I was not planning on sharing this with you but was convicted today, Good Friday, the day Jesus was crucified, that there may be at least one person who needs to hear this.
I want to say that I love you all, Christian or not. You are like a family to me… yes, even you Chip (joke)… and even though it is a risk for me to share this with you because it is so personal, I want to.
I hope this is received in the spirit which it is given, a spirit of love. May God bless each one of you.
THE CRUCIFIXION OF CHRIST
Please pray with me. Holy Father we pray that you and only you be glorified by the words that are spoken here today.
Amen.
I want you to roll play with me. As you read this I want you to picture yourself in Jesus’ time. You are going to play the part of Jesus. You are fully divine, knowing what is about to happen as well as fully human and will experience pain and death as a human. Feel what He feels, hear what He hears and see what He sees. It is 24 hours before you will die.
It’s a cold clear night. You are now in a beautiful garden. You are praying with your closest friends. You need some time alone to privately pray to the Father and ask them to stay there and keep watch. You know that soon you will die a horrible death. You know that you will experience pain and death as a human. You are in agony and pray to the Father to take this cup from your lips. You pray so intensely that you sweat blood making your skin fragile and tender. You return to your friends to find them asleep.
“Simon, are you asleep?
Could you not keep watch for one hour?
Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.
The spirit is willing but the body is weak.”
Could you not keep watch for one hour?
Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.
The spirit is willing but the body is weak.”
You leave to pray again and return finding them asleep again. They are embarrassed and don’t know what to say. You leave and return a third time only to find them asleep again.
“Are you still sleeping and resting?
Enough!
The hour has come.
Look, the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.
Rise!
Let us go.
My betrayer is coming for me.”
Enough!
The hour has come.
Look, the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.
Rise!
Let us go.
My betrayer is coming for me.”
Soon after midnight they come for you. Imagine the ache in your heart as one of your closest friends betrays you. You know that this is a guilt that he will not be able to live with and will ultimately drive him to suicide. Then the rest of your friends flee and desert you. At 1 in the morning you are taken by Jewish leaders and put through a lengthy trial where you are found guilty of blasphemy, a crime punishable by death.
You are then blindfolded. The guards spit on you They strike you in the face with their fists. They mock you.
“If you are a prophet then tell us which one of us just struck you?”
“Who was it this time?”
“And this time?”
“Who was it this time?”
“And this time?”
This goes on until daybreak. Since permission for an execution must come from the governing Romans, the Jews take you to the Pontius Pilate who will pass the ultimate judgment for you. Pontius Pilate sends you to Herod who then returns you to Pilate. They found nothing to charge you with. Imagine your sadness as the crowd cheers and joyfully frees a hideous murderer and condemns you to a horrible death by flogging also called scourging and crucifixion.
The Romans have perfected Crucifixion as a visible method of torture leading to a painful death as an example to others of what will happen if they were not loyal to the Roman Empire. Scourging was done before crucifixion to weaken the condemned person and increase the pain of their crucifixion. Scourging was so bad that it was not uncommon for the prisoner do die from the wounds before they even made it to the cross.
You are taken to a dark room. The Roman guards show you what you will be beaten with. It’s a short whip with several leather thongs at different lengths with small iron balls and sharp pieces of sheep bones tied at intervals. You are stripped of your clothing and tied to an upright post with your hands above your head. Anticipate the first blow tearing your tender skin.
As the Roman soldier strikes your back with full force the iron balls cause deep bruises. The leather thongs and sheep bones cut into your skin and fatty tissue. Imagine the immense pain. Then your buttocks are struck. More pain. Then your legs are struck. More pain. Then, as the scourging continues, the lacerations tear into the underlying tissues. Then into the skeletal muscles producing quivering ribbons of bleeding flesh. It seams as if the blows will never end.
Jewish law states that they can strike you no more than 40 times, but these are not Jews. These are Roman soldiers who do not care about Jewish law. They know that you claim to be the king of the Jews and enjoy showing you that they are the ones with the power.
The scourging continues until you are very near death. Pain and blood loss sends you into shock. Then the soldiers put a crown of thorns on your head. You hear yourself scream as the thorns pierce deeply into your skin. Feel the warm blood trickle down your face. Then they place a wooden staff in your hand and dress you in a purple robe.
It is 6 in the morning and Pilate presents you to the public again hoping that when the crowd sees you dressed like a fool, bleeding and near death that they will take pity on you and release you. They give Pilate their answer.
“Crucify Him! Crucify Him! Crucify Him!”
He reluctantly agrees and the guards take you away again to a dark room. They spit on you. They strike you in the face with their fists. They mock you.
“Hail Jesus, The King of the Jews.”
“Hail Jesus, The King of the Jews.”
“Hail Jesus, The King of the Jews.”
They repeatedly strike you on the head with the wooden staff. The blood and serum from your back wounds have begun to clot causing the robe to stick to your back. As they tear the robe from you the scourging wounds on your back are reopened causing excruciating pain.
At about 9 in the morning your clothes are put back on and you are led along with two thieves to be crucified. The vertical part of the cross is permanently waiting for it’s next victim at the top of the hill. You are at the point of exhaustion and they make you carry the crossbar, which you will soon be nailed to, up the hill. It weighs about 125 pounds. Feel the weight of the large crossbar as it is laid across the nape of your neck. Feel the rough wood dig into your tender raw flesh. Hear the crowd yell obscenities at you.
“King of the Jews.”
“You are not my king.”
“Call out for your subjects to save you.”
“You are not my king.”
“Call out for your subjects to save you.”
Feel them spitting on your face as you carry the crossbar which is getting heavier every second. Feel the wounds on your back open more against the rough wood. Your legs give way as you fall to the ground too exhausted to carry the crossbar anymore. They make you pick it up again. Your legs are too weak and you fall again. You can’t carry the crossbar anymore, but they make you walk the rest of the way up the steep hill where you know you will be crucified. Your sweat is cold and clammy. The soldiers and crowd taunt you.
“Traitor!”
“Blasphemer!”
“Die king of the Jews.”
“Blasphemer!”
“Die king of the Jews.”
Your clothes are removed again except for a loincloth. You are offered a bitter drink of wine mixed with myrrh as a mild sedative to ease your pain, but you refuse to drink it. You are thrown to the ground on your back opening and contaminating your wounds. They stretch you out over the crossbar. Heavy rough men hold your arm in place.
The Legionnaire feels your wrist for the indenture where the nail will soon be. Anticipate the pain of the first nail. An iron spike six inches long is driven through your wrist crushing nerves and producing excruciating bolts of fiery pain in your fingers running all of the way up your arm. This causes your hand to be partially paralyzed. When the spike pierces ligaments it causes muscle contractions and a claw like grasp. Anticipate the pain soon to be in your other wrist. With a heavy blow, your other wrist is nailed to the crossbar. Feel the excruciating pain now in both of your wrists.
You and the crossbar are then lifted and attached to the vertical part of the cross. As your full weight shifts to your wrists, your shoulders painfully dislocate as they are torn from their sockets. Your left foot is then placed on top of the right. They bend your legs until the bottom of your right foot rests on the cross. An iron spike is driven into your feet, through the arch and into the wood beneath them. Deep nerves in your feet are injured causing severe pain to shoot up your legs. A sign is nailed above your head proclaiming your only crime.
“The King Of The Jews.”
It then becomes difficult to exhale because the weight of your body pulls down on your outstretched arms and shoulders fixes your chest muscles in an inhalation state. Your breathing becomes shallow. The soldiers cast lots for your clothing. The crowd continues to taunt you.
“Where is your God now.”
“You don’t look like a king to me.”
“If you are the Son of God why can’t you save yourself?”
“You don’t look like a king to me.”
“If you are the Son of God why can’t you save yourself?”
Due to the lack of oxygen and fatigue your muscles start to cramp making it more difficult to breath. You find that the only way to exhale adequately is to lift your body by pushing up on your feet, flexing your elbows and shrugging your shoulders. This maneuver places your entire weight on your feet causing severe pain.
Also, flexation of the elbows causes rotation of your wrists about the iron nails and causes fiery pain along the damaged nerves. Lifting your body also painfully scrapes the scourging wounds on your back against the rough wooden cross causing more pain. Each breath effort becomes agonizing and tiring.
You see your mother in the crowd crying for you. You speak several times. Since speaking occurs when you exhale, these words are particularly difficult and painful.
After hours of endless pain, cramping causes partial suffocation and searing pain from the deep wounds on your back. Your arms and chest muscles become paralyzed due to severe cramping. The space around your heart begins to fill with serum and compresses your heart. The fluid loss in your tissues becomes critical. Your heart struggles to pump heavy, sluggish blood into your tissues. Your lungs gasp for gulps of air. You are in immense pain.
At noon the sun stops shining and darkness comes over the whole land for 3 hours. At 3 in the afternoon you say these words,
“It is finished! Father, into thy hands I commit my Spirit.”
You then cry out in a loud voice, lower your head, and die. Your death by crucifixion was in every sense of the word, excruciating. After your death one of the soldiers pierces your heart through your right side with an infantry spear and produces a sudden flow of blood and water. Later that day your body is taken down and placed in a tomb.
For me being saved means accepting forgiveness for my sins that nailed Jesus to the cross.
At any moment during His crucifixion Jesus could have just snapped His fingers and be taken away from His torment. He could have called a legion of angels to His rescue but He chose not to.
If you were hanging on the cross in His place would you have called for it to come to an end? Why didn’t He? The answer is simple. He loves us too much.
We often forget the reality of what it means when someone says that Jesus died for our sins. He did not just die for us. He died a horrible death on the cross for you and me and it was our sins that nailed Him to that cross.
Now, here the crucifixion story from the words of Luke. Listen to the word of God.
Luke 23:26-47 (New International Version)
New International Version (NIV)
The Crucifixion
26As they led him away, they seized Simon from Cyrene, who was on his way in from the country, and put the cross on him and made him carry it behind Jesus. 27A large number of people followed him, including women who mourned and wailed for him. 28Jesus turned and said to them, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children. 29For the time will come when you will say, ‘Blessed are the barren women, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!’ 30Then “ ‘they will say to the mountains, “Fall on us!”
and to the hills, “Cover us!” ’[a] 31For if men do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?”
32Two other men, both criminals, were also led out with him to be executed. 33When they came to the place called the Skull, there they crucified him, along with the criminals–one on his right, the other on his left. 34Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” And they divided up his clothes by casting lots.
35The people stood watching, and the rulers even sneered at him. They said, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, the Chosen One.”
36The soldiers also came up and mocked him. They offered him wine vinegar 37and said, “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.”
38There was a written notice above him, which read:|sc THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS.
39One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: “Aren't you the Christ? Save yourself and us!”
40But the other criminal rebuked him. “Don't you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence? 41We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.”
42Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.[c]”
43Jesus answered him, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.”
Jesus' Death
44It was now about the sixth hour, and darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour, 45for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. 46Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” When he had said this, he breathed his last.
47The centurion, seeing what had happened, praised God and said, “Surely this was a righteous man.”
26As they led him away, they seized Simon from Cyrene, who was on his way in from the country, and put the cross on him and made him carry it behind Jesus. 27A large number of people followed him, including women who mourned and wailed for him. 28Jesus turned and said to them, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children. 29For the time will come when you will say, ‘Blessed are the barren women, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!’ 30Then “ ‘they will say to the mountains, “Fall on us!”
and to the hills, “Cover us!” ’[a] 31For if men do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?”
32Two other men, both criminals, were also led out with him to be executed. 33When they came to the place called the Skull, there they crucified him, along with the criminals–one on his right, the other on his left. 34Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” And they divided up his clothes by casting lots.
35The people stood watching, and the rulers even sneered at him. They said, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, the Chosen One.”
36The soldiers also came up and mocked him. They offered him wine vinegar 37and said, “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.”
38There was a written notice above him, which read:|sc THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS.
39One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: “Aren't you the Christ? Save yourself and us!”
40But the other criminal rebuked him. “Don't you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence? 41We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.”
42Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.[c]”
43Jesus answered him, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.”
Jesus' Death
44It was now about the sixth hour, and darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour, 45for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. 46Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” When he had said this, he breathed his last.
47The centurion, seeing what had happened, praised God and said, “Surely this was a righteous man.”
cont...
after reading some of your ummm rather suggestivly racy posts I had thought that maybe all hope was becoming lost with the man I have come to know and care greatly for over these last several years...but I am so happy to see that you still have it in you my dear 
now off I go to see a live presentation of precisly what you just posed about lol
