My ex best friend a Jehovah Witness, said that?

Question

Jesus never carried a cross, up the hill to his crucifixion, as he was not crucified on a cross. It was a tree,is that what they believe,
what about all the pictures of Christ carrying
his cross, do they really not believe that, if so why.?

Answer 1

Cross, stake, tree? Does it really matter what it's called. They are all wood which comes from trees. I believe Jesus died on a cross. That doesn't mean I idolize the cross or have a crucifix, because neither is true. Matthew 27:32 tells us that Simon carried Jesus' cross. Yes, the Bible uses the word cross. It also uses the word cross in many other texts. And that is in the King James Version, which is the closest to the original translation.

Answer 2

Three things:

1. Those pictures are not photographs of the real thing. They were drawn by people centuries later.

2. It fulfills another Bible prophecy. Paul in Galatians 3:13, quotes Deuteronomy 21:23 in saying cursed is every man hung on a tree.

3. This is gruesome. Killing someone on an upright single piece of wood is more cruel than with two pieces. Put both arms out and a little up by your side. You breath normally. Put both arms over your head, hands together, and stretch. Breathing becomes difficult if not impossible. Now nail the feet together with the knees bent and you see the problem. You can push up with the legs to catch a breath until your feet can't take it anymore and slump down to not breathe. Repeat till they put you out of your misery by breaking your legs so you suffocate.

Answer 3

Hi Suzie...my first thought was Thomas saying unless i see the the nail holes in His hands and put my fingers in the holes in his hands and side-i will not believe..this suggests to me it was a cross. A cross is made from a tree, so does it really matter?!----It was called Golgotha-the place of the skull-a skull shaped hill outside the city gates...and Simon of cyrene was asked to help Jesus carry the cross (Matthew ch 27v32)
If it's really important to you, ask The Lord...
Be Blessed xxx

Answer 4

Well first does it matter? history shows that there were many not just Christ who died on a cross, so why when killing was done this way would they suddenly use a tree.
Much of what they believe is man made, man has a great deal of control over them, right down to taking their hard earned money from them

Answer 5

Hello,

Ditto to Achtung.

Plus, the Greek word generally translated "cross" is stau-ros'. It basically means "an upright pale or stake". The Companion Bible mentions that it "never means TWO pieces of timber places across one another at any angle...There is nothing in the Greek of the [New Testament] even to imply two pieces of timber."

In several texts, Bible writers use another word for the instrument of Jesus' death. It is the Greek word xy'lon. This word simply means "timber" or "a stick, club or tree."

However, the most convincing proof comes from God's Word. The apostle Paul says: "Christ by purchase released us from the curse of the Law by becoming a curse instead of us, because it is written: 'Accursed is every man hanged upon a stake [a "tree," KJV].'" (Galatians 3:13)

Hope I've helped.

Rachel B
:)

To 'Matt' above: There would have been more than one nail in a stake or tree. One for the hands AND one for the feet.

I also find it interesting when people think we only read The Watchtower magazine. News flash, The Watchtower is simply something we study on Sundays. If we were only worried about reading Watchtower magazines, why would the side of the USA Branch Headquarters in New York say in nice BIG letters: "READ GOD'S WORD DAILY." ? Please try to get your facts straight...it's clear you don't know what you're talking about.

Answer 6

What picture was drawn at Jesus' death?

What pictures there are, are only artist's rendering of what the artist believes happened.

stauros: an upright "stake", esp. a pointed one, used as such in fences or palisades

the History Channel stated that it takes days for a person to die on a cross.

It went on to say that breaking the legs of one hung on a cross doesn't speed death, it only makes the death more painful.

To quicken death by breaking one's legs requires the hands to be directly above the head.

Are you going to believe the eyewitness who said 'stake'
or
an artist's rendering based on a misconception?

.

Answer 7

The Greek word rendered “cross” in many modern Bible versions (“torture stake” in NW) is stau·ros′. In classical Greek, this word meant merely an upright stake, or pale. Later it also came to be used for an execution stake having a crosspiece. The Imperial Bible-Dictionary acknowledges this, saying: “The Greek word for cross, [stau·ros′], properly signified a stake, an upright pole, or piece of paling, on which anything might be hung, or which might be used in impaling [fencing in] a piece of ground. . . . Even amongst the Romans the crux (from which our cross is derived) appears to have been originally an upright pole.”—Edited by P. Fairbairn (London, 1874), Vol. I, p. 376.

It is noteworthy that the Bible also uses the word xy′lon to identify the device used. A Greek-English Lexicon, by Liddell and Scott, defines this as meaning: "Wood cut and ready for use, firewood, timber, etc. . . . piece of wood, log, beam, post . . . cudgel, club . . . stake on which criminals were impaled . . . of live wood, tree."

The book The Non-Christian Cross, by J. D. Parsons (London, 1896), says: “There is not a single sentence in any of the numerous writings forming the New Testament, which, in the original Greek, bears even indirect evidence to the effect that the stauros used in the case of Jesus was other than an ordinary stauros; much less to the effect that it consisted, not of one piece of timber, but of two pieces nailed together in the form of a cross. . . . It is not a little misleading upon the part of our teachers to translate the word stauros as ‘cross’ when rendering the Greek documents of the Church into our native tongue, and to support that action by putting ‘cross’ in our lexicons as the meaning of stauros without carefully explaining that that was at any rate not the primary meaning of the word in the days of the Apostles, did not become its primary signification till long afterwards, and became so then, if at all, only because, despite the absence of corroborative evidence, it was for some reason or other assumed that the particular stauros upon which Jesus was executed had that particular shape.”—Pp. 23, 24; see also The Companion Bible (London, 1885), Appendix No. 162.

“The shape of the [two-beamed cross] had its origin in ancient Chaldea, and was used as the symbol of the god Tammuz (being in the shape of the mystic Tau, the initial of his name) in that country and in adjacent lands, including Egypt. By the middle of the 3rd cent. A.D. the churches had either departed from, or had travestied, certain doctrines of the Christian faith. In order to increase the prestige of the apostate ecclesiastical system pagans were received into the churches apart from regeneration by faith, and were permitted largely to retain their pagan signs and symbols. Hence the Tau or T, in its most frequent form, with the cross-piece lowered, was adopted to stand for the cross of Christ.”—An Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words (London, 1962), W. E. Vine, p. 256.

“It is strange, yet unquestionably a fact, that in ages long before the birth of Christ, and since then in lands untouched by the teaching of the Church, the Cross has been used as a sacred symbol. . . . The Greek Bacchus, the Tyrian Tammuz, the Chaldean Bel, and the Norse Odin, were all symbolised to their votaries by a cruciform device.”—The Cross in Ritual, Architecture, and Art (London, 1900), G. S. Tyack, p. 1.

According to history, Tammuz was a Babylonian god, and the cross was used as his symbol. From its beginning in the days of Nimrod, Babylon was against Jehovah and an enemy of true worship. (Gen. 10:8-10; Jer. 50:29) So by cherishing the cross, a person is honoring a symbol of worship that is opposed to the true God.

You may not want to hear it, but your ex-friend was correct.

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Matt - At Luke 24:39, Jesus said to his disciples after his resurrection: "See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself; feel me and see, because a spirit does not have flesh and bones just as you behold that I have."

It was customary for the Romans to put a nail through the hands AND the feet.

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Steven - Jehovah's Witnesses aren't the only people to refuse blood. The Bible says to abstain from blood so all Christians should not give or take it. Every patient has the right to expect the best treatment, and as the medical community is now realising, blood is by no means the best treatment. Thumb-down.

Answer 8

The adherents of the Christian Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses do not distract from the message of "the good news" by going around denouncing the worshipful use of the cross and other idols. Instead, Witnesses simply believe that the bible plainly forbids idolatry of any kind, including the worshipful use of icons such as crucifixes.
http://watchtower.org/bible/1jo/chapter_005.htm?bk=1jo;chp=5;vs=21;citation#bk21
http://www.watchtower.org/bible/ac/chapter_017.htm?bk=ac;chp=17;vs=29;citation#bk29

(1 John 5:21) Guard yourselves from idols.

(Acts 17:29) We ought not to imagine that the Divine Being is like gold or silver or stone, like something sculptured by the art and contrivance of man


The exact shape of Christ's instrument of death is hardly a central doctrine of the faith, but Jehovah's Witnesses do happen to believe that Jesus was almost certainly impaled on a simple stake, rather than a cross of two intersecting beams. Of course the Romans had the ability to create a cross, and probably did. But ask yourself: why they would have bothered when a simple stake would have worked just as well or better?

The bible most assuredly does NOT offer any proof that the stake was actually a cross of two intersecting beams. The actual facts of the bible may be enlightening to examine...

You may be interested to see how your own copy of the bible translates Acts 5:30, Galatians 3:13, Deuteronomy 21:22, 23, and Acts 10:39. The King James, Revised Standard, Dyaglott, and Jerusalem Bible translate the instrument of Christ's death simply as "stake" or "tree" because the original wording simply does not support the idea that this was more than a piece of upright wood. The English word "cross" is an imprecise translation of the Latin word "crux". Note this image of crucifixion performed with a "crux simplex", such as seems to have been used to execute Jesus:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Justus_Lipsius_Crux_Simplex_1629.jpg

It is also eye-opening to examine how the first-century Christians felt about idols of any kind, much less one that glorified an instrument of death.

Learn more:
http://watchtower.org/e/200604a/article_01.htm
http://watchtower.org/e/20050508a/article_01.htm
http://watchtower.org/e/rq/index.htm?article=article_11.htm
http://watchtower.org/e/19960715/article_01.htm

Answer 9

I agree with Rachel B.

Rachel B Used reazoning! So did I.

Answer 10

The organisation is in charge of the JW interpretation of the Bible not the people. They have no freedom to agree or disagree with you Suzi. They must agree with the organisation or be disfellowshiped.