Jesus In India — Page 21
J e s u s i n I n d i a 21 these pure and holy ties, can the unholy attributes of a curse be ascribed to Jesus? No, this can never be so. There cannot be the least doubt therefore that Jesus was not crucified, and did not die on the cross, for his person did not deserve the stigma of death on the cross. Not having been crucified, he was also spared the unclean consequence of the curse, and this no doubt proves that he did not physically go to heaven. Since ascension was a constituent part of the whole scheme and a corollary of crucifixion, it necessarily follows that as he was neither accursed nor did he go to hell for three days, nor for that matter did he die on the cross, the second part of the scheme, namely, that of ascension, also stands nullified. The Gospels contain even more evidence on this, which I proceed to set below. One of these is the following statement of Jesus: But after I am risen again, I will go before you into Galilee. (Matthew 26: 32) This verse clearly shows that Jesus, after he had come out of the sepulchre, went to Galilee and not to heaven. His words ‘After I am risen’ do not mean coming to life after being dead; rather, Jesus used these words in anticipation of what the people were going to say in the future, because as it turned out, they thought he had died on the cross. And indeed, if a man is put on the cross, with nails driven into his hands and feet, and he faints away for all his suffering, looking more dead than alive; if such a man is saved from his ordeal and recovers his senses, it would hardly be an exaggeration on his part to say that he had come to life again. No doubt, Jesus’ escape from such a predicament was no less than a miracle. There is no doubt that after so much suffering, Jesus’ escape from death was a miracle, but it