Authentic Living!

For everything Jesus does, Satan devises a counterfeit. Have you ever thought what Satan's counterfeit looks like for what Jesus did for us on the cross? Jesus was and is holy and without sin and was totally innocent on death row.  This showed His ultimate love for us. He paid the consequences for our filthy sins, so that we may enjoy life after death with Him in heaven - a sinless, perfect place that far surpasses our lives here on earth!

Jesus voluntarily paid the ultimate price for all guilty persons, which gave us grace to live our lives based on His guidance.

So what is Satan's counterfeit?

An innocent person is forced to pay the price for a guilty person, which allows us to believe that our ways are better than God's ways. 

Satan loves for us to adopt our ways to navigate through life from others instead of from God's guiding hand, such as believing that one can live a life that is consequence free.   Satan wants us to believe that this consequence free life exists. We may notice how we have started believing that such a life exists, when we haven't noticed consequences from our own repeated actions that may seem harmless, but nevertheless is wrong. Or we may adopt this consequence free mindset into our lives based on what we've observed from others. We have seen others adopt it and they've either dodged consequences entirely or they've positioned themselves to have others pay their consequences. God's guiding hand shows us time and time again through Bible stories that a consequence free life is folly!  Furthermore, we are shown in God's Word how the idea of the most extreme situation to happen - in a court of law for an innocent person to be forced to pay the consequences for a guilty person.   

Starting in January of 2025, we will be helping "invisible" victims who are being forced to live their lives ostracized from society, in a prison cell, while the guilty continue to live their consequence free adopted lifestyle. "Invisible" victims go undetected by the masses and are found in prisons all across our country. We will be starting in Idaho with the case of Thomas Creech. How can we discern an "invisible" victim or an innocent person? By relying on God's guiding hand as we read Bible stories that show us who "invisible" victims are. Death row inmates who survive capital punishment, just like Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Thomas Creech survived 8 different attempts (hands, feet, and legs) of  lethal injection that lasted almost an hour, which took place on February 28, 2024.  

Did the justice system set Thomas Creech free just as Judge Darius (in the court case of Daniel found in Daniel 6) and Judge Nebuchadnezzar (in the court case of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in Daniel 3) did in the Bible? No because they know it would not go over well with the general public. We assume that all persons behind bars are guilty and they are being administered their consequences. Do we ever consider there may be current-day Daniels - innocent people who are completely set up? Instead the response from the justice system is to assign another date of execution and to use a different method of capital punishment. Experts downplay and rationalize God's miracle by excusing it due to the anatomy of the inmate's veins or having an untrained execution team. The general public never hears about it as a miraculous event in which God was at work! 

How can we see this as a miracle, like we see in God's Word? I mean the evidence of these current death row inmates' cases coupled with a dangerous label attached to their names makes it virtually impossible to desire to re-investigate it. Not to mention, we want to make sure we are keeping our communities safe by not freeing a true perpetrator. In God's Word we are given the truths about the facts concerning Daniel's court case and how there were men who devised a plan to set him up. Daniel had that dangerous label attached to his name and the overwhelming evidence that was against him. That is why an objective third party needs to re-open Thomas Creech's case and re-examine it through a non-biased lens searching to make sure there were no mistakes made. (In God's Word, false evidence is used regularly by those who have adopted a consequence free lifestyle to make their cases even more believable, to mask as the truth.) Was the evidence twisted, tampered with, or distorted to fit a story? (Remember the perpetrator may have adopted this consequence free lifestyle for decades and has dodged consequences many times before, as this may not be his/her first victim.)

*Thomas Creech is not the only failed execution; in America, 33% of executions fail.  Thomas Creech was assigned a second execution date on November 13, 2024. On November 6, 2024, a federal judge ordered a stay of execution (Death Penalty Information Center, 2024). 

References:

Death Penalty Information Center. (2024, Nov. 7). Idaho: Federal Judge Grants              Stay of Execution for Thomas Creech; Defense Asks Court to Bar Death Penalty for Bryan Kohberger.  https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/idaho-federal-judge-grants-stay-of-execution-for-thomas-creech-defense-asks-court-to-bar-death-penalty-for-bryan-kohberger