Mark 14
As they entered into the Garden of Gethsemane, the Savior said to Peter, James and John -
"...My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death..." (New Testament | Mark 14:34)
Obviously, something was begining to happen to Him. There are many that believe that the suffering of the Savior in the Garden was fear of His upcoming torture and death. I don't believe that. He possessed power over death. I believe it was in the Garden of Gethsemane that He suffered for the majority all the sins and pains of the world. I mention "majority" in that we know this great suffering returned on the cross. Elder James E. Talmage wrote -
“Christ’s agony in the garden is unfathomable by the finite mind, both as to intensity and cause. The thought that He suffered through fear of death is untenable. Death to Him was preliminary to resurrection and triumphal return to the Father from whom He had come, and to a state of glory even beyond what He had before possessed; and, moreover, it was within His power to lay down His life voluntarily. He struggled and groaned under a burden such as no other being who has lived on earth might even conceive as possible. It was not physical pain, nor mental anguish alone, that caused Him to suffer such torture as to produce an extrusion of blood from every pore; but a spiritual agony of soul such as only God was capable of experiencing. No other man, however great his powers of physical or mental endurance, could have suffered so; for his human organism would have succumbed, and syncope would have produced unconsciousness and welcome oblivion. In that hour of anguish Christ met and overcame all the horrors that Satan, ‘the prince of this world’ could inflict. The frightful struggle incident to the temptations immediately following the Lord’s baptism was surpassed and overshadowed by this supreme contest with the powers of evil.
“In some manner, actual and terribly real though to man incomprehensible, the Savior took upon Himself the burden of the sins of mankind from Adam to the end of the world.” (Jesus the Christ, page 613)
<< Home