There have always been screamers trying to get attention. It typically turns out they are just trying to validate themselves or maybe even profit. They still scream. It's not a question of whether their screaming includes any truth or facts, only that they scream for all the wrong reasons. They seldom care a whit about the message itself.

I've received some private communications (from outside our circle of fellowship) indicating that our current alarms are just more of the same screaming. That is partially true. But when people who aren't screamers start sounding alarms, it should mean something different.

The people who built the Internet, and those who keep it going today, are warning that censorship is now raining down on the Net. One by one, services that have been content neutral are made illegal. Rumble (a video service competing with YouTube) is now inaccessible in France. The EU has warned Musk that Twitter must keep some of their previous censorship, or they will block the service across Europe as a whole. Those are just examples.

What China did with it's Great Firewall has been embraced in Europe and other parts of Asia. Until recently, US law didn't allow it to happen here. Then, during the COVID-19 scare, it began happening secretly, with collusion between Big Tech and government agencies that suffer no accountability to the people. There are court cases dealing with this right now, and we should expect no good results coming from them, given how other forms of censorship have been approved by judges.

The controls are already in place. The only thing standing between this forum and censorship is whether anyone with power bothers to notice.

We are participating in our weekly prayer time at 5pm EST. Check out the prayer request forum for some prayer topics, but feel free to lift up your own.

You may also fast. There's no obligation or guidelines to how you should do it, or if you should do it at all. Just fast as the Lord leads and speaks to your convictions.

John tells us that, rather early in the process, Jesus asked him to assume custody of His mother, Mary. It should be obvious that Jesus didn't trust His own siblings with the task because they didn't believe in Him, and John clearly did. The parallel passages are in Mark 15:33-47 and Luke 23:44-56.

By the time Jesus was actually hung on the crossbeam, it was close to noon. Not long after, the sky grew exceedingly dark. None of the Gospels offer a geophysical reason, only that it was enough to be disturbing. This continued for three hours.

At about 3PM, Jesus called out audibly a quote from Psalm 22, lamenting that He had been abandoned by the divine Presence. He spoke in Aramaic, and the Hellenized Jews nearby thought He was calling for Elijah. This was yet another reason to mock Him.

Then Jesus groaned that He was thirsty. He needed to wet this throat so He could cry out in full voice. So the soldiers standing there stuck a sponge into a jug of their low-grade vinegary wine, and then poked a reed into it because His face was just out of reach of their hands. Once He had sucked up some of the wine, He was able to make the official declaration that He had completed this part of His mission. His last words were to resign His spirit into the Father's hands. Then He collapsed into obvious death.

Apparently the Father agreed with this assessment, because at that point there was an earthquake. Tombs in the area opened up and dead people were resuscitated, walking back into town to find their friends and families. Matthew refers to them as "saints" -- pious people of faith.

Most importantly, though, was that the earthquake broke the beam in the Temple from which hung the veil separating the larger open chamber -- where the Bread of Presence was stacked, the Menorah stood, and the altar for incense -- from the inner chamber called the Holy of Holies. Something about the way that beam broke was able to cause the veil to rip and expose that inner chamber. God Himself was announcing that people could now routinely come into His Presence. The whole ritual system was finished.

There was a Roman centurion there to command the three squads that had escorted the condemned men to Golgotha. With the darkness, earthquakes and resuscitated bodies walking around, it was obvious to Him that Jesus was what He claimed to be, the Son of God. Further, the omens convinced him that Jesus was utterly innocent of any crime.

At least part of the crowd went away striking their chests in the symbol of repentance and deep regret at whatever part they may have played in all of this. We are told that among those women whom Jesus had advised earlier to save their tears, women who lived in Jerusalem but had followed Him a good bit as disciples, those standing there included Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the Less and Matthew, and the unnamed mother of James and John.

John reminds us that this was the Day of Preparation for the Passover. Keep in mind that any bodies that bounced out of the graves that weren't resuscitated could not be reburied until the day after the Passover. But it was simply unacceptable that these men should be left hanging there so close to the Temple during Passover. So the Sanhedrin went and petitioned Pilate to have the soldiers break the legs of these condemned men so they would not be able to keep pushing up to breathe, but go ahead and die by asphyxiation before sundown. Then they wanted to bodies removed.

So the order came down and the soldiers used a heavy blunt weapon and broke the shins of the crucified men. It was a hard job, and the bones might not break with the first blow. The other two went first, but when the soldiers came to Jesus, He appeared to be dead already. As a test, they poked his rib-cage with a pilum. After the blood loss from that awful beating, and the sustained racing heartbeat that follows from loss of blood pressure, the lymph system would have flooded the tissues around the heart and lungs. Romans might not have known as much about medicine as we do today, but soldiers who beat and executed a lot of prisoners recognized that separation of blood and lymph was all the proof they needed that Jesus was dead.

John notes that he was there to witness this first hand. He associates this with two prophecies, that none of the Messiah's bones would be broken, and that they would gaze mournfully upon the Messiah whom they had speared.

Apparently things were wrapped up and only a handful of soldiers stood guard to prevent any last moment rescues.

Collating the parallel passages, we learn that as twilight approached, one of the Sanhedrin came to claim the body of Jesus. He was named Joseph, from Arimathea (AKA Ramathaim), and had dissented from the others regarding Jesus. Pilate wondered if Jesus was really dead by now, and queried the centurion who had been there. Sure enough, Jesus died early in the process, so Pilate released the body to him. Joseph was quite wealthy with servants to help him. They extracted the nails and took the body down, taking it to Joseph's own tomb, which was obviously not yet in use. He was wealthy enough to afford one of the few places left for sale in Jerusalem where a traditional Hebrew tomb could be built. He could also afford the workers to carve out a space in the rock.

Joining him there was Nicodemas, the one who had met Jesus at night for a private interview. He brought with him a large roll of fabric and sufficient aromatic spices in a mixture of gum Arabic to perform a standard embalming ritual. They washed and wrapped the body of Jesus from the toes to the armpits, slathering the cloth with the gummy mixture. The arms were brought down to the side and the wrapping started again at the hands and went up to the neck. This whole process would leave the body encased in a husk that would dry hard in a matter of hours. They finished with a large flat piece of cloth wrapped around His head.

This use of a freshly carved tomb constituted a proper ritual offering to God, something not yet used for any other purpose. The men and their servants finished just in time to avoid breaking the high Sabbath of the Passover. They rolled a heavy stone against the opening of the tomb to discourage thieves who might be hoping to find expensive trinkets normally buried with wealthy people.

Those three women who witnessed the death had also followed Joseph to the tomb, watched the men and their servants prepare the body, and carefully noted the location in a common garden shared among several tombs. When they left, they gathered their own stock of burial spices and oils, but then had to get home for the Sabbath.

Sometime early during the day of Passover, the same council that condemned Jesus met with Pilate and warned him that He had prophesied He would rise in three days. They asked that Pilate would secure the tomb so that the disciples could not steal the body and claim that Jesus had risen. Pilate agreed that this would be a problem, so he ordered up a squad of guards, and one of them carried a Roman seal. It would consist of something bearing Roman government symbols, including a bit of clay or wax that could be packed around the edge of the stone to seal it against the opening. It would be stamped with a seal that nobody could mistake. Breaking the seal would mean the death penalty.

So a guard was posted on the sealed tomb for the next few days.

We are participating in our weekly prayer time at 5pm EST. Check out the prayer request forum for some prayer topics, but feel free to lift up your own.

You may also fast. There's no obligation or guidelines to how you should do it, or if you should do it at all. Just fast as the Lord leads and speaks to your convictions.

The parallel passages are found in Mark 15:16-32, Luke 23:26-43, and John 19:17-24.

The crown of thorns was actually acanthus, a flowering bush with prickly leaves. We can't tell if the purple robe was the one Antipas had put on Him or something kept in the fortress for Roman use. The Roman soldiers on duty in this fortress were mostly conscripts from Syria. The mutual contempt between Syrians and Jews is well known historically. We can't tell if Matthew and Mark refer to a second round of the soldiers mocking Jesus, but they eventually place Him in custody of a squad of four appointed to escort every condemned man. The cross beam was already prepared, but Jesus was unable to carry it very far.

A man named Simon was coming into town from the opposite direction. He was a Diaspora Jew from Cyrene, a major city with a large Jewish community, now in ruins standing on the shore in modern Libya, toward the eastern end of the coastline. It's quite likely Simon was chosen in part because he was a large fellow, but also because he was the only one coming against the flow of traffic surrounding this procession. Mark notes that this man had two sons known to his audience, where he composed his Gospel in Rome: Alexander and Rufus. At any rate, this Simon was forced to carry the crossbeam, since Jesus was half dead already.

I suppose this is as good of a place as any to note that there is no Gospel record that Jesus fell at any time on the route. There's a lot of pious nonsense about this scene. The Gospels don't linger much over the details. We have no conclusive evidence indicating where Golgotha stood, except that it was outside the city limits of that time. The place for crucifixion would offer permanently fixed upright posts or even a framework atop a high spot that would be prominently visible as a warning to others. There would have been skeletal remains scattered around, since victims with no one to claim the body were left there until the carrion eaters consumed their flesh.

Luke does record that Jesus had a word for the weeping women from His entourage of disciples who lived in Jerusalem. Keep in mind that Jesus had already gotten past His sorrow in the garden, so He encouraged the women to save the weeping for their own coming trials. He reminds them of the coming destruction of the city. If the Jewish leaders could be so hateful and barbaric under God's patience, how will they treat the people when divine wrath comes on them?

The victims of crucifixion were offered a painkilling mixture. It was composed of the cheap wine supplied to the soldiers in their rations. It would have been the latter end of a batch coming out of the grape vat, with the dregs and not much sugar. When fermented it was more like vinegar than wine. Mixed into this was myrrh, which had an analgesic effect. Jesus refused His drink. There were two other actual criminals sentenced to die on the same day. Jesus was placed in the middle between them, fulfilling the prophecy in Isaiah 53:12.

During the process, Jesus prayed out loud that His Father would forgive the soldiers, since they had no idea who He really was. Having to guard these convicts until they were dead was a dreary duty for the soldiers, but they were permitted to plunder their victims, since crucifixion required they be naked. John notes they decided to cast lots for His seamless outer robe, instead of dividing the fabric among themselves. This fulfilled another prophecy (Psalms 22:18).

There was a bit of fuss over the charge mounted above Jesus' head; the Sanhedrin weren't happy. Pilate had mocked them by writing that Jesus /was/ the King of the Jews, not merely that He had claimed to be. For this, the accompanying soldiers mocked Jesus. The Jewish leadership witnessing His death recounted some of His parabolic statements, twisting them to have a literal meaning. One of the criminals hanging beside Jesus, despite his own misery, joined in this mockery, but the other insisted Jesus was an innocent man. Luke notes the latter asked Jesus for eternal mercy, and Jesus promised they would be in Heaven that same day.

It cost the men a bit of effort to speak at all. We have very few historical details and a mass of mythology obscuring the process of crucifixion. Our best guess is that the men were hung in such a way as to lean far forward, nearly choking from the position of their arms and shoulders above and behind them. Their feet were affixed, most likely nailed from the side through the heel bones, with their knees bent somewhat. They could push up with their legs against the pain of the spikes to catch their breath, but eventually slumped back down with exhaustion, only to nearly asphyxiate again. There's no reason to assume they were positioned very high off the ground.

The Romans had developed an exceptionally torturous form of death that took hours, even days if the victims were particularly hardy.

We are participating in our weekly prayer time at 5pm EST. Check out the prayer request forum for some prayer topics, but feel free to lift up your own.

You may also fast. There's no obligation or guidelines to how you should do it, or if you should do it at all. Just fast as the Lord leads and speaks to your convictions.

This particular part of the narrative is very difficult to harmonize across the Four Gospels. Parallel passages: Matthew 27:15-32; Mark 15:6-24 and Luke 23:6-25.

The Sanhedrin had ordered Jesus to be turned over to Pilate for trial. His residence was attached to the Roman garrison on the northern end of the Temple Plaza. It was regarded as the private home of a Gentile. Entering even his open courtyard would make a Jew ritually defiled, and there was no compelling reason to suffer that so close to the Passover. By long tradition, the Roman officials knew they would have to meet the Sanhedrin halfway, coming out onto the street to talk to them. It was a nuisance for Pilate to have to walk back and forth, but it was how things got done.

Besides, there had been some preliminary planning between Pilate's staff and that of the Sanhedrin. When Jesus was brought to him, Pilate realized quickly that this prisoner was guilty only of embarrassing the Jewish leadership, but otherwise had done nothing of concern to Rome.

Luke alone tells us (Luke 23:6-12) that when Pilate caught the reference to Jesus as a Galilean, he arranged to send Him before the Jewish ruler of that province. Let's remind ourselves that Herod's Jewish kingdom had been divided between his sons when he died. The one over the Province of Judea had been removed, but the one over Galilee was still in power. Pilate was the Roman representative over the whole kingdom, but ruled Judea directly, as well, wearing two hats.

Jesus was technically under the jurisdiction of Herod Antipas. The latter normally holed up in his own palaces, either in Caesarea or Machaerus Fortress in Perea. He was in town only to maintain the pretense of being Jewish, like his father did. The only proper residence for Antipas was the Herodian royal palace on the west side of Jerusalem.

So Pilate ordered Jesus marched across town to the royal palace to see what Antipas would make of Him. Antipas had never actually seen Him, and so was intrigued over His fame. The Jewish leaders made their case. The ruler asked a lot of questions, but Jesus never answered. After awhile, Antipas and his royal bodyguard began mocking Him. Based on the meaning of the term "Messiah" implying a king from the royal line of David, Herod had one of the fancy robes from the palace closets placed on Him. After a little more mockery, He was sent back to Pilate. While Antipas had nothing to add to the Sanhedrin's case, this whole exchange did provoke Antipas to reconcile with Pilate, removing previous tensions between them.

Jesus was once more standing in the paved courtyard of the Roman residence. Pilate went out to the Jewish leaders again. He resisted their demands, but they kept pressing him. So he went back inside and interviewed Jesus again. He learned that this Jesus had no intention of hindering Roman rule, and that He really had no plans to get involved in politics at all. He was a mystic whose alleged kingdom was not of this world.

There was a bit of philosophical discussion, but it only convinced Pilate further that nothing about Jesus fell under his purview. Worse, at some point during this whole business, his wife warned him not to get involved based on some portents in a dream, and it was clear Pilate was moved by this. Going back out to the street entrance to his residence, he tried again to get the Jewish leaders to have Jesus punished within the limits of their own laws. They started getting noisy about this.

Pilate decided it was time to gauge the sentiments of the growing crowd of onlookers. Had Jesus managed to gain traction with the common folks? Pilate addressed the issue of another custom, in which the Roman government released some prisoner back to the people as a sign of good will. He mentioned another Jesus, son of Abbaiah ("bar-Abbas"), a real thug who had made serious trouble for the Jewish government. But the Sanhedrin had planted provocateurs in the crowd, and as soon as Pilate suggested releasing this very real threat back to them, the crowd chanted in favor of him over Jesus of Nazareth.

At this point, Pilate tried one more ploy. He went back into his residence and ordered the guards to remove the royal robe and to flog Jesus using Roman methods. This involved a cat-o-nine-tails, and the beating stopped just before the victim was dead. He was barely able to stand when they threw the fancy robe over His bleeding body. They mocked Him, as if announcing Him as "King of the Jews" while their salutes were made so close to Him that their hands "accidentally" slapped Him. Instead of the laurel wreath that heroes wore, they strung together some local thorn vines and placed it as His crown.

Then Pilate announced he was finished with this business and had Jesus brought out. He pointed to Him, hoping this pitiful sight would shame them just a little. The uproar from the crowd was instantaneous. The Jewish leaders began chanting to have Him crucified, and the crowd began to echo it on cue. One of the Sanhedrin leaned close enough to Pilate to be heard over the crowd, saying that the real issue was that Jesus said He was the Son of their God, and that for this He simply must die.

At this Pilate felt sick. So, he had Jesus brought back inside the gate and asked Him where He was from. Jesus didn't answer, and Pilate warned Him that His life was at stake here. Jesus quietly responded that Pilate had been appointed for this task as an unwitting agent. He was not to blame for this awful mess, but the guilt fell on the Jewish leaders. Once more, Pilate went outside the gate and tried to get the Sanhedrin to back down, but they began chanting again. The representative warned Pilate that if he didn't carry through with the deal they made and order Jesus executed, they would send a petition to Caesar that Pilate was not serving him well.

Feeling wholly trapped, Pilate had his servants set things up outside his residence. There was an elevated bit of pavement with some open space Roman officials used for this occasion, though we have no idea today where it stood. The official Roman throne of authority was placed and Pilate took a seat. Before the Jewish leaders, he washed his hands, an ancient ritual that constituted an oath that he had nothing to do with this sentence, that it was only at the behest of the Jewish leaders. The leadership responded by claiming they would gladly take the blame -- "His blood be upon us and our children!"

Then he ordered the other Jesus released, and had this one condemned to crucifixion.

We are participating in our weekly prayer time at 5pm EST. Check out the prayer request forum for some prayer topics, but feel free to lift up your own.

You may also fast. There's no obligation or guidelines to how you should do it, or if you should do it at all. Just fast as the Lord leads and speaks to your convictions.

The Catacomb Resident blog is not loading this morning. I've checked on it from the outside and the DNS is not resolving. For those of you not familiar with how that works, it means that the Internet backbone out there that directs all the traffic has no record of where to find it. That could be any number of different problems, including some forms of censorship. Let's hope the people who own the server that hosts the blog can fix the problem.

I ran some diagnostics from my end. I can tell you that the other sites hosted on the server are not resolving, either. However, the server does respond to other kinds of requests.

The parallels are Mark 15:1-5 and Luke 23:1-5. We learn that the Sanhedrin, with the support of the priestly leadership and judges, waited until dawn so that it was just barely legitimate that they convene and declare Jesus worthy of death. The next step was to bring Him before Pilate for a matching Roman judgment.

It's quite possible that Judas assumed Jesus and His disciples would rise up in divine power and crush the ruling regime. Or perhaps he expected that Jesus would face only a beating, perhaps. Instead, Jesus allowed Himself to be led away bound to Pilate. Matthew alone tells us that Judas was shaken by regret at this scene. He attempted to return the bribe, confessing that he had betrayed an innocent man. The people who paid him insisted that was his problem now.

So Judas threw the silver on the floor of the Temple near the collection box from which he was paid, then went somewhere and hanged himself. The representatives of the ruling council picked up the scattered silver coins, and piously noted that it was against their policy to receive blood money into the Temple treasury, so they used it for charity. They bought an empty lot near the city that had been used for the production of pottery in the past. It was designated a place to bury Gentiles who died in the city.

The story of how it was bought leaked out, and it gained the notorious nickname as the "Field of Blood".

We note that Matthew quoted Zechariah 11 but references Jeremiah. This appears to be an obscure rabbinical tradition for referring to sections of the Scriptures by the name of the first book in the section. The passage in Zechariah prophesies that God, faced with the refusal of the ruling class of Israel to keep the intent of the Covenant, would be forced to declare the Covenant dissolved. Thus, this whole scene reeks of political maneuvering that completely ignores Covenant justice, yet appears to abide by the words of the Law. It was the problem Zechariah was addressing.

The passage in Zechariah includes a lot of symbolic acts that everyone knew was meant to convey a prophetic message. He took on the job of fattening some sheep for ritual slaughter, symbolizing how the nation's leadership regarded their own people. He dismissed the hired shepherds, symbolizing God dismissing the people He blessed with ruling power. It included Zechariah getting paid 30 pieces of silver for watching this flock of sheep; it as the price of a slave. The Lord told him to take that "princely sum" (sarcasm) and give it to the potter. Zechariah's response was dramatically tossing it on the floor of the Temple as a designated offering to pay for the pottery used in the rituals. It was the most mundane use imaginable, and duly symbolizes just how much the Jewish ruling class of both Zechariah's and Jesus' day valued their own nation as their divine inheritance.

The shepherds of the nation, the Sanhedrin, had valued Jesus as a cheap common criminal, and never bothered to address any part of His prophetic claims. They seemed to despise Him precisely because He cared about the common people. Instead of hearing out His claim to be the Messiah, of the royal House of David, they treated Him as a threat to their position.

Thus, they led Jesus before a Gentile magistrate who understood even less what it was all about than they themselves did. Again, it seems rather obvious that Pilate had been wheedled into going along with this plan to get rid of another terrorist, for this is precisely what he expected Jesus to be.

Pilate was in town precisely because Jewish festivals seemed to be when keeping the Pax Romana taxed him the hardest. He normally stayed in the Roman villa at Caesarea on the coast, but visited Jerusalem during high holy days so he could be on hand to respond more quickly to the increasingly common disturbances that came with those holidays, while at the same time pretending to honor the Jewish celebrations.

This kind of background tension was precisely the reason the Sanhedrin claimed Jesus deserved execution. They presented Him as someone claiming to be the King of the Jews. Pilate asked Jesus if that was His claim. Jesus responded with a turn of phrase that meant roughly, "Sure, whatever you say." This was not what Pilate agreed to, so he announced (Luke tells us) that he was not impressed with this accusation. If they couldn't bring a more blatantly rebellious Jewish patriot, the deal was off. This guy was clearly just a patsy.

So, the ruling council lined up to list their accusations of how Jesus agitated for the overthrow of the Jewish and Roman governments. Jesus seemed to have no real interest in the whole show. He appeared to be someone resigned to His fate, and offered no objection when given the chance under Roman procedures. Pilate was very impressed with how Jesus just shrugged it off. It was obvious this was a big put on, and that whatever reason the Jewish leaders had for this big show, it was no concern of Rome.