Today Pretani Associates attended the Easter At Home held at the Bannside Library at the invitation of Rhonda, and Eileen, Baroness Paisley and her family. I accompanied Dr Paisley and Eileen many times to Glasgow during his illness to buy books, which he loved. As the greatest Unionist politician since Edward Carson, he had many interests and was extremely widely read.
Holy Saturday,or Holy Sabbath (Sabbatum Sanctum in Latin) or Great Sabbath….This is the day when the body of Our Lord Jesus lay in the tomb, while, according to the Apostle’s Creed his spirit entered the Dark Realms, called Hell in the Old English usage. Here he liberated the souls of the righteous since the beginning of the world of conscience and left the souls of the damned. In medieval times this was called the “Harrowing of Hell”…Some therefore call it Black Saturday and others Joyous Saturday in celebration of Our Lord’s victory over the Dark Realms.
During one of the visits, my friend Dr Paisley bought for me in the Voltaire and Rousseau Bookshop in Glasgow, W Stroud’s book “A Treatise on the Physical Cause of the Death of Christ” 1847. He asked me for my opinion as he often did .As a physician myself I have had a lifetime interest in the death of the greatest of all physicians, Jesus Christ. I believe he suffered greatly under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried. The suffering was immense, with extreme flagellation, so that he was in hypovolemic shock and already in very poor condition when he was crucified. He would have had pericardial effusion of fluid compressing his heart, so that the soldier’s spear piercing his atrium would have indeed brought forth blood and water…This proves the authenticity of the gospels, as indeed the authenticity of his resurrection was proved by the former anti-Christian Saul of Tarsus who met the living Jesus following the crucifixion.