My God, My God ,why Have You Forsaken Me." Series

"My God, My God ,why have you forsaken me."

Matt. 27:46; Mark 15:34

The fourth word of Jesus from the cross discloses a sense of hope when we remember the whole psalm from which it comes. Psalm 22 does indeed begin with desperation: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?” (Psalm 22:1). The psalm writer struggles with what feels like God’s complete absence during his suffering. But, in time, the psalmist comes to a deeper experience of God’s gracious presence: “For he did not despise or abhor the affliction of the afflicted; he did not hide his face from me, but heard when I cried to him” (Psalm 22:24).

Mark tells us, "It was the third hour when they crucified him" (Mark 15:25). Sometime after the crucifixion took place, Luke tells us: "It was now about the sixth hour, and darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour" (Luke 23:44). "It was now about the sixth hour, and darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour, for the sun stopped shining...." (Luke 23:44-45a) A strange darkness settled down over the land, obscuring the sun until it could be seen no more - a 12–noon until 3 p.m..

This darkness intensified the feeling of desolation and despair for everyone who had gathered at the scene of the crucifixion.

The darkness that covered the land that eventual day cannot be explained as an eclipse because it was Passover time, and Passover was always on a full moon. Passover is a spring festival, so the 15th day of Nisan typically begins on the night of a full moon . All four Gospels state that Jesus was crucified on the Day of Preparation (Matthew 27:62; Mark 15:42; Luke 23:54; John 19:14, 31, 42). Mark, Luke, and John all state that the following day was the Sabbath. John’s account uses this wording: “It was the day of Preparation of the Passover” (John 19:14 ESV)

An eclipse is not possible with a full moon. And since Passover was a full moon it was not possible for the solar eclipse to occur. Neither was it a sandstorm, nor is there anything to indicate that a local phenomenon in the environment of Jerusalem or Judea caused it. The only conclusion you can come to is God caused it.

In our culture, if we hear "the fourteenth day of the first month," we would think this to mean "January 14." Our modern calendar is strictly a solar calendar, timed around the annual cycle of the Sun through the seasons, and oriented so that the solstices ( either of the two times of the year when the sun is at its greatest distance from the celestial equator ) and equinoxes ( either of two times of the year when the sun crosses the plane of the earth's equator and day and night are of equal length) fall on the same dates each year.

In our calendar, "months" are simply arbitrary units used to divide the solar year. So the dates within our months are just numbers, with no reference to the Moon or its phases. But the Hebrew calendar used by the ancient Israelites and the modern Jews today is a lunar calendar. And in this lunar calendar, the "months" represent complete cycles of the Moon's phases. In this way, each date of the month represents a certain phase of the Moon, so that the same phases will fall on the same date from month to month.

So when the Lord commanded Israel to celebrate Passover on the evening of the fourteenth day of the first month, it was understood that this day was two weeks after the New Moon, which is to say, the night of the Full Moon of the first month. The Passover is called "pesech" in Hebrew, and in the Greek of the New Testament, this word is rendered as "Pasch." For this reason, the Full Moon of Passover is called "The Paschal Moon."

We read in the Gospel accounts of the darkness that fell over the land during the crucifixion. Some rational-minded thinkers have attempted to explain this away as a Total Eclipse of the Sun that occurred during the crucifixion. However, such a solar eclipse can only occur during a New Moon, when the Moon is between the Earth and the Sun. However, the Paschal Full Moon occurs in exactly the opposite side of the sky as the New Moon, the completely wrong phase!

Also, a solar eclipse can only last as long as eight minutes, not the three hours of the darkness that happened during the crucifixion! So as we see, this miraculous darkness defeats any ill-informed attempts to at a rational, scientific explanation, again showing the folly of the "wisdom" of this world.