Anatomy and Physiology of the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ

good evening everyone and this evening I'm going to be giving a presentation on the anatomy and physiology of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and this is obviously very appropriate for Good Friday to talk about the crucifixion and you might be wondering how I became interested in this topic and when I was in college and was taking anatomy and physiology my professor actually gave a short presentation on this topic and what it did was really gave me a greater appreciation for what Jesus did for us on the cross especially from a physical standpoint to understand a little bit better what he went through and after graduate school actually taught at a Christian College for a number of years and I had the privilege of teaching anatomy and physiology and the very first year that I taught I knew that I was going to give a presentation on this topic around Easter time because it was so impactful to me and I wanted others to learn that information as well so I've been giving a presentation on this topic for nearly 20 years now and while I think it is a very important topic to discuss it's definitely one of the most difficult presentations that I've ever had to get but my hope and the reason that I do this is that you will walk away this evening with a greater appreciation for what Christ did for you on the cross and realize just how important the history that is presented in Genesis is to the very purpose of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ so let's start off with a little bit about the history of crucifixion so and what's invented by the Persians and was actually a major form of capital punishment from about the sixth century BC to about the fourth century AD it was actually though perfected by the Romans and we'll talk a little bit more about that later it was used the Romans used it for slaves foreigners revolutionaries about criminal criminals they typically didn't use it against their own citizens because it was considered so horrific we actually get a word in our English language from the word crucifixion and that is excruciating okay so if someone says they're in excruciating pain we usually understand that to me in great agony or torment so that word excruciating it literally means from or out of the cross and so our knowledge of crucifixion comes not only from the Bible obviously but also from Jewish and Roman historian so let's talk a little bit about the events leading to the crucifixion before we get to that event itself because it plays a role and it's important to understand and Jesus is suffering and it's actually relevant to the crucifixion so let's start in the Garden of Gethsemane and Yosemite means oil press and oil was often used to symbolize the Spirit of the Lord in 1st Samuel 1613 it says so Samuel took the Horn of oil and anointed him meaning David and the presence of his brothers and from that day on the Spirit of the Lord came upon David and power so it's used to symbolize the spirit so we could say there at Gethsemane that the Spirit of God was crushed as he prays in earnest now I'm going to be showing you a clip from the movie of the Passion of the Christ that came out in 2004 and I'll show several of those Clips throughout this presentation and the reason that I do that is because it illustrates I think very graphically and very visually some of what Jesus went through I think images and pictures and videos like this can can do more to relay that to you than I can in words it's not a perfect movie obviously but it is fairly true to history and scriptures for the most part so that's why I like to use it in this presentation to give you again more of a sense of what Jesus went through so let's just watch a short clip now from the garden seem okay so scripture describes this scene of Jesus praying by saying this and being in agony he prayed more earnestly than his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground so I want to talk first about that part of being in agony and when we look up the Greek word for that it's agony ax and what's interesting is that's the only usage of that particular word agony ax in the New Testament and it means violent struggle or severe mental struggles and emotion and again it's hard for us to sort of grasp that because Jesus is taking on sins right he's taking on sin on himself yeah he is the perfect sinless son of God but he's taking sin he's taking that punishment that wrath of God for those sins on himself and we have no concept of what that's like but that is what Jesus did even though he was sinless now as a result of what's going on spiritually and mentally it has a physical outcome as well and that is a matted roses or bloody sweat and you can see that in the clip there you can see these dark spots on Jesus's faith and so this is a rare bleeding disorder Jesus is not the only person to have experienced as other people have as well but it is caused by extreme stress and for reasons we don't fully understand the the sweat glands are very vascular Maria they have a lot of capillaries around them in under extreme stress there's capillaries rupture and they leak into the sweat glands all right and so when the person sweats blood comes out with it so it looks like they are sweating blood now obviously a person isn't gonna bleed to death this way but the skin does become very tender and fragile as a result of that so this shows you a cross section of the skin and I'm circled there where the sweat gland is and then the capillaries which you kind of see there they are all around that sweat gland and so they'll rupture or leak into it and then the person sweats both obviously sweat but also blood with that as well so Jesus is under Jesus remember he's fully God and he's fully man so while he is taking the sins of the world sends of sinners obviously on himself and the punishment for that sin it has a physical outcome all right so next we have the Jewish trial so that he was arrested at gas M&E after midnight he's questioned at the temple by various religious leaders of that day and he is found guilty of blasphemy and sentenced to death now I want you to keep in mind a couple of things here first of all there were a lot of illegal aspects to his trial by both Jewish standards by Roman standards and secondly that he's found guilty of blasphemy right so he claimed to be God now of course it isn't blasphemy because He is God right we know that but they didn't want to believe that they chose not to believe that and so keep that in mind for a little bit later when we talk about the Roman trials because we're going to see the charge there as actually different than blasphemy so what is Jesus's physical and mental condition at this point so we have to remember something again Jesus is fully God he is also fully man and so Peter has denied him three times and all the disciples have deserted him all right so how must that feel these people that you invested your life in and Jesus has invested his life in for the last three three or so years now have left him right and they've even even Peter's gone to the point of denying he even knew him right so that has to have an impact on him from from a human perspective the guards have blindfolded him they taunted him they spit on him and he's been struck by guards with their fists now again all of this that I'm that I'm gathering here and telling you can be found in the Gospels themselves I just don't put the Scriptures up here because it would get kind of busy but you can read that in in the scriptures and and again his spiritual condition right he is again we have to think about that it's easy to miss I think but he's taking on sin he's taking on God's wrath for that sin so neck starts his Roman trials because the Jews needed to gain permission for execution from the Romans obviously because they're under Roman rule so he appears before Pilate who is the Roman governor at that time and they the Jews now charge him as being a self-appointed king now that's interesting because originally in the Jewish trials he was charged with blasphemy but the Romans would have cared nothing about that right because they had lots of gods so what was one more right they wouldn't have cared that he claimed to be God or a God that wouldn't bothered them but it would have bothered them that someone was trying to be king right so that's why he was charged a little bit different differently there and Pilate could find nothing wrong Pilate didn't really have a good relationship with the Jewish people he didn't want to deal with this situation and so he sent him to Herot who is the Tetrarch of Galilee and Perea Herrick could find nothing wrong with him either Harriet just wanted to show basically right he's like do these things you know for me show me who you are and so they mocked him obviously they dress this is the first time we see Jesus dressed in a robe they beat him but again Herod Herod was just trying and Pilate we're trying to appease the Jews right they couldn't really find anything wrong with Jesus but they didn't want to give they didn't want to you know they wanted to basically kind of keep passing it back and forth between the two of them to try to not deal with this problem because they weren't finding Jesus guilty so he sends him back to Pilate a second time now he appears before Pilate Pilate could still find nothing wrong his wife has even come to him and warned him not to have anything to do with this situation and so it's customary at that time to release a prisoner so I don't know what's going through pilots mind but I'm wondering if he's thinking okay so I'm gonna give them a choice this is how I'm gonna get out of this I'm gonna give them a choice between Jesus and a known murderer right Barabbas that's their choices and certainly don't let Jesus go at that point cuz they know Barabbas is a murderer you know he'll I'll get off this way now again I don't know that's what he's thinking but I but I kind of that's what maybe I might be thinking if I was trying to get out of this situation but the crowds didn't want right Jesus they wanted Barabbas it just shows you how they were again so against him and so he gave in to the crowds and released Barabbas instead of Jesus and he surrendered Jesus for crucifixion we even see a point where he washes his hands right and that's not a Roman custom that would be going to a Jewish custom at that time basically if someone was murdered and the leaders could not find the murderer they would wash their hands of this situation and saying they you know there's nothing more that they can do and the same is true here so he's kind of showing them hey I'm washing my hands in this situation I'm not guilty even though he is and it sure it's on your heads basically that this is happening all right so what is his physical and mental condition at this point well first of all Jesus is still feeling the effects of hamada doses he's been abandoned and denied by his close friends he's been physically beaten and mock he's sleep-deprived kids again all of this occurred basically overnight and into the next day he's walked approximately two and a half miles and to our knowledge he's been given no food or water at this point so again it's important to think about all these things because it helps us understand Jesus it's physical state and even mental state and spiritual state as he goes into the next part of this so the next part is the scourging or the flogging and this was the legal preliminary to every moment execution with few exceptions and so the instrument that was used would vary and when you watch this clip you'll actually see a table where they have several of those instrument but the one that they'll use the most in this particular clip is a short whip that had several single or braided leather tongs on it and on those tongs were tied Iram balls and or sharp pieces of bone that were tied at intervals and so again this is a very graphic clip but I think it's important to have again a greater appreciation for the horrific net the how horrific it was what Jesus went through so let's watch so it's a it's a very challenging scene to watch obviously and when I watch it I can't help but think you know what he didn't have to do this he's God he didn't do anything wrong he didn't do anything to deserve this I did we did he could have wiped those people out in an instant he could have been completely free of that situation but he chose not to I mean he chose not to out of his great love for us hey he wanted to obey the father's plan I think this was how God had determined that our sins would be forgiven and so that we could have a relationship with him and we can live eternally with him in heaven so the procedure there that you see the individual is stripped they don't obviously have remain clothes on their hands are tied to a post of some kind or chained they scourge the back the buttocks and the legs now in this movie later in this particular scene they actually turned Jesus over and they scourge him on the front that's probably more for dramatic effect than it is reality because doing that would potentially cause them to rip into vital internal organs which would cause the person to die before they got to the crucifixion and they don't want that okay so the back the buttocks and legs tend to have more fat and muscle and they protect the organs so that's probably where they would have done most of the scourging to soldiers as you saw in the movie clip or one the alternated position and there was no limit and again in the movie they don't limit themselves technically Jewish loss at 39 but why should we think that they obeyed the law when it came to this they didn't in many other aspects of Jesus's trial and leading up to this so there's no reason to think that they would have done that now this particular image I'm showing you comes from a article that was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association back in the mid 80 and it's a very good article you can find it freely online it's called on the physical death of Jesus Christ and it's a very comprehensive article dealing with the crucifixion probably one of the best ones that I found out there and so encourage you to get that if you have more of interest in this and read it you can see Jesus I'm tied here actually to a taller post but again tied or chained to some kind of post in scourging again in the back the buttocks and the leg so the whole idea of the weapon that they're actually using and again Romans were very good at what they did sadly with hurting people so those little iron balls would basically tenderize it's like acting like a meat tenderizer almost because it would beat the back and and you know that those parts of Jesus and then the sharp things after it's been beat and thinned out a little bit will rip into it it's easier for it to rip into the skin so it's sadly it's just kind of like tenderizing it and then being able to rip into it better so the result as you saw as a bloody mass of bone and muscle and so the individual depending on how severe it is might start to undergo shock from blood loss literally the flesh ends up in strips or ribbons as a result of this very deep bruising laceration and this would weaken the victim and the extent of this would then determine their time on the cross now as the movie portrays and as we often think Jesus was be very very severely and I and I think he was but it's hard to sort of get that idea from the scripture itself at least in the Gospels because it says it just says and when he had scourged Jesus so there's no indication of the severity actually in the Gospels themselves but I do think there's a lot of other evidence in the scripture that would lead us to believe it was very severe and one of those is in first Peter and it says who himself bore our sins in his own body on the tree that we having died to sins might live for righteousness by whose stripes you are healed all right so stripes if we look up the Greek word for that it's mo lopes and that again is the only usage of that particular Greek word in the New Testament now in the and in the original language even though it has an S on the end and is actually singular so it's literally saying by his stripe okay it's how we would say that in English and it could indicate that Jesus is back was so severely beaten that it just looked like a single wound right a mass a bleeding bruise tissue it means a bruise or well or wound welt a wound that trickles with blood and it may again indicate the seriousness seriousness of Jesus's scourging so I'll talk about a few other verses that I think indicate that as well as we go along here now there was additional mocking and beating of Jesus so one of the first things they did after this was placed on him a scarlet robe and a crown of thorns so let's watch a clip so they placed on him a crown of thorns and it probably was from this tree which is called as it's a Festina Christi because it's believed again that that's what they would have used I had the privilege of visiting Israel last year and actually saw this particular tree and it is extremely thorny and where these groats these thorns that grow on it and when they were trying to put it into the shape of a crown it may have actually been more like a helmet because this is very hard to deal with those thorns are about an inch in length if you live in an area where they have honey locust trees or locust trees you've seen these we have some on our they are very painful if you run into them and so this would have been extremely painful he was struck we know on the head with the staff and they showed that the scalp is very vascular and there's a lot of nerve endings in it you know if you've ever cut your forehead it's very painful there's a lot of blood that comes from that and a lot of pain because of damaging those nerves there so he was mocked obviously he was spit on and even his beard was pulled out now people might say okay where's that and the gospel's well that part isn't that actually comes from the Old Testament and what's fascinating to me is that I always say I could probably make a talk on the crucifixion from the Old Testament alone and that's because there's probably more details about crucifixion in the Old Testament than there is in the New Testament but what's really fascinating about that is that at the time that the Old Testament was written the books of Isaiah and the books of the Psalms written by David there was written by David those were written hundreds of years before crucifixion was even a form of capital punishment so David and I day I had never seen a crucifixion yet they wrote about it in very precise detail specifically about Jesus's crucifixion but the only way that they could know those details as if they came directly from God I mean it shows us again that this is God's Word these words come directly from God now say I we made I gave my back to those who struck me and my cheeks to those who plucked out the beard I did not hide my face from shame and spitting and so we know he's being mocked we know he's being horrific ly beaten even to the point of pulling out his beard they then later took off the road because he's not going to have that when he's on the cross and you can imagine if he's got this tremendous these tremendous wounds they put this robe on him and then they take it off I'm sure they did not take it off nicely it would have reopened all of those wounds because it would stick to it and now again would be very painful back scripture says he was so severely beaten that he did not look like a human being and again this is why I say before he even got to the cross that's scourging and everything that they did to him after that was extreme and I always say this is where I believe the movie falls short because he still looked like a human being in the I don't know how you beat a human being to the point where they don't look like a human being and we read that again in Isaiah it says as many were astonished at you his appearance was so marred beyond human semblance and has formed beyond that of children of mankind so that's how severely beaten that Jesus was this is before he even got to the cross all right so what is his physical condition at this point you can obviously see it's going to be very deteriorated he's in a pre shock to a shock state specifically he's undergoing hypovolemic shock and we say hypovolemic it means his volume is low okay because he's lost a lot of blood and fluid at this point so some of the symptoms are that the individuals obviously bleeding on there cold clammy and sweaty and the reason for that is because in this in a shock state the blood is going to be preferentially shunted to the heart and the brain could you've got to keep those things going right or the individual die so the extremities like the hands and the feet and those things would start to feel very cold because Bloods being taken away from them and again to our knowledge he's not had any water or food intake at this point but he's losing a lot of blood volume all right so before we get to the crucifixion let's talk about the cross itself so there's two parts to a cross there's the stipes which is the upright post and then you have the particular much is the horizontal crossbar now Jesus's cross was probably what we call Tower shaped which means it looked like an uppercase T not a lowercase T like we typically represent just because that was a very common cross shape at that time Jesus would have only carried the particular which was about 75 to 125 pounds now and almost I think every dramatic presentation I've ever seen of the crucifixion Jesus carries the entire cross and I understand for dramatic purposes why people do that but reality was they only carried the cross bar and they would have been tied to that somehow they would have carried that and then when they got to the place of crucifixion that particular was then mounted onto the stipes probably on the ground and then they were raised up what we typically think of as the cross structure also the Romans added a set I'll or a said ulam which is a block of wood position either below the feet or below the and this see actually prolong crucifixion alright and we're gonna talk a little bit later about why that is the case so you can see here in this image you can see the particular which Jesus is tied to or somehow secured to it because that's what he would have carried the stipes is usually either it's already in the ground at the place of crucifixion or it's on the ground and they're gonna mount that particular with the person on it on to that stipes you can see the block of wood there the set out or the sigillum and again either below the feet or below the buttocks and the towel shape you see the uppercase T and the titleist which gives the charge against that person which in jesus's case was being King of the Jews now we know that Jesus carried the particular him for some period of time but again he was so apparently weakened so badly beaten that he could not carry it all the way to where the crucifixion occurred and so Simon of Cyrene was forced to carry it at that point and at some point along the way to where the crucifixion was he was offered wine mixed with myrrh which is also called gall now that is a pain reliever it's an analgesic Jesus tasted it and refused and I think that's especially important to think about because he refused it why because nothing could take away the punishment that he had to pay for our sins nothing nothing could take away the pain nothing can take away God's wrath for our stand on himself nothing right he had to bear it all so let's watch a little bit of the scene of Jesus being nailed to the cross so again as we watch that we have to think about that he wouldn't do that for us right he didn't have to but he chose to hey he wanted to do that so our relationship with God could be restored so that we could live eternally with him in heaven and what a great great sacrifice that was were not deserving of that right but because of God's plan he had a plan from the very beginning or and talk about that a little bit later he had a plan to save us right to allow us to know Christ as our Savior and to be eternally with him so we see that his hands were now onto the cross these are not nails like we think of nails these are iron spikes so there are about five to seven inches in length and it was either through the palms or through the wrist the Greek word for hand there doesn't indicate I mean that always includes the whole hand including the wrist so we don't know exactly from scripture some people say it couldn't have been the palms because the body weight would have caused them just to fall off the cross but I talked to our anonymous here dr. Minton and he says he doesn't think that there's a lot of strong connective tissue in there and that probably could support the weight of the body but either way either through the palms or the wrists he was we know he was nailed to the cross now doing that again either way would have damaged what's called the median nerve which runs right through the middle of the wrist and up into the hand and then spreads out so damaging that nerve is gonna cause a condition called called Alger which is literally like radiating shocks of pain throughout the arms and it would have had regardless of where he was now and it had to be between the bones none could be broken and the reason for that is because Jesus is the ultimate sacrifice right he is the ultimate Passover lamb and so according to the Old Testament no bones could be broken of the Passover lamb and so the way that this particular article chose to talk about this was that it was through the wrist right and so again a little bit different from the movie there obviously they had it through the palm but either way you're talking an amazing amount of pain as a result of that and whether it's through the wrist or through the palm it could it is possible not to break the bones it's probably a little bit easier through the palm not to do that but either way we know that no bones could be broken because he is the ultimate sacrificial lamb now one of the things that's a little hard to understand from the clip because you notice that they're they're pulling his arm out to reach where the hole was for the nail so they're dislocating his shoulder in the clip to get out so you might get the impression that he's pulled tight like this what we would call a tee position actually when he's hung up on the cross his arms are flexed so it's a wide position like this and but nonetheless as he either whether his arms are dislocated as you saw on the clip there when he's on the ground or or not when he gets up on the cross when that cross is finally put up the weight of the body actually dislocates the shoulders as well as possibly the elbows and so very painful and we get that idea from Psalm 22 14 as well it says I import out like water and all my bones are out of joint my heart is like wax it has melted within me so we get that idea of bones being out of joint from this messianic Psalm now next his feet were nailed to the cross and it was either through the feet or the ankles you know let me talk about that in a minute but either way you're gonna damage again major nerves the peroneal nerves and that's gonna cause the cause algid radiating shocks of pain throughout the legs and you do understand this from this particular clip so the knees you can see were flexed right they're bent they put that piece of wood they had it so his legs were bent up and so they would have been bent and rotated a little bit laterally and we'll talk about why that's important again and a little bit as well now whether it was through the ankle or through the actual foot itself no bones could be broken again because he is the ultimate sacrificial lamb now in this particular article they chose to show it as being through the feet so one foot on top of the other and then through the middle on the cross however archeological evidence from this time period we do have I was again I was privileged to go to Israel last year and see this in the Israeli Museum it's one of the few evidences that we have of crucifixion it actually shows the nail going through the ankle all right so or the iron spike so the feet were actually on either side of the stipes and nailed in from the from the sides so that is that seems to be more consistent like I say thinking about it that way because that's consistent with the archaeological evidence but either way no bones broken and it would damage a lot of nerves either way so a lot of pain as a result of that some other aspects of the crucifixion they would hang the titleist above the victim they would taunt and mock the victim as he was on the cross insects birds and animals which while this is really hard to think about they would burrow into the wounds they would pick at and devour the body I think a lot of times we have this idea that Jesus was or any person that was crucified was like really far off the ground but the reality is they were much closer to the ground itself and so some people not Jesus but some people were on the cross for days and so it's very likely then the animals would have access to them and obviously terrible things as a result of that as they're hanging there and we know that we Jesus's captors were there it's possible that there was demonic activity as Jesus suffered on the cross and again I'm gonna show you why from Scripture and obviously being forsaken by the Father and we saw him this messianic Psalm we read many Bulls have surrounded me strong Bulls of Bashan encircled me they gape at me with their mouths like a raging and roaring lion and so this this could be reference to obviously his captors the people that were against him but even to on the devil himself right because first Peter 5:8 says your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour okay so we have that roaring lion there which may indicate that four dogs have surrounded me the congregation of the wicked has enclosed me they had pierced my hands and my feet save me from the lion's mouth and from the horns of the wild oxen so again we see a lot of animal imagery which may indicate Jesus's captors and/or that demonic activity and then finally at the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice saying my God my God why have you forsaken me so the father's wrath on the son right for arson because remember Jesus is sinless he is the perfect sinless son of God yet he took our sins on himself and he took the wrath of God for that sin on himself and died for us but what actually leads from it he's from a physical standpoint to death on the cross and you might find this surprising but people actually die from asphyxiation or suffocation and let me explain why so individuals on the cross actually have a problem with breathing out okay so when we breathe are ripped when we breathe in inhalation our ribcage goes up and out and it's an active process and air coming in but when we breathe out it's a passive process so the elastic tissue that's around our lungs and in our lungs recoils okay it sort of bounces back the muscles relaxed and when that happens our rich ribcage falls down and the air goes out but when an individual is on a cross like this their breathing muscles there all of this is pulled very tight right the breathing muscles their lungs tissue the muscles across the chest or pulled right tight and because the weight of their arms and the weight of the body is on the arms and they're slouching down and so you've got all this weight here so there can be no passive exhalation that can't and doesn't snap back so to speak to push the air out so they can't passively exhale on the cross but they have to be able to breathe right because otherwise you die very quickly so the only way to breathe is to basically go from like we said that sort of a Y position to more of a T position they have to sort of straighten up and be able to take the weight off that area of their chest and those muscles in order for the air to be able to come out so that's the only way that they can breathe from moving from what we call again sort of the Y position to more of a T position sort of straightening up and you see that illustrated in this image here a little bit again that takes the weight off the chest muscles off the lungs basically so that they can recoil and the air can come out so every time the person takes a breath on the cross I want you to think about that every single time they have to move they have to go up right from the from the Y position to a more straight position and T position order to breathe out so you can imagine how difficult this is and how extremely painful this is right because they're gonna have to rotate the wrists about or the or the palm didn't want about the nails to do this so severe pain and their arms the back the buttocks and the legs which have been severely beaten we know in jesus's case are gonna scrape against that cross and I'm sure it's not finely sanded wood I'm sure that's extremely painful this is not gonna be some sort of fluid movement right it's gonna be rough it's gonna be up and then slump back down very quickly most likely so that's gonna be a lot of pain on the feet now I mentioned about that said I'll write that's either below the feet in the case of the movie which you saw on the crucifixion scene or below the buttocks and here's what that does the reason it prolongs crucifixion is it because it gives them sort of a resting point okay so either a way to sit down a little bit or a push off point for their feet to allow them to get up to be able to breathe out that's how it prolongs crucifixion because it gives them more time it basically gives them sort of a resting area to be able to breathe in and out longer so when a person is breathing like this the breathing becomes very shallow portions of the lungs begin to collapse and the individuals has hypoxia or low oxygen now Jesus still managed to say seven phrases think about that it's so challenging to even breathe right and and out yet there were things that Jesus needed to say right and wanted to say and so he did say this thing now as a result of the lack of oxygen muscles begin to cramp and they have what we call too tannic contractions and you might think about this in relation to tetanus and the reason is because your muscles actually need oxygen to relax and if you don't have oxygen your muscles stay really firm basically and they can't relax they stay contracted and so that's gonna be problematic again if you're trying to raise yourself up every time to breathe out a respiratory acidosis starts to occur there's a buildup of carbon dioxide in the blood because individuals not breathing very well the blood gets more acidic as a result of this and that causes body cells not to function properly it's kind of like if you think about after you've done really heavy exercise if you ran a bunch you get lactic acid buildup as well as some co2 build-up but mainly it's from a different kind of asset and you feel like oh like jelly like your muscles can't work that's how this individual is feeling on the cross now as a result of all these things happening the body the brain signals the body to breathe more and to the heart to pump more to try to compensate for this right to offset that but that's pretty hard to do right in the condition that he's in we know that Jesus was dehydrated and the reason for that is because he says I am thirsty right he is to our knowledge he's not been given anything to drink this entire time so he's given wine vinegar on a stick which is not a pain reliever at all so as a result of being dehydrated the blood that he does have then which isn't very much at this point is very viscous or very thick so it's not able to move through the body very well and give him the oxygen that he needs and during shock like I said before blood is preferentially shunted to the brain and the heart sorry the brain once you get farther along in it not even the heart and so the heart and other muscles start to die from lack of oxygen and organs as well and so an individual then usually on the cross would succumb to myocardial infarction or cell death so it starts to lead to cardiac arrhythmias the heart is dying so it can't send electrical signals correctly anymore you've got a lot of increased fluid production around the lungs and the heart the pleural areas and the pericardial areas you get pulmonary edema which is fluid in the lungs because the blood pressure has dropped so much it causes actually the liquid part of the blood to squeeze out into the lungs and so the lungs are getting fluid filled so it makes it harder to breathe and eventually the individual would probably die of a heart attack so the or cardiac rupture the heart would literally burst as a result of this now all of these were likely contributing factors to Jesus's physical death on the cross now I want to make this very very clear because Jesus is obviously unique he is God and He is man and so it's different for him in this sense than anyone else because scripture clearly records that he gave up his life willfully right no one can take it from him not even all of this now not not to say that these things didn't happen they did physically from a standpoint these are things that his body would have been going through but he made the decision to die right no one could take that from him and we know that very clearly we read that in both Luke and on now Jesus's death actually was very quick it was approximately three to six hours that he spent on the cross a scriptural chords that Pilate was surprised again that may be an indication to some degree at least from a physical standpoint that his beating was very severe now he died and then so the soldiers came around to take him off the cross and they did not have to break his legs now you might think what is that you know why why would they talk about that if an individual was on a cross think about this and they break the legs they want to get a person off the cross quickly they would just break their legs what would that do they can't lift up anymore right they can't lift up to breathe out and so they would suffocate very quickly as a result of that but for Jesus they didn't have to do that because he was already dead and again that fulfills a prophecy because no bones could be broken but just to be sure they confirmed his death by a spear through the side now I know there are some ideas out there that Jesus nearly passed out on the cross he swooned he didn't really die there is no way that the Romans would have left someone off the cross if they truly weren't dead right they were perfectionist at what they did so they confirmed his death by a spear through the side and you can see that Illustrated here said that spear I knew what they were doing what have most likely pierced the heart and the lungs right so no individuals gonna live if they were even alive which Jesus wasn't but after that and so the scripture records that blood and water came out water likely from the cavity surrounding the heart and the lungs and then blood from the heart now if it ended there if that was it and Jesus died we would have no hope of eternal life because if Jesus can't defeat death and neither can we and we would have no reason to serve God because he would be dead I mean Scripture Paul makes that clear he says and if Christ is not risen then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty right there would be no point and and so that's one area where I think the movie really falls short because I think you know we go through these horrific things that Jesus had to suffer right and they are horrific and it shows us how horrible our sin is and what God thinks of that but then the good news is right he resurrected he did not stay dead he died on Friday but he directed on Sunday and so we we known that from Scripture and that's the greatest part of all of that and you get a little sense of that from the movie but I think it would have indeed a lot better right had they shown that more and and we could celebrate in that that he did not stay dead so while this isn't the end of the story like I say in some respects because Jesus did resurrect it is the end of my ability to scientifically analyze on the situation or to talk about it from a from a physical standpoint because some people have called this my resurrection talk which I always kind of laugh because if I was talking about resurrection from a scientific or physical standpoint it would be very short right because it's a miracle and these things don't happen it it is one of the greatest miracles ever and it's completely beyond science but even though I can't understand it from a scientific perspective it doesn't make me believe it any less I absolutely am confident that Jesus resurrected and how do I know that I know that from his work I know that from eyewitness accounts that are given in his word and Paul really summarizes these in first Corinthians he talks about that he was buried and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures that he was seen by sefa stand by the twelve he was seen by over five hundred brother and at once he was seen by James then by all the Apostles and we have it several accounts of him appearing to the disciples and on on several occasions but one of the most well known obviously is when he appeared to Thomas because Thomas wasn't there the first time he appeared so he got he gets the moniker of doubting Thomas right but then he did appear eventually when Thomas was there and he said you Thomas treat your finger here and look at my hand and reach your hand here and put it into my side right from where the spear went through do not be unbelieving but believing he stayed on earth after his resurrection to help people believed that he had resurrected to help them no he wanted people to stop doubting and believe and when I read that I think about us here at the Creation Museum and our tagline of prepare to believe you know Christians don't reject the resurrection we're actually very quick to believe it and to defend it because we realize how problematic it is for Christianity if the resurrection didn't happen right because if Jesus is dead then we're still dead in our sins and we have no hope of eternal life but what I find is that many Christians do not accept or believe the Genesis account of creation they don't accept Genesis as history that God created in six 24-hour days approximately 6,000 years ago and in fact they're very quick to reject it on some times and so they don't realize though how problematic that is for Christianity and it's related to the whole purpose of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ see the reason that Jesus needed to die on the cross where does that start it starts back in the Garden of Eden and we read in Genesis it says but in the tree of knowledge this is God speaking of good and evil you shall not eat when the day that you eat of it you shall surely die I mean he told that to Adam we know had Eve had knowledge of that because there was no disease and death and suffering and God's original perfect creation but if they sinned if they disobey God that's exactly what would happen and that's exactly what they did right they ate from the tree and as a result we have death and suffering and so that's why it's so important to understand that Genesis is history that's why Jesus needed to die on the cross because we're all descended from Adam and Eve we all have that sin nature we're all sinners and we're all in need of the redemption and God love is so much right that he sent his son to die for us he didn't have to right he's God but he chose to because He loves us so much but a lot of Christians don't accept Genesis as true history and when I'm showing there on the screen instead they believe that God used evolution over millions of years and if God did that then that means there was millions of years of death disease and suffering before Adam even came into existence but if that's the case and the only conclusion that we can draw from Scripture that God thinks death is very good right because that's what he said after he finished his creation and Genesis 1:31 II declared it very good but if that took him millions of years of death disease and suffering and to bring about mankind and ever every other living thing I supposedly recorded in the fossil record then we've got a major problem because now instead of death and sin being linked we've unlinked them right no longer is the wages of sin death because instead of death being the punishment for sin we've got death millions of years before Adam and Eve even exist to sin and that's a problem in that idea it's completely inconsistent with the Bible because sin and death are always linked right for the wages of sin is done that is the punishment for sin God does not view death as good much less very good and so believing in evolution in millions of years undermines the authority of the Bible because that means part of it isn't true right and so if one believes that God used evolution in millions of years it really destroys we need to understand this because it's not just about what happened to Jennison it's about what happens to the gospel and what happens to what Jesus did because it destroys if God used death if he used evolution if he used millions of years it destroys the purpose of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ right because what exactly did Jesus died to redeem us from if the punishment for sin is not death right what did what was he doing and you know who really understands this well it's the Atheist now I hope that's changing over time right that's why we do what we do here at the Creation Museum to help educate and equip people on this and what the Bible says but the Atheist get this they understand this from Scripture right the following is a quote from a Christmas campaign by the American atheist if years ago and here's what they said no Adam and Eve means no need for a savior it also means that the Bible could not be trusted as a source of unambiguous literal truth it is completely unreliable because it all begins with a myth and builds on that as a basis no follow man means no need for atonement and no need for a redeemer you know it now I don't agree with the Atheist very often but they make an excellent point here they say if you don't have Adam and Eve and you don't have sin then you don't need a Savior because what is he here to save us from right there is no fall so there is no sin so there is no need for Redeemer and there's no need for our atonement and they say if it all begins with a myth then why believe any of the rest of it we only really have two choices it's either millions of years of death and disease and suffering that occurred before Adam sinned so then death cannot be a punishment for sin and it totally annihilates the purpose of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ or death is a punishment for adamson and Jesus died to redeem us from that punishment right that's why it's so important to believe that Genesis is true history that death is the punishment for saying that death is not very good right that sin and death are linked and not sin when separated from God for eternity but Jesus became sin for us all scripture said and he died and he resurrected so that our sins could be forgiven and that we can live eternally with him and you know that promise of a savior was made to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden they had just committed the first sin right the worst thing possible and all of creation was cursed as a result the ground has thorns and thistles man dies animals die we would suffer pain and disease and death but God had a plan right that's the good news of all of this we have all this bad news in Genesis but we have the good news of Jesus Christ we have the good news of the gospel and he revealed that plan to Adam and Eve in Genesis 3:15 and he's cursing the serpent right who Satan isn't in he says and I will put enmity or hatred between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed capital S he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel I mean the see that's being talked about here is Jesus Christ and yeah Satan would strike at Jesus right he would die a horrific death on the cross as we've already sung seen he would strike his heel but that's not a deathblow right but Jesus would resurrect from the dead and he would crush Satan's head that is a death blow and he would overcome death and over and by his death and resurrection pay the price for our sin so that we could do the same because of genesis 3:15 that first messianic prophecy God revealing his plan we have John 3:16 right for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life see the whole purpose for the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ it's based on what happened in Genesis right it's based on that first Adam because if those first 3 chapters of Genesis do not present true history I mean if they really are not true then you do not need the rest of the Bible you don't because what's the rest of the Bible about the prophecies of Jesus coming his life when it's coming again and we don't need any of those things if what happened in Genesis 1 2 3 didn't happen right if that history is untrue and we need to understand that often we'll put the Bible kind of upside down Genesis is on the bottom right because it's the first book of the Bible and it's the foundation upon which everything else is built including the gospel that's why I say what we do here it's not just about Genesis it's not just about creation or origins it's about the authority and the truthfulness of all of God's Word from the first verse to the last verse and the very gospel itself but people might say okay so is believing in Genesis as history is this really necessary for salvation so I ask you does Romans 10:9 say that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead and believe in a young or six or old days you will be saved no it does not say that right instead it just that part isn't in there about believing in a young earth it says you will be saved right you repent and believe you will be saved so we might be tempted to think okay so if believing the Genesis account of creation and the fall it really isn't important then you know because it's not necessary for salvation it's sort of a side issue it's not it's not a main issue it's not a foundational issue but here's the thing and it's really illustrated well in this cartoon this guy says it's a New Testament that matters not that Old Testament stuff right and we're being told that over and over again sadly by some even very well-known preachers that we can just leave we don't have to worry about the Old Testament we can just leave it out you know we're New Testament Christians we just need to focus on the New Testament but we need to understand that there are real problems if we try to unhitch right or if we try to separate Jennison and the doctrines of creation and the fall the history of Adam and Eve and what they did in the Garden and resulting curse on man from the Gospel message if we try to divorce those things because we're then removing the very foundation upon which the very gospel is built forth by the one man's offense may die much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one man Jesus Christ abound it to many I mean if we choose to separate those two and we choose not to believe what happened in Genesis it's gonna make us inconsistent as Christian it's going to undermine the authority of Scripture and it gonna make us in effective in our witness right because once people stop believing that first part of the Bible it's only amount of time do they stop believing the rest of it either right if the miracles of creation aren't true then why believe in the miracles of the virgin birth and the resurrection of Jesus Christ it's only a matter of time it's a slippery slope and sadly sadly I've seen Christian going down that slippery slope stop believing in Genesis stop believing in Adam and Eve stop believing in the fall and what happens to the gospel it's totally different it's not what the Bible says and because it undermined the authority of Scripture it undermines the the gospel itself when we don't believe that history that's presented in Genesis so it's important that we realize this right and that's why I in we're talking about the crucifixion and even the resurrection we're talking about Genesis because Genesis is a very foundation upon which the gospel is built and if we take away that history then we take away the gospel that's rooted in that history as well the Bible needs to be our thinking in every area from the very first first to the very last and only then can we truly demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against knowledge of God and take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ that's the only way that we can do that now I want to help you become equipped I hope that this presentation has helped you gain a greater appreciation for what Christ did because we need to understand that right we need to understand his divinity as well as his humanity and the price the awesome price that he paid for us but I want to help you know how you can become better equipped because in the in the world that we live in today people don't even know who Jesus is right so if we start with the gospel maybe it's gonna be confusing to a lot of people because they don't understand why they're sinners they don't understand why they need to be saved or what they need to even be saved from we have to start at a very different point right we have to start in Genesis we have to start with God is the creator we have to start with creation and Adam and Eve and their fall so that they can understand the reason for the end of need for Jesus Christ so how do we do that well one of the things I want you to do is sign up and answers insider.com for our monthly newsletter this is a great way to stay up to date with everything that's happening here at the Ark Encounter the Creation Museum and Answers in Genesis our resources are in there so lots of great things for you if you do this and sign up you'll get a free digital download a fire in my bones which is a testimony of Ken Ham who is the founder and CEO of Answers in Genesis that built the ark and the museum so this is a great testimony understanding why we do what we do in defense of Easter so I want to share some of our Easter products first this is by Tim Chaffee he's going to be talking the Rusted this weekend he'll have two presentations at he'll address some of these issues that he talks about in his book in defense of Easter as well as in this DVD series risen without a doubt I mean so talking about more focusing on the resurrection so I kind of talked to you about the crucifixion he's going to do the other part and talk to you more about the resurrection you can also get information on that in the books how do we know the Bible is true really being able to defend who Jesus in his virgin birth has done in his resurrection we also had this new little booklet called a biblical and historical look at Easter okay so this is great if you want something to hand out to people and I know we're going through the current coronavirus pandemic right now but these are great tools that you can use to really witness to people and help them know the truth about Easter because most school-aged children that are in the public school system if you question them about Easter they do not know why we celebrate it they think it's the Easter Bunny but it isn't right and we have to give them the truth this book by Simon Turpin he's the head of our UK office ten biblical reasons that Jesus is God again a great booklet for understanding more about this and helping people know truly who Jesus is and the purpose and meaning of life again a great little pamphlet that you can hand to people as a witnessing tool to understand the history that's presented in Genesis and the gospel that's rooted in that history a couple of things here on Adam because Adam and Eve and their very existence is being highly questioned within evangelical Christian age day and here's the problem again you probably already know what I'm gonna say if we do away with Adam and Eve then we do away with the fall then we do away with the gospel so we need to defend their historicity and so the genetics of Adam and Eve which is a DVD that I did on this topic as well as searching for Adam are great tools to look at this from both a biblical and scientific standpoint again show that they did exist and that science is consistent with that for children again helping them understand this from a very young age the true account of Adam and Eve as well as a is for Adam and I'm talking about this again we need to evangelize in a very different way and gospel we set is a tremendous resource you can probably read this book in two hours but it's really eye-opening for hope it's helping us know how we need to evangelize in a world that is totally biblically illiterate how do we do that we have got to start in Genesis we've got to start with God the Creator the live evolution in millions of years are next to the Bible this is the textbook of our ministry it's who we are and it's why we do what we do the answers books 1 2 3 and 4 as well as a flood of evidence which is kind of like the fifth answers book these are great tools for helping you know how to equip yourself on the questions that people are asking where did King get his wife how do you know today means a day what about millions of years radiometric dating dinosaurs aliens all of these things that people are questioning and asking and we have opportunity to give them biblical as well as scientific answers we have a version of this for teens as well as a version for children these are great things to put in that Easter basket right or great things to really equip and help them they're gonna last a lot longer so to speak and be more fulfilling ultimately than all that candy answers magazine this comes out six times a year it's a great magazine for the whole family on building that biblical worldview right looking at the current issues of our day looking at the current things that are going on in science today and being able to look at that biblically so there's a kid's magazine and every magazine that you get as well as you'll get the digital edition to begin book is a great book I know again during this pandemic I think we have a great opportunity to witness to people because they're looking for answers they're searching for things and they've got time to think about it so let's take advantage of that with some of the booklets that I talked about the beginning and even this book begin which has portions of Scripture beginning in Genesis going all the way to Revelation with some commentary to kind of tie it all together and then what does it mean to be saved and answers to 10 most asked questions so it's I always call it the Bible in a nutshell okay so it's a great resource to get people to start reading scripture and understanding what the Bible means be sure to check out our live programs that are going on every day at 10123 and 7:00 Eastern time as well as our special answers Easter event we have a lot more coming up on the Saturday and some and Sunday for all ages of the family even with special kids and devotions and so encourage you to check out the schedule go to answers Easter org and please consider hoping to sustain our ministry right the way that we're able to bring you this programming especially during this time is because of those donations that are very important to us during this time that we have to be at the Museum and the Ark have to be closed so please consider again any amount is very very hopeful helpful to us you can go to Answers in Genesis org slash to give thank you

Channel: Answers in Genesis

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Length: 58min 28sec (3508 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 10 2020