Easter Friday

It is now Friday, Jesus is still in the posession of the soldiers, priests and the government heads of the town. Things are not looking good so far. The priests had taken Jesus to Pilate, the head of the Roman government for that area and tried to prove to Pilate that Jesus was a real bad dude. However their accusations were just that, accusations, and didn't hold any weight so Pilate decided that "The King of the Jews" was not guilty of anything as far as he was concerned so go take Him elsewhere. Next stop on the merry go round was with Herod, he was the local person of authority for Jerusalem. Herod was anxious to see Jesus as he had heard rumours about Jesus and His miracles that He had done. I believe that Herod actually wanted Jesus to perform for him and entertain him. This was not to be as Jesus was not in the mood to entertain any head of government whether that person was a local head or a bigger district head. He was there for a purpose and that purpose was not doing miracles to make politicians laugh.
Seeing that Jesus was not co-operating with these people, they started to taunt Him by wrapping Him in a royal robe and then sent Him back to Pilate. Maybe Herod figured that if he couldn't make Jesus dance then maybe Pilate could. Because of this happening, Pilate and Herod became buddies, which is something that had never seemed possible before that date.
Pilate gathered the mob of priests, scribes and the people to address them and said "You have accused this man with many riotous actions before me but I can't find anything wrong to entitle me to have Him killed. Even Herod couldn't find anything wrong either because he sent Jesus back to me to deal with. I will give Him forty lashes and send Him on His way! We do have a tradition here that allows me to release a prisoner to you, the one in mind is Barabus so make up your mind whether it be Barabus or Jesus?"
The crowd was going wild and yelled for "Jesus" to be crucified with no other recourse in mind. Pilate finally gave in and announced that Jesus would be crucified to keep the mob satisfied.
Jesus was taken to the Praetorium where they stripped off most of His clothes, tied him to a post and struck Him with a whip that had pieces of steel and glass fastened to the ends of the thongs. When the thongs hit his flesh, it tore the flesh and muscles underneath so it was causing much distress to Jesus. I can guarantee that if that was done in modern day time there would be a serious uproar and a jailterm to the people doing the whipping but that was the common punishment in those days.
After this was done, the guards took Jesus and placed a crown of thorns on his head and shoved it down into his scalp. Then Jesus was made to pick up the cross beam and carry it to the hill outside the town where he and two thieves were to be crucified before a large crowd of onlookers. As Jesus was moving along the street, He collapsed from the weight of the beam and the loss of blood from the whipping. The guards picked a bystander from the crowd, Simon from Cyrene, and forced him to carry the beam for Jesus.
When the procession reached the top of the hill at Golgotha (the place where the crucifixions took place) the guards took Jesus and threw Him down onto the beam so His arms were spread across it. There Jesus was nailed with three big spikes to hold Him to the cross, one nail in each wrist and one nail through both legs above the feet. Then the cross was raised and the bottom was dropped into the hole prepared for it.
There were three crosses in three holes with two criminals and Jesus standing on the hill at Golgotha on display in front of the crowd, waiting for the three men to die of suffication because of their crimes, but Jesus had done no crime and was suffering for Mankind's sin.
At the sixth hour of the day, the sky turned pitch black and stayed that way until the ninth hour. Jesus cried out in another language "My God, My God, why have you forgotten Me?" Shortly he cried out again "It is finished" and He died.
Many strange things were occuring at that moment as the earth was shaking as in an earthquake, the veil in the Temple tore in two, the ground opened up and many dead souls came to life again and walked into the city. Boy that was weird.
The next day was the sabbath and no bodies were allowed to stay on a cross at this time so they had to be removed from the crosses. A rich man named Joseph from Arimethea, asked to take down Jesus body and the soldiers agreed so it was done. Joseph took Jesus, wrapped Him in clean linens and placed His body in Joseph's own new tomb that he had carved out of the rock. After this he placed a rock across the opening to the tomb and left. Mary (Jesus' mother), and Mary Magdelene were there watching Joseph as he placed Jesus in his tomb.
Well that is all for this dark and gloomy day so we will close on this scene and wait to see what happens tomorrow.
Wilf Blakey