Good Morning Brother Music Producer:
Mt:16:24: Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.
Why would Jesus himself refer to a Cross before it had any significance?
The only way we can explain this is Jesus was actually referring to the Egyptian Ankh and existed in a time when the religion of the Ankh had significance.
Again brother you have erred in you intepretation of the scripture. What Jesus is saying to the disciples is if they choose to follow him they must put aside all, fears, comforts, employment, courtships, doubts or other personal concerns and luxury and perpare for a mission that could cost them their lives. How do we come to this conclusion?
Mark 12:13-17
13 Later they sent some of the Pharisees and Herodians to Jesus to catch him in his words. 14 They came to him and said, "Teacher, we know you are a man of integrity. You aren't swayed by men, because you pay no attention to who they are; but you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not? 15 Should we pay or shouldn't we?"
But Jesus knew their hypocrisy. "Why are you trying to trap me?" he asked. "Bring me a denarius and let me look at it." 16 They brought the coin, and he asked them, "Whose portrait is this? And whose inscription?" "Caesar's," they replied.
17 Then Jesus said to them, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's." And they were amazed at him.
I use Mark because Mark is the first Gospel written from the account of Peter. We clearly see that at the time Jesus physically walked the earth that the land Jesus dwelled in was a Roman colony. Evidence of this is the mention of Caesar's image on the currency of the day. During the time Isaiah the currency commonly used was the shekels.
History tells us that Romans scourged and crucified criminals and dissetents of the Roman empire. crucifixion involved being stripped naked and scourged and then made to drag a gibbet or a stake through town through the street and then being nailed to that wooden stake or cross left to suffer a slow agonizing death from a location just outside the city.
In the scripture "denying youself and picking up your cross" has nothing to do with an Egyptian Ankh. The Ankh is a symbol of life any existed thousand of years before crucifixion. The cross before Jesus was crucified was not only a symbol of death but of a horrible death.
Jesus did not have to be an wise oracle or all seeing sage to have knowlegde of a cross. In fact all the disciples understood what he was saying because it was common knowlegde of the day.
Peace....