When the cross had been prepared, they placed it upon His shoulders and led Him to Golgotha. “But Jesus was enfeebled … by [hours] of violent … agitation, … by an evening of deep … emotion, … by the mental [anguish] of the garden, [and] by [the] three trials and three sentences of death before the Jews. … All [of] these, [added] to the [wounds] of the scourging [and loss of blood], had utterly broken … His physical strength” (ibid., pp. 634–35). So a bystander was enlisted to carry the heavy cross. At Calvary, Christ was laid down upon the cross. “His arms were stretched along the cross-beams; and at the centre of the open palms, the point of a huge iron nail was placed, … [and] driven … [through the quivering flesh] into the wood” (ibid., p. 639). His feet were also nailed to the cross, which was slowly raised and fixed firmly in the ground. “All the voices about Him rang with blasphemy and spite, and in that long slow agony His dying ear caught no [words] of gratitude, of pity, or of love” (ibid., p. 644). Every movement would be agony to the fresh wounds in the hands and the feet. “Dizziness, … thirst, … sleeplessness, … fever, … long [hours] of torment. … Such was the death to which Christ was doomed” (ibid., p. 641). Jesus was nailed to the cross on that fateful Friday morning, probably between nine and ten o’clock. “At noontide the light of the sun was obscured, and black darkness spread over the whole land. The terrifying gloom continued for a period of three hours. … It was a fitting sign of the earth’s deep mourning over the impending death of her Creator” (Talmage, Jesus the Christ, pp. 612–13). At the ninth hour Christ uttered that anguished cry, “‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’” [Matt. 27:46] “In that bitterest hour the dying Christ was alone. [So] that the supreme sacrifice of the Son might be consummated in all its fulness, the Father seems to have withdrawn … His immediate Presence, leaving to the Savior of men the glory of complete victory over the forces of sin and death” (ibid., p. 661). Later, “realizing that He was no longer forsaken, but that His atoning sacrifice had been accepted by the Father, and that His mission in the flesh had been carried to glorious consummation, He exclaimed in a loud voice of holy triumph: ‘It is finished.’ In reverence, resignation, and relief, He addressed the Father saying: ‘Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.’ He bowed His head, and voluntarily gave up His life” (ibid., p. 615). ---David B. Haight
Posted on: Thu, 06 Mar 2014 13:05:09 +0000
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