It is no secret that Bryan Fischer wants to see our nation governed by the Bible, going so far as to demand that whales, bears and other wild animals be put to death in accordance with scriptural mandates. So it was no surprise to see that he has written a new post defending the use of the death penalty as entirely biblical:
The King James version, “Thou shalt not kill,” has led some to erroneously believe that God was prohibiting killing of every kind, but he most certainly was not. The Sixth Commandment is specifically a command against cold-blooded murder. Killing in self-defense, war, and as punishment for murder are not only permitted but prescribed in the Scripture.
In fact, on the next page on the book of Exodus, in chapter 21, there are six specific crimes for which capital punishment is the prescribed penalty. As an aside, it’s worth noting that the death penalty was mandated for participation in the slave trade: “Whoever steals a man and sells him, and anyone found in possession of him, shall be put to death” (Exodus 21:16).
In other words, if the United States had simply followed the standards found in Scripture, slaves never would have appeared on our shores, slavery never would have been an issue, and the Civil War would never have been fought. Then, as always, the Scriptures show us the way forward not just personally but politically as well.
It is a little hard to understand how Fischer can claim that if the US had just followed Scripture, slavery would have been illegal since just a few passages later in Exodus 21: 20-21 it is made pretty clear that it was not slavery that warranted the death penalty, but theft:
When a man strikes his slave, male or female, with a rod and the slave dies under his hand, he shall be avenged. But if the slave survives a day or two, he is not to be avenged, for the slave is his money.
So if you beat a slave to death, you are to be punished but if the slave recovers, there will be no punishment … yet somehow Fischer thinks that this should have been our guide to “show us the way forward not just personally but politically as well.”
For what it is worth, the Exodus 21 passage Fischer cites also mandates death for anyone who strikes or curses his mother or father, so maybe he thinks we ought to enact that into law as well.
And we already know that Fischer wants to see homosexuality criminalized, so given that he wants Scripture to show us the way forward politically, one has to wonder whether he thinks Leviticus 20’s “Punishments for Sexual Immorality” ought to be enacted into law as well:
10 If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.
…
13 If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them.
I’d encourage others to ask Fischer that question but we all know that trying to get Fischer to actually defend or explain his views is just an exercise in futility.
