completion, but also to the Ten Commandments, and committing those to memory, and asking the

Holy Spirit in our prayers to help us apply those in our lives. Here's the challenge to the listeners.

Really quickly, give me, in the New Testament, tell me a commandment in the

New Testament that's not based on the Ten Commandments. Yes. Amen. Very quickly, I want to squeeze in one final listener who wants to know, it's an anonymous listener who wants to know, is it ever appropriate to oppose the death penalty?

If you happen to live in a country that the death penalty is being abused greatly, and people are blatantly being executed for crimes that do not deserve such a punishment.

Yeah, that's a great question too. The answer is, you're not really opposing the death penalty because you're convinced that God has given the death penalty.

You're opposing the manner in which it's being administered. And so what you do in that country, if you're living in such a country, then you do everything within your power legally to change the system, because the death penalty is established by God.

It's the rulers, it's the magistrates, it's the governors of the people that are abusing what

God has said is right. And those of you who wrote in anonymously, if you give me your full mailing address,

I will have a free copy of the death penalty on trial sent out to you, and obviously you will not be identified on the air.

But I want to thank you so much for being our guest today. You are definitely, you definitely have an open standing invitation to return to Iron Sharpens Iron whenever your schedule permits,

Dr. Gleason. Well, thank you. It's an honor, it's been an honor for me, Chris and Bob, to be with you, and I hope in the future that I will be able to come back and be with you.

And the website for your church is gracepresbyterian .net, and once again, the publisher's website is nordskogpublishing .com,

that's N -O -R -D -S -K -O -G -publishing .com. I want everybody to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater savior than you are a sinner.