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me it was rainin’.”
    â€œWho are they?” I asked. “Do you know who they are?”
    â€œThat’s part of the strange. They got no names.”

8
    Alan Stephens was still on the job. He was someone I could reach out to, ask for a favor and trust too. It was the Tonto and Lone Ranger thing. He saved me, so you’d think I owed him, but he’s never asked for a thing, and he keeps offering me his hand.
    It was best not to see him at his office in the police building downtown. So I caught up with him at the Bible study group he runs for men in law enforcement. There’s talk of making it people in law enforcement and letting women in, but right now the thinking is to let them start their own group, women in law enforcement, a separate-but-equal thing.
    â€œAs men in law enforcement,” Alan said in his introductory statement, “we may well find ourselves in that terrible situation where we have to take someone else’s life. Maybe in self-defense or to protect someone else. Sometimes we may unintentionally cause someone’s death. We’ve all known car chases that resulted in a death—to one of our own, to the person running away, or most upsetting of all, to an innocent bystander.
    â€œAs Christians, we are fortunate to have God’s Word, his Holy Book, to guide us. The Bible is very clear—make no mistake about this—killing is not wrong. Especially if you kill in defense of what is right. Then you’re doing God’s work, and it is righteous.
    â€œLet’s cut to the chase. We’ve all heard the Sixth Commandment quoted as ‘Thou shalt not kill.’

    â€œThat’s wrong. It’s a bad translation. It really, truly is . . . what it should be—and I will show you the Hebrew and the best dictionaries—what it should be—and in some Bibles you will see it the correct way—it should be, ‘Thou shalt not murder.’ That’s what God carved into the stone with his fiery finger, and it is what God meant.
    â€œMurder is the wrongful and intentional taking of a life.
    â€œMurder is wrong. And, in fact, God decrees the death penalty for murder. That is obviously the intentional taking of a life, but it is righteous and God approves, in fact God commands , the righteous taking of life.
    â€œWhy does God support the death penalty? For the very same reasons that we believe in it. Deuteronomy 19:20, ‘And those which remain shall hear, and fear, and shall henceforth commit no more any such evil among you.’
    â€œThe strange thing, and the thing that may trouble many of us in law enforcement, is that every time we have an execution, or possible execution, there are ministers out marching against the death penalty to save the murderer.
    â€œThink about this. What does Satan want? He wants to convince people that there are no consequences for their actions. So that they will feel free —free to murder, to fornicate, to commit adultery. Free to do anything because there are no consequences. God’s law is that there are consequences, that there is punishment, even for his chosen people, should they commit error.
    â€œSo why would a so-called reverend take up Satan’s work? Or fail to realize that he is taking up Satan’s work? Satan uses his own good-intentioned weakness to seduce him to try to seduce us.
    â€œHow can that that happen? you may wonder. Lack of Bible study. Even preachers and pastors, and certainly priests—Catholics don’t actually read the Bible—you know that, don’t you?”
    â€œAnyway,” Alan said, coming back to the point, “God wants judges and police and soldiers here on earth. To keep earthly order, to keep His order, to protect the innocent, to protect His nations, His beloved followers, and He is not a fool, and neither was Jesus Christ
a fool. They understand we live here in real life, with real problems, so they gave us this book