MY SAVIOR
The God that created the heavens and earth
He is my Lord and Savior
I did nothing that I should deserve
Such love from my creator
The Father sent His Son Jesus
Knowing what would be His fate
A human with all of my weaknesses
I bow before God amazed
He knew how helpless I was
With a sin that had to be paid
My Savior disregarded the cost
As a human He came to obey
He was crucified and tortured
How can I ever repay
The sacrifice he offered
Thank you God, for your grace
But that is not the end of the story
His resurrection. His victory
My Savior’s alive today!
By:
Lissette Trahan
Comment on My Savior
My first question when I am face to face to face with
Jesus will be why? Why did you come down from
your throne and become a human like us?
Knowing what you would go through. You would be hated,
you would be tortured in the most horrible way—
crucified!
And what astonishes me is that at any point you could
have said enough. Legions of angels would have come
to stop the crime.
You, the God of creation, came with one mission, to
save humanity. You came to show us how to live, how
to love. To show us the Father. That was your true
mission.
You became my Savior, my mediator with the Father.
You will be my advocate and intercessor when I stand
before God.
I am humbled to be loved so unconditionally. In
gratitude I surrender my life to you. I will obey and
serve you with the talents you have blessed me with.
You are my Lord and Savior.
1 John 4:14
And we have seen and testify that the
Father has sent his Son to be the Savior
of the world
A wonderful Easter message,
that unfortunately is overlooked
in this chocolate indulgent society.
GREAT!
Sent via the Samsung Galaxy S® 6, an AT&T 4G LTE smartphone
Thank You. He is Risen, He is Alive!!
Much more to the Easter story than bunnies with Easter eggs.
The First Good Friday:
Ancient Romans were disturbingly skilled in implementing crucifixion as capital punishment as crucifixion expert Dr. Alexander Metherell, M.D, PH. D, reveals specifics of this torment. Metherell has a medical degree from University of Miami and an engineering doctorate from England’s University of Bristol, and was formerly a consultant to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.
Metherell establishes Jesus’ ordeal as commencing the night before in the Garden of Gethsemane where New Testament records that Jesus began to sweat blood. This biblical narrative describes a medical condition Metherell identifies as hematidrosis whose causation is extreme psychological distress triggering a discharge of bodily chemicals breaking down sweat gland capillaries, resulting in sweat tinged with blood. Hematidrosis leaves the skin in an extremely fragile and sensitive state for flogging, a legal preliminary to crucifixion. Floggings were so vicious that some condemned men failed to survive it. 39 lashes were typically administered, but habitually more depending on the soldier meting out the strikes. The degree of malice becomes patently obvious as one learns that these whips of braided leather thongs had metal balls and sharp bone pieces woven into them ensuring their use to shred flesh.
The scourging area encompassed the back from the shoulders, buttocks down to the back of the legs. The lacerations left the back so shredded that portions of the spine were often exposed. As Metherell describes it “…. the lacerations would tear into the underlying skeletal muscles and produce quivering ribbons of bleeding flesh.” A grim portrayal corroborated by third-century historian Eusebius’ observation that “The sufferer’s veins were laid bare, and the very muscles, sinews, and bowels of were open to exposure.”
Scourged survivors were left in what Metherell terms ‘hypovolemic shock’, suffering extreme loss of blood, skyrocketing pulse, plummeting blood pressure, failed kidneys, plus extreme thirst to replace lost fluids.
At crucifixion, the condemned were positioned for transfixion. Arms were outstretched on the horizontal beam, sharp iron spikes five to seven inches long were driven through the wrists, not the palms as erroneously depicted in images of Jesus; wrists were regarded as part of the hand in ancient times. The palms are physiologically insubstantial to bear the weight of crucified victims. Spikes driven through the wrists crush the median nerve, the largest nerve going to the hand. Metherell describes this pain as “…. absolutely unbearable.” So, punishing that a new word was imperative to express it: excruciating. Literally, meaning ‘out of the cross.’ Victims were then raised up with the crossbar and attached to the prepositioned vertical beam. Nails were then driven through the feet, yielding further crushing agony.
Stresses in this vertical position compel the arms to stretch about six inches as shoulders are dislocated. Metherell portrays crucifixion as “an agonizingly slow death by asphyxiation as the muscles and diaphragm force the chest to an inhaled position.” “Exhaling requires the sufferer to push up on his feet repeatedly, scraping his blooded back against the coarse wood of the cross.”
As death approaches, the unceasing hypovolemic shock sustains an excessive pulse rate contributing to eventual heart failure leading to collection of fluid in the membrane around the heart (pericardial effusion) as well as around the lungs (pleural effusion). Afterwards, Roman soldiers would confirm death by thrusting a spear into the right side, going through the right lung and into the heart. The fluids described would then exit out of the body as the spear was withdrawn. If one remained alive, the soldiers would break the legs to hasten death.
Roman soldiers possessed negligible medical knowledge, nevertheless they remained supremely motivated in exterminating people for if they mismanaged their duties, they themselves would endure crucifixion. Some skeptics opine that perchance Jesus survived crucifixion, a conjecture Metherell repudiates vociferously.
Underscoring Metherell is Dr. William D. Edwards’ 1986 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association which concludes, “Clearly, the weight of the historical and medical evidence indicates that Jesus was dead before the wound to his side was inflicted…. Accordingly, interpretations based on the assumption that Jesus did not die on the cross appear to be at odds with modern medical knowledge.”
References:
https://www.healthline.com/health/hypovolemic-shock
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/403315?redirect=true
http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/deathjesus.pdf
https://www.layman.org/the-passion-of-the-christ-the-most-amazing-love-story-of-all-time
Chapter 11: The Medical Evidence from the book “The Case for Christ” by Lee Strobel
Tony Favero
Freelance writer
Retired engineer and mathematics instructor
Student in Bible Study Fellowship
Half Moon Bay, CA