The Porch - At The Cross

The Apostle Paul knew that the key to our freedom and salvation was The Cross. It wasn’t knowledge or religious ritual, but the Blood of the Passover Lamb shed on Calvary. The Porch examines the crucifixion to understand the events of that fateful Passover in Jerusalem that day.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Oh Hello, Welcome to the Porch on Firefall Talk Radio.
I'm Richard Grund. This is where you find the uncompromised

(00:29):
red letter basics of the Word of God. Where we
focus on the Book of Acts church to see how
they serve the Lord, and doing so we find the
church the Lord intended and not the one that man created.
The Porch is here to restore the priesthood of the
believer while regaining the world shaking influence that the early

(00:50):
Church had. Because the Church age isn't over, the Upper
Room experience is as much for today as it was
on the day of Pentecost. It's yours if you want it.
Links to all of our social media and streaming sites
are on the main page of Firefall Talk radio dot com.

(01:11):
Subscribe to us wherever you listen to us so that
you know in a new podcast is posted. If you'd
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excuse me everyone who does. At the bottom of the
main page of Firefall Talk radio dot com. There are
ways to do so. If you need more information, you

(01:31):
can reach out to us, including a snail mail address
if you would like to do it that way. Thank
you for being a part of the porch. Thank you
for being here every week. Thank you for sharing this,
praying for us, praying for our needs. If you need
prayer or you'd like to pray for others in the

(01:52):
Porch community, just let us know. We will plug you
in and when a prayer email goes out, we will
includes you or include your needs. Well, we start out
with praise and prayer and the sound of the show.
Par So, Father, we praise you, praise you for how
much you love us. We praise you for redeeming us

(02:15):
and allowing us to come home, to have access to you,
to be able to say Abba, Father, Papa, God, Daddy. Well,
thank you for the blood for setting us free, for
washing away our sins, which means we thank you for
you shure Lord, I don't I. We thank you that

(02:37):
you have done what we could never do, a price
that we never would have been able to pay, and
it took every drop of your blood to do it.
The Lamb of God slain before the foundation of the world.
And we love you and we thank you and we
appreciate what you've done. I thank you for the Holy

(03:01):
Spirit which you sent back to walk with us to
teach us to guard us, to guide us the angels
that surround us. Lord living in a fallen world under
control of Hacaitan and the fallen in their demonic offspring.
We thank you that you've not abandoned us. We're not
often orphans. We have access to you and you have

(03:24):
access to us. So right now we clear our minds.
We take our thoughts captive to the obedience of Messiah.
Claiming the mind of Messiah, we cast down every vain
imagination that would exalt itself above the knowledge of ely On,
God Most High, our Father, Holy Spirit. We ask you

(03:48):
to have your way. Do whatever it is you want
to do. Anoint the words coming out of my mouth
so that they do what you want them to do.
I step aside, Holy Spirit, I say, this is yours,
this is your time. Well, thank you. We ask you
a blessing, protect the technology, watch over us and all

(04:08):
that we have no distractions. Let us go forth in
your name to receive what you want us to receive.
And I pray all these things in your Shoe's name.
If you agree with me, say amen.

Speaker 2 (04:45):
These lessons are proprietary information, except where not of the
information comes from outside sources the combination of that information.
The manner presented is exclusive cannot be repeated or used
without permission. The date of this broadcast serves as the
registered date of the following information. At the Cross, At
the cross where I first saw the light and the

(05:08):
burden of my heart rolled away, It was there by
faith I received my sight, And now I am happy
all the day. Alas did my savior bleed, and did
my sovereign die? Would he devote that sacred head for
such a warm as I.

Speaker 1 (05:29):
Was it? For crimes that I had done? He groaned
upon the tree, amazing pity, grace unknown, and love beyond degree.
Well might the sun and darkness hide and shut his
glories in when Christ, the Mighty Maker died for man
the creature's sin. Thus might I hide my blushing face

(05:52):
while his dear cross appears. Dissolved my heart into thankfulness
and melt my eyes tears. The drops of grief can
never repay the debt of love I owe here, Lord,
I give myself away just all that I can do.
At the cross, at the cross where I first saw

(06:15):
the light and the burden of my heart rolled away.
It was there by faith I received my sight and
I am happy all the day at the cross. It's
been on my mind for a couple of weeks now,

(06:36):
and I saved it for this Passover season, and it's
come up in the previous teachings when talking about Paul
and what he said in First Corinthians, chapter two, verses
one through five, he said, when I came to you,
brothers and sisters, proclaiming to you the testimony of God

(06:58):
concerning the South through Messiah, I did not come with
the superiority of speech or of wisdom, no lofty words
of eloquence or of philosophy, as a Greek orator might do.
For I made the decision to know nothing, that is,
to forego philosophical or theological discussions regarding inconsequential things and opinions,

(07:24):
while among you except Jesus the Messiah and him crucified
and the meaning of his redemptive, substitutionary death and resurrection. Now,
I came to you in a state of weakness and
fear and great trembling. And my message and my preaching
were not in persuasive words of wisdom using clever rhetoric,

(07:49):
but they were delivered in demonstration of the Holy Spirit
operating through me and his power, stirring the minds of
the listeners, persuading them so that your faith would not
rest on the wisdom and rhetoric of men, but on
the power of God. See. Paul was a highly trained

(08:11):
student in Old Testament teachings and Jewish law and logic rhetoric,
and he was conversant in Roman law as well, So
he could have done all that. He could have used
all that, but instead, when preaching the Gospel, he focused
on the message itself and the power of God, not

(08:32):
on rhetoric and persuasion techniques. See the failure in Athens
proved to him that the Cross was the message. La
Cross the key to freedom into destroying the curse. That's

(08:53):
what we're going to talk about. A lot of this
teaching is based on the writing by doctor Seatrum and
Davis called the Physician's View of the Crucifixion. And doctor
Davis was a nationally respected ophthalmologist and vice president of
the American Association of Ophthalmology, and he offered this, and

(09:16):
of course others have expounded upon it. I've seen videos
on YouTube people took it a little further. And what
I'm going to do is take the framework of what
he said, I'm going to fill in some of the blanks.
I'm going to add some revelation. But the first known
practice of crucifixion was by the Persians. Alexander the Great

(09:39):
and his generals brought it back to the Mediterranean world,
to Egypt and to Carthage. It was reported that Alexander
himself crucified or impaled, which was another way to do it,
of two thousand prisoners at his siege of the Phoenician
city of Tire. The Romans apparently learned the practice from

(10:04):
the Carthaginians, as and with almost everything the Romans did,
they developed it to a very high degree of efficiency
and gained a skill at it. Encyclopedia Encyclopedia. Excuse me, Britannica,
and I'm gonna apologize upfront. If I get emotional and

(10:29):
I have trouble speaking, I'll just pause and take a break,
because as we get into this, I can already feel it.
I can already feel and feel my heart starting to stir,
and I'm having trouble getting my words to flow. So
bear with me. The Encyclopedia Britannica says crucifixion was the

(10:55):
most frequently used to punish political or religious act agitators, pirates, slaves,
and those who had no civil rights. In five nineteen BC, Darius,
the first king of Persia, crucified three thousand political opponents
in Babylon. In eighty eight PC, Alexander Jenaeus, the Judaean

(11:22):
king and high priests, crucified eight hundred Phariseic opponents. So
it means difficult to trace the exact origin of evolution
of this practice, but we have some indications. But the
earliest examples of it was used as punishments for prisoners

(11:44):
of war. And wouldn't that seem like what Yeshiah was
to Satan? He was a prisoner of war, intending to
punish him, not understanding he was setting in motion his
own demise Theworldistory dot Org says Rome absorbed and adopted

(12:05):
many concepts and practices from the provinces. We know about
Roman crucifixions through the writings of Cicero, Platus, Seneca, Tacitus,
and Plutarch. One of the more infamous occasions was when
Marcus Crassus punished the survivors of the slave rebellion under

(12:28):
Spartacus in seventy three to seventy one BC, Crassus ordered
approximately six thousand slaves to be crucified on either side
of the Appian Way, which went from Naples Naples to Rome.
And if you've ever seen the Appian Way, to walk
through that or ride on a cart through that, with

(12:50):
having six thousand slaves, three thousand on each side surrounding
you must have been a sight. Well, their bodies were
left there in a decayed state to emphasize what happens
to rebels. So Satan and his hand in this from

(13:10):
an early early time. Maybe he knew what he was
going to use it for, maybe he didn't. I don't know,
but we know that these Roman authors commented on crucifixion,
and then the innovations and modifications that were made in
ancient literature. For instance, the upright portion of the cross

(13:33):
or stipes could really have been the cross arm of
the partit partibulum. It's easy feudis I Richard? No, It
wasn't attached to two or three feet below the Latin cross.
But the most common one of the day was the
Tao Tau cross, which was shaped like a te Now,

(13:58):
of course, in some of the paintings we see the
variations in the different crosses, and that could have come
from the sign being placed at the top, but we'll
just follow along with what the doctor said. The particularm
was placed in a notch at the top of the
stipes in this cross. There's there archaeological evidence that it

(14:24):
was on this type of cross that Yeshua was crucified.
Medieval and Renaissance painters have given us a picture of
Christ carrying the entire cross without any historical or biblical proof.
But the upright post or stipes was generally fixed permanently
in the ground at the sight of execution, and the

(14:45):
condemned man was forced to carry the particulum, which weighed
anywhere from one hundred to one hundred and twenty five pounds,
from the prison to the place of execution. We really
see this clearly in the original Jesus of Nazareth from
the seventies by Franco Zephyrelli. Many of the painters and

(15:07):
most of the sculptors of the crucifixion will show the
nails through the palms, but historical Roman accounts and experimental
medical work have established that the nails were driven between
the small bones of the wrist. The radio and the
onna not through the palms. Nails driven through the palms
will strip out between the fingers when made to support

(15:30):
the human body's weight. The misconception may have occurred through
the misunderstanding of Yushua's word to Thomas. When Domus doubted,
he said, observe my hands, and extended them out towards him. Autonomous.
Both modern and ancient have always considered the wrist as

(15:51):
part of the hand. A titulous or small sign stating
the victim's crime was usually placed on a staff carried
at the front of the procession from the prison, and
later nailed to the cross so that it extended above
the head. The sign, with its staff now to the

(16:11):
top of the cross, would have given it somewhat the
characteristic form of the Latin cross. So this is the
physical passion, as it's called the Messiah. But it began
in Gitthsemite, did not begin in prison. It began in
the garden of Gethsemite. And many of the aspects of

(16:34):
the initial suffering. One of the greatest physiological interest is
the bloody sweat, where he sweated perspired drops of blood.
In Luke, the physician is the only one to mention this,
he says, and being in agony, he prayed the longer,

(16:54):
and his sweat became his drops of blood trickling down
upon the ground. Modern scholars, doctor Davis says, have used
every trick imaginable to explain away this description, apparently under
the mistaken impression that this just doesn't happen. A great

(17:16):
deal of effort could have been saved had the doubters
consulted medical literature. Though very rare, the phenomenon heema the
drosis or bloody sweat is well documented, documented under great
emotional stress of the kind that our Lord suffered, tiny capillarities,
tiny capillaries, I'm sorry, and the sweat glands can break. Thus,

(17:44):
mixing blood with sweat, this process might well have produced
a marked weakness and even possible shock. WebMD even talks
about it, says doctors don't know exactly what triggers hematidrosis,
in part because it's so rare, but they think it's

(18:07):
related to the body's fight or flight response. Tiny blood
vessels in the skin begin to break open. The blood
in them may get squeezed out through the sweat glands,
or there might be unusual little pockets within the structure
of the skin. These could collect the blood and leak

(18:28):
into follicles where the hair grows and out onto the
skin's surface. It's caused by extreme distress, fear such as
facing death, torture, or even severe ongoing abuse. And what's interesting,
I read another thing and I didn't include it, that
stated that there really is no pain involved. And I've

(18:50):
always had to talk to me in the past that
because of this, because the blood sitting on the top
of the skins, the nerves would be tender and sensitive,
and he would have been in a lot of pains
starting in the garden. So he's already bleeding. I'm thinking, well,

(19:11):
if that's not true, Lord, why why did this take place?
And the thought that came to mind, And I believe
it's from him, because I would never have thought it
was to bleed quicker and to shed blood within the

(19:31):
time frame he had to shed the blood. We know
from the passover model and from everything that's going to
happen on this particular date, there is a time frame
which everything must be fulfilled, all prophecy must be fulfilled.
So he begins bleeding the night before in the Garden

(19:56):
of geitsemine the clock has begun to chick. So after
the arrest, in the middle of the night, Sue was
brought to the Sanhedrin and to Caiaphas, the High Priest,
and there the physical trauma is inflicted as a soldier
strikes him across the face to remain silent when questioned

(20:17):
by Caiaphas. The palace guards then blindfolded him and mockingly
taunted him to identify them as each passed by, as
they spat upon him and struck him in the face.
And I doubt they did it with an open hand.
The Romans that were in Jerusalem were the worst of
the lot. They were the dregs of the Roman army.

(20:40):
They were brutal, they were vicious. So in the early morning,
he's battered, and he's bruised, he's dehydrated, he's exhausted from
a sleepless night. He's taken across the pratorium of the

(21:00):
Fortress of Antonio, the seat of government for the Procurator
of Judea, punctuous Pilot. And of course we're familiar with
Pilot's action attempting to pass the responsibility to Herod Antipus,
the tetrarch of Judea. So apparently, he suffers no mistreatment

(21:22):
at the hands of Herod and was returned to Pilot.
It's then, in response to the cries of the mob,
the Pilot ordered Barrabbas Barrabbas released and condemned yasure, discourging,

(21:45):
and crucive fixi, and will read the scripture later. But
he didn't want to. He wanted to wash his hands
of it, but he couldn't. Many scholars believe the Pilot
originally ordered you sue a scourge as full punishment, and

(22:07):
that the death sentenced by crucifixion only came in response
to the taunts of the crowd. The procurator was not
properly defending Caesar against this pretender who allegedly claimed to
be King of the Jews. And of course we forget that.

(22:32):
The story goes. His wife warned him in a dream
and a vision to have nothing to do with this man,
but he couldn't listen. Politics will always trump oversea overcome prophecy.
Preparation for the scourging was carried out. The prisoner you

(22:56):
see is stripped of his clothing, his hand tied to
a post to a column, with his hands above his
head tightly bound on either side of a pillar, so
that his arms were distended and his back stretched taut
I assume not, so that the skin would split easier.

(23:18):
He was then whipped with the Roman flagellum, a whip
with two or three leather strips attached to a short
wooden handle. Not along the leather strips were pieces of
metal and bone that dug into and then tore out
the flesh during the whipping, which shredded the man's back

(23:42):
from neck to buttocks. It was not uncommon for the
victims of the scourge, the Roman scourge, to die from
the ensuing blood loss and or shock. It's doubtful that
the Romans made it attempt of follows Jewish law in
this matter, but the Jews had an ancient law for

(24:04):
prohibiting more than forty lashes. Some say it was thirty nine.
Some don't say anything. We just know that they didn't
kill him in the process. So the Roman legionnaire, the
man who's given this job, handpicked, he's actually a specialist

(24:26):
at this. He steps forward. The dehydrated, exhausted, she was
holding on to the column, the pillar in front of him,
his hands and chains tied above him. The flagellum happened
to be the symbol of Saul, the Roman son god.

(24:50):
It's in his hand. He lifts it up above his head,
knowing full well that the purpose of this short whip
is to removed the flesh from the victim's back. And
the whip is brought down full force, again and again
and again and again on your shoe's shoulders, his back,

(25:16):
and his legs. And these men were trained in such
a way that they could hit the same stripe over
and over, like a butcher for laying a piece of meat.
And I may have shared this with you, may have
been a while ago that one of the very first
visions I ever had was seeing your shoe on the cross.

(25:36):
But I was seeing it through the eyes of a
Roman soldier, or maybe even a demon that was inside
of me before I got saved. From behind the cross
on the left hand side of the cross, so I
could see your shoe his body on the left, his
hip from his left flanked from the waist down to

(25:57):
the ankles, and it was filleyed like a piece of beef.
I could see all the way through the muscle to
the bone. And I used to work at a supermarket
in high school the amp, and there was a butcher
there who was incredibly good at what he did, and

(26:18):
he could hit the same stripe over and over and over.
So when that piece of meat came out, it was perfect,
as if it had gone through a saw. And that's
what his leg looked like. Isaiah fifty, verse six. I
gave my back to those who struck me, and my

(26:42):
cheeks to those who plucked out the beard. I did
not hide my face from shame and spitting. And that's
what the Roman soldiers would have done. They would have
beat him, they would have spit on him, they would
have ripped out chunks of his beard again Isaiah fifty two,

(27:05):
verses thirteen and fourteen. Behold, my servant. In this case,
the sin bearing servant shall deal prudently. He shall be
exalted and extolled and be very high. And just as
many were astonished at you. So his visage was marred
more than any man, and his form more than the

(27:30):
sons of men. I can't even imagine what he looked like.
His eyes were swollen, his beard has got chunks taken out.
The blood which has been sitting at the top of
the top layer of skin has been pouring out since
last night in the garden. At first the thongs on

(27:52):
the flagellum cut through the skin only, and then they
cut deeper ins in the subcutaneous tissues, producing first and
oozing of blood from the capillaries in the veins of
the skin, finally spurting arterial bleeding from vessels in the
underlying muscles. The small balls of lead first produced deep,

(28:14):
deep bruises which are broken open by the subsequent blows,
and the bones, acting like hooks, are catching the skin
and peeling it back. And apparently there was one Roman
legioneer that did this, had created a flagellum that had
a hook at the end of the longest strap, called

(28:35):
the scorpion. And finally the skin in the back is
hanging in long ribbons, and the entire area is an
unrecognizable mass of torn, bleeding tissue. When it's determined by
the centurion in charge that the prisoners near death, the

(28:58):
beating is finally stopped. The half fainting issue is then
untied and allowed to slump to the stone pavement, wet
in his own blood. But that wasn't enough. Satan had
to mock him. Satan had to get his flesh. The

(29:23):
Roman soldier saw this as a great joke by proclaiming
the provincial jew that claimed to be king. So they
threw a robe upon his shoulders. Some think it was
a very thick horse blanket, and placed the stick in
his hand for a scepter. Now understand, with all of
this bleeding, with the skin torn open, this thick blanket,

(29:46):
this thick robe material would have sunk into the blood. Apparently,
I'm thinking could have slowed some of it down so
he didn't bleed to death. But they still need a
crown for the king. They still need a crown to
make their travesty complete. So they take flexible branches covered

(30:06):
with long thorns, usually in bundles for firewood, used commonly
in bundles for firewood, and they plaited into the shape
of a crown, and this is pressed into his scalp.
Again there is copious bleeding, scalping one of the most
vascular areas of the body Matthew twenty seven, Verses twenty

(30:31):
ninth through thirty one. And when they had twisted a
crown of thorns, they put it on his head, and
a reed in his right hand, and they bowed the
knee before him and mocked, saying, hell, king of the Jews.
And they spat on him and took the reed and
struck him on the head. And when they had mocked him,
they took the robe off of him. They would have

(30:53):
ripped that cloth off of him, therefore breaking whatever clotting
had happened, putting his own clothes on him. They led
him away to be crucified. And I see now that
that was a way of Satan, mocking the prophecy that
one day he would be forced to kneel to this king,

(31:16):
clothing him purple crown of thorns driven into his scalp,
and those thorns were pretty long, would have gone deep
through skin into bone, striking him with the reeds, spitting
on him mockingly bowing a knee. And then when they

(31:37):
were done mocking him, they took the purple off of him,
as if to say, you're no king to us, just
like the Jews said during the crucifixion trial, we have
no king but Caesar. The crown of thorns meant to

(31:59):
see the symbolize the curse of the ground from Genesis three,
verses seventeen and eighteen. When after having done what even
Adam did. God looks at them, and he says, because
you have heeded the voice of your wife and have
eaten of the tree which I commanded you, saying you
shall not eat of it. Cursed is the ground for

(32:22):
your sake in toil. You shall eat of it all
the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it
shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the
herb of the field. So, after mocking him, striking him

(32:44):
in the face, putting the reed in his hand, thorns
driven deep into his scalp, off that room, and the
purple robe, whatever it was, and whatever cloths had been created,

(33:13):
is now removed, ripped off, causing excruciating pain. This is
if you rip off of you carelessly, rip off even
a band aid or a surgical bandage. Could you imagine
what he felt? And then they take the heavy partibulum

(33:33):
of the cross and they tie it across his shoulders,
hands on each side behind his head, and in a
procession with two thieves, the condemned Messiah is forced to
walk the slow journey along the Viadella Russa to Golgatha.

(33:57):
Worldhistory dot orgs is based on Roman literature as well
as descriptions in the province's crucifixion was established routine. The
Citurian led special military teams, and in the provinces the
soldiers were selected from local auxiliaries. There were natives that
had joined the Roman army. So the victim would be

(34:18):
stripped and then lashed and scourged, and as part of
the public humiliation, he or she was led through the
streets and remained naked. Christian art portrays Isshua with a
decent loincloth on the cross, but nakedness was a maintained

(34:40):
part of the humiliation. So here you have you shure.
He probably hasn't slept since the night before, he hasn't eaten,
he's taken in no water, he's been beaten, he's bleeding,
he's torn apart, and he stole walk and despite his

(35:03):
efforts to walk erect, the weight of this heavy wooden beam,
anywhere from one hundred and ten to one hundred and
twenty five pounds, causes him to stumble and fall. Now understand,
when he falls, he can't put his hands out to
catch himself, so he's falling forward, face first into the gravel,

(35:26):
into the road, over and over, and the rough wood
of the beam is gouging into the lacerated skin and
muscles of the shoulders. He tries to rise, but at
this point the human muscles have been pushed beyond their endurance.

(35:49):
The centurion, anxious to get on with the crucifixion and
afraid that the victim would die too soon, selects a
stalwart North African onlookers, Diamon of Syreen, to carry the cross.
And if you think about the visual the cross that

(36:09):
Simon's forced to carry, He's got the blood of yr
shoe all over it, and now it's on Simon. So
Yashua follows. He's still bleeding, he's still stumbling, he's sweating,
he's clamming, he's in shock, and he has to walk

(36:32):
a six hundred and fifty yard journey from the fortress
Antonio to Golgatha. They get their Simon's ordered to place
the particulum on the ground, and your shoe is quickly
thrown backward onto his shoulders. He's yanked and slammed backward
into the ground with his shoulders against the wood. They

(36:54):
roughly pull his arms out as far as they can go,
probably pulling them out of their bucket, and the legionnaire
finds the depression in the front of the wrist, that
soft area that we talked about before, and he takes
this wrought iron nail five to seven inches long, and
he drives it through skin and wrist and bone and

(37:21):
nerve and sinews and ligaments deep into the wood. And
what that would have done was caused his hand to
curl up in a claw around the top of that nail.
He couldn't have faked this. That hand would never be
useful again. Also, no matter what the Renaissance art says,

(37:46):
he didn't go through his palms, He went through his wrist.
And quickly the Roman soldier moves to the other side
and does the same thing. The arm out yanks it
to its furthest point finds that soft area, places the
nail there and slam slam, slam, maybe four or five

(38:10):
times until it drives through and catches into the wood.
But he's not too tightly stretched. He has to have
some flexation because they need him to be able to move.
And you'll understand why. Then the particulum is viciously yanked

(38:33):
upward to be placed at the top of the stipes.
I can't even imagine the pain, can't even imagine what
he's feeling. I can't imagine what the angels are thinking

(38:59):
and feeling at that moment. I can't imagine what his
father's feeling. So they take this sign that reads Jesus
of Nazareth Yeshua, not king of the Jews. And now

(39:20):
that in place, now we know from this dark old
count of the Bible, all the Pharisees get very upset. No,
I should say, he said that he was king of
the Jews. Doesn't matter. Satan doesn't understand. Then, in his
effort to mock him, he tells the truth. They then

(39:41):
take the left foot, which is now praised backward against
the right foot, so you have the two feet left
foot on top of the right foot, both feet extended toes.
Down is driven through the arch of both feet, straight

(40:03):
through into the wood. The knees are moderately flexed. The
victim has now been crucified, and as he slowly SAgs
down with more weight on the nails and the wrist,
excruciating pain shoots along the fingers and up the arms

(40:25):
and explodes into the brain. And the nails and the
wrists are putting pressure on the median nerves. But to
release that he has to stand up with his feet
to release that, and it's a back and forth shock,
back and forth. He places his full weight on the

(40:46):
nails and the feet, the searing agony of the nails
tearing through the nerves between the metatarsal bones of the feet.
At this point, the arms fatigue. Great waves of cramps
sweep over the muscles, knotting them in deep, relentless throbbing pain.

(41:06):
And I've always seen Yashua as a well fit man,
well fit man. He was the son of a carpenter.
He was a carpenter himself, by the way he ate.
I don't think he was a bodybuilder by any means,
but I believe that he was strong. But these muscles
are cramping, and he's losing the ability to push himself upward,

(41:30):
so he drops down, hanging by his arms. The spectral
muscles are paralyzed, the intercostal muscles aren't able to act.
Air can be drawn into the lungs but cannot be exhaled,
so Yashua fights to raise himself in order even for

(41:50):
one short breath. Finally, carbon dioxide builds up into the
lungs and the bloodstreams, and the cram partially Subsidepismodically, he's
able to push himself upward to exhale and bring in
a life giving gasp of oxygen. Prophecy is being fulfilled

(42:20):
Psalm twenty two, verses sixteen to nineteen. For dogs have
surrounded me. The congregation of the wicked has enclosed me.
They pierced my hands and my feet. I can count
all my bones. They look and stare at me. They

(42:41):
divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they
cast lots. But you, o Lord, do not be far
from me. Who my strength hastened to help me. We
know from Luke in Chapter twenty three, Soaring verse thirty two,

(43:01):
there were two other criminals that were led with him
to be put to death, And they came to the
place called Calvary, and the crucified him and the criminals
on one side on the right hand, and on the
other on the left. Then Nishiura looking down at what
the Roman soldiers are doing, So his father forgive them,

(43:21):
for they do not know what they do. You see,
they're dividing his garments and casting lots, just like Psalm
twenty two says, and you got the people looking on
the congregation of the wicked. Even the rulers with them sneered, saying,
he saved others, let him save himself if he is
the Messiah, the chosen of God. The soldiers also mocked him,

(43:47):
coming and offering him sourrow wine. If you are the
King of the Jews, save yourself. And that inscription they wrote,
they wrote it in Greek, they wrote it in Latin,
they wrote it in Hebrew. This is the King of Jews.
Now think about that, Think about the prophecy that's being fulfilled.
Think about the Day of Pentecost, think about evangelism throughout

(44:10):
the world. That's written in Greek and Latin and Hebrew,
making sure every tongue knew that he was king. They
just don't know yet that he's King of kings and
Lord of lords. So we have the two criminals, and

(44:33):
one of them hanging with them blasphemes and says, if
you are the Messiah, save yourself and us. But the
other answering, rebuked him, said, do you not even feared God?
And seeing you are under the same condemnation. And we
indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds.

(44:59):
But this has done nothing wrong, and it looks over
at your shoe, and he says, Lord, remember me when
you come into your kingdom, and you sure, says assuredly,
I say to you today you will be with me

(45:24):
in paradise. That's salvation. He recognized and admitted his sins.
He recognized who your sure was, that he was a king,
and he had a kingdom, and he knew that he

(45:45):
wanted to be in that kingdom. So during this period
of time, during this show, if you will, you sure
doesn't say a lot, but he utters seven sentences. First,
when he looks down at the Roman soldiers throwing the

(46:06):
dice for his seamless garment, which could not have been
soaked in blood, but they wouldn't have been gambling for it.
Therefore it wasn't on him as he walked, Father, forgive them,
for they know not what they do, he says to
that repentant thief, today, you'll be with me in paradise.

(46:32):
But then one more thing that's really important that we
should all remember. When he looks down at the only
disciple that has shown up that has never left him
from the trial to now, the grief stricken John, the

(46:56):
beloved apostle, who is standing with you show his mother Mary.
This in John nineteen verses twenty five through twenty seven.
Now there stood by the cross of Jesus, his mother,
and his mother's sister, Mary, the wife of Clophus, and

(47:18):
Mary Magdalen. I'm sorry, I got to say this. Where
are the men? Where are the disciples? Where is Peter
and Andrew and James and these rough and tumble men.
You got women standing there. You got John, the youngest
of them all, you got married. You show his mother,

(47:40):
You got her sister, Mary, the wife of Clophs, and
you have Mary Magdalen. When he looks down at his
mother and the disciple, whom he loves, and he says
to his mother, woman, behold your son. And he says
to the disciple, behold your And from that hour the

(48:01):
Disciple took her into his own home. I don't know
where James's brother half brother was, I don't know where
the rest were. They obviously weren't there. But he looks
down at the apostle John and says, behold your mother.
And John takes him in to takes her into his home,

(48:22):
obviously until she dies. And I believe her that to
say this if Mary, who was very important she was
chosen to give birth to the Messiah. But if she
was that all, if she was all that important afterward,
if anybody was going to state that and write about it,

(48:45):
it would have been John. But neither John, nor Peter,
nor James her Son, nor even Paul ever bring her
up again. The fourth cry we hear from the cross

(49:06):
is actually again prophecy being fulfilled Psalm twenty two, Verse one,
My God, my God, wy have you forsaken me? Why
are you so far from helping me? And from the
words of my groaning la labak sabaktani, it's almost over.

(49:31):
He's been poured out. All his bones are out of joint.
His heart is like wax softened with anguish, melted down
within him, terrible crushing pain deep into the chest as
the pericardium slowly fills with serum and begins to compress

(49:53):
the heart. Hours of limitless pain, cycles of twisting joint
rendering cramps, intermittent partial asphyxiation, searing pain with the tissues
are torn on his lacerated back as he moves up

(50:13):
and down on the rough timber, and then the crushing
pain when he drops down again. And he did that
for you, and he did that for me. But it's
almost over. The loss of the tissue fluids have reached

(50:37):
a critical level. The compressed heart is struggling to pump
the heavy, thick, sluggish blood into the tissues. Remember he's
had no water, he's dehydrated. The tortured lungs are making
a frantic effort to gasp small gulps of air. And
anybody who's ever struggled with breathing or watch somebody struggle

(51:00):
with breathing, knows how scary that is. And he says,
one more thing to fulfill prophecy, says I thirst Psalm
sixty nine, verses twenty and twenty one. Reproach has broken

(51:21):
my heart, and I am full of heaviness. I looked
for someone to take pity, but there was none, and
for comforters, I found none. They also gave me golf
for my food, and for my thirst. They gave me
vinegar to drink. They soak a sponge with cheap sour wine,

(51:45):
more vinegar than it was wine. It was the staple
drink of the Roman legioneers, and they lifted up to
his lips. But he doesn't accept it. Look twenty three
in Matthew twenty seven, give us a clear picture Looke
twenty three, Verses forty four through forty six. Now it's

(52:07):
about the sixth hour, it's midday, it's noon, and there
was darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour,
three pm. And there is reports of a solar eclipse
in history. During what is believed to be that period
of time. The sun was darkened, and the veil of

(52:32):
the temple was torn in two. And when you show
a cry out with a loud voice, he said, Father,
into your hands, I commit my spirit. And having said this,
he breathed his last. He didn't die, he gave up

(52:54):
his life. And as I said before, it's in Matthew
twenty seven where he cries out from the cross, la
la Lama sabatani, which is my godwife, you've forsaken me.
And of course some of the religious people there says, oh,

(53:15):
the man is calling for Elijah. No, he was fulfilling prophecy,
You spiritual moron, Oh, leave him alone. Let's see if
Elijah will come and save him and he yields up
his spirit, he willingly gives it up. Now at that

(53:37):
moment in the temple, the temple vale was torn into
from top to bottom, and the earthquake and the rocks
was split, and the graves were opened, and many of
the bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were
raised coming out of the graves after his resurrection, and

(53:57):
they went into the Holy city and appeared to me.
Any now, when the centurion and those with him who
regarding the Shoea saw the earthquake and things that had happened,
they feared greatly, saying, truly, this was the Son of God.

(54:23):
To the body of your shure is silent. In the
last bit of prophecy, it has finished, I believe, was
a declaration, a wheezing, gasping declaration into the heavens. His

(54:54):
mission of atonement completed, and he allowed out his body
to die. But it's the Sabbath, and in order that
the Sabbath not be profaned. Isn't it amazing? They didn't
care that they had just killed a man, but that

(55:16):
their Sabbath is now profane. The Jews asked that the
condemned men be dispatched and removed from the crosses. Isn't
that what religion does. It's more concerned about form and
formality and ritual than actual compats and the things of
the heart and the things of God. So the common

(55:40):
method of lending a crucifixion if they weren't dead, was
by breaking the bones of their legs, so they could
no longer press up and catch a breath. See this
prevented the victim from pushing upward to relieve the muscles,
the tension the muscles of the chest, and to be
able to pull in a gasping air to avoid suffocation.

(56:07):
But now that their legs are broken, they can't do that,
so they suffocate. And the two thieves had their legs broken,
But when they came to Yeshua, they saw that it
was unnecessary because he was already dead. The passover lamb

(56:29):
was not to be broken. Exodus twelve forty six. In
one house that shall be eaten, you shall not carry
any of the flesh outside the house, nor shall you
break one of its bones. Numbers nine verses ten through
twelve speak to the children of Israel, saying, if any

(56:50):
one of you or your posterity is unclean because of
a corpse, or is far away on a journey, he
may still keep the Lord's passover. Fourteenth day of the
second month at twilight, they may keep it. They shall
eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herb herbs. They
shall leave none of it till morning, nor break one

(57:11):
of its bones. According to all the ordinances of the Passover,
they shall keep it. The Passover lamb does not have
a bone broken. But to be doubly sure that he's dead,
the legionnaire many claim to believe belonginess drives his lands

(57:31):
through the fifth interspace between the ribs, upward, through the
pericardium and into the heart. In John thirty four, John
nineteen thirty four says, immediately there came out blood and water.
It is an escape of water fluid from the sacks

(57:52):
surrounding the heart, giving post Morden post mortem evidence that
our lord did not die the useful usual. So I'm
struggling the usual death by suffocation, but literally died of

(58:14):
heart failure, a broken heart due to the shock in
constriction of the heart by the fluid and the pericardium.
Then it would make sense, because of all that the
father has felt from the garden tongue now for his children,

(58:39):
that the Lord would die from heart failure. But you
know I shared all this with the you, and so
much of the symbolism of Yeshuah during the Passover his
last pass is lost to us because we're unaware of

(59:04):
the customs of the time. The Council of Nicea and
three twenty five AD removed by choice anything that reminded
believers of the Jewish nature of their faith, and this
was further reinforced in the Second Council of Nicea in
seven eighty seven, were all things, including Messianic Jews were

(59:26):
ostracized and rejected by the Christian churches. Yeshiwah was a Jew.
Jews were required under the Law of Moses to celebrate
the Passover every year to remember the exodus from Egypt.

(59:49):
The Last Supper was a Passover meal, the one that
he had and he ate with his disciples, and many
of the elements and the ritual of the Passover meal
pointed to the sacrifice that he would be making as
the expected Messiah to rescue not just Israel, but everybody

(01:00:09):
from the slavery to sin. You're sure the Messiah of
Israel is the savior of the world to all who
believe in him. Oh, they said Hosannah to the king
five days before, because five days before the lamb is killed,
it has to be presented to the temple in front

(01:00:32):
of the people. The passover lamb, a male without defect.
That's you're sure. The lamb was roasted and eaten. None
of its bones broken, bones broken. None of his bones

(01:00:56):
were broken, Zechariah twelfth cent and out said I'm sorry,
Zechariah twelve to ten. I gotta be honest. I'm amazed.
I've held it together this long to get this far,
Zechariah twelfth ten. And I will pour in the house

(01:01:18):
of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the spirit
of grace and supplication. Then they will look upon me
whom they pierced. Yes, they will mourn for him as
one mourns for his only son, and grieve for him
as one grieves for a firstborn. They missed it the

(01:01:40):
first time on Calvary, but they won't miss it when
he comes in the sky with all the saints and
his angels. They'll be able to see the scars in
his wrists and on his feet. Don't know who he is,
but see on this particular day. Remember I said there
was a time frame in which he had to die,

(01:02:05):
That the priest would blow the shofar at three pm,
the moment the Lamb was sacrificed, and all the people
would pause to contemplate the sacrifice for sins on behalf
of the people of Israel. At three pm, Yeshua, the

(01:02:26):
Lamb of God, the Passover Lamb, he was crucified when
he said it is finished, and the shaufar was blown
from the temple, and the temple val was ripped in two.
The sacrifice of the Lamb of God fulfilled at the
exact hour of the symbolic animal sacrifice that was taking place,

(01:02:49):
the last one that would be needed that would no
longer be needed, an animal sacrifice, the shedding of blood,
because the final passover Lamb had died. Now. This veil
is described in Exodus twenty six thirty one. You shall
make a veil woven a blue, purple and scarlet thread

(01:03:13):
fine woven linen, and it shall be woven with an
artistic design of a cherubim. So this veil, it's three
inches thick, several stories high, and it's torn from top
to bottom, which means no man ripped it. Your heavenly

(01:03:38):
Father toward open removating, removing the separation between God and man,
and fifty days later, on the anniversary of the giving
of the Law on Mount Sinai, on tent to cost,

(01:04:05):
God would leave the earthly temple to inhabit those who
called on Yeshuah's name. Through his holy spirit. He would
no longer need a temple. He would no longer need
a temple veil. He would live in us Hebrews ten,

(01:04:26):
verses nineteen through twenty three. Therefore, brethren, having boldness to
enter the holiest by the blood of Yeshuah, by a
new and living way, which he has consecrated for us
through the veil that is his flesh, and having a
high priest over the House of God, let us draw

(01:04:47):
near with a true heart in felishurance of faith, having
our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies
washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession
of our hope without wavering, For he who promised is faithful.

(01:05:08):
The promise has been kept and fulfilled. At the cross.
In Matthew twenty eight, the Lord tells us that the
Son of Man didn't come to be served, but to serve,
and to give his life a ransom for many, the

(01:05:29):
price to set them free. The promise has been fulfilled.
It's been fulfilled in the old rugged cross, stained with blood,
so divine, a wondrous beauty I see, for the dear

(01:05:51):
Lamb of God left his glory above to pardon and
sanctify me. So I'll cherish the old rugged cross till
my trophies at last I lay down. I will cling
to the old rugged cross and someday exchange it for

(01:06:12):
a crown. To the old rugged cross, I will ever
be true it's shame and reproach gladly, gladly bear. Then
he shall call me someday to my home far away
with his glory forever I'll share. So I'll cherish the

(01:06:36):
old rugged cross till my trophies at last I lay down.
I will cling to the old rugged cross and exchange
it someday for a crown. Because he did that from me,
He did that for you. You understand now why Paul

(01:07:00):
said he knew one thing, and one thing only Jesus
and him crucified. It's the cross, It's the blood. It's
the washing away of sins. Without the shedding of blood,
there can be no remission of sins. And I know
my Jewish brothers and sisters have changed the rules and
made up some nonsense to excuse why they no longer

(01:07:23):
need the sacrifice or Lamb's blood. But every year a
man can tell them that they're clean. Oh my gosh,
is that a lie. It goes against God's word. He
said sin can only be washed away by the blood,
and the blood has washed it away. The bloody is sure.

(01:07:44):
So it's at the cross, the old rugged cross, that
you and I have been set free. It's the marker,
it's the key that has unlocked all the chains, and
it's something we should never forget and not just think
about it one time a year, but understand every day

(01:08:06):
the price he paid so that you and I could
go home. Father, As I said, I cannot imagine what
you felt that day. We know that for the joy

(01:08:27):
you show a one to the cross. He knew what
it would do. But it's still hurt. It was still brutal,
it was still gruesome, it was still ugly. But that's
just how our sins and our rebellion has been. They've
been brutal, they've been gruesome, and they've been ugly, and

(01:08:48):
Satan continues to do that to this world. But we
are in this world and not of this world, because
we embrace the cross, we celebrate the empty tomb, We
live and serve you through the upper room. I pray though,
that right now you have touched my brothers and sisters,

(01:09:10):
that you've opened their eyes and their minds, that you've
gotten them to understand why it's so important, why what
you did is so important, and why we are so
important to you in this time, during these days, while
the enemy wants to mock this and make people think
it's not necessary and that you didn't come to do this. Oh,

(01:09:32):
it's exactly what you came to do. And we know
that Satan has been defeated, and we will stand in
the glory and the power with you at the cross.

(01:09:54):
I pray this. Then you show his name. Amen. May
the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord
may I don't I make his face to shine upon you,
be gracious to you. May the Lord may I don't

(01:10:14):
ee you're sure how much yuck lift up his countenance
upon you and give you peace, Give you shalom. I'm
Richard Ground. This has been the porch on Firefall Talk Radio.