Hurlbut's Life of Christ For Young and Old: A Complete Life of Christ Written in Simple Language, Based on the Gospel NarrativeHurlbut, Jesse Lyman
Religion
Hurlbut's Life of Christ For Young and Old: A Complete Life of Christ Written in Simple Language, Based on the Gospel Narrative
Hurlbut, Jesse Lyman
Jesus Christ -- Biography
At this time, near the cross of Jesus, was standing John, his disciple,
the one disciple that Jesus loved, and with him was Mary, the mother of
Jesus, also her sister and two other women named Mary--Mary the wife of
Clopas, and Mary Magdalene, or Mary of Magdala. When Jesus saw his
mother, and beside her the disciple whom he loved, he spoke from the
cross to her:
"Woman, there is your son."
Then he said to John:
"Son, there is your mother."
And from that time Mary, the mother of Jesus, lived with the disciple
John, as though he was her own son.
It was now noon, and Jesus had been upon the cross three long, terrible
hours; the sun beating with its rays upon his head. Just at noon a
sudden darkness came over the sky and the earth, and the darkness did
not pass away until three o'clock. This darkness alarmed the people, and
those who had been speaking to Jesus words of contempt, now stood still,
full of fear.
At about three o'clock, Jesus called out with a loud voice these words:
"My God! My God! Why hast thou forsaken me?"
These are the opening words of the twenty-second psalm, written many
hundred years before as a prophecy of what Christ should suffer. It may
be that Jesus spoke those words to show that all his suffering had been
foretold long before. Jesus in speaking those words used the old Hebrew
tongue, the language in which the psalm was written. In the old Hebrew
the words, "My God! My God!" were "Eloi! Eloi!" But the language had
changed so greatly since the psalms were written that the people who
heard him did not understand the words. Some said, "He is calling upon
Elijah the prophet to help him!"
Then Jesus spoke again and said:
"I am thirsty."
There was standing by a jar full of vinegar. One of the men took a
sponge, soaked it in the vinegar, fastened it on the end of a stick, and
placed it on the lips of Jesus. This also had been foretold in the
sixty-ninth psalm, in the words,
"In my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink."
As soon as Jesus tasted the vinegar, he said:
"All is finished."
Then, after a moment's pause, he spoke with a loud voice to God:
"Father, into thy hands I give up my spirit!"
And with those words his head dropped forward, and Jesus was hanging
dead upon his cross.
[Illustration: The people on Mt. Calvary looking at the dying Jesus were
filled with fear, and went back to the city in terror at the darkness
and earthquake.]
Just at the moment when Jesus died, suddenly there was an earthquake;
the ground was shaken, the rocks were torn apart, and many of the tombs
around Jerusalem were opened. In the Temple on Mount Moriah, a wonderful
event was seen. The great veil that hung between the Holy Place and
the Most Holy Place was suddenly torn from the top to the bottom, as if
by a mighty unseen hand, so that the priests in the Temple could see
what none of them, except the high priest, had ever seen before, the
inside of the Holy of Holies.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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