Crucifixion of Jesus

“ Jesus suffered a painful, shameful, and ignominious death, to deliver his people from the bitter pains of eternal death. His crucifixion is the procuring cause of their salvation; for he died that they might live. Ought we not to admire and adore the wisdom of our God, who could cause such invaluable good to spring out of what, distinctly considered, was an act of such injustice and cruelty. We see the persecutors of Jesus full of fury and indignation, executing their cruelties on the innocent object of their abhorrence. ”

“ Does erudite theology regard the crucifixion of Jesus chiefly as providing a ready pardon for all sinners who Purpose of crucifixion ask for it and are willing to be forgiven? Does Spiritualism find Jesus' death necessary only for the presentation, after death, of the material Jesus, as a proof that spirits can return to earth? ”

“ So today even though hundreds of years have rolled by since Thy crucifixion, we know that there is in Thine heart, there is in Thy soul a warm spot for the Sons and Daughters of Africa whose forebears bore the cross for Thee up the heights of Calvary to thy crucifixion.
We sing and shout with the angels; we ring our joy bells; we blow our horns in praise because Thou art indeed the Jesus, the Christ, the Emanuel to us, the Son of Righteousness, the Prince of Peace. ”

“ The typical theologian never seems to think of looking at the death of Jesus from the purely human point of view, and yet surely this is the only legitimate thing to do when trying to get at the heart of the subject. It is what we should do in any other case of a like kind; we should never dream of doing anything else. We have no business to begin speculating upon transcendental questions until we have examined the purely human causes of such an event as the crucifixion of Jesus. ”

“ In the degree that the life of the body became extinguished, his soul became clear, and returned by degrees to its celestial origin. He regained the idea of his mission; he saw in his death the salvation of the world; he lost sight of the hideous spectacle spread at his feet, and, profoundly united to his Father, he began upon the gibbet the Divine life which he was to live in the heart of humanity throughout infinite ages.
The peculiar atrocity of crucifixion was that one might live three or four days in this horrible state upon the instrument of torture. ”

“ And Jesus Christ himself had the design of drawing men’s affections to himself in view, by his crucifixion: says he, ‘And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.’ This he said, signifying what death he should die: thus distinctly stating that it was the self-denials and mercy exhibited in the crucifixion that would draw out the affections of the human soul, and that those affections would be drawn to himself as the suffering Saviour. ”

“ We can think of no more high-minded person in Jerusalem than young Saul of Tarsus, the student of Gamaliel; and we know how cordially he approved the course the leaders of Israel had taken in putting Jesus out of the way.
The cross is the point where God and His children, even the best of them, clash. At Calvary we see the rocky coast-line of men's thoughts and feelings against which the incoming tide of God's mind and heart broke; and we hear the moaning of the resisted waves. The crucifixion is the exposure of the motives and impulses, the aspirations and traditions, of human society. ”

“ In His own crucifixion, in that which came before His crucifixion, He knew the suffering of this earthly life. There is no human being who ever has known the misery of man as Jesus knows it, and so He comes to all sorrows with tender consolation. ”

“ In all dying there is struggle and weakness; in our dying to sin there is great struggle and weakness. But only in his crucifixion can we see, in Jesus Christ, a place for struggle and weakness. [70] That self-sacrificing obedience of Jesus Christ's whole life, which was summed up in this great, final act of his crucifixion, and which is palpable as sacrifice, obedience, dolorous effort, only there, is, therefore, constantly regarded by Paul under the figure of this final act, as is also the believer's conformity to Christ's obedience. ”

“ Considered from the standpoint of scriptural evidence, there can be no doubt of the absolute necessity of the Atonement as it was wrought out in the suffering and death of the Christ. The two disciples overtaken on their way to Emmaus by the unrecognized, risen Savior, gave him an account of the crucifixion and the reported resurrection of Jesus. They also voiced their own great disappointment in the seeming anti-climax of the events which had resulted in the crucifixion by saying: "But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel;" ”

“ The stigmata which are the best proof of his hyperæsthesia are likewise the best evidence of his spiritual plagiarism and his comparative failure. For to be crucified is not to be Christ. Jesus did not set out to be crucified, but to do his and his Father’s work. Crucifixion came in the day’s work, but was its interruption, not its fulfilment. The true imitation of Christ is to do one’s work though men crucify one. But deliberately to seek crucifixion—even crucifixion of one’s natural desires—is to imitate the accident, not the essence. ”

“ Still another mark of crucifixion is restfulness. Yes. Christ was crucified, and went down into the grave, and we are crucified and buried with Him. There is no place of rest like the grave; a man can do nothing there, "My flesh shall rest in hope," said David, and said the Messiah. Yes, and when a man goes down into the grave of Jesus, it means this: that he just cries out, "I have nothing but God, I trust God ”

“ Such apparent evidence as there is in favour of the old theory of Jesus' natural recovery from the effects of the crucifixion may be found in Salvador's "Jesus-Christ et sa Doctrine"; but, as Zeller has shown, the theory is utterly unsatisfactory. The natural return of Jesus to his disciples never could have given rise to the notion of his resurrection, since the natural explanation would have been the more obvious one; besides which, if we were to adopt this hypothesis, we should be obliged to account for the fact that the historic career of Jesus ends with the crucifixion. ”

“ We have no reason to suppose that Jesus ever took upon himself the nature of any other race of creatures, as he did take our nature. We have no reason to suppose that he ever died, in any other world, as he died in ours. How wonderful this makes the thought of his crucifixion! ”

“ Those who crucified Christ are in the true mind of the Christian Church representatives of the whole human race, and it is for no one to point a finger of resentment at those who brought Jesus to his death, but rather to see the crucifixion as the divine judgment upon all humanity for choosing the ways of sin rather than the love of God. ”

“ The Sacred Heart of Jesus. God did not suffer the bones of His crucified Son to be broken; and in order that no one might attribute this fact to chance, He announced, fifteen hundred years before, by the type of the paschal lamb, that it would be so. Why, then, did God permit the Sacred Body of His Only-Begotten Son to be pierced with a lance, and His Sacred Heart to be laid open? The Crucifixion being such an all-important event to the whole world, each circumstance of it, however small, must have a meaning, and have been provided for in the plan of Redemption ”

“ But when these learned men go back from the day of his crucifixion to the day of his birth, they are at a loss, having no certain evidence or testimony by which they can determine it. I intend this afternoon to give light on this subject from new revelation, which we, as Latter-day Saints, can depend upon. I will read to you from the Book of Mormon, some things that happened, at the time of the crucifixion, on this great western hemisphere, and I will say we have a date given there in connection with these events, showing how old Jesus was at the time of his crucifixion. ”

“ But, as no wound is inflicted on any part of the body absolutely necessary to existence, the unfortunate sufferer often lingers many an [143] hour in this extreme agony, before the powers of nature are exhausted and death closes the scene.
This is but a faint outline of the sufferings of crucifixion, to which the Priests and Rulers sentenced the blessed Jesus, whom we see going forth to the place of execution, carrying his own cross, and fainting beneath the load. ”

“ The exact place of the crucifixion can be determined as little as that of Gethsemane, though there is a tradition from the fourth century, and in addition there are many conjectures. Jesus was led, apparently, to the ordinary place of criminal execution, and with two others, probably insurrectionary robbers like those with whom Barabbas had been associated, he was crucified. ”

“ The writer of the fourth Gospel seems to have understood this difficulty, and informs us that they could not kill him, because he had prophesied what death he should die; so he could die no other. It was dire necessity, that the heathen symbol of life and immortality—the cross [524:2] —should be brought to honor among the early Christians, and Jesus had to die on the cross (the Roman Gibbet) , according to John [524:3] simply because it was so prophesied. The fact is, the crucifixion story, like the symbol of the crucifix itself, came from abroad. ”

“ If, then, it be accepted as a historical fact that Christ was about fifty years old at this crucifixion, the date of his birth would have to be set back at least ten years.”
Every line of these accounts of the trial and crucifixion of Christ bears the ineffaceable stamp of fiction. There was no Christ to crucify, and Jesus of Nazareth, if he existed, was not crucified as claimed.
For more than fifteen centuries an inoffensive, [295] industrious and moral people have been persecuted, robbed and butchered by Christians, because their forefathers are said to have slain a mythical God. ”

“ Many cases are known of men having been restored after crucifixion, and, as the embalming given Jesus in the Jewish custom consisted in nothing more than a wrapping in a shroud with myrrh and aloes, there is nothing to oppose this hypothesis. ”

“ We could not indeed psychologically account for the development of the resurrection faith after the crucifixion, if before it Jesus' life and utterances had not been such as to make his manifestation in glory seem to the disciples just what they ought to have expected. ”

“ It was the Roman custom to make the execution of convicts as public as possible, under the mistaken and anti-psychological assumption, that the spectacle of dreadful punishment would be of deterrent effect. This misconception of human nature has not yet become entirely obsolete.
The sentence of death by crucifixion required that the condemned person carry the cross upon which he was to suffer. Jesus started on the way bearing His cross. ”

“ The crucifixion of a man is a possible occurrence; but the corporeal resurrection of a man who has suffered death is impossible. These reputed appearances of Jesus, if they have a historical foundation, were evidently mere subjective impressions or apparitions. Although he is declared to have remained on earth forty days, he made, at the most, but two or three brief visits to his disciples, appearing and disappearing like a phantom. ”

“ We rather incline to throw a veil over the ghastly details, or we uncover them only so far as may be necessary in order to understand the condition of His mind, in which we seek His real sufferings.
The sacred body of our Lord was exposed to many shocks and cruelties before the final and complicated horrors of the crucifixion. First, there was His agony in the garden. Then—not to speak of the chains laid on Him when He was arrested—there was the blow on the face from the servant of the high priest. ”

“ Jesus, though weakened by long torture during the preceding night and early morning, by the shock of the crucifixion itself, as also by intense mental agony, and particularly through spiritual suffering such as no other man has ever endured, manifested surprizing vigor, both of mind and body, to the last. The strong, loud utterance, immediately following which He bowed His head and "gave up the ghost", when considered in connection with other recorded details, points to a physical rupture of the heart as the direct cause of death. ”

“ These enemies of Christ affirm that the Disciples hoped so vividly to see Jesus rise from the dead as He had promised, and that the resurrection was so urgently needed to counteract the disgrace of the crucifixion, that they were induced, almost forced, to expect it and to announce it as imminent. Then in that atmosphere of superstitious suspense, the vision of a hysterical woman, the hallucination of a dreamer, the delusion of an unbalanced man sufficed to spread the news of the appearance of Christ about the little circle of the desolate survivors. ”

“ John—who came to Jesus by night to have a talk with him on the subject of religion. He was also a member of the Jewish Sanhedrim, and “a ruler of the Jews.” Joseph went boldly in before Pilate, and asked permission from him to take the body of Jesus down from the cross and have it buried. This was in the afternoon of the same day on which the crucifixion had taken place. Pilate was surprised to think that Jesus could have died so soon. Death by crucifixion, although very [123] painful, was still a lingering death. ”