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| 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—
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| Dawn of Hope |
