⁴⁵ Now from the sixth hour^[f] there was darkness over all the land^[g] until the ninth hour.^[h] 46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” ⁴⁷ And some of the bystanders, hearing it, said, “This man is calling Elijah.” ⁴⁸ And one of them at once ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine, and put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink. ⁴⁹ But the others said, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him.” ⁵⁰ And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit.

⁵¹ And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split. ⁵² The tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, ⁵³ and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many. ⁵⁴ When the centurion and those who were with him, keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were filled with awe and said, “Truly this was the Son^[i] of God!”

— Matthew 27:45-54, English Standard Version

When reading through the four different Gospel accounts of Our Lord’s agony upon the Cross, the thing that strikes me the hardest is the sheer force and violence of the Father’s rage, watching His only begotten Son dying the most humiliating death imaginable. The depictions you see of His death in statues and paintings, is in fact highly sanitised. As I pointed out last year, every time we depict Christ in a loincloth upon the Cross, we do so to lessen the actual humiliation and horror of the day.

In fact, Jesus died naked and exposed to the entire world for ridicule and mockery. Quite aside from the physical agonies of crucifixion – there is a reason why the adjective, “excruciating”, conveys pain so terrible as to be beyond mortal reckoning – the Romans intended the death of a common criminal through crucifixion to be the ultimate humiliation. That is why, by Roman law, no full Roman citizen could ever be crucified. The pain alone was horrifying – but the dishonour was even worse.

Thus did we, mere mortals, dishonour and humiliate a sinless man, who never once claimed Himself, by His own words, to be the Son of God – though many around Him said He was. We killed one who worked countless miracles, forgave sins, raised the dead, and brought hope and grace to all who met Him.

We murdered an innocent man, because we didn’t like what He had to say and how He went about His life.

And for that, the Father, quite rightly, poured out His rage upon the world. Which is why those passages from the Gospels have such power and force.

If you actually read the Gospels, the amazing thing about them is the economy of words used within those pages. Unlike some of the Epistles, and certainly unlike the writings of many of the early church fathers, the Gospels are marvels of brevity and economy of language. Yet, the story they tell is truly the greatest ever told. Nothing in all of human history comes anywhere close to it – because nothing like that ever happened before, or since.

Yet, within those very sparse words (compared with the weight and power of the story being told), we find and see the roaring, furious rage of an angry God behind it all – a God whom every single one of us offends, every single day, with our wanton disregard for His law, and our rejection of His freely offered gift of grace.

Think about that for a moment – God is quite literally angered to the point where He could legitimately strike each of us down, EIGHT BILLION TIMES A DAY. Every day. Three hundred and sixty five days a year.

If that doesn’t make your head spin, I don’t know what will.

The mind blanks and cowers in sheer terror when contemplating that rage. it is too awful even to begin to think upon. The only thing stopping God from wiping us all off the face of Creation, with nothing more than a thought, is His boundless love and mercy – because He has a plan for us, and He intends to see it out to the end.

If you want to get a very small idea of just how bad things will get toward the end of all things, though, just read the passage above. For three hours, God the Father poured out His wrath upon the world, as He watched us abuse and vilify and humiliate His Son, whom He sent to fulfil that very plan.

Looking at the very darkened state of the world today, we can also draw some parallels from those hours and these present days. As I pointed out yesterday, and I will speak more upon this in my next podcast, exorcists around the world seem to be saying similar things right now. They all report the daemons are pointing to something really BIG coming up.

There is a real sense out there that the daemons know their time and power will be curtailed soon. The Big Fella Upstairs is getting ready to yank the plug and drop the hammer – REALLY HARD. And NOT ONE OF US is going to like the results – even though we thoroughly deserve whatever comes.

Those hours of darkness at the end of Our Lord’s mortal life on this Earth, preceded the greatest miracle of all. But for those who had to live through them, they must have gone through the very last extremities of mortal terror as their world practically fell apart at the foundations, as the earth itself came unstuck.

This Good Friday is a reminder to all of us to clean our robes, reflect upon all that we have done wrong, and get back in tune with God. He is not mocked, and He will only tolerate our constant obsession with sin and evil up to a point – go look what happened in Genesis 6-8 to get an idea of what He does when He finally says, “enough”.

It is also a reminder to us to be patient in the face of endless evil. Yes, the madness is getting worse every single day – no doubt about that. But better things are coming. The disciples endured the terror of those hours of darkness and scattered, melted away in the face of persecution by the greatest empire in the world at that time. And then, on the third day, they witnessed miracles that turned them from cowards into lions, who stood tall and died joyfully in the name of a miracle that transformed them completely.

As bad as things are, and as bad as they will get, we must never lose faith in that miracle, for it defines us all.