Ian Henderson

The disciples are wiped out with sorrow. Desperate to keep their eyes open they stare through the darkness at the shadowy figure of their friend who is knelt down and rocking slightly. They can hear Jesus let out gasps of pain as he prays a stone's throw from where the exhausted disciples sit propped against olive trees. He had told them that his sorrow was crushing the life from him, but later when Jesus finally came to wake them, they where stunned to see his life, his actual blood, on his face and arms glowing like sweat in the moonlight. (1)

Hours later Jesus' body is battered, bruised, dehydrated and utterly exhausted. He has been blindfolded and punched by the temple police, chained and marched from Pilate's place, to Herod's and back to Pilate (around two and half miles) and now barely able to stand, he is sentenced by Pilate to be flogged. The Romans would strip a prisoner naked, tie their arms around a blood and flesh splattered pole, and then men the size of nightclub bouncers would release their anger, hatred and full body strength into shredding the prisoner's back and legs into a unrecognisable mess of blood, tissue and flesh. Unlike Indianna Jones' whip, the Romans used several strips of leather that had metal and bone embedded in them that would rip away chucks of muscle and flesh to expose the bone beneath. With his back torn to pieces, Jesus would have lost a huge amount of blood causing his blood pressure to fall and sending him into shock. The torture has only just begun.

Half dead and shivering with shock Jesus is forced to endure humiliation and even more pain, as the guards ram a crown of thorns on his head and throw a robe on his back. The robe sticks to the gashed out holes in Jesus' back as it soaks up the blood and helps it to clot. The sadistic soldiers start smacking Jesus around the head with a stick, forcing the crown of thorns to dig even deeper into Jesus' soft scalp perhaps causing damage to the nerve that supplies the face and creating a mind numbing pain down his face and neck. By now his hair and face are smothered in blood, due to the scalp being a part of the body that bleeds most copiously. Eventually the guards, sick of their games, remove the crown and robe from Jesus' body, and like carelessly pulling off a bandage, ripping off the robe causes excruciating pain and the wounds start to bleed again.

Outside the city, Jesus is thrown to the floor and nine-inch nails are smashed through his wrists, (2) puncturing precious nerves to the hand and causing agonising pain up both of Jesus' arms. The guards then lift the beam on which iron spikes now hold Jesus prisoner and attach it to a stake, which is already in the ground. (3) As Jesus' full weight slumps down on his pierced wrists, his arms and elbows dislocate and now with the legs twisted and bent at the knee a final cruel nail is hammered through Jesus' feet.

As Jesus hangs on the cross his whole upper body spasms and locks up in a deep cramp, it's not long before his arms and chest are paralysed and within moments he begins to suffocate and choke. With a twisted and evil creativity the perverted mind that invented this cruel death devised a torture that makes it impossible for the victim to breathe out. As he hangs, Jesus can suck air into the lungs that his body heavily weighs down on. But to exhale he must give his lungs freedom by lifting his body up, and with his arms crippled of strength, the only way he can let out air, and take another life giving breath, is to push up on the nail through his feet. So one minute he is choking to death the next he can't think for the pain. The lack of oxygen causes a leak of watery fluid from the blood into the tissues resulting in a build up of that fluid around Jesus' heart and lungs. He suffers terrible pain as the heart is slowly compressed and crushed.

After hours of limitless torture, desperately gasping for breath, the crushing pressure on his heart and the chill of death clawing through his body, Jesus clenches his teeth, pushes up despite the searing pain exploding in his feet and now straightened legs and breathes out his last words.

"Father! Into your hands I commit my spirit."

Finally the build up of fluid round his heart causes it to rupture. And it literally breaks.

Jesus Christ, the Son of God dies, his body given for you.

(1) Only one of the gospels says that Jesus began to sweat blood, which was written by Luke, who was also a doctor. Modern doctors explain that there is a rare condition called hemohedrois, where the blood vessels that feed the sweat glands break down and the blood mixes with that sweat so the body is covered in diluted blood and even forms drops which will fall to the ground. Hemohedrois is brought on from severe anguish and anxiety.

(3) Despite what we see on the walls of churches, it is more likely that the type of cross Jesus died on was a Tau Cross, which looked like a capital T. If prisoners were forced to carry the cross, the horizontal beam (the patibulum) would be lashed across the shoulders and taken to where the vertical piece (the stipes) was permanently in the ground.