The scene was ugly. As the earth quaked and it became pitch dark, Jesus cried out, “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken Me?” What went through the minds of the people as they stood in gross darkness and heard Jesus cry out?
When the earth shook, the veil of the temple was rent in twain and the people never even knew what it was about. God, who had become man, was paying a price for redemption. He died as a man, for the God that was in Him left Him on the cross to die alone.
On Golgotha’s hill there were three crosses. Hanging on those crosses were two thieves and my Savior. All three of these men showed a different attitude towards crucifixion.
Two were thieves. The Bible declares their crime. Possibly they both stole for a living. Perhaps they’d been treated harshly, had been hurt. Maybe they were orphans and felt society owed them something, so they blamed their sins and crimes on everyone else. They railed and they rocked, screamed and hollered, “It’s unfair. Let me come down. I’m innocent. I’m being mistreated. Somebody help me. Oh, I don’t deserve to die.”
They had no remorse, they only wanted to escape the cross. Had they escaped, nothing would have changed. It would have been only a matter of days before they were thieves again.
But, if that one thief could talk to us today, he would say, “The best thing that ever happened to me was the day I was crucified, the day they drove nails in my wrists and feet and took my life.” He had accused, blamed God and man, but today he would tell you, “I’m glad I was crucified. It was for my own good.”
What had happened to this thief? What changed his attitude? He saw Love’s greatest Example and it changed his heart. Both thieves deserved to die. They had no right to complain, but the only One who had a rightful reason to rail was led as a Lamb to the slaughter. He did not open His mouth.
It so touched the one thief that he rebuked the other and turned to Jesus and said, “Remember me, when thou comest into thy kingdom.” He wasn’t a religious man, but he saw something and it changed him. On that glorious day, he was no longer a thief, but a son. He was changed.
Suspended between heaven and earth was the King of all kings, the great Example on how to be crucified. He had been questioned by religious men, had stood before the Sanhedrin and Caiaphas, the High Priest. He had been tried by Pilate, and now, Jesus, the Son of God, hung there naked. They had stripped Him of His clothes. Roman crucifixion did not allow a loin cloth to hide His nakedness.
Spikes had been driven through His hands, the blood gushed forth. He had been beaten with a cat-of-nine-tails, the roman whip, a leather throng, nine strips of leather. Into these leather strips were tied pieces of sharp metal. No doubt they had used an expert to beat and scourge the Lord, because He was notorious.
Someone skilled in using this whip would use a special flick to the wrist, a special movement, so that he could beat a man beyond recognition. That metal in the whip would cut in and lift flesh and muscle off the bones. Historians record that you could have looked in His rib cage from His back and seen His heartbeat. It was for my healing.
Crucifixion was the severest, most agonizing and cruel punishment Rome ever imparted on anyone. There He hung, bleeding and suffering. They had pierced Him, plucked out His beard, beaten His head with a reed to drive a crown of thorns down upon His tender head. His back had been ripped until the flesh hung by the skin.
He didn’t mock the ones that plucked His beard, He didn’t scream in anger at the one that beat the crown on His head, or the one that nailed Him to the cross. The Bible doesn’t record it, but I firmly believe that as He was persecuted that way, His Spirit inside was rejoicing.
You ask, “How could He be rejoicing?” With all my heart I believe our Lord was rejoicing, “Thank You, Father, for what has been accomplished. Thank You, Father, for what is happening. Thank You for My crucifixion.”
Do you mean to tell me, He got to that place?” Absolutely.
How could He be thankful for pain and the agony, the suffering at Calvary? Why was He rejoicing? He was thinking about His Bride. He loved us so much. He had you and me on His mind. Had He had not died a perfect Sacrifice, we would have been lost forever. The final act of a crucifixion, by Roman custom, was to break the legs of those who were hanging there. When their legs were broken, they could no longer push off, but the whole weight would be upon their chest. Within a matter of minutes they’d be dead because they would not be able to draw a breath.
The Roman soldier already found Jesus dead when he came to break His bones, so instead he pierced Him in his side. Thus Scripture was fulfilled. His bones were not to be broken, for He was God’s perfect Passover Lamb.
When that soldier pierced His side that day on Calvary, a great separation took place. As Eve was inside of Adam when he was created, the Bride was in Jesus when He was born. God had reached into the first Adam in the Garden of Eden and pulled out his counterpart, Eve. On Calvary, God also reached into the second Adam, Christ, and pulled out His counterpart, the Bride of Jesus Christ. Not ribs or muscles in the natural, but spiritually, that little Bride was separated from her Bridegroom two- thousand years ago.
That Roman spear in His side made a little incision only slightly larger than the blade of the sword, and blood and water flowed. The time would come in the very Endtime, in which the great breach between Jesus Christ, the Husband, and His Bride is going to be closed. In a spiritual sense, the Bride will go back into Christ the same way she came out, in a narrow way, “For without holiness, no man shall see God.”
I wasn’t there to see that blood and water flow, I wasn’t there in the natural to see His Bride separated from His side, but I know beyond the shadow of doubt that in my lifetime I am going to see the Bride that was separated from her Bridegroom at Calvary, reunited and restored back to her rightful position. Beloved of the Lord, you will surely see the greatest event that has ever happened in the history of the world. You are going to witness the reuniting of the Bride with her Bridegroom.
Jesus suffered as no man has ever suffered, yet He answered not those who mocked Him. He died with dignity. How could He die in such a manner, so calm, so quiet? How could He do it?
It was settled before He went to the cross. We think of Him as God. We picture Him a great Hero, squaring His shoulders, marching to Calvary saying, “I will suffer. I will die for lost humanity.”
No, it wasn’t that way, but every day He brought His flesh under subjection to the Father’s will. He was God, yet in His human body He was tempted in like manner with the same passions we are, yet without sin. He understood the vices of the flesh, the pulls of carnality, the cravings of this fleshly body, but He sinned not.
How could He die with such serenity and peace? He had settled the score the night before in Gethsemane’s Garden. Something so significant took place in the Garden of Gethsemane. For the first time in history, the Father and the Son had a disagreement of wills. There in the Garden, for the first time, the will of the Son (the flesh) rose up against the will of the Eternal Spirit of the Father that dwelt in Him.
You don’t know how tragic this was, because there are not two or three Persons in the Godhead. Jesus Christ was enough God, so He could redeem us, yet enough man to feel the agony of deciding, “Will I yield to the will of the Father, or will My flesh rise and cause Me to run in the other direction?”
There in the Garden of Gethsemane, His will wrestled with the will of the Father, until the struggle was so hard, an Angel came and ministered to Jesus. He wiped His brow as He agonized. Two wills that had always flowed in agreement suddenly conflicted. I am persuaded with all my heart this was significant enough that it probably stopped the earth for a split second of time.
I’m so glad that, as sweat dropped down like great drops of blood and an Angel ministered to His fleshly needs, my Lord forever screamed, “If at all possible, let this cup pass from Me. Nevertheless, not My will but Thine be done.” That was Gethsemane’s purpose. Surrendering the will of the flesh to the Father’s will.
I believe Jesus’ death was complete in Gethsemane. His obedience brought Him to perfection. My Lord died a Perfect Sacrifice. No spot, no blemish, no conflict of wills. It was all settled. That’s the reason He could die with dignity. That’s the reason He prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” How could He do it?
You say it was because He was God. No, Jesus died alone. He died as a man. He loved His little Bride so much, He was thankful that the conflict was settled. “It’s not much longer now. Not much longer now.” He is rejoicing, rejoicing, when suddenly a sensation like a rip roars through His body, and He cried out on the cross, “Father, My Father, why hast Thou forsaken Me!”
As the Spirit of God that had been in Him, that anointing that had caused Him to heal blinded eyes, raise the dead, cleanse the leper, that Spirit that had ever been much a part of Him, on Calvary’s cross, the Father ripped that from Him and He died empty. The agony of that rip was greater than the nails in His wrist and feet, greater than a spear in His side. The rip that He felt when the Father’s Spirit departed left Him to hang on the cross alone. It left Him totally ripped. That’s why His flesh screamed one last time. Not in anger, but in despair.
In my mind, it is not a good feeling to think that the Eternal Spirit of the Father left Him there to die alone, but He had to do it for the predestinated purpose of redemption. He left His fingerprint on that body when He left the blood He had created for the redemption of all mankind. It was His grace towards lost humanity that brought the blood to us. It was not the chemistry of that blood itself, the blood that seeped into the ground, but the Life that was in that blood.
I propose that when the Eternal Spirit of the Father left Jesus, He went by divine presence into the Holy of Holies in the temple, and took His hands and waited for the queue. At the precise moment in which Jesus gave up the Ghost, the God of eternity rent the veil, ending fifteen-hundred years of separation, believing in something you couldn’t feel, and made a way for His little Bride to have access to the Holy of Holies, the Shekinah Glory of the Lord.
When my Lord got over the initial shock of that rip of the Spirit of Almighty God leaving His flesh, I believe His mind went back to me. Jesus died speaking in tongues. I don’t know what was said, but I believe what was in His mind. “It’s for you, little Bride. For you, little Bride.”
There is one Spirit. When God was brought down to man’s level, He had to condescend to this realm. When you put God in a fleshly body, there is conflict until the will of the flesh is crucified.
You say, “This doesn’t make sense to me.”
Let me ask you the question, “Have you been filled with the Holy Ghost? Does He abide in your life? Have you ever told a lie since you were baptized with the Holy Ghost? How can this happen when you received the same Spirit that was in Jesus? How can you tell a lie if Jesus is living in you?" It does happen. How could you do it? How often have you said, “I’ll never do that again.” But you did. At the time you meant that you’d never do it again, but there was conflict between what God was telling you to do and what your flesh was telling you to do.
Don’t you know that’s a damning feeling? “I’m lost if I can’t do God’s will. I’m nothing.”
Have you ever felt that way? Then look to the Garden of Gethsemane and you’ll find your Lord in the same conflict. It is so comforting to me to know that God will not stomp on me when my will is in conflict with His.
When that Angel from Glory came and ministered to Him, the Spirit in Him did not need comforting. It was not His Spirit, but His flesh was in conflict with the Spirit of the Father. I am so glad that my Lord learned obedience.
“Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered; And being made perfect…”
Medical science has declared it is medically unlikely, yet possible, that someone can become in such anguish and stress, that the fibers of the blood vessels and capillaries begin to deteriorate until the blood would begin to seep through the body like sweat.
My Lord was in that kind of agony because His flesh said, “I don’t want to die. I don’t want to be crucified!,” but the Spirit in Him said, “You must! You must! Look at Your children, look at those who will be lost. Look at what will happen to this old world if You don’t. You must! You must!”
There was nothing consoling about Gethsemane. His flesh said, “I don’t want to hurt, I don’t want nails in My wrists or hang naked on the cross. I don’t want My back beaten until My flesh hangs out. I cannot endure it.” Yet the will of the Father kept telling Him in the Spirit, “You must! You must! You must! You must!”
“Oh Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me.” The demons of torment stood there to tempt Him, to try to add to His agony, yet He overcame. He had a will. He didn’t want to die.
You ask, “If there is no Trinity, who was He talking to?” He was talking to His Father that was dwelling in Him.
“That sounds mysterious.”
We are talking about God, brother. It was not two Persons in conflict in Gethsemane. There is only One God. There is one eternal Spirit. That Spirit made a body and that body had a will. That will was in conflict with the Spirit within Him.
Are you willing to be like Jesus? Then another Gethsemane, another crucifixion must take place. It brings two kinds of destruction. One takes us upward, the other takes us downward. Which will it be in your life? There is nothing more devastating than a blow dealt to you by a brother or sister in Christ. Have you ever been hurt, devastated or wounded by someone you loved in the church? Have you ever been on the receiving end of the hammer and nails?
Brother, sister, if you keep blaming the wrong person for the spear hole, you’re going to find your soul in jeopardy. Don’t try to pull yourself off the cross before you’re dead. You’re going to jeopardize your soul.
Are you searching tonight to recover, or are you one who still goes down on your knees saying, “Lord, deliver my sister. Oh Lord, justify me. Vindicate me.” You spend a lot of time praying, wanting God to vindicate you by bringing other people open and naked.
Don’t you understand, God has allowed this to happen to you, to me? Don’t gloat, He has allowed it to happen to you to perfect you. The hurt of a Christian being cruel to another Christian is severe. You have been crucified by Christians, you’re going through an experience that can affect you the rest of your life. It could leave you lame and crippled, possibly mark the end of your walk with the Lord.
Let me ask you another question. Can you come clean and honestly say, “Yes, I too have in some word, some deed, some action nailed a brother or sister to the cross. I too have put another spear in their side.”
Oh, Bride of Christ, what will you do when you face your greatest conflict, when you face the same conflict Jesus did in Gethsemane? Will you be bitter with God if you have to go through a Gethsemane, or a crucifixion spiritually, a dying to the flesh, carnality and selfishness?
It is the same struggle on a different scale, a different measure, so that you can receive the very Person of Jesus Christ, the very life He laid down in Gethsemane. As the Word is trying, groaning, struggling to become flesh in you and you begin to taste a little bit of that agony of crucifying your flesh and letting God rule your life, will you surrender to the eternal will of the Father? Will you bring your flesh under subjection?
What will you do when the Word of God comes and rips off the cover? When the all-seeing penetrating eyes of Jesus rip off the lid of your life by open vision, when God Himself peers into your secret heart and thoughts by His Word, when He tells you what will keep you out of heaven’s promise. No, there is nothing comforting, nothing peaceful, nothing enjoyable about Gethsemane.
Everyone wants to be raised with Him, to be in His Image, share His glory. But you will never come forth on resurrection day, unless you are willing to hang spiritually and be crucified with Christ, naked and ashamed, humiliated, open, nothing hid. Are you willing to allow the Lord to expose every religious cloak you are trying to hide behind? You’ll not be allowed to hide behind speaking in tongues or prophesying or a spiritual testimony. He will pull away your every religious cloak, whatever hides the wickedness of your heart. He’ll not judge us by how spiritual we talk or shout, but by whether we have gone all the way to be crucified with Him.
I would be embarrassed tonight to stand before you naked. If God were to require that, I would be humiliated, embarrassed. But we are not speaking about the natural, but how would I react if God were to require that I hang naked before you, nothing hid, the inner man exposed, nothing unexposed, nothing covered. My Lord was. My Lord was.
After the pain and crucifixion, after the agony, after Calvary, they placed Him in a borrowed tomb, but on the third day He arose from the dead, triumphant. You see, crucifixion is not permanent, it is not a finality. It is an invitation.
When Jesus is saying to us, “Will you be crucified, spiritually? Will you let your flesh die?” He is really saying, “Will you come and be resurrected with Me?” You cannot taste resurrection until you taste death. You cannot taste Life until you taste death. You cannot have a resurrection until you have a crucifixion. Will it upset you to die out to self or will you say, “Thank You Lord, for an invitation to resurrection.”
When our Lord was resurrected on the third day, He never complained about His crucifixion. Do you read in the Bible how resentful Jesus was when He gathered His disciples around to tell them all the gory detail of how his tormentors had crucified Him? Do you remember how He complained about His scars? How that in every conversation with His disciples He kept referring back to how He had been persecuted and mistreated?
No, not one time did our Lord complain about His scars, nor did He blame those that had killed Him. Never was resentment or guile found in His mouth, neither did He work vengeance.
Brother, sister, how will you know you’ve had a true resurrection? When you no longer speak about your scars. You had better let it sink into your spirit. He wanted your crucifixion, so that your dark side could be revealed. Nothing brings out who we really are like nails, spears, swords, daggering and cutting words and wrong spirits. Many times, deep down in your heart, you blame everyone for your own actions except the one that is guilty. That is you, my friend. The results in our life will be our choice.
This is an invitation to resurrection. Once we have come through this crucifixion and had our resurrection by bringing our will out of conflict into submission to His will, if someone should pass by our way and remind us of our crucifixion, we’ll search for it in our memory bank and it won’t be there.
You will come to His perfection. It is His promise. However, there will never be a resurrection for the Bride until God has a perfect Bride to come to receive. Flesh has to die. Flesh cannot be perfected, but the life of God in you can bring you to perfection.
You will know when you are asked, “Who has crucified and pierced you?” Will you say, “Yes, I remember. I never did get to tell you my side of the story. You never did let me explain.” Brother, sister, then your crucifixion is in vain. It has accomplished absolutely nothing in your life to make you better, but it has left you bitter. It lets me know, you aren’t dead yet.
But should I come by and ask, “I know a few months ago you were viciously mistreated. Things were said that you weren’t guilty of. I know it must have hurt.” If you respond with a righteous spirit, “Oh now, I really don’t remember what you’re talking about. It must have been if you say it’s so, possibly in another realm, in another dimension, not the realm I’m living in now. I honestly don’t remember.”
Do you understand? Your invitation to resurrection is to come up higher into Christ into another realm, where the memories of your crucifixion will vanish at dawn. You see, God has not allowed things to happen in our lives so He could be entertained, but because He wants to see us in His Image.
If only we could get this revelation. It doesn’t matter what anyone does to us, what anyone says about us nor the way they treat us. That will not change our standing with God one iota. You could look me in the eye and call me the biggest devil, the biggest old liar that ever walked, but that would not change my standing with God.
If I am righteous, I would be just as righteous. If I was evil, I would be just as evil. It wouldn’t change. But do you know what will affect my standing with God? My reaction. If I react positively, it takes me closer to Him, if I react negatively, it takes me further away from God. It’s not what people do to you or me, it is how we respond. When we stand before Him, we’ll face nobody’s record but our own.
The Angel of the Lord told me one time, “If you’ve got one scratch of ought in your heart towards anybody, you cannot make the rapture.” Think of it. Just one scratch. Then when He revealed to me things concerning individuals that He wanted me to know, I thought, “How could I possibly have no ought against these people in my heart, when I know what they’re doing?” I am not talking about being angry with them or harboring evil, but just a feeling, a scratch of ought against them.
We are blessed to live in an hour in which the Holy Ghost of God is coming down to draw us, pull us, pull us. The deep calling of God is wooing you. No, you’ve not become fanatical over religion. What is happening to you is, you are being drawn back into the side of the Messiah. You are being pulled back into the Bridegroom, spiritually.
We were told that the Voice of the Bridegroom will be in the Bride. The final Voice of God to the Age is the Bride of Christ, but it is the Voice of the Bridegroom speaking through her. That cannot happen as long as we are separated from Him. That is why we have to be drawn back into His side, so that when He speaks, we can be His echo, the Voice of the Bridegroom in the last days. Then those that are bound will have their deliverance, we will see the Third Pull, see the creative power of God manifest the Spoken Word.
Rest assured, little Bride, deliverance will come. Hear the Voice of the Bridegroom, “Deliverance will come. Deliverance will come.”
There is a people getting ready to go into the tent, into God’s Pavilion. So don’t let the devil contaminate your spirit by being resentful or jealous. Don’t let him cause you to fight and defend yourself now. Don’t come down off the cross if your crucifixion is not complete. Stay there a little longer, or you will miss this glorious transformation God wants to pour out in your life. Hang there until it’s complete.
I believe the right place to be right now is with our Lord, hanging on Calvary until all that is like flesh disintegrates in His glory, and all that is left is the glorious reflection of all that He is. Don’t let your crucifixion at the hand of other Christians affect you negatively the rest of your life. Let it affect you positively and you will reemerge a different creature.
If we could get our thoughts, our mind sanctified, our attitude clean and holy, we would almost be there. Those are the things that keep us from God’s perfection.
Your first step to recovery if you’ve been wounded is to come to terms with the One most responsible for your crucifixion. If you’ll look too deeply into the natural realm, you will miss it and not get beyond earthly men and women. If you’ve suffered hurt, frustration, every pain you have felt at the hand of Christians, then you’ve got to determine, “Who caused this? Who wished such calamity in my life? Who wanted to see me broken and finally devastated? Do you know him?"
It is easy to blame people. We want to be personally vindicated, cleared of every charge, so we go down on our knees and ask God for vindication. Brother, sister, it’s not vindication or exoneration we need, it’s more nails.
Let us look to our Lord. Who caused Him to be pierced? Who caused His cross and suffering, His agony? Who caused Him to be placed on trial? Who arranged false witnesses to testify against Him? Who chose the men that would beat His back and cause a river of blood to flow? Who chose and selected the men that would hold the hammer and drive the nails? Who was it that chose the arm that thrust the spear in His side? Who did this to my Lord?
Was it the religious Jews, the Romans? Was it the devil, the enemy of our soul? It sounds like the devil, looks like the devil. It probably is the devil. So why don’t we blame him? But let us ask our Lord, “Jesus, who crucified You? Who caused You the pain?”
How would He respond? Would you expect Him to say, “It was the wicked one. It was those religious Jews, or those Romans.”
The answer is found in the Garden of Gethsemane. Did Jesus have a conversation on His knees with religious Jews, with the Romans, with the enemy of our soul? Who was it that Jesus communicated with on His knees? If Jesus, God Himself, stood in this place and you would ask Him the question, “Who put You on the cross? Who caused You to be crucified and humiliated?” He would calmly yet boldly give you the answer, “In Truth, My Father did.”
The only One really crucified is the only One who can allow you, little Bride, to be crucified. So who are you going to blame and hurl your bitterness at? If the Father willed the Son’s crucifixion, so meticulously designed it, that He even made sure it would be at the hands of religious leaders, how much more ought we to do the same? If He had to say, “Not My will, but Thine by done,” if He had to accept His crucifixion.
So if you refuse to accept your crucifixion as coming totally from the Father and no one else, you don’t even know the day you’re living in. You will be nothing but mistreated, and mistreatment is not enough to change you. You’ve got to be crucified spiritually and forever settle the conflict.
Will you look to the Father and say, “Thank You, Lord, for doing this to me. I love You for it and thank You that you’ve used my brother to put me on the cross. You’ve used the sister I love to wound me so deeply, that it started working on my flesh. Thank You, Lord, that you’ve used those dreadful circumstances of my crucifixion, my naked embarrassment, to cause me to look inward and be changed into Your Image for Your Glory.”
If you stay on the level of being mistreated, you’ll blame people, but if you’ll move higher into crucifixion, it will not make you bitter, it will make you better.
Don’t turn a deaf ear to the Voice of God in this hour. He is calling, “Revive yourself. Stir yourself. Awake, oh Zion, and shake off the ashes, rise from out of the dust, for thy light has come and the glory of the Lord is upon thee.
This is your hour, Bride. This is your hour of victory. This is your hour of deliverance. This is your hour for divine healing and health. This is your hour to walk over your enemy in the Name of Jesus. This is your hour to lend and not borrow. This is your hour to be the head and not the tail. This is your hour to be blessed when you come in and blessed when you go out. Don’t miss it! Don’t miss it.”
Just remember, if this is God’s Spirit extended for the last time for His Bride, you cannot make it without deliverance. There is no turning your back, only facing and believing it will change you to His Image.
Brother, sister, we had all better quit playing church and get ready. He is coming. He is coming. This is the hour in which God desires to baptize and seal His Bride with the Holy Ghost and Fire. We are going to have to have that sealing.
There is coming an explosion of Holy Ghost power and the devil is angry. We are coming down to the time in which the Angel of the Lord is coming with an inkhorn to seal those that are sighing and crying, not the ones that are bickering and blaming each other.
Brother, sister, don’t let anything contaminate your spirit in this hour. God will have a people that will be crucified with Him, that will die to the flesh, that will hang there until there is no fight left, a total surrender, hanging limp in His presence.