Friday, June 23
He left behind an empty tomb
a church brother today shared about some truths about Jesus.
1. He existed.
Jesus was a man who walked upon the face of the earth.
there is no doubt of His historicity more so than that there is no doubt
napoleon bonaparte and julius caesar existed
2. He made radical claims
claims like He is the way the truth and the life.
that He is the only way, and nobody else goes to the Father except through Him.
claims that He will die to atone for the sins of man and rise up again 3 days later.
(note the uniqueness of Jesus's claims. Many of them had been prophesied by prophets long before His time.)
3. He left behind an empty tomb
sometimes people get offended because they cannot accept the idea that
Jesus 'ressurrected'. He 'rose from the dead'.
ignoring for a moment the people who 'saw' Jesus
during the period between 3 days after His crucifixion
and 40 days after
explore some theories others might rather believe.
a. Jesus didn't really die. He somehow survived the crucifixtion
the stabbing of His heart by the roman soldier just to make sure he really died
suffocation from spices meant to preserve his body during mummification
and perhaps survived for 3 days on a diet of spices
while burrowing His way across the world to India where He became a guru.
some people think that crucifixion kills
the way sundried tomatos or salted fish are preserved
guess again.
the victim's back is usually flogged with a flagrum
which ripps the skin off one's back, leaving the tissue and bone bare
the blood loss also leads to weakness,
sometimes even death or unconsciousness
in addition to the scourging, Jesus was brutally beat and tormented
by the Roman soldiers
the victim carries the cross (a weight of easily 100 pounds,
across the distance of two football fields) to the execution site
with nine inch nails driven into his wrists and ankles.
sending shocks of pain up his body, and rendering him
unable to bear the weight of his body, and the strain put on the arms and shoulders
will result in a disloaction of the shoulder and elbow joints
the victim's rib cage will be held in a fixed position, making it difficult
to breathe. one has to push up on his feet to take in gasps of air
the scourged back and raw tissue rubs against splintered wood
making each breath an agonising torture
and the body is weakened to a point that the pain and exhaustion
makes breathing impossible
the lungs begin to collapse, causing hypoxia.
loss of blood causes respiratory acidosis, increasing the strain of the heart
and faster beating to compensate
fluid builds up in the lungs, and the heart begins to fail.
even after Jesus had already died of suffocation
a Roman soldier pierced His side to doubly ensure that He was dead.
water and blood gushed out
if Jesus wasn't already dead, He would have died from cardiac rupture.
death comes in many forms. some painless. some excruciating.
crucifixion is the epitome of excruciating.
as the person heaves for breath. his back will scrape
against the splintered wood of the crucifix
the pain is torturous agony
b. His body was stolen by grave maurauders who wanted to plunder His tomb for the spices
Jesus's tomb seriously had nothing else of worth other than the spices used to wrap his body
unless there was some underground medical/forensic research that was going on
33A.D. no less. even before hippocrates existed
fact. Jesus's tomb was carved out of a rock and had a giant boulder rolled across its entrance
also, guarding His tomb were two rows of roman centurions
they would alternate duties, so one row slept while the other kept guard
during those times, as a roman centurion, being caught falling asleep on the job
was a crime punishable by death
so the tomb raiders would have to somehow bypass a hundred armed and wide awake roman soldiers
dynamite a giant boulder to smithereens
steal Jesus's body for the spice
and somehow piece together the boulder again without being found out.
c. it's a conspiracy. the romans stole the body
this theory is more absurd than the last
not only do the romans have no incentive to steal the body
(at least the tomb raiders might be in search of valuable spice)
the romans were actually the persecutors of Jesus,
and the propagators of the proposition that Jesus is not, in fact, Christ.
the romans WANTED the body to be in the tomb, just to prove that Jesus was in fact human
d. the disciples stole the body. they had a logical motive right?
they wanted to prove that their little ring leader was in fact the son of God
ignoring for a moment the physical impossibility of stealing the body (see b.)
many of the disciples, who claimed to have seen Jesus the ressurected
died defending the faith
Christians during that time were tortured by a variety of sadistic methods.
being torn apart by raging horses, crucifixtion (peter was crucified upsidedown)
and a particular favourite involved putting half-starved rats under a heated cauldron
atop the stomach of the christian
the ravenous mice literally dig their way out of their fiery grave
would these men die defending a lie if they had the body and therefore knew
that everything that they were holding on to was a lie, an absolute farce?
sherlock holmes once commented to watson (aside from elementary)
that once you eliminate the impossible
what's left no matter how improbable must be right.
people only reject the proposition that Jesus rose from the dead
because they cannot comprehend the probability of rising from death
0. oOo
