Just Before the Crucifixion

186:4.1Af­ter Pi­late had washed his hands be­fore the mul­ti­tude, thus seek­ing to es­cape the guilt of de­liv­er­ing up an in­no­cent man to be cru­ci­fied just be­cause he feared to re­sist the clamor of the rulers of the Jews, he or­dered the Mas­ter turned over to the Ro­man sol­diers and gave the word to their cap­tain that he was to be cru­ci­fied im­me­di­ately. Upon tak­ing charge of Je­sus, the sol­diers led him back into the court­yard of the prae­to­rium, and af­ter re­mov­ing the robe which Herod had put on him, they dressed him in his own gar­ments. These sol­diers mocked and de­rided him, but they did not in­flict fur­ther phys­i­cal pun­ish­ment. Je­sus was now alone with these Ro­man sol­diers. His friends were in hid­ing; his en­e­mies had gone their way; even John Zeb­e­dee was no longer by his side.

186:4.2It was a lit­tle af­ter eight o’clock when Pi­late turned Je­sus over to the sol­diers and a lit­tle be­fore nine o’clock when they started for the scene of the cru­ci­fix­ion. Dur­ing this pe­riod of more than half an hour Je­sus never spoke a word. The ex­ec­u­tive busi­ness of a great uni­verse was prac­ti­cally at a stand­still. Ga­briel and the chief rulers of Neb­a­don were ei­ther as­sem­bled here on Uran­tia, or else they were closely at­tend­ing upon the space re­ports of the arch­an­gels in an ef­fort to keep ad­vised as to what was hap­pen­ing to the Son of Man on Uran­tia.

186:4.3By the time the sol­diers were ready to de­part with Je­sus for Gol­go­tha, they had be­gun to be im­pressed by his un­usual com­po­sure and ex­traor­di­nary dig­nity, by his un­com­plain­ing si­lence.

186:4.4Much of the de­lay in start­ing off with Je­sus for the site of the cru­ci­fix­ion was due to the last-minute de­ci­sion of the cap­tain to take along two thieves who had been con­demned to die; since Je­sus was to be cru­ci­fied that morn­ing, the Ro­man cap­tain thought these two might just as well die with him as wait for the end of the Pass­over fes­tiv­i­ties.

186:4.5As soon as the thieves could be made ready, they were led into the court­yard, where they gazed upon Je­sus, one of them for the first time, but the other had of­ten heard him speak, both in the tem­ple and many months be­fore at the Pella camp.