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March 28, 1997 - Bill Cooper

02:01:27

Good Friday

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	Radio 99 55.
	I'm through.
	Plastic Radio like you always wished it could be.
	101.1 FM.
	Eastern Standard Time.
	This is my daddy's station. I'm two.
	Classic radio like you always wished it could be.
	101.1 FM. Eager.
	101.1 FM is owned and operated by the Independent Foundation Trust as a non-profit community service.
	Once upon a time in a world, the users all had to decide.
	Once upon a time, the person who built that system was...
	me.
	I'm a man.
	You're listening to the Hour of the Time.
	I'm William Cooper.
	the you're listening to the hour of the time
	i'm william cooper ladies and gentlemen today is good friday
	and uh... in keeping with the history of this broadcast we can do stick with subject
	of the day or of the history
	of the day today.
	Whether you are a Christian, a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Jew, an agnostic, an atheist, it doesn't matter.
	Everyone should at least know the meaning behind the term Good Friday.
	So that you can be a better neighbor to those who respect and honor this day and the events that transpired approximately because there are disagreements amongst those who claim to know 2,000 years ago.
	So, folks, sit back and be prepared to a little bit about the history of the Christian religion.
	The Christian religion is a religion of the Holy Spirit, and it is a religion of the Holy Spirit.
	And, of course, if you are a Christian, be prepared to pay homage.
	Amen.
	♪♪ ♪♪
	♪♪ you
	After Jesus was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane, He was taken before the Sanhedrin.
	There He was given a religious trial and sentenced to death.
	However, not being able to carry out the sentence because of their own religious law, The Sanhedrin took their case to the Praetorium of Pontius Pilate, and there we join the story.
	Advised that the members of the Sanhedrin and a great crowd of people were outside the Praetorium asking to speak to him about a certain Jesus of Nazareth, Pilate went out, and having glanced around at them, asked by way of a star, What accusation do you bring against this man?"
	They answered, "'If he were not a criminal, we should not have handed them over to thee.'"
	This answer was no accusation at all.
	It was merely intended to capture Pilate's goodwill, implicitly inviting him to trust the accusers and accept the judgment pronounced by the Sanhedrin.
	It as much as told the governor not to worry They had the very same views he did regarding justice and equity, and they referred this man to his court only because he was a real criminal deserving of death.
	Pilate interpreted their words for what they were worth.
	The seasoned Roman understood immediately that this was another of the many questions which hinged on the Jew's religious beliefs and in which he had no desire to become involved.
	Hence he took refuge in the existing norms and answered, Take him yourselves, and judge him according to your law."
	This was merely a suggestion that they apply the laws of their nation, exclusive, of course, of capital punishment.
	But this, you see, was the very crux of the matter, and the accusers indirectly called it to Pilate's attention.
	It is not lawful for us to put anyone to death.
	This answer revealed their true purpose, and also indicated what had taken place that night.
	If the Sanhedrin appealed to Rome's representative, it was not for permission to impose a fine, or a sentence of excommunication, or the thirty-nine legal stripes, all of which they could lawfully inflict without the procurator's approval.
	The accusers wanted permission to carry out the death sentence which the Sanhedrin had passed that night, but was powerless to execute.
	Pilate, therefore, understood that the accusers wanted the prisoner put to death.
	Thus Jesus' case was presented before the civil authority, but proofs were necessary to convince the new judge, who almost certainly had never heard of Jesus of Nazareth, and the accusers chose those calculated to make the most telling impressions upon him.
	The Jews then said to him, We have found this man perverting our nation, and forbidding the payment of taxes to Caesar, and saying that he is Christ, Messiah, King.
	Luke chapter twenty-three verse two.
	This was a strictly political charge, and took the place of the religious charges brought against Jesus before the Sanhedrin.
	Here, before the Roman magistrate, Jesus is represented as a political revolutionary, and more specifically, as attempting to prevent the payment of tribute to Caesar, as well as imposing as a political messianic king.
	The last part of the charge implied political royalty.
	But Pilate was not so naive as to accept the glitter for the gold.
	He sensed something quite different at the bottom of these charges.
	In any case, the accusers had chosen what was very delicate ground for him.
	To him, as Rome's representative, they had brought a man charged with conspiring against Rome, and although he immediately perceived that the charge was unfounded, he was forced to discuss it.
	If he did not, there was real danger that the disappointed plaintiffs would denounce him to Rome as being lax and negligent toward political movements against the authority which he represented.
	Hence, as a man of law, he was determined to expose the duplicity of the accusers, but as Roman magistrate, he must figure as the guardian of the imperial authority.
	There was nothing to do but question the prisoner himself.
	Pilate re-entered the praetorium, where the prisoner had been led, while the accusers remained scrupulously outside, and he began his inquiry with the most critical question of all.
	Art thou the King of the Jews?
	The question in substance repeated the last charge brought against Jesus, but as Pilate used it, the term, King of the Jews, was deliberately ambiguous.
	In reality, it meant more or less.
	Are you the king of the Jews in any one of the supramundane and deiformed meanings used so frequently in the writings of your nation?
	Or are you king of the Jews in the sense in which Herod, the son of Antipater, was king here in Palestine a half-century ago?
	Are you the king of an ideal and invisible world?
	Or are you the king of this material and visible world?"
	Jesus answered Pilate, Dost thou say this of thyself, or have others told thee of me?"
	Pilate saw that this answer was intended to remove the ambiguity in his question, and he was annoyed, and he replied somewhat scornfully, Am I a Jew?
	Thy own people and the chief priests have delivered thee to me.
	What hast thou done?
	Jesus' answer again distinguished between the two meanings in Pilate's original question.
	My kingdom is not of this world.
	If my kingdom were of this world, my followers would have thought that I might not be delivered to the Jews.
	But, as it is, my kingdom is not from here.
	Somewhat surprised by this answer, Pilate determined to clarify one point at least, and replied, Thou art then a king?
	Undoubtedly expecting Jesus to deny it.
	But Jesus did not deny it, for he answered, Thou sayest it, I am a king.
	Which meant, I am truly a king, as you say.
	Nevertheless, he added an explanation which said what Pilate had perhaps expected.
	This is why I was born and why I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth.
	Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice.
	Annoyed, Pilot interrupted roughly, This is not so much a question as an exclamation, especially since Pilate immediately rose to go out and parley with the Jews.
	These words merely indicated that the discussion was going into abstract ideas which did not interest the magistrate at all.
	In Rome, Pilate had listened hundreds of times, perhaps, to the philosophical debates held in homes and marketplaces, and he had been woefully bored by the disquisitions on truth and error.
	And so on that morning, he had not the remotest desire to hear another from this obscure Jew.
	In any event, even this brief conversation with Jesus had convinced Pilate, more than ever, that he was innocent, and that the whole denunciation had been prompted by hatred over some religious squabble.
	And here, two distinct elements in Pilate's character met and intensified each One was the sense of law or justice, which as a Roman magistrate he certainly possessed, and which required him to demand respect for the law.
	The other was his scorn for the leaders of Judaism, which was being offered excellent opportunity in the name of the law to block their wishes.
	Both of these sentiments clamored for acquittal.
	Meanwhile, the mutterings of the crowd could be heard, and now and again a unanimous outcry seemed to flame one or another of the accusations into the building.
	Before going out to them, Pilot tried, as it were, to get some help or suggestion from the prisoner himself in his own defense, and so he came back to him again and asked, Hast thou no answer to make?
	Behold, how many things they accuse thee of!
	Mark fifteen, verse four.
	But the prisoner, who had just proclaimed himself the witness of the truth, made no answer.
	Pilate was not a little surprised, but he still proposed to protect the defendant, even without his help.
	And going out, he declared, I find no guilt in this man.
	This should have ended the trial then and there.
	The Sanhedris, more than the mob, were indignant They protested violently, all shouting at once the various charges against Jesus, emphasizing particularly the political one.
	He is stirring up the people, teaching throughout all Judea and beginning from Galilee even to this place!
	Luke chapter 23 verse 5.
	These last words especially caught Pilate's attention because they seemed to offer a solution to the problem.
	He asked if Jesus was a Galilean.
	And when they told him he belonged to the jurisdiction of the Tetrarch, Herod Antipas, he saw a way to use the fact to his own advantage.
	Pilate was sure Jesus would appear just as innocent upon examination by Herod as he had in the questioning he had undergone in the Praetorium.
	That would give him another argument with which to silence the accusers and humiliate them besides with complete legality.
	In addition, This case afforded him a fine opportunity to better his relations with the Tetrarch, which had been quite unfriendly of late, probably because Herod spied on the Roman magistrates in the Orient for the Emperor Tiberius.
	Hence he decided to send the Tetrarch's subject to him for judgment, ostensibly as a mark of deference.
	Since Jesus had been accused before the tribunal of the representative of Rome, that was where he should have been judged.
	But Pilate, for these practical reasons, was quite willing to forego jurisdiction in this case.
	Herod Antipas was in Jerusalem for the Pash.
	When he learned the procurator was sending him the Galilean prisoner, He was exceedingly glad, for he had been a long time desirous to see him, because he had heard so much about him, and he was hoping to see some miracle done by him.
	We know, in fact, that Herod Antipas half-believed Jesus to be John the Baptist, risen again, and the innate superstition of the man who had murdered the precursor was heightened by memory of his victim.
	Herod asked Jesus many questions, but without receiving one single answer from Him.
	If the accused refused to speak, however, his accusers, who had zealously followed him, were generously articulate.
	Before the Jewish king, they probably emphasized the more typically Jewish charges, such as Jesus' alleged blasphemies, his violation of the Sabbath, his supposed threats against the temple, and his declaration that he was equal with God.
	The prisoner's silence was a great disappointment to Herod.
	Nevertheless, his legal judgment was sounder than that of the plaintiffs, and he did not fail to see that all their charges were inspired by hatred and that the accused was innocent.
	He should have proclaimed him such immediately and set him free.
	But the Tetrarch's arrogance had to have its little revenge for the frustration it had suffered.
	Herod ordered the guards to array the uncommunicated prisoner in a bright robe, one of those ornate garments worn by persons of distinction in the Orient on solemn occasions.
	Perhaps the Tetrarch had one of his own robes, now worn a little and so not used any more, brought out to mock the prisoner, who was thus dressed as the king he declared himself to be.
	The very guest with which he chose to close his inquiry showed that he considered the prisoner a stupid and ridiculous man, but certainly not a dangerous one, and had implicitly rejected the charge that Jesus was subversive and guilty of sacrilege.
	Otherwise, he would have been punished with extreme severity, not made a laughing stock for the court.
	Dressed in this fashion, and accompanied by the sarcastic shouts of his accusers, who conscientiously trailed after him everywhere, Jesus was sent back to Pilate.
	Luke, the only one to record this episode, says that Herod and Pilate were made friends that same day, for before they were enemies to one another.
	When Jesus came back to him, Pilate saw that Herod did not want to get mixed up in the affair, and he began to be worried, for he realized it was much more serious and complicated than it had at first seemed.
	He still held firmly to the prisoner's innocence, but he decided to make some concession to the accusers, in the hope of settling the matter.
	The man of law was retreating before the politician.
	So he turned to the accusers and argued with them, You have brought before me this man as one who perverts the people, and behold, I, upon examining him in your presence, have found no guilt in this man as touching those things of which you accuse him.
	Neither has Herod, for he sent him back to us, and behold, nothing deserving of death has been committed by him.
	Up to this point, Pilate had spoken as a man of law, inspired by his sense of justice.
	But the politician in him comes forward with this utterly unexpected conclusion.
	I will therefore chastise him and release him.
	The therefore is a serious mistake in logic.
	If both Pilate and Herod had found no guilt, nothing deserving of death, in him, How could this, therefore, be justified?
	How could the promised chastisement be considered legal, especially when it was the terrible Roman flagellation?
	For the procurator, however, what was not permitted by the law was demanded by politics.
	And Pilate immediately proceeded to offer the accusers another pliative.
	During the posh It was the custom for the procurator to release some prisoner at the request of the multitude.
	Hence it seemed to Pilate that it would be right and convenient this time to grant Jesus the favor, for justice would thus be served, at least in part, and the accusers would be satisfied as well.
	Now, there was in prison at this time a notorious malfactor called Barabbas.
	During a riot, which he probably started himself, Barabbas had killed a man, and he was, besides, a professional thief.
	He was now in prison awaiting the procurator's sentence.
	Pilate thought that, given the choice between Jesus and Barabbas, the accusers would certainly ask for Jesus.
	So he went to the threshold of the Praetorium and said, Whom do you wish that I release to you, Barabbas or Jesus who is called Christ?
	And by way of being still more specific, he added, the King of the Jews.
	Pilate here betrayed his defective knowledge, not so much of the nation he governed, but of its spiritual leaders.
	As a matter of fact, his proposal did make some impression on the mob.
	Jesus was certainly repugnant to that hireling rabble because he was repugnant to their masters.
	But at the same time, they considered Barabbas such an out-and-out criminal as to deserve the most severe sentence.
	Hence, there was a short perplexed pause while the hirelings hesitated between the choice prompted by whatever honesty remained in their consciences and that demanded by their unrelenting masters.
	A very curious incident occurred.
	Pilate, confident that he had at last found a way out, unexpectedly received a private warning from his wife in these words, Have nothing to do with that just man, for I have suffered many things in a dream today because of him.
	This information is recorded in Matthew.
	The Evangelist who is always careful to report divine messages communicated in dreams.
	Pilate's wife's message must have made a deep impression on Pilate.
	However cynical he might be regarding philosophical theories about truth and error, he was certainly susceptible to the mysterious signs which enjoyed so much credence among the Romans of his day.
	All Rome was sure that Julius Caesar would have escaped the dagger thrust from the fatal Ides of March if he had listened to his wife Calpurnia, who begged him not to go to the Senate that day, because the night before in a dream she had seen him pierced by many wounds.
	So his wife's warning certainly was another reason for doing all he could to release that just man, his prisoner.
	The rabble had gotten over its perplexity under the coaching of its masters.
	The chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowds to ask for Barabbas and to destroy Jesus.
	And the conflict began again, because both sides had received reinforcements, the procurator from his wife, the mob from the Sanhedrists.
	Pilate again asked the accusers, Which of the two do you wish that I release to you?
	And they answered unanimously, Barabbas!
	Barabbas!
	Taken aback by the choice, Pilate asked instinctively, What then shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?
	And with the proper coaching, the crowd shouted, Let Him be crucified!
	Matthew 27 verse 22 and 23.
	Pilate was not exactly grieved by this reasoning, but he was baffled and sickened.
	He was getting nowhere trying to reason with that brawling rabble.
	It was also difficult to make himself heard above their continued shouting.
	Still, he was anxious to let them know he in no way shared their bloodthirsty wishes, and so he resorted to an act which they could see Even if they would not stop to listen.
	He had a basin of water brought to him, and he washed his hands before the crowd while they continued to clamor for the death of the prisoner.
	The act was a conventional symbol not only among the Hebrews, but also among other ancient peoples.
	In this instance, it showed that the procurator refused to accept any responsibility for the request being made of him.
	Whatever the outcome of the affair, Then, at a moment when the din had somewhat subsided, he shouted, I am innocent of the blood of this just man.
	Look you to it.
	Several of them heard his words, and their answer came back with promptness and confidence.
	His blood be upon us and upon our children.
	This wish, or prayer, suggests a brief reflection which is, after all, not irrelevant to the trial of Jesus.
	It was expressed unanimously both by the spiritual leaders of Judaism and a large representation of the people of Jerusalem.
	It was therefore a truly representative voice of the people, a strictly official prayer expressing the will of both the head and the members.
	It was not addressed to the Roman procurator, but to a much higher judge, to the judge who was invoked so often in the sacred scriptures of Israel.
	And who was the only one who could make that disputed blood fall upon the heads of Israel's future children?
	Only that Supreme Judge could make the voice of the people a voice of God by making the wish come true.
	Today, anyone who can read can decide for himself whether or not it has come true merely by contemplating the evidence of history.
	We mention this also because in our day the question has been taken up again by those very children mentioned in the prayer.
	These children in 1933 set up in Jerusalem a special tribunal composed of five outstanding Israelites in order to re-examine the sentence.
	Their verdict, passed with a 4-1 vote, was that the ancient sentence of the Sanhedrin should be revoked.
	They affirmed that, quote, The innocence of the accused was proved.
	His condemnation was one of the most terrible errors ever committed by men, and the Hebrew race would be honored in making reparation for it."
	At this point, Pilate found his own thoughts and feelings in no little conflict.
	Personally convinced of Jesus' innocence, his wife's message had strengthened his conviction.
	Besides, the governor's cantankerous temperament saw a fine opportunity here to do the people he governed one of those mean terms he so delighted in, this time with the support of law and justice.
	On the other hand, the persistence of the accusers, instead of abating, had increased, and, if completely opposed, it might easily lead to one of those tumults which were the principal worry of every Roman governor of Judea.
	The mayor thought of such a possibility, to say nothing of his fear of the reports that might be given of him in Rome, made Pilate morbid and cautious about his decision, and as they beclouded the austere vision of justice in his eyes, the seductive features of political expediency gradually took its place.
	Hence he tried one thing after another, almost as if to beguile the accusers with minor concessions.
	In the first place, he granted the mob's request for the release of Barabbas.
	In addition, still hoping to make the accusers more pliable, he had Jesus scourged, as he had promised.
	Among the Romans, the flagellation ordinarily preceded crucifixion, but sometimes it was a penalty in itself, and it could be inflicted in place of capital punishment, and it was carried out by the soldiers.
	The prisoner was stripped and made to bend over a post to which his wrists were bound.
	The blows were administered not with rods, but with a special instrument, the flagellum, a stout leather whip with several tails weighted with little metal balls or even with sharp points.
	Among the Jews, the legal scourging was limited to a certain number of stripes, but among the Romans, its extent was left to the caprice of the floggers.
	or the prisoner's endurance.
	Especially if he was going to be executed, he was an empty image with which the law was no longer concerned, a body which could be beaten with merciless freedom, and usually one who underwent the Roman scourging was reduced to a sickening and terrifying monstrosity.
	But the first blows, the neck, Hips, arms, and legs grew livid, and then became streaked with bluish welts and swollen bruises.
	Then the skin and muscles were gradually lacerated.
	The blood vessels burst, and blood spurted everywhere.
	Till finally the prisoner, every one of his features disfigured, was a bleeding mass of flesh.
	Very often he fainted under the blows, And sometimes he died.
	It was to this torture that Pilate subjected Jesus, although his intention was to save him by this concession from execution.
	When the scourging was over, Jesus was left for a time at the mercy of the soldiers who had administered it and who gave him the same treatment they usually gave to those condemned to death.
	Any sport, whatever, any brutal jest or inhuman mockery was permissible.
	So when the Scorchers had finished flogging Jesus and set about clothing Him again, they called their companions to join in the hilarious performance that was to follow.
	When they dressed Jesus in a red mantle, the kind worn by generals in a triumph, they plaited a crown of thorns and put it on His head, and then in His hands Still bound at the wrists, they set a reed for a scepter.
	Had he not declared himself the king of the jeers?
	Well, let him present himself as a king to the soldiers, complete with scepter, diadem, and cloak.
	These soldiers must have put all the more gusto into their jeers and jibes because they were not legionnaires, but cohort auxiliaries, recruited for the most part probably from among neighboring peoples hostile to the Jews, especially the Syrians and the Samaritans.
	Yes, it was a particularly diverting pastime to shower their scorn and ridicule on a team of those Jewish scoundrels that they hated so much.
	Just as special homage was paid a general in his triumph, these brutal clowns began to file past Jesus, each one stopping to kneel in front of him and repeat obsequiously, Hail, King of the Jews!
	and immediately rising again to spit in Jesus' face.
	For taking the reed from his hands, they would slam it down upon the crown of thorns.
	Meanwhile, from Jesus' first appearance before Pilate at dawn, no less than four hours must have gone by.
	It must now have been between ten and eleven o'clock in the morning.
	Pilate was still thinking how he might next try to save Jesus, and the mob was still waiting outside the Praetorium, noisily persistent.
	Pilate attached no importance whatever to the painful insults inflicted on the prisoner after the scourging, since he had neither ordered nor prohibited them.
	But he did place some hope in the legal and psychological effects of the scourging.
	When Jesus, disfigured by the torture he had undergone and clad in his trumpery garments, was once more brought before him, he decided to base his last appeal to the mob on the impression he hoped such a bleeding rag of humanity would have upon them.
	Hence he ordered Jesus to be led out after him, while he announced to the crowd, Behold, I bring him out to you, that you may know that I find no guilt in him.
	Jesus, who by now could barely stand, was pushed across the threshold of the praetorium, and appeared, as our eyewitness tells us, John, chapter 19, verse 5, Wearing the crown of thorns and the purple cloak, pointing to him, Pilate exclaimed to his screaming accusers, Behold the man!
	In Greek, the exclamation meant something like, Our, here's the fellow now!
	And it certainly carried with it no overtone of pity, but it did implicitly invite the accusers to reflect whether there was any point and using further violence against a man reduced to that condition.
	The scene which followed can be described only in the witnesses' own words.
	Quote, When, therefore, the chief priests and the attendants saw him, they cried out, saying, Crucify him!
	Crucify him!
	Pilate said to them, Take him yourselves and crucify him, for I find no guilt in him.
	The Jews answered him, We have a law, and according to that law he must die, because he has made himself son of God.
	John chapter nineteen, verses six and seven, end quote.
	Pilate's words were not a permission to crucify the prisoner.
	They were a second invocation to reflect that he could not in conscience pronounce the sentence they demanded, and hence the prisoner could not be put to death because they did not have the power to execute him.
	The accusers were quick enough to grasp the procurator's meaning in their answer, which appealed to the Hebrew law, drew their magistrate out of his own field to that of religion, in which the Romans had always shown the utmost respect for the beliefs of the conquered Jews.
	Substantially, they suggested to Pilate the possible threat that if he did not pass the death sentence, they would regard him as the protector of the impious and sacrilegious.
	So here they struck a weak spot in the armor of Pontius Pilate.
	And here again, nothing can take the place of the evangelist's account.
	Now, when Pilate heard this statement, he feared the more, and he again went back into the Praetorium and said to Jesus, Where art thou from?
	Probably the uneasy procurator hoped that Jesus' answer would furnish him some new answer to give his accusers, but Jesus simply did not answer him at all.
	Pilate therefore said to him, Dost thou not know that I have power to crucify thee, and that I have power to release thee?
	Jesus answered, Thou wouldst have no power at all over me were it not given thee from above.
	Therefore, he who betrayed me to thee has the greater sin."
	End quote.
	At this answer, Pilate found himself alone in his opposition to the mob.
	The procurator's resistance was fortified only by his conviction that the prisoner was innocent and by his desire not to give the Jews what they wanted But the first made no impression whatever on the accusers, and the second he could not, in all prudence, make known to them.
	Hesitating and still uncertain, he could see no way out of the difficulty.
	His state of mind is described by the evangelist, and from then on Pilate was looking for a
	way to release him.
	John, chapter 19, verse 12.
	The accusers sensed the danger, and to obviate it, they resorted to an argument that could
	not fail to have a telling effect on the procurator.
	They began to shout, If thou release this man, thou art no friend of Caesar, for
	everyone who makes himself king sets himself above Caesar.
	At that shout, Pilate could not hesitate much longer, for he was a very ordinary mortal
	after all, a Roman official concerned only about his reputation in Rome and his own political
	career.
	To face the wrath of the Emperor?
	Oh no, not this man.
	But he was not yet disposed to give in, and completely annoyed by the fact that his hated subjects, shrieking and chattering like monkeys, blocked him at every turn.
	He was still hoping for some unforeseen something to save the situation, as he decided to face the conclusion of the trial in direct argument with the accusers.
	Shortly before, they had threatened to consider him the protector of the impious and the sacrilegious if he freed Jesus.
	But had not the accused proclaimed himself the spiritual king of the accusers themselves?
	As a political administrator, Pilate did not enter into religious questions, but for this very reason he could not take action against one who claimed for himself a preeminence that was purely religious with nothing whatsoever political about it.
	How did he know but what the prisoner had a whole crowd of disciples disposed to accept his religious royalty?
	Could he kill the leader of a strictly religious society and then persecute all its members, too, for that's what he would have to do?
	Obviously not.
	As a layman and an impartial magistrate, he was obliged to respect the religious royalty of the accused and command respect for it.
	Pilate thought this reasoning might save Jesus, and he resorted to it as his last hope.
	About the sixth hour, according to John, chapter nineteen, verse fourteen, or a little before noon, with the intention of ending the trial and pronouncing his final judgment, Pilate had his tribunal, with its cubrule chair, set up outside on the lithostrolos, in the presence of the accusers.
	And then he came out, the prisoner being led after him, sat down in the cubrule chair, and reopened the discussion Pointing to Jesus, Pilate said, Behold your King!
	What did the accusers think of the prisoner's royalty?
	It was not clearly a political royalty, as the magistrate, who knew a thing or two on that squark, could easily see.
	Was his a royalty in the religious sense of the term?
	You see, Pilate knew nothing about such matters and did not want to have anything to do with Let the accusers answer, therefore.
	The procurator's words sounded like bitter sarcasm to the mob, and they shouted loudly, Away with him!
	Away with him!
	Crucify him!
	Crucify him!
	Away!
	Away!
	Crucify him!
	But Pilate persisted.
	Shall I crucify your king?
	The answer this time, as the evangelist expressly states, came from the chief priest, who shouted, We have no king but Caesar!
	Pilate saw his last loophole blocked.
	The royalty of the accused could not be taken seriously, either by the magistrate or by the accusers.
	The latter, and precisely the most prominent among them, recognized no royalty in Jesus, and proclaimed that their one and only king was the Roman Caesar.
	Obviously, Caesar's representative could not express any different opinion on this point, just as he was forced to crucify the false king in order not to offend the religious sensibilities of the accusers.
	That must have been Pilate's reasoning, more or less.
	And then, concludes the evangelist, he delivered him to them to be crucified.
	The sentence had now been passed.
	Nothing remained but to execute it.
	The representative of Rome had condemned the prisoner to a Roman penalty at the request of the accusers, for when the Jews had shouted to Pilate, Crucify him!
	Crucify him!
	they'd asked for a punishment not Jewish originally, but Roman.
	The ordinary Jewish penalty for blasphemy with which Jesus had been charged before the Sanhedrin was stoning.
	At the time of Jesus, however, crucifixion had been in use for many years among the Jews of Palestine.
	It had been introduced among them when they first came in contact with the Romans, especially
	in the year 63 B.C., when Pompey the Great captured Jerusalem.
	The Romans always had a real terror of crucifixion.
	That is the very least we can say.
	It was, in fact, the penalty reserved for slaves, and inflicted only for very serious crimes.
	Actually, however, it seems that Roman citizens were crucified on occasion, and even that the law permitted this form of death to be inflicted on freedmen in some provincials, though they were Roman citizens.
	Ignoring its most ancient forms, The cross in the time of Jesus might have any one of the three following forms.
	First, a tall pole to which, at the upper quadrant, a cross pole was affixed, or what is known as the Tao Cross, a tall pole with a cross fixed at the very top, and then the traditional letter X. The first was called Emissa, or Capetata, with reference to its shortest arm or headpiece.
	The middle one was called Commissa, and was the only one with three arms and no headpiece, today called the Tau.
	The third, which was not used very much, was the Decusata, or Slantwise, commonly known as St.
	Andrew's Cross, which resembles, in fact, exactly, the X of our alphabet.
	The Emissa was the most probable type used for Jesus. This had two parts, the
	vertical beam which was planted in the ground and the cross piece fastened at a point in
	the crucifixion to the vertical piece. The latter, however, was not entirely smooth or flat.
	About halfway up there was a thick short block called in Latin, sedile, seat. The
	person crucified straddled it and it served to support his weight.
	Some such support was absolutely necessary.
	It would have been impossible for a body to be held on the cross by four nails alone, for the weight would have soon torn the hands away.
	This is so evident that the earliest Christian artists pictured Jesus' cross with a support to which his feet are nailed.
	This foot support is an archaeological error, for it would not have supported the weight of the body either, but even the error proves the necessity of having the seat off.
	When the sentence was passed, the place of execution was prepared, if it was not ready beforehand.
	The vertical beam, without the cross piece, was set up in the ground.
	It was not ordinarily very high, The feet of the condemned man were at about the height of a man's head, and so the whole post could not have been more than twelve or fifteen feet tall.
	A conspicuous and greatly frequented place was always chosen for the execution, because the site was to produce a salutary effect on slaves and other individuals who were liable to the same penalty, what we call today a deterrent.
	where there was a great deal of traffic were generally preferred outside the city, but near one of the gates, and possibly among tombs.
	Before being crucified, it was the tradition that the prisoner was scourged, sometimes on the way to the place of execution.
	The condemned man was entrusted to soldiers, usually four, commanded by a centurion, whose duty it was to certify his death.
	The horizontal beam of the cross was placed, sometimes tied, on the condemned man's shoulders.
	A servant of the court walked ahead of him, bearing a tablet on which his crime was written in large, clear letters, but sometimes this inscription was hung about the prisoner's neck.
	The procession always went through the busiest streets in order to make the execution as public as possible.
	Even when he was not scourged along the way, the condemned man was the victim of every kind of brutal jest from the part of the curious and bloodthirsty rabble.
	He was no longer a man to them, but something beyond the law, a walking dunghill.
	At the place of execution, the condemned man was led to the vertical post, already set in the ground, And there, stripped of his garments, unless he had been previously stripped for the scourging along the way.
	It was common among the Romans for a man to be nailed to the cross completely naked, but among peoples more sensitive it may be that he was covered with whatever rag happened to be handy.
	And thus stripped, the prisoner was made to lie on his back on the ground So that his shoulders and outstretched arms lay on the cross-piece he had been carrying, and then his hands were nailed to it.
	Next, probably by means of a rope, fastened about his chest and thrown over the top of the vertical beam, he was hoisted up the ladder until he was able to straddle the cedar.
	After the prisoner had been lifted up in this manner, the cross-piece was nailed or tied to the vertical beam, and then his feet were nailed.
	Naturally, this required two nails, and not one as Christian art has so often imagined, for since the prisoner was straddling the seat aisle, his feet hung almost at the sides of the vertical beam, and could not be crossed.
	In this state, the crucified awaited death.
	Hour after hour, he could see all kinds of people pass beneath him.
	Patricians who refused him even a glance.
	Busy merchants who might pause for just a moment as they passed.
	The riffraff and the slaves who amused themselves watching the progress of his suffering.
	He might perhaps glimpse some sign of compassion.
	The only one, on the face of a relative or former associate lingering in the vicinity.
	But it was a barren pity at best.
	For the soldiers prevented anyone from approaching to give the sufferer any relief whatever.
	The only things that could possibly reach the shred of humanity nailed to the cross were the stones thrown from a distance by urchins, or by some former rival anxious for a last bit of bitter revenge.
	Death might result from loss of blood, The acute suffering caused by hunger, and especially by thirst, are from other physiological causes.
	it took quite some time to die, and the merciless sun burnt the skin.
	Sometimes it was not long in coming because of the weakness that resulted from the terrible scourging which preceded the crucifixion.
	But more robust constitutions, however, sometimes remained alive on the cross for several days altogether, dying gradually in the most frightful agony, and sometimes the executioner deliberately hastened the end either by lighting a fire at the foot of the cross to produce a cloud of heavy smoke, or by piercing the body of the victim with a Or by breaking his thigh bones with a club.
	In the earliest times, the corpse was left hanging on the cross until it decayed and just fell down to the ground, piece by piece.
	Around Augustus' time, however, friends or relatives were ordinarily granted permission to bury the body, but only if they requested it.
	All this was the general procedure in all crucifixions.
	And it was followed in the crucifixion of Jesus also.
	When the procurator had pronounced the sentence and written his statement of the crime on the tablet, it assumed an official character.
	It was to be transcribed in the government archives and communicated to the emperor in Rome, and it was also to be executed immediately.
	After all, not much preparation was necessary to carry out the sentence of crucifixion.
	The vertical piece was standing ready in the place of execution, or if not, it could be
	set up in a few minutes, and it would not take more than a few strokes of an axe to
	prepare the crosspiece from any kind of beam.
	Hence all that remained to be done was to summon the soldiers, hand over the condemned
	man to them, and proceed to the place designated.
	The place where Jesus was crucified fulfilled all the conditions mentioned.
	Just outside the walls at the northern end of the city there was a little rocky mound
	a few yards higher than the surrounding terrain, the appearance of which had prompted his picturesque
	name, the Skull, or in Latin, Calveria, and in Aramaic, Golgotha.
	and I'll see you next time.
	It was an ideal spot for the crucifixion, for on it the condemned man would hang in full view, and since it was such a short distance from the city gate, many people were sure to pass that way.
	And besides this, there was a tomb nearby, and perhaps more than one, and so the place fitted this last condition also.
	This, then, is where Jesus was sent to be crucified.
	It would not have been a long walk from the Antonia, only a little over half a mile.
	Not only were the streets crowded that day because of the posh, however, But it is also probable that the soldiers chose the longest and most congested route to give the execution the required publicity.
	Those most concerned about the latter were the chief priests and the other Sanhedrists who followed the condemned man in triumph, and who would certainly not have lost the opportunity to prolong their victory and his humiliation in the sight of the populace.
	Yet from the beginning a very bitter fly turned up in their ointment.
	The procession was composed of the soldiers, the chief prisoner, Jesus, and two common thieves, also condemned to death.
	Each of them was accompanied, according to rule, by the tablet which announced his crime to the public.
	Jesus' tablet was inscribed in the three languages commonly used in the district, Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Latin, and its text, dictated by a pilot, read substantially as follows, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.
	The Charified Sanhedrists caught a glimpse of this along the way, and they were able to read it even more clearly when it was nailed up on Jesus' cross.
	Precise jurists that they were, they discovered an enormous error in this statement The man was being crucified not because he was the king of the Jews, as the inscription indicated, but because he had said he was king of the Jews, and he really was not, ends their verdict.
	Touched to the quick, they hurried to the procurator and pointed out this terrible mistake, which had to be corrected in the interests even of the government.
	The people might be insulted upon reading in an official document that the King of the Jews had been crucified, especially since only an hour before that same devoted people had publicly declared that they recognized the Roman Caesar as their only sovereign.
	The chief priests of the Jews said, therefore, to Pilate, Do not write King of the Jews.
	But he said, I am king of the Jews, Pilate answered.
	Would I have written?
	I have written.
	John chapter nineteen, verses twenty-one and twenty-two.
	Pilate had somewhat recovered himself, now that there was no longer any danger of being denounced to Rome.
	He took his revenge for the defeat he had suffered, and repaid the Sanhedrin's exhibitions of loyalty with spiteful perversity.
	And this was the first drop of bitterness in their cup of triumph.
	From the Antonia, the procession wound slowly through the crowded streets, and many of those who had been shouting in front of the praetorium were probably gone home to prepare for the paschal meal.
	Several of the elders followed the procession, however, to make sure that nothing went wrong and that the matter was ended once and for all.
	The jokes and jibes the rabble always had ready for the condemned were certainly not wanting along the way.
	But the most exquisitely cruel jests were directed at the man whom the elders pointed out to be a special attention of the mob's brutality.
	The Galilean rabbi was a much more worthy object than the two thieves for their obscene derision.
	He was a man of great wisdom and a man of great courage.
	I'm.
	The.
	Speak, then, how it happened...
	...that we differed so much over all others.
	The shadows changed the face.
	And the stars...
	...switched to the sea.
	Oh, what a night!
	And the heavens...
	...began to sing...
	...to the stars...
	Carrying his crosspiece, Jesus managed to walk only with great difficulty.
	It was now about noon.
	And from before midnight he had passed through a succession of physical and mental sufferings of incomparable violence.
	For there had been his painful and affectionate farewell to the Apostle in the Cynical.
	Then had come Gethsemane and the arrest, the trial before the Sanhedrin, the cruel mockery in the house of Caiaphas, and finally the horrible scourging.
	Now he had no reserved strength left.
	He tarred under the weight of the beam and stumbled at every step, and there was real danger that he might fall at any moment, not to get up again.
	The possibility worried the sinner.
	So he resorted to requisition.
	.
	There happened to be passing by a certain Simon of Cyrene.
	Mark takes care to point him out to his Roman readers as the father of Alexander and Rufus.
	He was coming from the country where he had been working, and was now on his way home.
	But the centurion, since the need was pressing, requisitioned him, ordering him to carry the crosspiece, which Jesus could not hold up any longer.
	There's no reason for believing that Simon knew Jesus or was his disciple.
	And so the centurion's order must have been anything but welcome.
	If, however, his son Rufus later became a leading figure in the Christian community in Rome, and if Paul, through respect, calls Simon's wife mother, we may conclude that the service he reluctantly lent Jesus begot the very best of consequences in a way unknown to us.
	But Simon was not the only one who helped Jesus.
	This time spontaneous came to him from the woman, and Luke, the evangelist of feminine pity, is the one, the only one, to record it for us.
	Perhaps when the crossbeam was taken from his shoulders and he straightened a little in relief, Jesus noticed in the crowd following him a group of women who were weeping and lamenting him.
	They were daughters of Jerusalem.
	Hence, citizens of the Capitol, although there may have been with them some of the Galilean women who ordinarily followed Jesus, there was in Jerusalem a kind of society of mercy composed of noble ladies organized to help in some way those condemned to death.
	Perhaps these women who now approached Jesus belonged to some such association, and they must have performed their act of mercy all the more wholeheartedly if they knew Jesus at least by name.
	Jesus returned their compassion in kind, thinking again of the imminent destruction of Jerusalem.
	He saw the anguish women and mothers would have to endure in that catastrophe, and he felt with them in their maternal grief for warning them of its future victims.
	And so he said to them, Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.
	For behold, days are coming in which men will say, Blessed are the barren and the wounds that never bore, and breasts that never nurse.
	Then they will begin to say to the mountains, Fall upon us, and to the hills, cover us.
	For if, in the case of Greenwood, they do these things, what is to happen in the case of the dry?
	Luke Chapter 23, verses 28-31 If these things which the pious women deplored with tears
	that day were befalling the innocent condemned to death, what would happen forty years later
	when the destruction of Jerusalem would overwhelm a sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity,
	a wicked seed, children of perdition, as Isaiah said expressed it?
	Chapter 1 verse 4 When the procession reached the place called
	the skull, the crucifixion was carried out immediately.
	Wine mixed with myrrh, believed to numb the senses, was offered to Jesus, and certainly to the two thieves also, but it no sooner touched his lips than he refused it, choosing to drink with full consciousness to the last drop the chalice given him by his Heavenly Father.
	All three were stripped of their garments, though it is possible they were conceited some kind of loincloth.
	The garments of the crucified fell to the soldiers, who divided them into equal shares.
	This they did with Jesus' garment, too, and the evangelist who watched them tells us exactly what happened in his own words.
	A Jew usually wore an outer garment or cloak, and beneath it a tunic.
	The cloak was made of two pieces of cloth sewed together, but the tunic might be without
	seam, woven in one piece from the top.
	.
	The soldiers, therefore, when they had crucified him, took his garments and made of them four parts, to each soldier a part of also the tunic.
	Now the tunic was without seam, woven in one piece from the top.
	They therefore said to one another, Let us not tear it, but let us cast lots for it to see whose it shall be.
	John chapter 19, verses 23 and 24.
	The cloak could be divided along the seams with no great loss, but since the tunic was in one piece, it would have lost most of its value if it had been cut into four parts.
	So the soldiers agreed to give it to the one favored by the dice, but in their action The Evangelist sees the fulfillment of the Messianic prophecy in Psalms 22, verse 19, which says, They parted my garments amongst them, and upon my vesture they cast lots.
	Stripped of his garments, Jesus was laid upon the ground.
	His arms were stretched along the crosspiece he had carried, and his hands were nailed to it.
	Next he was lifted to the vertical beam, already set in the ground, and set astride the support.
	Then his feet were nailed.
	His cross was in the middle.
	The two thieves were crucified, one on each side of him.
	On his cross was fixed the tablet telling his crime.
	The crucifixion was finished not long after noontime.
	On this last point, there seems to be a contradiction between John's statement that Pilate pronounced sentence at the sixth hour, or a little before noon, and Mark's information.
	Now it was the third hour, and they crucified him.
	Various hypotheses have been proposed to reconcile these two statements.
	The most reasonable solution seems the one based on the customs of the country at the time.
	The period from dawn to sunset was divided into twelve hours, which varied in length according to the season of the year.
	But this division was theoretical rather than practical.
	In countries like Judea, For mechanical devices for measuring time were extremely rare, the people usually determined the time of day from the sun, and so had ended up by dividing the hours of daylight into four equal periods, two before noon and two after noon.
	Hence, from dawn to what we should consider 9 a.m.
	was always morning, or the period of the first hour.
	From 9 a.m.
	until noon was the period of the third hour.
	From noon until three p.m.
	was the period of the sixth hour, and from three p.m.
	until sunset was the period of the ninth hour.
	The synoptics rarely deviate from this terminology, Matthew 20 verses 1 through 6, but it is more usual for John to name some of the intermediate hours.
	John 1, verse 39, 4, verse 6, chapter 52, chapter 11, or excuse me, chapter 4, verses 6 and 52, chapter 11, verse 9.
	Instead of the longer periods, because of his desire to be specific, in all likelihood the discrepancy between Mark and John with regard to the hour in which Jesus was crucified is due entirely to this one point, that Mark is referring to the period of the third hour, which lasted until the sixth hour, or noontime, while John means literally the sixth hour of the day, or high noon.
	At least that's an explanation.
	So far as we know, Jesus did not speak throughout the whole process of crucifixion.
	There was scarcely any strength left in His torn body, and His thought was absorbed in contemplation of His Heavenly Father, to whom He was offering the sacrifice of Himself.
	The first words from the cross which are recorded for us, however, while addressed to the Heavenly Concerned those on earth around him.
	Perhaps it was while they were nailing his hands or his feet that he exclaimed, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.
	Luke, chapter 23, verse 34.
	He asked pardon not so much for the unwitting soldiers hammering on the nails as for those others who had deliberately arranged that he would be crucified.
	Even to them Jesus grants His own forgiveness and implores the Father's pardon for them, because they do not know now what they earlier refused to know.
	He generously uses the consequence of their earlier guilt to excuse the present crime.
	And from the cross Jesus watched with drooping but still penetrating eyes all that was going on about Him.
	Below Him lingered the chief priests and the other Sanhedrists Really, it was time for them to be returning home, like good Israelites, to superintend the preparations for the Paschal meal.
	But they preferred to loiter a little, gloating happily.
	They kept walking back and forth beneath the three crosses.
	Sometimes they glanced angrily at the cross in the middle, and now and again they planted themselves before it with their hands behind their backs, and addressed the crucified directly, I'll sit up again, save myself, devour the Son of God, come down from the cross!"
	Father Sanhedris referred an argument ad hominem, which was at the same time an apologia of their own behavior. He said,
	he brothers, himself he cannot say. If he is the King of Israel, let him come down now from the cross and we will
	believe him.
	He trusted in God.
	Let Him deliver Him now, if He wants Him.
	For He said, I am the Son of God.
	But no answer came from that cross, nor did the one they had crucified descend from it.
	Neither would have done those interlocutors any good.
	There were insults and reproaches also from the two crucified thieves.
	Matthew and Mark say, the robbers also, meaning that the insults came from the thieves without specifying whether from one or both.
	Luke does make a distinction, however, and says that one insulted Jesus while the other prayed to him, one of them perhaps to suck some bitter consolation from the ruin that had overtaken his own life.
	He kept repeating to Jesus, If thou art the Christ, save thyself and us!
	But the other robber did not share his feelings, and he rebuked him, saying, Dost thou not even fear God, seeing that thou art under the same sentence?
	And we indeed justly, for we are receiving what our deeds deserve.
	But this man has done nothing wrong.
	Probably the good thief knew Jesus of Nazareth by reputation, and obviously, despite his crimes, there was a residue of goodness left in him.
	In the face of death, it rises to the surface and covers all his past.
	The dying man clutches the last hope left to him, personified and the just man unjustly killed.
	Turning to Him, he says, Lord, remember me when Thou comest into Thy Kingdom.
	When you come reigning gloriously in that Kingdom which you have foretold, and Jesus
	answers, Amen, I say to thee, this day thou shalt be with me in Paradise.
	Among the persons Jesus could see from the cross, there was only one small group which was any source of comfort to Him.
	Or was it perhaps an added source of sorrow?
	The names of those in the little group nearest the cross have been given us by the evangelist who was with them.
	Although he omits his own name, referring to himself only as the disciple whom Jesus loved.
	With him were standing his mother and his mother's sister, Mary of Cleophas, Alphaeus, and Mary Magdalene, John chapter 19 verse 25.
	And after Jesus' death, the synoptics mention another larger group at a greater distance from the cross to most of women who were weeping and lamenting.
	They were the women who had helped Jesus in His ministry and had followed Him from Galilee to Jerusalem.
	Matthew 27, verses 55 and 56 and Mark 15, verses 40 and 41.
	Among those in the second group, we have the names of Mary Magdalene, as in the first group, Mary, the mother of James, the less, and of Joseph.
	This Mary also appears in the first group as Mary of Cleophas, and in addition, a and the mother of the sons of Zebedee, both of whom are the same person.
	That at least two of the women are mentioned in both groups is not surprising because they are mentioned at different times.
	The first group before Jesus' death, and the second group standing a certain distance away after it had occurred.
	In the group nearest the cross, then, stood the mother of Jesus with the beloved disciple.
	Was her presence a comfort to him as he hung on the cross?
	The soldiers prevented her from approaching him, and the nails prevented him from making any gesture whatever to her.
	Mary's voice was stilled with grief, and Jesus could not speak from weakness.
	They could communicate only with their eyes.
	As the mother gazed upon her son, she perhaps thought to how frightful a state that body formed in her womb in a manner unique in the world was now reduced.
	And as the son looked at his mother, Perhaps he reflected how she who had been proclaimed blessed among women was now become the object of extreme pity.
	But at a certain moment, gathering all his strength, he nodded to his mother and said, Woman, behold thy son.
	And then to the beloved disciple he said, Behold thy mother.
	His last will and testament, the dying Jesus united forever his two greatest earthly loves, the humble woman of Bethlehem and the young man who had heard the beating of his heart at the Last Supper, and from that day John took Mary into his home.
	Jesus was failing rapidly, and suddenly it began to grow dark.
	From the sixth hour there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.
	Or from noon until about three o'clock, the expression, The whole land here means Judea.
	It is clear that the evangelists viewed this darkening of the earth at Jesus' death as miraculous, like the miraculous signs which accompanied His birth.
	But whether it was produced by a dense mass of clouds, or in some other way, it is impossible for us to determine.
	In the darkness that hung over physical nature, Jesus's earthly existence ebbed slowly away through an agony that lasted about three hours, and which the evangelists have shrouded in a reverent silence.
	His life and strength were bleeding from him through his torn hands and feet and the gaping welts left by the scourging.
	His head was riddled with the thorns.
	Not one muscle in his body could relax in that position on the cross.
	There was no rest from pain as torture piled upon torture and grew more and more excruciating with every moment.
	In that dark spasm of agony, only the pinnacle of his soul was serene, lifted in contemplation of the Father.
	Suddenly, about the ninth hour, Jesus cried aloud, saying in Aramaic,
	Shabbat shalom.
	Rather than an exclamation in themselves, these words were a quotation.
	They were the beginning of Psalm 21, and mean, as Matthew and Mark add in Greek, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
	Since this is a quotation, its full meaning must be derived from the entire composition which it introduces.
	This psalm, in fact, predicts the final sufferings of the future Messiah, and in reciting its first line from the cross, Jesus meant to apply it to himself.
	Among other things, the ancient psalm had said, and I quote, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
	O my God, I cry by day, and thou dost not answer, and by night neither is there any rest for me.
	And I am a worm, and no man, the reproach of men, and despised by the people.
	All they that see me laugh me to scorn.
	They open wide their mouths and wag their heads.
	Let him turn to the Lord.
	Let him deliver him.
	Let him save him, seeing he delights in him.
	They have pierced my hands and my feet.
	I can number all my bones.
	They look and see me.
	They part my garments among them, and for my vesture they cast lots."
	Hence, Jesus' exclamation affirms once again that He is the Messiah, and as proof, indicates the manifest fulfillment in Himself of the prophecy that He is quoting.
	But some did not understand the very first words of the exclamation, The learned scribes present certainly recognized the quotation, but others, less well informed, took them as an invocation to the prophet Elias, unless they purposely misunderstood them to have a fresh excuse for jeering at the suffering Christ.
	And with mingled curiosity and sarcasm, they exclaimed, Behold, this man is calling Elias!
	As he hung, waiting on the cross, Jesus spoke again.
	I thirst."
	Given his loss of blood and extreme exhaustion, this was natural, but it is not the whole exclamation.
	In fact, the psalm which Jesus has just quoted also said, quote,
	My mouth has become dry as a potser, and my tongue sticks to my jaws, end quote.
	I'm...
	Thirst, then, was also a part of the prophetic vision of the suffering Messiah.
	Hence John, chapter 19, verse 28, calls attention to the fact that Jesus, that the Scriptures might be fulfilled, said, I thirst.
	This time, Jesus' request, at His very last, met a compassionate response from one of the guards.
	For want of something better, the Roman soldiers used to quench their thirst with a mixture of water and vinegar still commonly used by harvesters in Italian country districts.
	Foreseeing that they would have to spend quite a long time on guard below the crosses, the soldiers had brought a jar of it with them.
	And at Jesus' cry, one of them soaked a sponge in it, set the sponge on a rod, and held it up to his lips.
	Those who had been shouting about Elias did not like the soldier's action at all, and they tried to dissuade him, exclaiming, Wait!
	Let us see whether Elias is coming to save him!
	Wait!
	Hold on there!
	In their opinion, if Elias was going to save Jesus, he would also manage somehow to cure his thirst.
	It seems that the soldier answered them with the same exclamation.
	Mark fifteen, verse thirty-six.
	Wait, let us see, etc., etc., etc.
	As if to say that it might be better to comfort the crucified a little while they were waiting for Elias to come.
	And Jesus, who a few hours before had refused the wine and myrrh, now sucks the liquid from the sponge.
	Evangelists call it vinegar, for a definite reason.
	To echo the passage in Psalm sixty-eight, verse twenty-two, which says, In my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.
	When he had taken the mixture, Joseph murmured, It is consummated.
	And shortly afterward, a shudder seemed to pass over his racked body, and he again cried out in a loud voice, saying, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.
	Then he bowed his head.
	And we have to assume at that point that he was dead.
	And at that moment, strange things took place in the darkened city.
	Two great embroidered curtains hung within the temple, one between the vestibule and the Holy Place, and one between the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies, to remind the devout of the inaccessibility and invisibility of God who dwelt in the Holy of Holies.
	About the ninth hour, as Jesus was dying, one of the curtains Probably the inner one split in two from top to bottom, almost as if to signify that it no longer had any function.
	For the invisible God was no longer inaccessible.
	There were earthquake tremors also, and the rocks were ripped, and the tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep arose.
	And coming forth out of the tombs after His resurrection, they came into the holy city and appeared to many.
	The resurrection of the dead is probably anticipated in this passage, for it seems to have taken place after the resurrection of Jesus, with which it is here connected.
	Now, when the centurion and the soldiers on guard saw the strange phenomenon which accompanied Jesus' death, and reflected on the calm and unusually rapid manner in which it had come, They recalled his whole attitude during the trial, and putting two and two together, were convinced that such a prisoner was not only innocent, but a very extraordinary being.
	They began to exclaim, Truly, this was a just man.
	Luke 23, verse 47 And with reference to the disputed accusation against him, Truly, this man was the Son of God.
	Mark fifteen, verse thirty-nine.
	And then, and then, the attitude of the mob changed.
	As soon as Jesus was dead, the Sanhedrists had nothing more to fear from Him for the moment, and so they went home to prepare for the paschal meal.
	Hence there was no one left to bully the crowd and prompt the jibes against the crucified, and so they could show their true feelings.
	They, too, were impressed by the darkened day and the heating And remembering what had taken place at the trial, they began to walk away from the cross, beating their breasts.
	On their way home, the Sanhedrists suddenly remembered a precept of the law.
	They kept reminding themselves that they had done a very holy deed in having Jesus crucified, but His holiness would be imperfect if His body were left hanging that night.
	No, it must be buried that same afternoon before sunset as the law commanded.
	Especially since sunset marked the beginning of the most solemn feast of the Pash.
	So they went to the procurator and requested him to observe this precept, suggesting at the same time the simplest way to do so.
	It would be enough to break the legs of the three who had been crucified, and in a few moments they would all be ready for burial.
	Not many moments before, another Sanhedrin had gone to the procurator with a request to bury Jesus.
	Christ's death had somewhat revived the courage of His disheartened disciples.
	There was among them a certain Joseph, a native of Arimathea, northwest of Lydda, a wealthy
	man of great prestige, a member of the Sanhedrin, and also a disciple of Jesus, although for
	fear of the Jews a secret one.
	John chapter 19 verse 38 Spiritually, then, he somewhat resembled Nicodemus, who was also
	a member of the Sanhedrin, although Joseph had had the courage to disagree with his fellow
	Sanhedrins when they condemned Jesus to death.
	Luke 23 verse 51 Now he dared even more.
	Perhaps at the request of Jesus' relatives and friends, he went to Pilate and requested the body of Jesus for burial as Roman law allowed.
	Pilate heard his request, willing, but was surprised that Jesus had died so soon.
	So he called the centurion who was in charge, and when he had confirmed Jesus' death, Pilate gave Joseph permission to take the body.
	Almost at the same time, the other Sanhedrists arrived, and Pilate, granting their request too, ordered other soldiers, not those still on guard at the crosses, to break the legs and then take the bodies down.
	The evangelist who witnessed their arrival says, The soldiers therefore came and broke the legs of the first, and of the other who had been crucified with him.
	But when they came to Jesus, and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs.
	But one of the soldiers opened his side with a lance, and immediately there came out blood and water.
	John, chapter 19, verses 32-34 Hence the two thieves had survived Jesus and were dispatched.
	Jesus' legs were not broken, because it was evident that he was already dead.
	One of the soldiers struck with his lance in the direction of Jesus' heart, just to remove any possible doubts.
	And the lance tore a wide wound in his side, as large as a man's hand.
	John 20, verses 25 and 27, And from this wound flowed blood and water.
	Now, learned English physiologists have tried to explain the water and blood by supposing that Jesus' heart was literally broken before being pierced by the lance.
	If the heart is ruptured, they claim, there is a hemorrhage within the pericardium and subsequently a decomposition of the blood.
	The red globules sink to the bottom and the watery serum remains on top.
	Hence, when the pericardium is opened, the two come out separately.
	According to these physiologists, then, Jesus' rapid death is to be explained by a rupture of the heart produced by mental suffering.
	Jesus died literally of a broken heart caused by grief, according to this hypothesis.
	Whatever the merits of such an explanation, the evangelist who witnessed the incidents sees much deeper and more mysterious meaning in it.
	For these things came to pass, that the scripture might be fulfilled, not a bone of him shall you break."
	And another scripture says, "...they shall look upon him whom they have pierced."
	The first quotation is from Exodus 12 verse 46, Numbers 9 verse 12, and refers to the Passion For the evangelist Jesus was the true victim of redemption foreshadowed in the Paschal Lamb.
	The second quotation is from Zacharias, chapter twelve, verse ten, who predicts that the Jewish nation will mourn for one whom they have pierced as one mourns for a firstborn.
	The evangelist does not give us the name of the soldier who pierced Jesus' breast, but Christian legend has bestowed an unforgettable one on him, calling him Lancer.
	His lunk, and so the soldier was called Longinus.
	The soldiers must have been performing their lugubrious work while Joseph of Arimathea stood waiting to use the permission granted him by Pilate.
	And as soon as Jesus' body was taken down, Joseph set about giving it a fitting burial, which had, however, to be hasty because of the legal repose which, of course, according to law began at sunset.
	Joseph was assisted by others.
	He didn't do this alone.
	His spiritual brother Nicodemus is mentioned by name, who came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, and weighed about a hundred pounds.
	John, chapter nineteen, verse thirty-nine.
	It's really easy to imagine that the pious women who had been present at the crucifixion also helped to prepare Christ for His burial, and first among them, His mother.
	He certainly would not have renounced the sorrowful joy of receiving his body in her arms as it was taken down from the cross.
	Just as Nicodemus had brought the spices to anoint the body, Joseph had brought a sindon, a shroud of winding sheet of fine linen.
	Since there was not much time, the preparation of the body was quite brief.
	They therefore took the body of Jesus and wrapped it in linen clothes with the spices, after the Jewish manner of preparing for burial.
	In fact, in the manner Lazarus had been prepared, then the body was wrapped in the shroud.
	Time also prevented their moving the body to a tomb any distance away, but this difficulty
	was easily overcome thanks to the generosity of Joseph, who offered his own tomb, which
	was right on the hill of the skull.
	There was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid.
	John chapter 19 verse 41.
	The garden lay at the foot of the skull, and the tomb had been hewn out of a rock.
	Mark 15 verse 46.
	Which was a projection of the one that formed the little height of the skull.
	Probably other wealthy citizens of Jerusalem also had their tombs built there.
	And this dovetails perfectly with the custom of carrying out a crucifixion near a burial ground.
	The tomb Joseph gave up for Jesus' burial was arranged on the inside, like all other Jewish tombs, with a vestibule, and then a burial chamber with its niche for the body.
	The outer door was shut with a huge stone set against the opening.
	To enter, one had to push the stone.
	And not without considerable effort, to the left or the right, and it moved along a little groove hewn out of the rock on either side of the door.
	Since Jesus had died about three in the afternoon, all was over before six, when Joseph, and I quote, rolled a great stone to the entrance of the tomb and departed, end quote, Matthew twenty-seven verse sixty.
	But the tomb was not left alone immediately.
	Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, the mother of James and Joseph, were there, sitting opposite the sepulcher.
	Another pious woman also drew near to see where the revered body had been buried.
	Then, returning to the city, they took advantage of the last bit of daylight left and prepared spices and ointments.
	Their devotion apparently was not satisfied with the abundant supply contributed by Nicodemus, and they planned to anoint the body of Jesus more carefully, and hence to return to the sepulcher as soon as the Sabbath was over.
	Luke 23, verses 55-56.
	That night was a fine one indeed for the triumphant Sanhedrin.
	They celebrated the Paschal meal not only with the traditional air of gaiety, but with a special inward satisfaction and gloating as well.
	You see, that Galilean rabbi was actually gone.
	He was safely dead.
	There was no danger that they would ever have to listen to his infectives again and be humiliated in the eyes of the people.
	The few disciples he had managed to attract would unquestionably scatter.
	Now that their master was dead, and no one would speak of him anymore.
	Little did they know.
	But to them, theirs had been a splendid victory, and the thought of it must have added a special flavor to their passionate supper.
	And yet, as they thought of it, these worthies began to notice a little flaw in the shining crystal of their cup of triumph.
	A little thing.
	Certainly, but not to be neglected.
	They remembered that Jesus had predicted that three days after his death he would rise again.
	They remembered!
	They remembered all of a sudden this doubt came creeping in.
	Were they really not rid of him after all?
	I mean, didn't he say?
	No.
	Couldn't be.
	They remembered that Jesus had predicted that three days after his death he would rise again.
	No, couldn't be.
	This was sheer boasting.
	There was no doubt about that.
	Or was it?
	Most of them were convinced Sadducees and so maintained that resurrection of the dead was impossible.
	Or was it, really?
	This gnawing doubt began to grow, and this remembrance sort of put a dampener on their celebration.
	But, you know, even if it was impossible, this boast might give rise to imposters, rumors, and other annoying consequences.
	Maybe we're not shed of him yet.
	It might be better to remedy that little flaw and forestall the trouble.
	Mightn't it?
	And so they got together.
	And on the following day, although it was their posh, some of them took the short, legitimate walk to Pilot's house to give him some very good advice.
	Sir, we have remembered how that deceiver said, while he was yet alive, After three days I will rise again.
	Give orders, therefore, that the sepulcher be guarded until the third day, or else his disciples may come and steal him away, and say to the people, He has risen from the dead, and the last impostor will be worse than the first.
	Pilate answered them brusquely, You have a guard of your own.
	Go guard it as well as you know."
	The procurator's rudeness was apparent only.
	It merely served to cover the fact that he was giving in to them again.
	Actually, he had granted the request and again let the Sanhedrists use the detachment of guards composed of Roman soldiers that he was accustomed to put at their disposal.
	John 18 verse 12.
	That was all they wanted.
	They just wanted to be rid of this nagging doubt.
	This possibility.
	This fly in the ointment.
	This, no.
	No.
	He's done.
	He's gone.
	He's dead.
	This can't be.
	We don't need any more of this.
	Be gone with him.
	And that is all they wanted.
	And on the same Sabbath, they led the soldiers to the place.
	And then they felt relieved.
	But not relieved enough.
	For no one could surpass those particular Jewish leaders for wariness.
	They took precautions against the possibility that would hardly occur to anyone else.
	You see, they foresaw that the soldiers, though they stayed on guard before the tomb, might be susceptible to the bribes of Jesus' disciples and let them into the tomb.
	So they affixed their seals between the stone rolled against the entrance and the rock from which the tomb was cut.
	This was a wise precaution.
	since no one could possibly enter the tomb without breaking the seals for which the soldiers
	were responsible, and the dead man would be sure not to rise again.
	How wrong they were!
	1 you.
	Thank you.
	Nobody really knows exactly what happened, as every religion, and that's why it's called religion instead of science, some things must be taken as an article of faith.
	The same historical documents which have narrated the story of Jesus up to this point do not stop with his death, but
	with the same authority they relate his resurrection and second life.
	That is more than sufficient for those, ancients as well as moderns, who do not admit the possibility of the supernatural, Acts 17.32, to promptly reject this whole second part of the gospel narrative.
	These persons are logical, granted the principles from which they start, but it is significant that their conclusion is determined solely by those principles, not by any deficiencies or uncertainties in the documents.
	In the account of Jesus' second life, the four evangelists followed the same procedure as before.
	They do not pretend to give a complete, detailed, strictly chronological account of what happened.
	Instead, they choose the facts which seem most opportune to them, and they arrange their material in the order most convenient for their individual purposes.
	In relating the discovery of Jesus' empty tomb, Matthew and Mark are parallel enough.
	Luke does not give so many names, but he does not differ very much from Mark's account.
	Finally, John is more sketchy because, here again, he wants to specify and fill out the familiar story of the synoptics with a few points on his own authority as an eyewitness.
	And, of course, an eyewitness's testimony is paramount.
	It is true that we can find no place That speaks of anyone who ever saw Jesus in the act of rising from the dead.
	None of the evangelists says how He emerged from the sepulcher.
	One of them implies that He did so without disturbing the stone rolled against the entrance, although His resurrection was accompanied by extraordinary signs.
	Quote, And behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven, and drawing near, rolled back the stone, and sat upon it.
	His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment like snow."
	Matthew 28, verses 2 and 3.
	Hence it was the angel who rolled away the stone, but the tomb was already empty, and the stone no longer served any purpose.
	All four evangelists agree that the sepulcher was discovered to be empty very early on Sunday morning, or the next day.
	Whatever day it must have been, and since he was crucified on the Sabbath, it had to be Sunday morning.
	The soldiers sent by the Sanhedris had been on guard there since the day before, and certainly at that early hour of the morning, they were still stretched out asleep on the ground.
	Now remember, folks, dates, days, and times are all in convention here.
	We know that Christ was not born on Christmas Day, December the 25th.
	We know that.
	We also know that He was probably not crucified in the spring during the festival of Ishtar, of the spring fertility rites, but at some other time, which we have all discussed on previous episodes of The Hour of the Time.
	So don't get caught up in the dates, or whether it was Saturday or Sunday or anything like that.
	For what we're concerned with now is the meaning of this day, not whether or not it was actually
	this day.
	The soldiers sent by the Sanhedris had been on guard there since the day before, and certainly
	at that early hour of the morning they were still stretched out asleep on the ground.
	The earthquake, and the appearance of the angel, and the wide-open tomb So terrified them that they fled for safety through the nearby city gate.
	Once surrounded by houses and recovered somewhat by their panic, or from their panic, they remembered that their flight was formal desertion of their post, and subject to heavy penalties according to Roman military discipline, and indeed every military discipline that's ever existed.
	So you know that in a face of the threat of the most severe punishment for their action.
	They must have seen something that so terrified them that all thought of consequence fled from their minds, and they fled from the scene.
	They had to find some remedy, and shrewdly perceived that their best hope lay with the Sanhedrists, who had the greatest interest in the matter.
	So, in order to save themselves in gaining allies, they went straight to them to make a bargain.
	The sepulcher did not remain alone very long, for a group of pious women was already on its way from the city.
	They were the women who on Friday evening had prepared the spices in order to give the beloved body of Jesus a more fitting burial as soon as the legal repose of the Sabbath was over.
	From one or another of the evangelists we learn the names of Mary Magdalene, Mary, mother of James, Salome, Joanna, and the other women
	who were with them."
	Luke 24, verse 10.
	The time at which they arrived at the sepulcher is indicated in a very curious fashion by
	Mark 16, verse 2, and very early in the morning on the first day of the week, Sunday, they
	come to the tomb, the sun being now risen.
	At first glance it is difficult to reconcile very early with the sun being now risen, since
	the former would mean the very first light of dawn, or about four o'clock in the morning,
	while the latter phrase would seem to refer to a time no earlier than six.
	It all becomes clear if we read between the lines.
	And this is what we could read, if this is correct in the way that we read it between the lines.
	Very early in the morning they came to the tomb.
	and reach it, the sun being now risen.
	Certainly they did not have to go a great distance to get to the tomb, ladies and gentlemen, but the reason why they took so long is given by Mark himself in chapter 16, verse 1, who has just said, When the Sabbath was passed, that is, on that same morning, they bought spices that they might go and anoint him.
	Their devotion was now satisfied with the spices some of them had prepared two evenings before, and the rest wanted to make their own contribution of ointments which it took some time to buy.
	These feminine delays were too much for the most ardent and whole-souled among them, Mary of Magdala, the only one whom John mentions, and the first one named by all three synoptics, sped by her great love She left her companions and ran on alone to the tomb.
	She reached it, as John says, in complete agreement with Mark, early while it was still dark.
	John chapter twenty, verse one.
	But what she saw, as soon as she arrived, struck her with dismay.
	She knew nothing about the soldiers placed there on the Sabbath, so she was not surprised by their absence.
	But she did see that the round stone had been rolled aside and the entrance stood open.
	A glance inside was enough to tell her that the tomb was empty.
	What had happened?
	What had happened?
	Who could tell her?
	She must go to the disciples, perhaps they knew, especially Peter and John.
	She ran, therefore, and came to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple, whom Jesus loved, and said to them, They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.
	John chapter twenty, verse two.
	The plural, we, kept by John, is an excellent link between his account and the Synoptics.
	You see, they speak of several women at the sepulcher, whereas he speaks only of Mary Magdalene.
	But he has her use the plural, we.
	Mary's tardy companions, meanwhile, finished their purchases and were on their way to the tomb.
	But near the end of their walk, They suddenly remembered a difficulty they had not thought of before.
	And they were saying to one another, Who will roll the stone back from the doorway of the tomb for us?
	We know that those round stones were very large and heavy, and the women certainly could not move the one in front of Jesus' sepulcher by themselves.
	As soon as they reached the sepulcher, however, and looked about them, They saw that the stone had been rolled back, for it was very large.
	No less startles than Mary Magdalene, but less impulsive, they made their way in, and on entering the tomb they saw a young man sitting at the right side, clothed in a white robe, and they were amazed.
	Luke says more accurately that there were two men in dazzling raiments Chapter 24, verse 4 The young man in Mark said to the woman, Do not be terrified.
	You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified.
	He has risen.
	He is not here.
	Behold the place where they laid him.
	But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he goes before you into Galilee.
	There you shall see him, as he told you.
	Mark chapter 16 verses 6 and 7 and Matthew chapter 28 verses 5 through 7.
	These two apparitions in Luke say much the same thing, but they develop the last thought more fully, and their words produce a different result.
	According to Mark, the women fled from the tomb, for trembling and fear had entered into them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.
	According to Luke, on the other hand, the women Having returned from the tomb, we ported all these things to the eleven and to all the rest.
	And this is what Matthew 28 verse 8 says also.
	Mark's account probably refers only to the women's first impression.
	They were in the beginning so stunned with fear and bewilderment that they said nothing.
	In any case, the news they were about to communicate was certainly not such as to win them a very cordial welcome.
	And that is perhaps another reason for the reluctance indicated by Mark.
	When they returned to the city, they were telling these things to the apostles, but this tale seemed to them to be nonsense, and they did not believe the women.
	Luke Chapter 24 Verse 11 Meanwhile Mary Magdalene's announcement had made a much greater impression on Peter and John.
	As soon as they heard her excited story, Peter went out, and the other disciple, and they went to the tomb.
	The two were running together.
	And the other disciple ran on before, faster than Peter, and came first to the tomb.
	And stooping down, he saw the linen clothes lying there, and the handkerchief which had been about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but folded in a place by itself.
	And then the other disciple also went in, who had come first to the tomb, And he saw.
	The disciples therefore went away again to their home.
	John 20 verses 3-10 What they saw was enough to convince them that the body had not been stolen, as Mary Magdalene supposed.
	If it had been, there would have been no purpose in unwinding the linen cloths or carefully folding up the handkerchief and setting it by itself.
	There was nothing more to be done there, however, And so the two hurried back to the city, anxious to consult with the other disciples.
	And of course, there's much more to this story, as Jesus presented himself in the flesh several times.
	Not once, not twice, but a total of seven times in the next several hours and days.
	And so that is the meaning of this day, Good Friday.
	And that is why Christians reflect upon what happened on an obscure little hill in a city
	of far, far away from most of those who practice this religion at a time over two thousand
	years ago.
	The first thing that comes to mind is the fact that this is a place where the Bible
	was first revealed to the world in the year 1850. And it's a place where the Bible is
	first revealed to the world in the year 1850. And it's a place where the Bible was first
	revealed to the world in the year 1850. And it's a place where the Bible was first revealed
	to the world in the year 1850. And it's a place where the Bible was first revealed
	This is The Voice of Freedom.
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