Clyde Thompson grew up in
a Christian family. His father was a Bible salesman, but when he was old enough
to stay home alone, he began refusing to go to church with the rest of the
family. Most Sundays, while his family was in church, Clyde was out hunting.
One Sunday afternoon in
1929, when he was 17 years old, he met two other boys in the woods, an argument
broke out between the men and Clyde shot them both. So Clyde was the youngest
man in Texas history to be sentenced to death in the electric chair. Two years
later, he became the youngest man on death row at Huntsville Penitentiary.
As the date of his
execution neared, Clyde listened to a radio preacher and asked for the man to
come to the prison and baptize him. The preacher came and Clyde was baptized,
but all this appeared to be just “jailhouse religion.” Desperate for release, Clyde began trying to
escape and he was shot through the shoulder in one of the attempts. While on
death row he got into a fight and killed two other prisoners, making a total of
four people he had murdered.
As the years passed, Clyde
Thompson was tagged by his own prison mates as “The Meanest Man in the State of
Texas.” He developed such a terrible reputation inside death row that they put
him in isolation. Clyde was housed in an old building that used to be the prison
morgue. A steel door was put in place and the only opening was about a foot
square with bars. There was no running water, no electricity and only six hours
of sunlight each day.
After being in the
isolation for 2 or 3 months, Clyde asked a guard to bring him a Bible. He knew
they wouldn't give him anything else to read, but he was bored. He just wanted
something to read. He decided he would try to prove the Bible wasn’t from God
because it was full of contradictions—at least that's what he had heard. But
the more he studied it, the more he became convinced it was God's truth. He
came to realize that Christianity was man’s only hope and he repented in tears
on his knees day and night for months.
A change began to come
over Clyde Thompson. The guards noticed it. Later, he was released from the
morgue to return to death row. There, on death row, he taught and baptized eight
other prisoners. Then one day amazing and inexplicable news came. The warden
came in and told Clyde that the Governor decided to commute the sentence of
death to life imprisonment.
Clyde was flabbergasted!
As he continued his Bible study and prison ministry, he made such an impression
on prison administration that they finally let him go among the general
population. Clyde’s faith in Christ grew and grew when he took a two-year Bible
course from a college in TN. He became the chaplain’s right-hand man. Eventually,
after more than 28 years in prison, the State of Texas gave him a life-time
parole.
On the outside, Clyde went
straight to the Lubbock County Jail, one of the largest county jails in Texas
and he began a chaplaincy program there. Clyde died of a heart attack in July
of 1979.[1]
Clyde Thompson
Clyde Thompson will go
down in God's record book as one of the greatest soul winners. It was “The
Meanest Man in the State of Texas,” who was transformed by God’s glorious
Gospel and led hundreds of hardened criminals to the foot of the Cross.
Clyde’s testimony reminds
me of Paul’s word’s 1 Cor. 6:9-11, “9 Or do you not know that the unrighteous will
not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually
immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, 10
nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will
inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And such
were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were
justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”
Notice the little phrase, “And
such were some of you. But . . .” Thank God for the “buts” of the Bible. Great
doors swing open on those coordinating conjunctions. Doors which open up the
endless storehouses of God’s grace and mercy. I once was lost but now I'm found, was blind, but now I see. Justice called, but mercy answered. I deserved hell, but Christ offered heaven.
-DM
[1] Thompson,
Clyde. "I Was Sentenced to Death in the Electric Chair - A True
Story." Christian Courier.
Access date: July 19, 2016 <https://www.christiancourier.com/articles/1377-i-was-sentenced-to-death-in-the-electric-chair-a-true-story>
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