-
The Manner of Jesus’ DeathThe Watchtower—1959 | December 1
-
-
sensitivity of his nerves, making the experiences he was yet to undergo bearable. Here we see the mercy of Jehovah in permitting Jesus to be made sick before he was nailed to the torture stake.
After Jesus had been arrested and given a mock trial, he was scourged and, at the insistence of the clergy-led crowd, was handed over to be impaled. Terrible as the experience was, the pain was no doubt lessened to some extent by the nerve-deadening experiences he had already undergone. Rather than allow Jesus to suffer long on the torture stake or to let the soldiers end his life by breaking his bones, “Jehovah himself took delight in crushing him,” which he did by letting him expire a few hours after he was impaled. Jesus, realizing what was happening, cried out: “My God, my God, for what purpose have you forsaken me?” And, overcome with grief, “Jesus let out a loud cry and expired.” (Mark 15:34, 37) In explaining what had happened, William Stroud, M.D., in The Physical Cause of the Death of Christ, refers to the observation of one Grüner, who says: “It is common for persons whose heart is oppressed by excessive congestion of blood, with anxiety and palpitation, and who are threatened with suffocation, to cry out with a loud voice.” Apparently his heart had been broken or one of the larger arteries had been ruptured, causing him to expire.
This made possible the fulfillment of another important part of Jehovah’s purpose. “Unless blood is poured out no forgiveness takes place.” (Heb. 9:22) And concerning the death of Jesus it had been written: “He poured out his soul to the very death.” (Isa. 53:12) His death had to be on a stake to make it possible to relieve believing Jews of the curse of the Law, but death on a stake would not cause blood to be poured out, and that was required in order to meet the divine requirements for the remission of sins of all believing mankind. (Gal. 3:13) But Jehovah’s having crushed Jesus by letting his hands and feet be pierced by nails and permitting a rupture of his heart or one of the arteries, the blood poured into his pericardium or thorax. Thus when one of the soldiers took a spear and pierced his side, “blood and water came out.” (John 19:34) In this way, while Jehovah was pleased to bring to an early end the agony of his Son, he also made it possible for all the things written by the inspired prophets to be fulfilled and for the requirements for salvation to be met.
-
-
‘Estrangement from God’The Watchtower—1959 | December 1
-
-
‘Estrangement from God’
The following declaration of the Amsterdam Assembly of the World Council of Churches regarding Christendom’s churches appears in the volume Treasury of the Christian Faith: “Within our divided churches, there is much which we confess with penitence before the Lord . . . , for it is in our estrangement from him that all our sin has its origin. It is because of this that the evils of the world have so deeply penetrated our churches, so that among us too there are worldly standards of success, class division, economic rivalry, a secular mind. Even where there are no differences of theology, language, or liturgy, there exist churches segregated by race and color. . . . We are in danger of being salt that has lost its savor and is fit for nothing.”
The Bible writer James comments on worldliness causing estrangement from God: “Do you not know that the friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever, therefore, wants to be a friend of the world is constituting himself an enemy of God.”—Jas. 4:4.
-