HOW DID JESUS REALLY DIE?                                                         

Being nailed on a cross is painful enough but hanging there for days while still alive is far worse.  Fortnately for Jesus, he was nailed on his cross on a Friday. The Romans previously agreed to accept Saturdays as the Jewish Sabbaths and the Jewish Sabbath actually begins at four in the afternoon of every Friday. The Romans also agreed to not have condemned prisoners, no matter who they were, left hanging on their crosses during the Jewish Sabbath. For this reason, Jesus and the two other condemned men were removed from their crosses just before four in the afternoon.  Jesus' final hours of his life on the cross lasted from approximately 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., a period of about six hours. I don’t know how long the two other prisoners had been hanging on their crosses  prior to Jesus’ arrival  on Golgotha  also known as Skull Hill. It was at this location that all prisoners in the area of Jerusalem were executed.

Having previously been beaten by the Jews, it was now the Romans’ turn to administer the whip. The beatings administered by the Roman soldiers are well known to have been very bloody, leaving lacerations all over the body. Romans designed their whips so that the ends of the leather lashes of each whip would cut the flesh from their victim’s bodies. These beatings were designed to be painful to the extreme. It would also cause a fluid build up around their victim’s lungs. In addition, a crown of thorns was forced into his scalp which was capable of severely irritating major nerves in his head, causing increasing and excruciating pain, as the hours wore on.

In Christ’s severely stressed condition, these beatings were severe enough to kill him and yet, he didn’t died from those wounds.  His body was horribly bruised, cut and bleeding. Having had no nourishment for many hours, and having lost fluids through profuse sweating and much bleeding, Jesus would have been severely dehydrated. This brutal torture would certainly be sending him into what doctors call it—a shock which can kill anyone suffering from it. I know this for a fact because several years ago when I survived a serious car accident, hours later I went into a state of shock and was rushed to a hospital by an ambulance and was in the hospital for several weeks. Jesus having to carry the cross beam of his cross on his shoulders didn’t ease his exhaustion either.

According to Dr. Frederick Zugibe, the piercing of the median nerve of the wrists with a nail can cause pain so incredible that even morphine won’t help bring some form of relief from the  severe, excruciating, burning pain, not unlike like lightning bolts traversing the arm into the spinal cord.” Rupturing the foot’s plantar nerve with the nail driven in both feet would have a similarly horrible effect.     Since he and the cross were on the ground when the nails were being driven into his wrists and feet, when the cross was eventually lifted upwards and dropped into the hole that was to keep the cross upright, would have increased the pain in both his wrists and feet.

Now I realize that pictures of Jesus along with statutes of Jesus show that the nails were driven into his hands. This is a myth. The Romans knew that the nails in the hands had nothing in them to support the weight of the condemned man and that is why the nails were always driven into the wrists of the condemned men.  The pictures I have seen of the three men on the cross show that they were nailed to their crosses with the hails driven into their wrists.

It was also the custom of the Romans to nail a small block of wood to the area of the vertical post where the feet would be for two reasons. The first reason was so that the feet of the condemned men could easily be nailed to the blocks of wood. But there was another more insidious reason for nailing their feet on that small block of wood. If their feet weren’t nailed on that block of wood instead of the vertical beam, they would die within an hour or less. The Romans wanted their condemned prisons to linger for days if at all possible.

Now I want you to brace yourself because I am going to tell you how Jesus actually died on the cross.

He suffocated to death. Now I know that most if not all of my readers will say that he bled to death. There is no doubt that he bled from the wounds brought about from the whipping, the crown of thorns and the nails.

Our blood accounts for about 8 percent of our body weight A typical adult male has approximately 5 liters of blood in his body. That is approximately 10,5 pints of blood that would be flowing through  Jesus’ body when he was on the cross.

Now I know what you are thinking. When the Roman soldier thrust his spear in the right side of Jesus’ chest, no blood came out of the wound, only water.        There is an easy explanation for this. His heart had stopped beating and since it wasn’t beating any more, the he blood in his body couldn’t be pumped out of the wound in his chest. However, since the water in that area of the chest that was pierced didn’t need to be pumped anywhere in his body, whatever water was in Jesus’ chest, simply poured out as a result of gravity.   

And now back to his suffocation on the cross.       

As he (and this applies to the other two condemned men on their crosses) was hanging by his wrists on the cross beam, the muscles in his arms and abdomen pulled against his diaphragm (the organ that controls our breathing) and although he could breathe in he  couldn’t exhale.

This brings us back to the block of wood in which his feet were nailed into. In order to be able to exhale, all he had to do was  stand up a wee bit and the pressure of his abdominal muscle would be less against his diaphragm and then he could exhale and thus also breathe in air.  Of course he would have to do this all the time which would increase  the pain in his feet and his wrists since he had to push up his body and at the same time pull his body upwards. 

Now comes the real proof that Jesus suffocated to death on the cross.  If you read the Christian Bible, you will know that after it was determined that Jesus was dead and that the two thieves were still alive, the senior soldier on the scene ordered two of his soldiers to break the legs of the two thieves. Why do that when a spear thrust into their hearts would do the trick. Because like Jesus was doing to keep himself alive, the two thieves were also relieving the abdominal pressure against their diaphragms in order to breathe. Once their legs were broken, they couldn’t stand up and subsequently, they too died from suffocation.

While I still have your attention, (hopefully) there is some more information I want to pass on to you.

Jesus made seven final statements during his last hours on the cross. These phrases are held dear by followers of Jesus because they offer a glimpse into the depth of his suffering to accomplish redemption. Recorded in the Gospels between the time of his crucifixion and his death, they reveal his divinity as well as his humanity.  What follows is one of them as pertained by Mark.

Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” 

Jesus wasn’t sure if he was the Messiah (the Hebrew word for the person who would rescue the Jews from the Roman tyranny.) The only way that Jesus could be sure if he really was the Messiah was to put God to the test. If he was the Jew’s expected Messiah, then God would rescue him from the cross with an army of angels. That is why he was so anxious to be put on the cross. I said that because that was his intention. He could have avoided dying on the cross by stating at his hearing that the proceedings were conducted improperly since such trials have to be conducted in the day and not at night in which his trial was conducted. He kept silent instead and let fate dictate his future. 

That is why he cried out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” 

 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept anyone’s claim of him being God or even the son of god.

After Jesus died on the cross, one of the soldiers who was at the feet of Jesus, said, “That man is truly a son of God.”

He didn’t say that Jesus was the son of God. Hs said that he was a son of God. It had been then and probably even today that any man who does good deeds is a “son of God.’

When Jesus cried out his last sentence, “It is finished”, he wasn’t referring to his own life. He was referring to the pain he was undergoing. It was at that moment that he decided not to relieve the pressure against his diaphragm so that he could die right away—which he did.

I hope that you have found this article informative.

Saturday's article is called, Did Judas really betray Jesus?