We viewed death row, (several windowless gray concrete buildings with flat roofs surrounded by layers of razor wire and a high voltage “kill fence” with 50,000 volts of electricity running through it) from a distance, and it looked ominous. Words like evil, sinister, foreboding, and death came to my mind as we walked towards it.
C.K. Hazlewood Jr. is a former marine and Director of Texas State Prisons. He’s a tall lanky man that literally towered over me, and appeared even taller wearing his trademark white cowboy hat and western cowboy boots. Through the years he’s seen it all in the Texas state prison system. One look at him and one innately knows that he is much tougher than the inmates that he shepherds, but talk to him a little and it becomes obvious that he has a heart for the lost including all of the 154,000 prisoners hosted throughout the state penitentiary system.
He became a born again Christian after working his way up through the ranks. He served several years as a guard beginning back in the day when prisons were pitiless and brutal. He told me that before he met Christ, if the prisoners on his beat were foolish enough to misbehave, they paid dearly for it, and they quickly learned that he could be every bit as ruthless and ferocious (or even more so) than those across the bars from him
The Lord wonderfully saved him, and his life dramatically changed for the better. He eventually went to night school to earn an undergraduate degree from Bible College and then a Masters from Seminary, (It took 12 long years to accomplish this feat). In addition to his prison duties for the state, while off duty he now pastors a large church in Huntsville TX (which was kind enough to host both nights of our Bill Glass Behind the Walls Prison Ministry event).
CK told us, “We’ll visit those prisoners who already have their execution dates set first. Six men are scheduled to be executed in April alone. In all 279 men are located here on death row in these buildings. We’ll move from pod to pod and meet with as many of them as we can”.
Inside we stopped at the control center and were given an overview of how the different pods are setup, and were given particulars on the worst of the worst that we’d be visiting. And then we were provided somber instructions to keep our distance and stay alert at all times. It wasn’t lost on us that these men are some of the most dangerous criminals in the world. We were told that they will shoot homemade darts at guards and visitors, throw excrement on them, and when locked up in small exercise cages for their one hour of exercise per day, have been known to grab those who stray too close and try to strangle them through the bars. These guys have nothing to lose.
CK told us that one of the men that we would visit on death row was there for murdering one of his correctional officers. He slit his throat from ear to ear with a homemade knife when he turned his back on him for just a second.
There are places in this world that I’ve felt the presence of the Lord such as walking into Honey Lake Church. By the same token I’ve been in places where I can feel the presence of evil, New Orleans comes to mind. On death row I can feel the presence of evil as much as anywhere I’ve been in the world. As I walked cell to cell talking with the condemned I saw one man in particular that personified satan incarnate. I became woozy looking into his haunting eyes and felt I was being overcome and overpowered by evil. It was as though I could look right through his eyes into a soul of pure evil.
He was talking fast and cursing the system and telling me he was innocent. As I stared into those haunting eyes, my own eyes seemed blurred and I couldn’t focus. I began to get kind of dizzy and I struggled to snap out of it. Just then C.K. came and got me, (I was glad). He told me there was a man in a cell located upstairs who wasn’t sure about his salvation and he wanted me to talk to him. He was a young man, (thirty something), and had been on death row for 13 years. He said he had gone forward in church as a small child, but didn’t think he was saved.
I witnessed to him and explained God’s plan of salvation. I told him about the condemned man on the cross being crucified with Jesus and how he confessed his crime and put his faith in Christ as His Lord and Savior and after he had done so, Jesus told him from the cross, “This day you will be in paradise with me”. I assured him that the condemned criminal that Jesus took home with Him that day as His very first convert would not be His last.
The young man recited the sinner’s prayer and accepted Christ as his Savior right then and there.
I don’t think his was “foxhole fear” of his eminent date with the needle and lethal injection, or jailhouse religion. He seemed as sincere as anyone I’ve ever heard that prayed the sinner’s prayer. Even though he was confined to a 6X9 ft. cell with no window in the worst possible conditions surrounded by pure evil, the gentle presence of Jesus Christ was there. After praying to accept Christ I could sense peace in his demeanor that can only come from knowing God’s free gift of grace.
We all need that peace and total assurance that when our number is called we will go to be with Jesus in heaven. One thing I came away with from this experience is that evil is no match for the power of God.
While some, (especially victims), might resent the fact that God saves sinners that commit black evil crimes; it is God’s good pleasure to do so. If you haven’t got that point in your heart, you need to study your Bible and pray that God will enlighten you, because you can like it or not, or think it’s fair or not, but grace is God’s free gift to one and all. We should embrace it, and not resent it because it is what saves us too.
We cannot be rightly related to God if we are not also rightly related to the people around us, (free from a condemning, judgmental attitude). This is a theme that Jesus brought up over and over again. It is listed in one of the beatitudes when Jesus said, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.”
Consider this, we can get angry at someone and do nothing but boil and rage and go on our way. Another can get angry and in a fit of rage shoot the person right between the eyes and kill them.
Society does not consider your anger and boiling rage a crime. Anger seems to come so easily to human beings, and in fact most would say it’s normalcy; however that same society will immediately call the person who shot someone in his moment of anger and boiling rage a crime and the perpetrator a murderer and criminal.
God, who is holy and operates according to His law, looks at it quite differently than society. Jesus tells us in the Bible that if we so much as get angry with someone it is the same as murder in God’s eyes. Matthew 5:22 But I am saying to you, that everyone who will be angry against his brother without cause is condemned before the judge. The same is true for adultery. If we as much as lust after someone, it is the same as committing adultery in our heart in God’s eyes.
According to His laws, all sin must be punished. He looks at our sin as a Holy Judge and declares us guilty and demands a punishment of death for ALL sin.
Amazingly God provided His own Son to endure our punishment for us. Jesus willingly went to prison (and death row) and the cross to take that punishment for us. Though He was innocent He was convicted by a murderous throng who yelled, “Crucify! Crucify! Crucify!” He was cruelly put to death for our sins and even while enduring the worst of His pain looked down on the jeering, taunting, cursing, murderous mob below Him, and said, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do”.
Friends He died for you, me, and all of those guys on death row, in the pedophile unit, and anyone else who is willing to call upon the name of the Lord and ask for forgiveness, and repent.
But for the blood of Christ and GRACE, we would ALL bust hell wide open.
Romans 3:23
“For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.”