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Both the garden and the cross. I know so many want to skip some things but both were necessary
____________________________________________No...

I know that’s a false belief of the Mormons but the Garden of Gethsemane has nothing to do with salvation..

Only the Cross is important..

The LORD Jesus Christ didn’t say “If I go and pray in the garden”

He said “If I be lifted up I will draw all men and women to me” John 12:32 meaning lifted up ON THE CROSS...

He was telling His disciples how He was going to die...

His praying in the Garden of Gethsemane was not part of that ...He often prayed...and alone..

coming OUT OF the Garden of Gethsemane when He just happened to say that to Peter..

The significance of the Garden of Gethsemane is that it is on the Mount of Olives...

Olives were pressed there...

The LORD Jesus Christ was facing a pressing a squeezing...a challenge..

He was about to lay down His life for us...

His torment was due to the fact that He was facing being cut off from God...

He had always been with God the Father ...He had never been separated from the rest of the Trinity..

He was about to volunteer and go where no Person of the Trinity had ever gone before...to Hell..

It was His choice..He was about to face the Cross and all its horrors but even worse he was about to face separation from God..and death and Hell..

Although He had already told His disciples He would rise again..He still had to face the horror of being away from God for those few days..

While Jesus was on the Cross and before He died God left Him..

He cried out with a voice loud enough to be heard by those on the ground around Him...He must have screamed at the top of His voice

“MY GOD !!! MY GOD !!! WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME ?”

Matthew 27:44, Mark 15:34 This cry was so important that David prophesied in Psalm 22:1 that Jesus would do this...

God cannot look at sin and all the sins of the world for all time had been placed on Jesus...He who had not ever sinned Himself was now so drenched in sin His own Father could not look at Him or be anywhere near Him..

A child gets anxious if he doesn’t se his mother for a few moments but he is not neglected and cut off from her she may just be in the next room...

but Jesus knew God wasn’t just in the next room He wasn’t going to be back until Jesus had died alone and gone through Hell alone and risen again..

Now of us humans can understand the anguish that Jesus felt because we have never experienced living in Heaven forever with God and then being cut off from Him..

Humans who wind up in Hell feel some of that forever and that’s an excellent reason to repent and be born again and go to Heaven so that you don’t end up in hell without God..

But the LORD Jesus Christ agreed to lay down His life and shed His blood on the Cross and die there in order to save us from suffering the penalty of our sins..

He went to hell so that we don’t have to...

He suffered separation from God on the Cross so we don’t have to..

The Cross is where it all happened..

That’s why Christians put a cross on their churches and inside..

May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. Galatians 6:14

And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross! Philippians 2:8

in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which He put to death their hostility. Ephesians 2:16

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 1 Corinthians 1:18