John 19:30

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“When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, He said, It is finished: and He bowed His head, and gave up the ghost.”

Why does this account state that Christ died at this point, and then, in Jn 19:34, appear to say that He was speared after He was already dead? When truly understood, this explanation represents a subtle satanic plot designed to picture Christ’s death with a very wrong emphasis. The problem springs from the presence of two key translational errors.

The first is in Jn 19:34. This passage reflects the wrong tense. It should reflect the Greek aorist tense (past tense), which would require had pierced instead of pierced and had come (the Greek is canae). This is proven by Matthew 27:49. This scripture has an entire phrase left out that would make it properly conclude: “…and another took a spear and pierced His side and there came out water and blood.” This is why Jesus died in the next verse (Mt 27:50)!

What is the greater problem referenced earlier?

Many preachers and religionists teach that Jesus Christ actually died of a broken heart, and the above wrong translation appears to substantiate this idea. In fact, Christ died because He bled to death!—and He was prophesied to die in this fashion! (See Exodus 12:6-7, Hebrews 9:22, Isaiah 53:7-8 and 12, Leviticus 17:11, Deuteronomy 14:21, Genesis 9:6, Ephesians 1:7 and Colossians 1:14.) When placed together, these verses demonstrate that Christ had to shed His blood for humanity.

Hebrews 9:22 shows that blood must be shed for sins to be forgiven. Ambassador College once had a copy of an original Greek manuscript from A.D. 300, which contains this phrase. Unfortunately, the phrase had become a marginal reference by the time the King James Version was produced in A.D. 1611. The Moffatt translation still contains it, but only in parentheses.

The entire reason that Christ died was part of a Master Plan by God. His suffering—and consequent death by blood loss—did not happen by accident, but rather was entirely by design. In addition to denying the truth of Scripture and the need for blood to be shed to forgive sins, the attempt to picture Christ with a broken heart (1) weakens Christ into One who was shocked by that which He was not really prepared to witness and (2) is a classic example of how the maudlin, sentimental Protestant view of Christ often rules their teaching.