 Gnosis of the Creed –by Swami Nirmalananda Giri
 Chapter Twelve—He was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate.
Suffered and was buried.
For Us
Since we have covered previously what it means for Our Lord to have been “made Man,” we can pass on to the next phrase: “He was crucified also for us.”
Again we encounter the words “for us,” as in the earlier section: “Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven.” The Incarnation and all that has followed was for us. And the motive was love alone. It was not done to appease a sense of outraged justice or “an angry God.” Nor was it for the repairing of a world order that was going awry. Only one statement is true regarding the whole matter: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life”–as the Lord Jesus Himself told us. And by “the world” is meant the whole creation, His own outbreathed Life. The intimate connection of human parent and child is but a dim reflection of the spiritual bond which we all have with the heavenly Father and Mother. He Became A Servant
Christ did not sacrifice Himself to make us good workers to “serve” Him, but became Himself a servant to restore us to the status of sons of God. He became a servant and was sold for the price of a slave that He might free us from the slavery into which we had fallen and make us His free Sons of Light. “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” What Is Salvation?
Seeing our plight, He “came down from heaven and was made man.” As Saint Athanasius said, He Who was God became man so that those who were man could become god–as had He. Salvation is the passage of human beings to divinity. The Greek expression which we use in Eastern Christian theology is theosis, “deification.” That process is death (separation of our consciousness from God) being swallowed up in victory (the reestablishment of conscious unity with God), this mortal humanity putting on immortal Divinity.
“For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.”
Salvation is not going to heaven, for in heaven (and there are in fact many heavens) we are still separate from God. As long as God remains an object “out there” to relate to as “another,” there will be the possibility of again losing contact with Him. The only sure salvation is oneness with God in mystical union.
Saint Paul says that the goal of creation is “that God may be all in all.” That is, ultimately we come to experience that God is both the All that is within all things, and is the All within Which are all things. Saint Paul does not say: “that God may be all,” implying that we shall cease to exist, but “that God may be all in all,” showing that in a mysterious way those united with Him will be absolutely one with Him, yet somehow they will retain their individuality as an expression of His ineffable being. That is, they will not actually be God, but will participate in experiencing the infinite Being of God as a gift of His grace. They will experience both their own being as individual waves of His Being, and yet at the same time will experience His Being as the infinite Ocean Which encompasses–and is–their true being and life.
We cannot understand this, for it is as Saint Paul wrote, quoting the Prophet Isaiah: “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.” It is pointless to try to puzzle it out. In fact, the very attempt to intellectually understand them is the gateway to erroneous understanding of these matters. The premise that they are capable of being understood is itself a serious error. The one thing we must understand is that this ultimate state is a union of love with the God Who is love, and can be attained only through the perfect keeping of the Law: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.” He Lived Our Life
To be united to God is to participate in His life. By His incarnation in Nazareth, Jesus the Christ first united Himself to us and participated in our life, experiencing the bitter fruits of sin, though Himself perfect and sinless. On the Cross He experienced the fundamental effect of sin: alienation from God, in the sense of total loss of awareness of God. Therefore He cried out: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” partaking of the ultimate delusion of sinful mankind: that God has “abandoned” us, “turned His face from us,” or that we are separated from Him. Such an idea is insanity, and Jesus partook of that madness to turn us back to sanity of spirit. This was necessary for Him to undergo in His complete identification with us, which won for us the capacity for complete identification with God. And then He experienced the next step: death. For death is the result of losing contact with God. In this way He drank the “cup” to its fulness. Crucifixion
It is interesting to note that the Creed says Christ was crucified for us, not that He rose for us. Those who would try to emphasize the resurrection and ignore the crucifixion do not have the perspective of the Creed, for the crucifixion is the pivotal point of our salvation. The History Of Golgotha
The bones of Adam and Eve were kept through generations as precious relics. They were taken by Noah into the Ark and later deposited in a place shown by divine inspiration of which it was said: “This is the center of the earth. From here salvation shall go forth unto all the world.” Later when the intervening ages had completely blotted out the memory of this prophecy and the location of Adam and Eve’s bones, the Lord Jesus was crucified on that very spot. During the great earthquake at His death, the rocks were split beneath the Cross and the Lord’s blood ran down over the bones of Adam and Eve as a sign of cleansing and atonement for their sin. This is why crucifixes sometimes have a skull and crossbones at the bottom. The Meaning Of Crucifixion
Why did Christ choose crucifixion as the mode of His death? It has a definite meaning, as does all of His life. Crucifixion is the nailing of the hands and the feet onto a cross–specifically, onto the crossbars (a correct Cross shows the Lord’s feet nailed to a crossbar, as well). By this process a person is tortured to death. Jesus also was wounded in the head by the crown of thorns and in the side by the lance.
What does this show us about ourselves?
First, that we are utterly helpless. Since we accomplish everything in this world by the use of our hands and feet, their nailing depicts the helpless bondage of the spirit, which is nailed on the cross of material, physical existence. The nailing is not to the vertical shaft, which represents the upward moving of the consciousness toward God, but to the horizontal crossbars, which represent the static condition of being caught and confined to a particular plane of consciousness.
Whereas evolution should flow uninterruptedly upward toward divinity, it begins to move horizontally in the orbit of the ego, contrary to the spirit, and gets caught up in the continuous circle of recurring birth and death on one level, rather than transcending it and moving on ever upward to the Goal. Thus we become trapped in a contrary current, in a mode of life that goes “against the grain” of the divine will and plan for us.
Just as Jesus was suspended on the Cross between heaven and earth, we are caught up and stagnated in the human level which is between the earthly and the paradise kingdoms. We do not belong to earth and we do not belong to Paradise. We have shed our animal bodies, but have forfeited our Paradise bodies, the “garments of light” that Adam and Eve cast aside in Paradise, making themselves “naked.” Christ was naked on the Cross as well, to show us that we are indeed “wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind and naked.”
There we hang, suspended between earth and heaven, helpless. “Free Will” A Cruel Mockery
People boast of their free will, but where does their free will get them? Look at the vast number of people starving in the world. Have they no will to be fed? Of course. But they are not. Do not the millions who are grievously ill will to be healthy? Yes. But they remain sick. Everyone wills to live and not die. But we all die. What does that “free will” accomplish for us, then, except frustration? This is because our will is free, but the inner, creative powers that should be accomplishing what we will are not. They are nailed down, suffocated by our material consciousness. We are free to will, but not to accomplish that will. So it becomes a thing of torment for us. It is the pain of spiritual crucifixion.
We are also nailed to the cross of material existence by our own destinies, by the reaping of our sowing. For Saint Paul says: “God is not mocked.” And Jesus said: “Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing.” We are in prison here. We may philosophize profoundly and affirm gloriously, but the truth about our poor, trapped spirit is that it is nailed down, bleeding to death, losing its life by being tortured on the crossbeam of this world which has been flawed by man’s sin and cooperation with Lucifer and his angels, reaping what we ourselves have sown. Of a certainty, as the wise thief said to the other, we are justly in this condition, enslaved, wounded, and helpless as the result of our own misdeeds. How Crucifixion Kills
Though the pain is excruciating, crucifixion actually kills by suffocation. The muscles of the rib cage become paralyzed and the person can no longer breathe air (pneuma, which is also a term for spirit). In our spiritual crucifixion we cannot breathe, we cannot draw on our true life as spirit, because we are separated from the Infinite Spirit: God. Specifically, we are isolated from the Holy Spirit, “the Life-giving Spirit” in Whom all are made alive and live.
Saint John of Kronstadt wrote in My Life In Christ that the Holy Spirit is the vivifying principle in us, in which we come to life. Through the Holy Spirit Christ became incarnate. In and through the Holy Spirit the saints are omniscient and empowered to work their miracles. But we die of spiritual suffocation because we do not breathe that air of God’s life, the Holy Spirit.
We human beings boast that we are the crown of creation because we have the power of logos, the power of intelligent communication and reflective thought. But that crown is a thorny one, indeed, for we take that wonderful intelligence and get ourselves deeper and deeper into misery with it. As long as we continue to wear the crown of thorns, all affirmations on our part about how we are immortal and children of God, etc., are just cruel mockeries, meaning no more than did the antics of the soldiers when they knelt before Jesus and called out: “Hail, King!” Pity Ourselves
When we look upon a crucifix, we should be moved at the sight of the Lord Jesus, nailed, crowned with mockery, with His side opened, and His lifeblood flowing out. Since the Lord Jesus willingly underwent the crucifixion for love of us, our reaction should be one of love and gratitude, as well as pity.
Yet since the crucifix is a mirror showing us our own “face,” sorrowful pity should be bestowed by us on our own suffering spirit that is undergoing this horrible condition from life to life. We often pray to God, saying: “Lord, have mercy,” but when will we have mercy on our own selves and begin to free ourselves from our bondage? Through all the experiences of life, both pleasurable and painful, we are bleeding out our life forces, leeching out our life energies until we are nothing but dead husks.
From the Cross, Christ is saying: “I came to you, and this is how I found you. I became one of you, like you in all things. So behold your condition, assumed by Me.”
A Further Meaning
A further meaning of the five wounds of the crucifixion is that we are wounded in our five senses, the sixth wound in the heart symbolizing the “sixth sense” of the mind which is intuition. Rather than seeing with the one eye of the spirit and thereby having a correct identity with our immortal being, we have made ourselves slaves, enchained by the five senses. We allow these senses to shape us and determine all our actions and reactions. We are wounded in and by our senses, being under the hypnosis of the illusions to which they continually subject us. Through them we are drawn into the greatest evil of all: forgetfulness of God. Instead of using our limited energies to perceive and ascend to God, we idly expend our life forces through the senses in “innocent” ways. But how insidious and deadly is that innocence! For it is our life which we allow to trickle away day by day as we immerse ourselves in “innocent pleasures” and “harmless distractions,” neglecting the “one thing needful.” The Heart Of The Matter
The crucifixion portrays the spirit as it presently finds itself in this world: enslaved, entrapped, wounded, and bleeding because it is identifying with that which perishes. The purpose of the crucifixion was to free us from such a state. To remain in that condition and yet claim to believe in Christ, to be a Christian, is to mock Christ. He experienced the physical and psychic wounding of humanity in order to free us, yet we prefer to not be freed, but to just “believe” in Him. But we must come to believe in ourselves–in what we truly are! We must “arise and go,” and be freed from that cruel cross, healed of all its wounding. The nails must be pulled out, the spear must be withdrawn, and the crown of thorns must be removed.
The Way Of Healing
For our healing we must recall Saint Paul’s principle that we are “workers together with him,” that we must “work out our own salvation,” our oneness with God. Christ not only rose from the dead, He ascended back to the Father. And so must we. Ourselves Revealed
Everything Jesus of Nazareth did was a revelation to us of our own self. It was not only God He revealed by His external life, but man as well. As we have said, the Gospel narrative is a symbolic mystery-drama which is also historically true. The early Fathers of Alexandria were expert in the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures in this way. They taught that just as the human being is composed of body, mind, and spirit, the Holy Scriptures are to be studied from three different levels: (1) the level of the body, in the sense of external behavioral directives, the “do” and “don’t” aspect; (2) the level of the mind, in outlining what psychological “set” we should have in our attitudes and responses (in other words, how we should perceive and think); and then (3) the level of the spirit–directives on the path to enlightenment. Our understanding is greatly impaired if we lose or neglect any of these levels of understanding the Holy Scriptures.
Christ, The Servant
Though He came freely, He came in perfect humility as a servant. A literal translation of Philippians 2:7 is: “But he emptied himself, having taken on the form of a slave, having been formed in the likeness of men.” When we look at Christ’s perfect life we often rationalize the abysmal difference between His mode of life and ours by saying: “Oh, He was divine,” implying that His mode of life is beyond us and ignoring the fact that Christ is our example. For this reason He did not just appear on the earth “out of thin air,” but was truly born as a human being, taking on the same nature we bear, making Himself subject to the same compulsions and forces of the earth plane as are we. To underscore this, He continually referred to Himself as “the Son of Man.” Everything that is done by Christ in the holy Gospels is an action that is to be done by all Christians, for He said: “The works I do you will do.” Until we do all the works of Christ and the Apostles we are not fully Christians and must keep on striving to manifest our Christhood just as they did. A Look At Ourselves
As we have said, through the crucifixion Christ revealed to us our own condition. The crucifix is a picture of ourselves, portraying the effect upon us of our ignorant actions in ages past. It is regrettable that those who object to crucifixes as being negative and morbid do not have the same sensitivity and aversion to their condition of spiritual bondage and ignorance which the crucifix portrays. Under Pontius Pilate
He was crucified for us, out of love and mercy, “under Pontius Pilate.” It is significant that the foreign, secular ruler is mentioned by the Creed as the one under whom the Lord was crucified, for the Romans would never have bothered with Jesus if the Judeans, who comprised the Sanhedrin, had not agitated against Him, fearful lest they lose the power they had gained by betraying their own people into the domination of the Romans.
The Judeans
The Judeans were the spiritual snobs of Israel. Since Jerusalem was in their province they considered themselves above all other Hebrews. Even in the Old Testament there is a distinction between Judea–also called Juda–and Israel. The Biblical accounts often speak of the King of Judea and the King of Israel, showing that even politically the Judeans were distinct from the rest of the Chosen People. The Judeans would take a bath if even the shadow of a Samaritan or a gentile touched them, yet they groveled before the Roman tyrants to gain political and religious power over their own people. They bought appointments to the priestly offices of the Temple from the Romans. Even the High Priest obtained his office by bribing the Romans.
The Judeans not only associated with the oppressors of their people and country, they themselves participated in the oppression. They had permission from the Romans to coin their own Temple money without which no sacrifices could be bought or offered. In this way, through exorbitant rates of exchange, they callously robbed those who came to Jerusalem to make offerings in the Temple. The Hebrews of the Diaspora especially hated the Judeans for this reason.
It was only appropriate that the Judeans and the traitor, Judas, who shared their name, should collaborate against Christ, since long before Judas betrayed Christ into their hands these men had betrayed their own nation and its people into the hands of the barbarian Romans. They, the Judeans, are the ones indicated when English translations of the Gospels speak of “the Jews,” and not the nation of Israel in general. The Symbolism Of Pilate
What was the significance of Pilate to the framers of the Creed? Why was he designated as the crucifier of Jesus?
Pilate was not the lawful ruler of Israel, but an intruder, a servant of the Imperial Roman oppressors. He is an apt symbol of the false ego which has been intruded upon us by this deceitful world into whose bondage we have willingly sold ourselves. Under this illegitimate ruler we are crucified.
Our immortal spirit should rule our lesser life in the same way God rules the greater life of the universe. But we refuse to allow our spirits to rule and instead give all power in our life over to the world. Then the puppet tyrant which is the ego, the mind and heart created by the world, dominates us. That inner “Pilate” crucifies us, causing us to suffer in this world and to die in relation to the eternal realm where we really belong. Our Dilemma
Our true self is our immortal, divine spirit, but we have accepted the unreal authority of the false self, the ego-mind, which is nourished and developed by earthly, fleshly experience. The Lord said to Pilate: “Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee.” So, too, is it with us. We undergo spiritual crucifixion because we have given power to that which is innately powerless.
We have fallen under the alien power of this body and the earth from which it was formed. This in turn subjects us to the influence of him who seduced Adam and Eve and subverted and corrupted this whole creation, Lucifer the Archangel, as well as the angels who fell with him. These invisible dictators–along with the earthbound spirits that are their slaves–are ruling the minds and wills of people in our modern times to a devastating degree, and with virtually no opposition. Nearly every person on the earth is a slave of the evil powers to some degree. But they would have no power at all over any human being if it were not given to them by the erring spirit.
Again: Why Pilate?
By omitting any reference to them, the Creed tells us that it was not Annas, Caiaphas, the Sanhedrin, or Herod who crucified the Lord, but Pontius Pilate, the foreign intruder who had nothing in common with the Lord (the others were Hebrews and held legal authority). Even more, Pilate was the only one who knew Jesus was not guilty! The others, though of evil motivation, did sincerely think that Jesus was a wrongdoer on some level. We, too, permit ourselves to be under the rulership of false powers that have no real claim on us, and who know that we do not rightfully belong to them. We plunge our spirits into extremes of suffering and misery by submitting to those who have no legitimate power over us. This is the enormity of sin and the fall of man. The Truth About Our Bondage
If we were poor, helpless creatures “sold under sin,” as ignorant theology would have us believe, then we would simply be pitiable. But we are not pitiable, we are culpable–for our enslavement, degradation, and suffering are totally voluntary on our part.
For us men and for our salvation Jesus suffered, for suffering is the fundamental character of physical incarnation. How awesome to realize that it occurs not just once, but over and over! As the Gospel says: “One soweth, and another reapeth.” That is, one body sows in the present life and another body reaps the effect of the sowing in a future life. This cycle of continual birth and death is spoken of by Jesus as Gehenna, “where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.” The mythical, fiery hell of the revivalists is nothing in comparison, for we would adjust to that hell after awhile and would not even notice the burning. But in this hell of (seemingly) endless birth and death, we move from misery to misery, from disappointment to disappointment, from difficulty to difficulty, from frustration to frustration.
Buddha asked himself: “What is the common denominator of human existence?” The answer he received was a single word: Suffering. Some are more aware of it, some are less aware. But all suffer.
Burial
“And was buried.” The spirit is buried in the “tomb” of the physical body. We are buried within the earth, for the body is formed from the earth. We are buried deep, our consciousness completely covered and smothered by the heaviness of earthly experience, resulting in the separation of our consciousness from God.
Jesus was buried in a tomb that was not His own. So, too, our spirit is buried in a tomb that is not properly its own, but the result of actions performed by the body and the ego.
Linen And Spice
His body was prepared for burial by being wrapped in linen bands and a hundred pounds of aromatic spices. Both were valuable elements, but they were part of death rites, not of life. Many of us are quite genteelly and nicely buried, but that in no way mitigates the horrible truth: we are dead. The “good things of life” are the aromatic spices of death. No matter how “good” a particular lifetime might seem, we are still sealed in the body, helpless and bound. Dead.
Christ Never Died
Although in our consideration of the symbolism as applied to ourselves we have been speaking of death, the Creed never says that Christ died. It says He suffered and was buried, but not that He died. What does that mean?
When He was buried, He was put out of sight, in the dark, away from the sun, the source of life. This is to indicate that in reality our “death” is but an appearance, only a displacement of consciousness. We are banished from the vision of God into the darkness of forgetfulness. In that darkness we move around and occupy our time with all kinds of actions and objects and call it “living.” But it is nothing of the kind. It is dying without being truly dead.
Just as we address Christ in Holy Week, saying with wonder: “O Life, how canst Thou die?” we can put the same question to ourselves–and with just as great amazement. For we are as immortal as He. His mystery is our mystery, His death is our death, His life is our life. The truth about Jesus Christ is the truth about us.
We Are Immortal
He did not die, because no one dies. The body drops away, but that is not death any more than it is death when we change our clothes. We have changed bodies millions of times, yet we live on. In this present life our body has had all its cells replaced many times. Yet we remain the same. The Fathers of the two Councils that formulated the Creed were careful not to say that the Lord died, for we do not die. From the beginning of the world there has never been a dead person. There are multitudes departed, but never dead, for they live unto God forever. The Case Of Job
When we look in the book of Job we find something very interesting. After his testing, God restored to him double of whatever material objects he had lost. But God did not restore unto him double his children. Instead He gave him seven more sons and three more daughters–the same number as he had had before his trials. Why? Because his children were immortal and were still existing just as they did before, though in another dimension, another “mansion” in the Father’s House. There was no need for them to be replaced, even though they were not living in this world. In this way God indicated their immortality to Job. That is, Job had twenty children after his restoration. A Terrible Contradiction
We live in a terrible contradiction: alive, but “dead” and “buried.” This is much worse than any hell that could be dreamed of, as we have said. But there is hope, for the Creed then says: “And the third day He rose again according to the Scriptures.” More chapters of the Gnosis of the Creed:
• Chapter One—The Nicene Creed
• Chapter Two—I believe
• Chapter Three—In one God, the Father almighty
• Chapter Four—Maker of heaven and earth, And of all things visible and invisible
• Chapter Five—And in one Lord
• Chapter Six—Jesus Christ
• Chapter Seven—The Only-begotten Son of God, Begotten of the Father before all ages. Light from Light, True God from true God. Begotten not made, Being of one substance with the Father; By Whom all things were made.
• Chapter Eight—Who for us men, and for our salvation
• Chapter Nine—Came down from heaven
• Chapter Ten—And was incarnate by the Holy Spirit
• Chapter Eleven—Of the Virgin Mary. And was made Man.
• Chapter Twelve—He was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate. Suffered and was buried.
• Chapter Thirteen—And the third day He rose again according to the Scriptures. And ascended into heaven. He sitteth at the right hand of the Father.
• Chapter Fourteen—And He shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead.
• Chapter Fifteen—Of Whose kingdom there shall be no end.
• Chapter Sixteen—And in the Holy Spirit, the Lady and Giver of life: Who proceedeth from the Father. Who together with the Father and the Son Is worshipped and glorified. Who spoke by the prophets.
• Chapter Seventeen—And in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.
• Chapter Eighteen—I confess one baptism for the remission of sins.
• Chapter Nineteen—And I look for the resurrection of the dead. And the life of the age to come. Amen.
1) John 3:16 [Go back]
2) “Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” (Philippians 2:6-8) [Go back]
3) “Then one of the twelve, called Judas Iscariot, went unto the chief priests, And said unto them, What will ye give me, and I will deliver him unto you? And they covenanted with him for thirty pieces of silver.” (Matthew 26:14,15) Thirty pieces of silver was the set price for a menial (unskilled and uneducated) slave. [Go back]
4) “And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up for to read. And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord. And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him. And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.” (Luke 4:16-21) “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.” (John 8:36) [Go back]
5) “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God.” (John 1:12) [Go back]
6) Romans 5:8 [Go back]
7) I Corinthians 15:53,54 [Go back]
8) “In my Father's house are many mansions.” (John 14:2) [Go back]
9) I Corinthians 15:28 [Go back]
10) I Corinthians 2:9 [Go back]
11) I John 4:8 [Go back]
12) Mark 12:30 [Go back]
13) Matthew 27:46 [Go back]
14) Matthew 26:39,42; Mark 14:36; Luke 22:42 [Go back]
15) This is according to the tradition of the Alexandrian Jews. [Go back]
16) Revelation 3:17 [Go back]
17) Galatians 6:7 [Go back]
18) Matthew 5:26 [Go back]
19) “And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on him, saying, If thou be Christ, save thyself and us. But the other answering rebuked him, saying, Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss. And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:39-43) [Go back]
20) “And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.” (Luke 1:35) [Go back]
21) Matthew 27:29 [Go back]
22) Mark 10:38-42 [Go back]
23) Luke 15:18 [Go back]
24) II Corinthians 6:1 [Go back]
25) Philippians 2:12 [Go back]
26) “For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps.” (I Peter 2:21) “He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked.” (I John 2:6) [Go back]
27) “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do.” (John 14:12) [Go back]
28) John 19:11 [Go back]
29) “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” (Genesis 2:7) [Go back]
30) John 4:37 [Go back]
31) Mark 9:44,46,48 [Go back]
32) “Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden; and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein was never man yet laid. There laid they Jesus therefore because of the Jews’ preparation day; for the sepulchre was nigh at hand.” (John 19:41,42) [Go back]
33) “There came also Nicodemus, which at the first came to Jesus by night, and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound weight. Then took they the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen clothes with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury.” (John 19:39,40) [Go back]
34) “And the Lord turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends: also the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before.” (Job 42:10) [Go back]
35) “He had also seven sons and three daughters.” (Job 42:13) [Go back]
36) “And there were born unto him seven sons and three daughters.” (Job 1:2) [Go back]
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