Spirit's Release

 So many crucifixes show Jesus hanging gracefully from a cross, but the cross was the cruelest of tortures barbaric minds could conceive.  Many artists represent the Savior nailed to the cross while the two thieves are fastened with ropes.  In reality the rope was there not only to hold the victim onto the cross, but it compressed the chest forcing out all air whenever the burning pain in the thigh muscles became so great that the poor victim had to let himself down.  The legs were bent in a cramped position so that the only way to draw a breath was to strain upward upon the nail driven either through both feet one over the other, or through both heels with the legs turned viciously to the side.  The nails through the hands were bad enough, but it was feared the weight of a grown man might tear through the tendons and ligaments there so the torturers drove another nail through the wrists to support the weight. 

It just so happened that the great nerve that carries the sensations from the fingers passes through the wrist and so any pressure coming to bear upon that cruel spike caused a sensation similar to striking one’s “crazy bone” in the elbow only more pronounced and sustained.  The whole time the person “hung” upon the nails through his arms and hands he would be racked by the shocks to the nerves mentioned.  Writhing in agony induced by the pressure of the nails on his nerves, the poor victim would be struggling to breathe as the rope across his chest would have pushed all the air from his lungs.  His only hope of drawing a breath would be to push down, resting his entire weight upon the nails through his feet or heels, and strain upward with exhausted leg muscles screaming because of the cramped way they were positioned beneath him.

When they broke the legs of the two thieves so they wouldn’t hang on the crosses through the Sabbath, it wasn’t so much the shock of the broken bones they were counting on to kill the thieves, it was that they could no longer  raise themselves up to draw a breath, so they suffocated.

Usually victims of the cross hung there for four days before they died; ninety six hours of excruciating pain exacerbated by an ever growing thirst brought on by the loss of blood, continuously writhing up and down; torn between the searing pain in the legs, and the need to breathe.  Rest was impossible!

Short hours into the ordeal, birds would come to peck out the victim’s eyes, if family wasn’t there to drive them away.  Then came the flies laying eggs in the moist eye sockets, and nose, leaving the victims blind, barely able to breathe past a thirst swollen tongue, wracked with pain in every muscle and joint, to await the inevitable hours of madness that came on when the maggots burrowed into the brain from the eyes and nose just before the release of death.

That was the death they condemned our beloved Savior to suffer, and even that paled when compared to the agony he suffered in the Garden.    D&C 19:18 Which suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit—and would that I might not drink the bitter cup, and shrink—

Dawn of Hope