The Crucifixion Of Jesus From A Medical Standpoint

Every year at Easter I remember an article I read when I was a paramedic in the Air Force. It was the medical version of what Jesus Christ suffered from the time He was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane until He died on the cross. Most people have no idea just how gruesome the crucifixion of Jesus was. An article written by a physician explained it very well. I first read the article about 40 years ago and still remember it. It was that powerful.

The text below is not the original article that I read but it contains the same basic information. It's not for the faint of heart. This is a physician's description of what Jesus actually suffered in those those two days before He died for all of us. It was written by Dr. C. Truman Davis, MD and here is summarized by Michael K. Farrar, O.D. I hope you'll read it and get a perspective of what Jesus really suffered for us.

The Crucifixion From A Medical Perspective

Summarized and Edited by Michael K. Farrar, O.D.

From an article by Dr. C. Truman Davis, M.D., M.S.

God’s Breath Publications

The movie “The Passion of the Christ” is a very dramatic movie concerning what Christ went through during His crucifixion. I thought it might be beneficial to share with you a summarized version of an article I read some years ago on the physical experiences of Jesus during the crucifixion.

The physical suffering of Christ began in the Garden of Gethsemane where Christ is confronted with the reality of His approaching death. In this intense moment, Luke 22:44 states that being in agony, Christ’s sweat became as blood. This is a true medical phenomenon called “hematidrosis.” Under great emotional strain, tiny capillaries in the sweat glands can break, thus mixing blood with sweat, thus the term “bloody sweat.” We can’t even imagine the amount of emotional stress Christ was under at this time.

After the arrest in the middle of the night, Jesus was brought before the Sanhedrin and Caiphas, the High Priest; it is here that the first physical trauma was inflicted. A soldier struck Jesus across the face for remaining silent when questioned by Caiphas, John 18:22. The palace guards then blindfolded Him and mockingly taunted Him as they each passed by, spat on Him, and struck Him in the face.

In the early morning, Jesus, battered and bruised, dehydrated, and exhausted from a sleepless night, is taken across Jerusalem to the Praetorium of the Fortress Antonia. This is the seat of government of the procurator of Judea, Pontius Pilate. Through popular request of the people, Pilate orders Jesus to be crucified, but first to be scourged. The soldiers prepare Jesus for scourging by first stripping Him of all His clothing and then His hands are tied to a post above His head. The scourging begins, by the Roman legionnaire stepping forward with the flagrum (or flagellum) in his hand. This is a short whip consisting of several heavy, leather thongs with two small balls of lead attached near the ends of each. The heavy whip is brought down with full force again and again across Jesus’ shoulders, back and legs. At first the heavy thongs cut through the skin only. Then as the blows continue, they cut deeper into the lower tissues, producing first an oozing of blood from the capillaries and veins of the skin, and finally spurting arterial bleeding from vessels in the underlying muscles. The small balls of lead first produce large, deep bruises that are broken open by subsequent blows. Finally the skin of the back is hanging in long ribbons and the entire area is an unrecognizable mass of torn, bleeding tissue. When it is determined by the centurion in charge that the prisoner is near death the beating is finally stopped. Half-fainting, Jesus is then untied and allowed to slump to the stone pavement, wet with His own blood. A robe is thrown across His shoulders. The taunting Roman soldiers place a stick for a scepter in His hands. A small bundle of branches covered with long thorns is formed into the shape of a crown and then pressed into Jesus’ scalp. Again, there is much bleeding (the scalp being one of the most vascular areas of the body). After mocking Him and striking Him across the face, the soldiers take the stick from His hand and strike Him across the head, driving the thorns deeper into His scalp. Finally, they tire of their sadistic sport and the robe is torn from His back. This had already become adherent to the clots of blood and serum in the wounds, and its removal causes excruciating pain and the wounds begin to bleed again.

We should mention at this point the exact type of cross which Jesus is to carry to His crucifixion. We usually see pictures of Christ on a “Latin Cross.” In reality, Jesus was actually crucified on a “Tau Cross.” The Tau Cross had a “stipe” (upright portion) and a “Patibulum” (Cross-Arm) just like, the Latin Cross, only the Tau Cross patibulum was placed in a notch at the top of the stipe. This gave the Tau Cross the appearance of the Greek letter Tau or the English letter T. The patibulum of the cross was placed on the shoulders of Jesus and this was what He carried up to Golgotha.

With this heavy burden, Jesus begins His slow 650-yard journey along the path to the hill of Golgotha. In spite of His efforts to walk erect, the weight of the heavy wooden beam, together with the shock produced by copious blood loss, is too much. He stumbles and falls. The rough wood of the beam gouges into the lacerated skin and muscles of the shoulders. He tries to rise, but human muscles have been pushed beyond their endurance. The centurion selects a person from the crowd to carry the cross of Jesus.

The crucifixion begins. Jesus is offered wine mixed with myrrh, a mild analgesic mixture. He refuses. The patibulum is placed on the ground and Jesus is thrown backward onto it. The legionnaire feels for the depression at the front of the wrist. Again a common misconception is that the nails were driven through the palms of Jesus’ hands. This could not be true for the hands would tear apart trying to support His weight on the cross. It is know that the wrist was also considered to be part of the hand, so the nails were driven between the two wrist bones and provided for a very adequate support system during a crucifixion. The legionnaire upon finding the depression between the bones in the wrist drives the heavy, square, wrought iron nail through Jesus’ hand and into the wood. Quickly, he moves to the other side and repeats the action, being careful not to pull the arms too tightly, but to allow some flexion and movement. The patibulum is then lifted in place at the top of the stipe and the “titulus” reading (Jesus, of Nazareth, King of the Jews) is nailed in place.

The left foot is pressed backward against the right foot, and with both feet extended, toes down, a nail is driven through the arch of each, leaving the knees moderately flexed. Christ is now crucified. As He slowly sags down with more weight on the nails in the wrists, excruciating, fiery pain shoots along the fingers and up the arms to explode in the brain; the nails in the wrists are putting pressure on the median nerves. As He pushes Himself upward to avoid this stretching torment, He places His full weight on the nail through His feet. At this point, another phenomenon occurs. As the arms fatigue, great waves of cramps sweep over the muscles, knotting them in deep, relentless, throbbing pain. With these cramps comes the inability to push Himself upward. Hanging by His arms, the pectoral muscles are paralyzed and the intercostal muscles are unable to act. Air can be drawn into the lungs, but cannot be exhaled. Jesus fights to raise Himself in order to get even one short breath. Finally, carbon dioxide builds up in the lungs and in the blood stream and the cramps partially subside. Spasmodically He is able to push Himself upward to exhale and bring in the life giving oxygen. It was undoubtedly during these periods that He uttered the seven short sentences recorded in the Bible.

The first sentence was while He was looking down at the Roman soldiers throwing dice for His seamless garment, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:34)

The second sentence was to the penitent thief; “Today thou shalt be with me in Paradise.” (Luke 23:43)

The third, while looking down at the terrified, grief stricken, adolescent John, “Behold they mother,” and looking to Mary, His mother, “Woman, behold they son.” (John 19:26-27)

The fourth cry is a quote from the beginning of Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

Hours of this limitless pain, cycles of twisting, joint-rending cramps, intermittent partial asphyxiation, searing pain as tissue is torn from His lacerated back as He moves up and down against the rough timber; then the other agony begins. A deep crushing pain deep in the chest as the pericardium (the sack enclosing the heart) slowly fills with serum and beings to compress the heart.

It is now almost over, the loss of tissue fluid has reached a critical level, the compressed heart is struggling to pump heavy, thick sluggish blood into the tissues; the tortured lungs are making a frantic effort to gasp in small gulps of air. The markedly dehydrated tissues send their flood of stimuli to the brain.

Jesus gasps His fifth cry, “I thirst!” (John 19:28)

A sponge soaked in Posca, a cheap, sour wine that is the staple drink of the Roman legionnaires, is lifted to His lips. He apparently doesn’t take any of the liquid. The body of Jesus is now near death. He can feel a cold chill creeping through His tissues. This realization brings out His sixth cry, possibly little more than a tortured whisper: “It is finished.” His mission of atonement for the sins of mankind has been completed. Finally He can allow His body to die.

With one last surge of strength, He once again presses His torn feet against the nail, straightens His legs, takes a deeper breath, and utters His seventh and last cry, “Father, into Thy hands I commit My Spirit.”

The common method of ending the crucifixion was by curifracture, the breaking of the bones of the legs. This prevented the victim from pushing himself upward, the tension could not be relieved from the muscles of the chest, and rapid suffocation occurred. The legs of the two thieves were broken, but when they came to Jesus, they saw that this was unnecessary.

Apparently to make double sure of death, the legionnaire drove his lance through the fifth interspace between Jesus’ ribs, upward through he pericardium and into the heart (John 19:34). The watery fluid that escaped from this wound was the fluid that had built up in the pericardium around the heart and the blood from within the heart. We therefore have evidence that our Lord died not from the usual crucifixion death by suffocation, but from heart failure due to shock and constriction of the heart by fluid of the pericardium.

Here we have a glimpse of only the physical torture that our dear Lord endured during the crucifixion. We can only imagine the emotional and psychological sufferings that took place, not to mention the spiritual burden of carrying the penalty for all the sins of all those who have ever and will ever live. Christ paid a great price, but rose in victory, proving His offer of everlasting life is available to anyone who would simply accept Him as his or her Savior and Lord.

IGNORING WITH ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY

From my 80+ year old (and very wise) father-in-law. He nails it. It's not the gun.

We are supposed to learn from history, but we do not even learn from recent history. In the 30s we saw half the children living on farms and ranches with parents that fed the other half of the country. We all had guns almost since we can remember. My first rifle was waiting for me in Dad’s closet for my 11^th birthday. It was a hand-me-down .22 caliber single-shot which was shorter than my height at the time. I was a locally well-known marksman; could knock a squirrel out of a tree at near 50 yards.

We hunted jack rabbits at night on big ranches from the back seat of a Model A Ford (with the top down). Very few girls bothered with guns, but a few had them. Had my first BB gun at age 9, It was a Daisy model; they came out just before the Red Rider models. I could use Dad’s db. bbl. 12-gauge shotgun for bird hunting with the guys.

We never dreamed of using these arms against humans. Nowadays, people have conniption fits if they see a boy of 15 with a BB gun, once a natural American sight (and at younger ages). Any teenager could go into a hardware store and buy any gun or ammunition, no questions asked. With a note from my Dad, I could buy dynamite (we dug wells and post holes by hand using dynamite for the rock). If you could bear it (carry it) you could buy it. There was no legal age limit.

We never knew school shootings, although several of the guys had rifles or shotguns hanging in their vehicles (parked just off campus) when I was in high school (some guys had old cars or pickups their dads got for them). Guns were not only plentiful; they were a natural part of life - especially for us guys living out of the city limits.

This is how we know with absolute certainty that the availability of guns has nothing to do with their present misuse by certain individuals. We know that the shrill demands of emotional children and their emotional parents are from misled fallible human brains as to the cause of school shootings. If we ask ourselves about the differences between the culture of the 30s and today’s, we have the cause of contemporary gun misuse in an instant.

Further, the FBI statistics on today's banned rifles and all other kind of rifles as being 368 out of 17,250 homicides. Banning rifles of all/any kind will have almost zero effect on the murder rate with guns. Calls for more restrictive gun ownership are part of a larger strategy to outlaw gun ownership. This would leave private gun ownership strictly in the hands of outlaws.

Discarding with dead certainty that gun availability can be blamed for either school shootings or mass shootings; can be blamed for most of homicide with guns; we are faced with what gun haters are avoiding: School shootings are a part of and reflect the declining moral values of our culture. The definition of progressive liberalism is: The degeneration of a culture through the legitimization and/or the normalization of deviate behavior.

All around us and in the media is reflected: disrespect for those in authority; disrespect for accountability (in ourselves and others) for anti-social behavior; gutter vocabulary language, even in the media and from our youth; the anti-religious activities toward Christianity (source of peace) which reinforced morality and an acceptance of Islam (source of violence); disrespect of creditors (failing to pay debts); tolerating theft by government which forcibly uses one American for the purposes of less worthy Americans (legalized theft) and which accounts for about three quarters of government spending that will eventually lead to total poverty/bankruptcy through the eventual devaluation (collapse) of the Dollar. Defending our children will cost more than a bundle.

JIM N. TAYLOR

Some Arguments For And Against Gun Control

An old high school friend posted the following on my Facebook page this morning. Below is her post and my answers to it. Please feel free to argue anything with which you disagree but please be able to justify your argument.

Here are my 20 suggestions for future regulations to ensure a safer environment of our children and our communities:

1. Ban semi-automatic weapons that fire high-velocity rounds and ban accessories that simulate automatic weapons.
2. Limit future purchases of all magazines to 10 bullets or less.
3. Ban and criminalize the purchase and possession of armor piercing bullets and hollow-tip bullets.
4. Raise the firearm purchase age to 21.
5. Limit gun purchases to one per month per individual.
6. Treat firearms like cars — with licensing, registration, and mandatory insurance.
7. Automatically ban people from buying or owning a gun that are convicted of domestic violence or that are subject to protection orders.
8. Increase the penalties across all states for a person (straw man) buying a gun for someone who is banned from owning one to a maximum of 10 years in prison.
9. Establish a database of gun sales and universal background checks.
10. Close loopholes for buying weapons at gun shows.
11. Enhance mandatory background check requirements and standardize them across all states, including for private sales.
12. Make sure the National Instant Criminal Background Check System is built for confidence, instead of speed.
13. Limit concealed permit carry laws to only those states, municipalities, and places of business/worship and that explicitly allow such rights.
14. Pass federal red flag legislation that provide a means for extreme risk protection orders, allowing the police to temporarily take away guns from people deemed by a judge to be dangerous, based on family member or acquaintances raising concerns.
15. Allow the CDC to make recommendations for gun reform.
16. Change privacy laws to allow mental healthcare providers to communicate with law enforcement.
17. Establish and fund a federal gun buyback program that pays people to voluntarily sell without risk of prosecution to local, state, or federal law enforcement their guns and ammunition. Then destroy those guns and ammunition to reduce the number of firearms in the United States.
18. Increase funding for mental health research and professionals.
19. Increase funding for school security.
20. Increase funding for local, state, and federal law enforcement.


The only ones I agree with are the second half of #1 and the last four. 

2) 10 round magazines don't really stop anything. The Parkland shooter only had 10 round magazines. It takes less than three seconds to swap out a magazine. So if they limit the size of the magazine to 10 rounds one need only carry more magazines.

3) Armor piercing bullets are already illegal.

4) Since the Columbine shooting in 1999, only three mass shooters, including school shooters, have been under age 21.

5) Limiting gun purchases to one per month is going to do what, exactly. That's still 12 guns per year. And most mass shooters only use one.

6) Driving is not a Constitutional right. Most states require registration of firearms and licenses to carry them. Mandatory insurance would be a source of income for the insurance companies and might help a gunshot victim if he or she was shot by a legal gun owner. If that gun owner was still alive and if the shooting was illegal. Not likely.

7) If a person is convicted of domestic violence, a felony, they are banned from buying guns. If they are the subject of a protection order there needs to be a court order to take their weapons away. Each case is different. Nothing about it should be automatic.

8) Straw purchases of firearms (buying for someone who cannot buy their own) carries a federal penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. (Whoever wrote this didn't research it very well.)

9) There is already a database of gun sales and background checks, if all data is entered properly.

10) The "loopholes" at gun shows are largely a myth. All gun show legal sales require a background check.

11) Enhance background checks how? Name one thing that needs to be done that's not done already. The last few times a mass shooter passed a background check who should not have was due to human error. What law will fix that?

12) Again, NICS is only as good as those people entering the information.

13) Driver's licenses are good in every state even though one state has no idea if the person from the other state is a safe driver. It should be the same for gun owners. What difference does it make what state you're in if you're a law-abiding gun owner? And what difference does it make what state you're in if you're a criminal?

14) If ordered by a judge this is already legal. No need for a new law. The Parkland case proves that many in authority (school officials, police, FBI, etc.,) are reluctant to do it.

15) Gun ownership is not a disease. Why should medical personnel have any say in it.

16) Again - this is already law. If a doctor deems a person a danger to himself or others he/she is allowed to report it to authorities.

17) This is perfectly fine as long as it's voluntary.

Everything I Have Is Now Yours

When our pastor's first grandchild was born he told us the story of when his sons were born, everything he had in the world became theirs. But that changed with the birth of his grandchild. “When I held her for the first time,” he said, “I immediately thought 'Everything I have in the world is now yours.'”

I couldn't really relate at the time because I had no grandchildren and wasn't really expecting any. But when I now hold my granddaughter, or watch her play and listen to her jabber away trying to talk, my heart knows exactly what Dr. Marr was talking about. Everything I have is now hers. The love I have for this child is really overwhelming. She melts my heart on a daily basis.

I babysat yesterday for about five hours. She was fussy and wouldn't let me put her down without crying. I'm not sure what the problem was (probably teething) because she is normally a happy baby. But when I put her in her walker she would follow me around the living room crying and holding those little arms up to say “Grampa... please, please, please pick me up.” And when I put her on her tummy on a blanket on the floor she crawled over to my feet and began pulling herself up on my legs. Who could resist such requests for love? Or say no to that face?

I got her to play for a while, then fed her and she went to sleep in my arms. Her mama returned just five minutes after she fell asleep and I had to hand her over.

Since I had only one child of my own I don't know what it's like to love two or more. But I'm going to have granddaughter number two in May so I guess I'll find out. I can't imagine being able to love more than one child like that but given the things Dr. Marr has said about his grandchildren (a total of 5 now, I think) I already know I will. I'm so looking forward to meeting the second one.

School Shootings, Dick's Sporting Goods, And Real Numbers

Dick's Sporting Goods, Walmart, and Kroger's “Fred Meyer” stores have announced they will no longer sell rifles to anyone under the age of 21. This was done following the Parkland, Florida, shooting because the shooter is only 19.

Let's take a look at the supposed wisdom of this decision.

Since 2009 there have been 156 school shootings. They varied in scope, magnitude and number of victims but there were 156 shootings that were somehow school related, according to reports.

Of those 156 shooters only two were under the age of 21. If you do the math it comes out to .012%. So Dick's, Walmart and Kroger's decisions are hopefully going to prevent about 1/10^th of 1% of future school shootings? Talk about overreaction.

I'm not trying to minimize what happened in Parkland. It was tragic. But neither the gun nor the age of the shooter were the problem. The problem in Florida was the lack of action taken by law enforcement when they not only made contact with the shooter multiple times but were told that he openly stated he wanted to be the next school shooter.

So Dick's, Walmart, and Kroger you can pat yourselves on the back if and when another shooter under 21 opens fire at a school and your name doesn't appear in the headlines as being the store that sold him the gun. But based on the numbers above the chances of that happening are miniscule. I wouldn't be boasting about it yet. It's likely you're going to get sued over it.