Hi FofN!
Welcome to the Board...you will find it a place of diverse beliefs and opinions held together with the common thread of some type of exposure to JW's.
I once wrestled with the cross/stake debate. Using a bit of common sense, I lean toward the cross beam interpretation based primarily on the logic of how Jesus went to his execution. For his implement of execution to have been an upright stake, it would have had to have been of adequate girth to support his weight and long enough to have been placed in the ground with enough stability to not fall over with the lop-sided weight distribution a man's weight would have on the center of gravity of that pole. A conservative guess would be that such a pole would have to weigh several hundred pounds to accommodate both those requirements. Now the Bible accounts in Matthew, Luke and Mark indicate that Jesus started to drag his tortue stake to Golgotha and then it was carried the balance of the way by Simon of Cyrenne...does it seem realistic that a man that had endured constant beatings and scourgings throughout the night could then drag a wood pole weighing hundreds of pounds, even a short distance, through the city? Even an able-bodied man like Simon would struggle under such a load. It would seem much more reasonable that he carried a lighter cross beam to the execution site where the upright pole was already buried and in place. That pretty much cinched it for me.
More importantly is not the cross versus stake argument, a WT red herring, but rather what that crucifixion meant. Does it really matter what shape the instrument of his death was?...I would offer that the end, not the means is what God would want people to focus on. Once again, JW's try to be different by emphasizing non-issues.
