Jesus' Death: Six Hours of Eternity on the Cross
courtesy of Lambert Dolphin's Library
A superficial reading of the gospel narratives concerning the death of Jesus will show that He was nailed to the cross at 9 o'clock in the morning, and was dead by 3 in the afternoon. His terrible ordeal, it would seem, was over in a mere six hours.
The agony in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before had been an ordeal in prayer before His Father that we can scarcely understand. The writer of Hebrews comments on this incident,
"In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard for his godly fear. Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered..." (Hebrews 5:7, 8)
Then, too, Jesus had been up the rest of the night without sleep enduring scourging, beating, cruel mockery and unspeakable brutality. He was already weakened when he carried his cross, stumbling, to the place of crucifixion alongside the main public highway, probably just outside the Damascus Gate.
Several medical doctors and forensic experts have written books about the common Roman form of execution---death by crucifixion. Often the process took several days. The nailing of hands and feet forced the victim to push up against the weight of his own body to take a single breath. In the hot sun, terrible thirst ensued and death came in most cases from suffocation amidst great pain. The victim was also naked and humiliated---death on the cross was reserved for the most wretched of all criminals.
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3 comments:
very emotional & very long!
I have to say, I'm completely confused by this:
In this sense, neither heaven nor hell are yet populated---all believers reach heaven at the same "time." The dying thief, Stephen the first martyr, the Apostle John, and all the rest of us will arrive in heaven at precisely the same "instant," experiencing neither soul sleep nor loss of consciousness nor time delay, whether the interval between our death and the Second Coming is a hundred years or one hour. The thief on the cross, in his own consciousness, will experience arriving in Paradise the very same day he died, as Jesus promised he would. (Of course if heaven is still empty, except for Jesus, from our vantage point in time, the prayer to Mary or St. Jude or any of the saints is pointless. These believers are each "time traveling" in their own split-second interval separating their individual death from the great resurrection of all of us believers. Thus, we all get to heaven at the same "time."
Have you heard this before & do you know what it means?
Yes, I've heard it before and it’s the only portion of the article I happen to disagree with. A lot of that concept was taken from Arthur Custance's works and Lambert was a physicist, so he’s prone to thinking along those lines. I think the spirit of believers will be with Christ when they die and will probably have some sort of temporary body as they await the resurrection. I agree with Boatman’s recent post about this.
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