Truth About The Crucifixion — Page 121
I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again; this charge I have received from my Father,¹) would not lessen the pain he endured. . Could it be that at the last moment, Jesus had lost faith; when all through his life he had believed so magnificently?. Surely not; for Luke tells us the last saying was: Father, into. Thy hands I commit my spirit. . Why did God not cause the cross to be thrown down, and release Jesus? Why indeed had He allowed him to be nailed there?. With a single word he could have thrown down the cross, the executioners and the soldiers and dispersed the gaping crowd, writes Daniel-Rope in Jesus in his Time (1945). Why God did not do this is not explained. . Alas, man has been given freedom and free will; he has been left to his own devices and to do with his life as he pleases. Therefore he must suffer the consequences not only of his own acts but of the acts of others. . We are indebted to Dr. Coodspeed American historian (and others before him) for pointing out to us that Jesus was speaking the words of his forefather David. And no one knew the scriptures better than Jesus. . They are the words of the twenty-second Psalm, which begins: My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?. This remarkable prophecy, which may have been written, not in David's time but during the deportation nearly 600 years before Jesus, gives a complete picture of the man on the cross and ends: Posterity shall serve him; men shall tell of the Lord to the coming generation, and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, that he has wrought it. . Thus was it seen that while Jesus was a son of David, he was yet his Lord. . Indeed, there were three occasions when Jesus identified himself for posterity, as well as to his own people. The first was in. Nazareth, when he quoted Isaiah: The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has appointed me to preach good news to the poor. . 2 1 John 10:17. 2 Luke 4:18. 125