Climax to The Greatest Story Ever Told

Climax to The Greatest Story Ever Told Part 1

The demon hordes were closing in. The air was heavy with their dark aura; the miasma was visible and pulsating wildly. They were excited. This was what they had waited for. He knew it. The cold chill of impending death played a vigorous, haunting melody up and down His spine. But it was only for a while longer. Just a little longer! If He could just keep holding out, it would be over soon. Finally. He'd been fighting them off for hours. They just kept coming relentlessly. If only people would be that tenacious in seeking after Him... He had no rest!

His spirit was doing what His body couldn't. The latter had been brutally beaten into submission almost to the point of breaking over the last few hours. He almost smiled a bitter smile at the thought-almost: hands that He had lovingly fashioned had slapped Him and pushed Him and bruised Him. The face before which angels bowed in loving awe, before which the entire universe would roll up like a scroll and flee; the face which Moses had pined for and had begged to look upon but had been refused; that face was now covered in thick, bubbly mucus, spit and blood by sinners. The very thorns that God had sent into the world to curse it in Genesis 3 were now tightly wrapped around His own brow. He had become a curse.

He almost smiled at the irony--almost--but it was all too sad. Who was it that gave life to the vicious and unfeeling attackers? Who supplied energy to the hands that gripped the mallets, driving pointed iron through raw, soft flesh? Who granted strength and movement and skill to the fingers that grasped the whip with its merciless spikes and buried it over and over into His back only to yank it out again, not caring what came up with it? Who gave power to the tongues all around Him that were spewing out words that cut Him like daggers? Who gave them breath to speak those words of ridicule? It was insane, but the Victim of the assault was sustaining His attackers, unwilling to take their lives away from them.

It seemed masochistic. He held the power to stop the ones inflicting pain upon Him again and again, yet He sustained them and allowed them to live, allowed them to keep jeering and mocking and slapping and spitting and beating and kicking and clawing and jabbing and screaming insults or mock praise... He was not a helpless human criminal, deserving of this fate and powerless against His punishers. He was God in human flesh, and He wielded the power to kill or incapacitate them all, if only He'd wanted to. Yet He restrained Himself for all their sakes. Not once did a tongue cleave to the roof a mouth, losing the ability to mock and jeer and speak. Not once did a hand stop in the middle of trying to hit Him and wither away, useless. Not once did a knee buckle as a leg aimed a kick at His gut. Not once did the light fade from the eyes that looked at Him with scorn and loathing, causing them to go blind and lose the awesome privilege of seeing the face of Him who had spoken the entire Creation into being.

Now that face was bruised and red with injury and blood. There was no beauty to behold in it now. Angels would have fallen before it in worship--men had covered it in ridicule. His eyes were puffed up after the beating He'd taken, yet He struggled to peer out of them upon the race He had come to save. His gaze was loving and sad as He counted off every face there. And they stared back at Him hanging there from the cross, put to public shame like a common criminal simply to satisfy their own several agendas. He lifted His aching head briefly to Heaven. "Father, forgive them! They have no idea what they're doing...!"

Not only did they not know, they also could not see. The physical spectacle of the Nazarene prophet enduring a slow and torturous death on a cross was only half the reality. They were hopelessly oblivious to what was happening in the spiritual plane. They couldn't see that He was really all alone, surrounded on every side by advancing legions of demonic soldiers who were intent on seeing Him fail His mission. They were the real problem here.

His consciousness switched almost fully to the spiritual realm now. The crowd's cries of "Come down and we'll believe you are the Messiah" was being echoed all around Him as the hordes of demons taunted Him relentlessly. It was they, after all, who were stirring up the people to do and say all they had done and said for the past several hours. But here in the spirit realm He was not on a cross. No, He was a one-man-army in seemingly dire straits, a lone island of brilliant light amid a veritable ocean of swirling blackness. Here He would not suffer and die quietly. No, His lot was to fight to the last against these overwhelming odds until the signal came in the sky, marking the terrible moment when He would be sacrificed for the lives of the entire human race. The demons would do their best to prevent that moment from ever coming to pass.

But time was running out for them. In the physical realm, His body would last only a precious few more minutes. Death was hurrying to meet Him. If it were to find Him untouched, unsullied, all would be lost for them. He could feel their desperation. They had thrown everything they could at Him for almost a full day. He had been 6 hours on the cross. Finally, it would be over soon. They needed a breakthrough no matter what. He couldn't be allowed to complete His sacrifice!

As for Him, He was struggling under the weight of all the wrongs that had ever been. He was bearing everything all alone, the horrifying burden of universal sin. It would have been more than enough to break anyone else. That's why only He could do this. He had to. But His Father was nowhere near, now, when He needed His companionship most. And more than that, there was a deeper fear that He simply couldn't shake. It was little comfort that His death was mere minutes away. Because in mere minutes He would face His Father for the very first time as someone--something--other than His Beloved Son.

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