"Forsaken"
All things, as John tells us, were now accomplished; the Scriptures of old, the prophecies concerning Messiah, were all fulfilled. Only the consummation of the Great Sacrifice, the actual human death of the divine Son, remained to be completed. For more than three hours Jesus had hung upon His cross, from before noon till mid-afternoon; but the last of those hours was not such as the first. Gradually, imperceptibly perhaps, a darkness had closed round the earth. Was not the “light of the world” fading from it? Men who had mocked Him in the sunshine grew silent as this funereal blackness blotted out the day.
Every gasp of the sufferer must have been audible now in that strange hush. The tragedy was being mercifully hurried to an end. Some victims lived upon the cross for days; Jesus was dying in three hours. One awful cry of anguish was wrung from Him, “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” A cry of human heartbreak; for was it not of heartbreak rather than of physical suffering that Jesus died? Of grief for that world of men whom He had so loved, so tended, and who had so basely deserted Him? Of what divine struggle that single outcry was the ending we can not know; perchance only in that last moment were the doors of mercy closed, and the Father finally refused the prayer of Jesus that all men might be saved.
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