Why DoWe Wait

In America, we have many states that still practice the death penalty today. I think that is something that God would back us up on, the problem is not in the penalty though it is in the carrying out of the sentence. I remember as a young boy, listening to the radio with my dad and hearing a news broadcast that said a man had been given two consecutive life sentences. I asked dad what that meant and he said that this man would have to live in prison for the rest of his life…twice! I thought boy that judge must really be dumb; even I know that is impossible.

Crime runs rampant in our society today and it’s not because we don’t have any laws in place to punish these crimes, it runs rampant because we fail to carry out the sentences in a timely manner.

Ecclesiastes 8:11 “Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.”

God is warning us here that we need to be swift in dealing with an evil work. The very act of carrying out the death penalty if done as often as the sentence is passed down, should strike fear into any would-be criminal. As long as people feel like they can spend many years waiting on a trial, and then many more years waiting for the sentence to be carried out, they’re going to continue to take their chances with crime. After all, living fifty years in prison is better than being killed in the streets in ten or twelve. Consider then the parallel, we live our lives out thinking that judgment is a long distance away and perhaps it will never come, after all people come and go and live their lives as they please yet things never change.