It absolutely amazes me that, after almost 2,000 years of arguing and finger pointing, not one of the so called experts has figured out who killed Jesus. I have been silently watching and waiting for years to hear an expert with all his college degrees in theology tell us what happened but have finally given up on getting anything intelligent from them. I have learned that a college degree only provides a person with knowledge but not common sense and knowledge without common sense can be dangerous.

If you study the scriptures and history, you realize that the Jews only had the authority to sentence Jesus to death and were completely dependent on the Romans putting Him to death. It should be clear to anyone with even a little common sense that they could not sentence Jesus to death and execute him by themselves. By law, the only people who could execute Jesus were the Romans. As a matter of fact, the Romans had to approve the death sentence imposed on Jesus before they would put Him to death which means that the Jews couldn't even sentence Jesus to death without the permission of the Romans.

As a matter of fact, if you study history for the area, you find that God did something very interesting and brilliant. If God had sent Jesus to Israel just 100 to 200 years earlier, the Jews would have had enough autonomy to both sentence and put Him to death. If God had sent Jesus just 70 years later, Israel would have been destroyed and the Jews would not have been able to either sentence Him to death or execute Him. The Romans would have had to both sentence Jesus and execute Him.

In other words, there was a relatively small window of less than 300 years in which the Jews could sentence Jesus to death and the Romans could have and would have had to execute Jesus. So, why did God send Jesus at exactly that time?

One word explains it all; symbolism. God was sending us very important message that we have all missed. If God had sent Jesus significantly earlier so that the Jews and only the Jews could have sentenced and executed Him, then it would have been perceived by the world to mean that Jesus came to pay for the sins of the Jews and only the Jews. If God had sent Jesus 70 years later when the Romans and only the Romans could have sentenced and executed Jesus, then it would have been perceived by the world that Jesus came to pay for the sins of the non-Jewish world and only the non-Jewish world.

You have to understand the function and symbolism of Rome and to do that, you have to study its history and the history of the Church of Rome. Prior to the Church of Rome, when Rome was still a fledgling power, there were from 100 to as many as over 200 pagan cults in the City of Rome. Every time the people elected a new Caesar, the new Caesar would bring his church or religion into power and there would be massive upheavals in Rome with rioting and killing because the previous religion didn't want to give up the power the last Caesar provided them with.

This problem got so out of hand that the leaders finally realized that, if they didn't do something about this, it would eventually destroy Rome. They got all the different religious leaders together from the different religions and decided to combine all of their religions into one religion or the Church of Rome so changes in Caesar's wouldn't cause changes in religions.

To do this, they analyzed the basic differences and similarities for the different religions and incorporated all the major differences along with the similarities so that the new Church of Rome was very much like all of the lesser religions and incorporated all of the top religious leaders as cardinals for the Church of Rome. This permitted them to assimilate everyone in Rome into one church or religion.

This worked so well that they decided to use it for their expanding empire. The way they did this was to send Priests and monks with the troops who were sent to conquer other countries or peoples. While the troops were conquering a group of people, the priests and monks were busy studying their religions. The priests and monks would send a report back to the Church of Rome and the cardinals would decide whether and which religious practices of the new pagan religion would have to be incorporated into the Church of Rome in order to be able to assimilate the newly conquered people into the Church of Rome so Rome would have religious control over the newly conquered people.

The cardinals would send a report back to the priests and monks telling them which of the religious practices from the new pagan religion would be incorporated into the Church of Rome and then the priests and monks would go to the pagan religious leaders and people telling them about the similarities between the two religions persuading them to join the Church of Rome.

Also, as soon as the local population had been conquered, the Roman Army would recruit soldiers from the local population. In this way, the Church of Rome became the local population's church and the Army of Rome became their army very effectively assimilating entire nations into the Roman Empire.

This worked for every country Rome successfully conquered except Israel who was permitted a partial and conditional autonomy including religious autonomy. One of the conditions for Israel's continued autonomy was that the Jews could sentence a person to death but it had to be approved by a Roman military leader and the Roman Army had to execute the individual.

But the symbolism God used here and everyone has missed for almost 2,000 years is that the Army of Rome, because it was made up of people from every country they had conquered, represented the non-Jewish world and Israel represented the Jewish world. With the Jews and Romans both working together to crucify Jesus, God was telling us that Jesus came and died for the crimes of the entire world and not just the crimes of either the Jews or the Romans.

We are all responsible for the death of Jesus because He came to die for all of our crimes against His laws. Get it right and deal with it.