George Wilson was a career criminal who, in the 1830s, was indicted on six counts of obstructing and robbing the U.S. mail, including threatening a carrier with bodily harm, and violent assault (wounding a carrier).  The violent assault carried a penalty of death. Rising public petition against the death penalty prompted then president, Andrew Jackson, to issue a pardon for the assault conviction. 

Amazingly, Wilson declined the pardon. “And now, to-wit, this 21 October, 1830, the defendant, George Wilson, being in person before the court, was asked by the court … whether he wished in any manner to avail himself of the pardon referred to, and the said defendant answered in person that … he did not wish in any manner to avail himself, in order to avoid sentence in this particular case, of the pardon referred to.”

The district court was not sure how to handle the complexities of the case, and eventually the matter was referred to the U.S. Supreme Court which later ruled that, “A pardon is an act of grace, proceeding from the power entrusted with the execution of the laws, which exempts the individual on whom it is bestowed from the punishment the law inflicts for a crime he has committed. … A pardon is a deed to the validity of which delivery is essential, and delivery is not complete without acceptance. It may then be rejected by the person to whom it is tendered, and if it be rejected, we have discovered no power in a court to force it on him. It may be supposed that no being condemned to death would reject a pardon, but the rule must be the same in capital cases and in misdemeanors.”

Further, Chief Justice John Marshall purportedly pronounced that the value of a pardon “must be determined by the receiver … It has no value apart from that which the receiver gives it . . . therefore, George Wilson must die."  He was subsequently executed for his crime.

In their book BEYOND ALL LIMITS, Bill Bright and James O. Davis recount a story from famed English explorer, William Edward Perry, who mapped out most of the Southern Polar Cap:

“On one particular expedition, Perry and his crew were preparing to hike to another unfamiliar location. On the eve of their departure, they studied the stars and determined their exact coordinates. As the sun rose, they began a hard, lengthy journey north to this unmapped region. They marched through he ice and snow all day long with the freezing air burning their lungs.

As the sun set, they made camp, totally exhausted from their trip. After their evening meal, Perry studied the stars again to determine their exact coordinates. He was stunned to learn that even though he and his crew had journeyed north all day, they were now farther south than when they began that morning. After struggling to solve this problem, they discovered that although they had traveled north, they were on a giant ice sheet that was floating south faster than they were walking north. Although they were going in the right direction, they were sliding away and did not even know it.”

William R. "Bill" Bright (1921 –2003) was an American evangelist and the founder of Campus Crusade for Christ.

Dr. James O. Davis is founder of Cutting Edge International and the Co-Founder of Billion Soul Network.

The Albigensian Crusade (1209–29) was called by Pope Innocent III against the Cathari, a dualist religious movement in southern France that the Roman Catholic Church had branded heretical. When the crusaders captured the city of Béziers in the heart of the Cathar territory, they inquired how they should sort out the orthodox Catholics who still lived there from the heretic Cathari. The reply came in the form of a decree from a papal representative who said, "Kill them all. God will know his own." Consequently, tens of thousands of people--men, women and children--were all massacred in the name of religious zealotry.