There are many who refute His death.
From D.H. Lawrence’s “Swoon Theory” to Hugh Schonfield’s “The Passover Plot”, and Donovan Joyce’s “The Jesus Scroll” to Gary Habermas’ “Holy Blood, Holy Grail”, people have tried to debate the fact that Jesus died.
Why? Because if people can convince themselves of this fact, then Jesus couldn’t have been God and that all He claimed was a hoax. Thus, we are no longer compelled to follow His commands and are free to disregard everything He says.
Dr. Metherel, who has a medical degree from University of Miami and doctorate from University of Bristol in England clearly gives evidence to Jesus’ death in Lee Stobel’s book “The Case For Easter.”
1. His body went through hypovolemic shock. Hypo means low, vol refers to volume, and emic means blood. So hypovolemic shock means the person is suffering from the effects of losing large amount of blood. This was due to the beating, scourging, dehydration, intense stress, lack of sleep from the previous night when He was in the Garden of Gethsemane.
2. A person who is crucified (though some don’t make it to the crucifixion due to the scourging and flogging) essentially dies a slow agonizing death by asphyxiation. In order to exhale, the individual must push up on his feet so the tension on the muscles would be eased for a moment. In doing so, the nail would tear through the foot not mentioning what it does to the person’s nailed wrists/hands.
People then just give up by not pushing up to breathe. As the person slows down in his breathing, he goes into respiratory acidosis which leads to irregular heartbeat which then leads to cardiac arrest.
3. The legs of the men on Jesus’ left and right were shattered in the lower leg bones to prevent them from pushing up to breathe, thus killing them almost instantaneously. Jesus’ was already declared dead, thus there was no need to break his legs. This was to fulfill the prophecy from Ps. 34:20 that “none of his bones will be broken…”
4. To ensure His death, a Roman spear by a professional executioner is thrust in His side. The Bible says that blood and water gushed out. Because of the hypovolemic shock, it would have caused a sustained rapid heart rate that would have resulted in the collection of fluid in the membrane around the heart called pericardial effusion as well as around the lungs, which is called pleural effusion. Hence the reason for the blood and water exiting His beaten up side.
This confirmed to the Roman executioner that the One crucified was indeed dead.
There are many more evidences to His death. I could go on and on.
However, with all the evidences, one will still have to make a decision whether to put his faith in the person and work of Jesus.
Bottom line, salvation only comes by faith. While it is not blind faith, it is definitely a faith on truth. He is the TRUTH.
Well then, what will it be?
“For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.” (1 Cor. 15:3-4)
Everyone knows how to cut, paste and crop these days – my kids included. I was cropping our family picture one morning for a Power Point presentation in time for a seminar I was going to teach in.