Christianity
Essay Preview: Christianity
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Christianity is one of the major religions of mankind and to the rest of the world. In Europe and America Christianity has been the dominant religion. Christianity has also spread throughout the world and has a greater number of supporters then any other religion.
Christianity was founded by a Jewish teacher known as Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus was born in Bethlehem, near Jerusalem, and grew up in the town of Nazareth. Jesus was educated by the Pharisaic school and was practicing as an observant Jew. As Jesus traveled through towns in Judea he gathered small groups of followers. He chose twelve from these groups and they became known as the twelve apostles. They traveled around the world preaching his teachings. According to the gospels, Jesus created great excitement among the people.
Jesus was tried before Pontius Pilate the Roman governor after many had feared him for healing, and preaching that he was the Messiah. Pilate eventually agreed to have Jesus crucified. According to the Bible, Jesus rose from the grave, and went back to his followers for forty days and preached before he rose back to the Heavens.
Jesus was considered the Jewish Messiah but also a savior for all human races. By following the teachings of Jesus, all people could be saved from the consequences of their sins. They could avoid damnation and instead enjoy the bliss of salvation in paradise after death in the heavens.
The religions of Christianity and Judaism both accept everyone and charge nothing. They welcome the poor and rich alike. They believe that the people should be good citizens and obey the laws. They both encourage them to practice charity and to care for the poor and weak.
Christians believe that the appointed Jesus was there Messiah. They believe that all people had some good in them. If they prayed to Jesus or God the Father, no matter what wrong they committed they would be forgiven in the eyes of their Lord. All men could be saved from sins in the after life. Christianity is now one of the major religions that can be found all over the world.
The first group of people who got hold of Jesus was the Roman soldiers. They were probably the most innocent in the whole thing. Granted they did perform the actual act of crucifying Christ, but it was because of the order that Pilate gave them.
There were over 30,000 men in Israel alone. The act of crucifixion started by a man named Ormazd from Persia. He thought that the earth was sacred, so he did not want to defile the earth by killing criminals on it so he put them on a large pole to leave the criminals for death.
After Pilate gave the order to crucify Christ the soldiers took him. The scripture says in Matthew 27, that the soldiers “gathered a full Roman cohort around Him.” I looked into what a “full Roman cohort” was. It seems that a total of 600 soldiers make up a full Roman cohort. The soldiers knew that Jesus claimed to be a king so they stripped him down and put a scarlet robe on him. Next they took thorns and thistles and weaved a crown together and put it on Jesus head. Caesar wore a wreath on his head and the soldiers were mimicking him and mocking Jesus by doing this cruel act. As they put the crown of thorns on Jesus head blood ran down on Jesus face, which made him even more unrecognizable. The final piece of dress that the soldiers put on Jesus was a reed in his right hand. The way John MacAuthur, Jr. explained the reed was that it was to represent royalty, authority, and power. After giving Jesus the reed the soldiers were making fun of Jesus by getting on their knees and pretending to worship Him. They then took the reed from his hand and beat Jesus on the head with it while they were saying this like, “Look how easy we strip you of your power and authority. We now beat you with your own staff.” Jesus believed in loving your enemy, and also forgiveness. He never defended himself and was tortured until he died on the cross.
Afterwards Jesus stood before Pilate during this meeting what stood out most to me is the first thing that Jesus responded to. Pilate said to Jesus, “where did you come from?” But Jesus did not answer him. Then Pilate said, “You wont talk? Dont you know that I have the authority to pardon you and the authority to crucify you?” Jesus said, “You havent a shed of authority over me except what has been given to you from heaven. That is why the one who betrayed me to you has committed a far greater fault,” John 19:10 -11. The people forced Jesus to carry his own cross after He had been beaten and had no rest before his death due to torture and trial.
From common knowledge, I know that Jesus did not just carry a section of the cross, but the whole thing. This means that Jesus was beaten and then forced to carry a cross weighing more than 200 pounds. To make sure that this happened 4 soldiers escorted him. They were also there to help him get through the crowds and lead the way to his death. These 4 soldiers are called a quaternion.
Once Jesus made it to a town south of Greece called Cyrene he was not able to carry the cross any more. His body was giving out; because of this the Roman soldiers picked a guy named Simon who came to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover and ended up having to carry the cross for Jesus.
When they finally made the trip to the final destination, it was a place named Golgatha, which means place of a skull. The reason for the name was because people were buried there up to their necks and their heads were poking out of the ground. Once everything was in place the soldiers first nailed Jesus feet to the upright beam and his hands through the wrist to the horizontal beam. After being nailed to the cross it was raised and there was room for Jesus to bend his knees. “A death by crucifixion seems to include all that pain and death can have of the horrible and ghastly – dizziness, cramp, thirst, starvation, sleeplessness, traumatic fever, shame, publicity of shame, long continuance of torment, horror of anticipation, mortification of intended wounds – all intensified just up to the point at which they can be endured at all, but all stopping just short of the point which would give to the sufferer the relief of unconsciousness.”
While Jesus was on the cross many things happened. A sign of mockery was hung above his head that read, “This is Jesus the king of the Jews.” Jesus was crucified along with two other criminals, one on each side. At first both of them mocked and yelled at Jesus. There were many people standing around watching. Most of these people at one time admired Jesus and even followed him. Many books say that the people were yelling at Jesus and mocking