The Shroud Of Turin

Transcript

Welcome And Setting The Question

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Good morning, everybody. Welcome. A lot of moving parts. Got my hands full. Welcome. Greetings. This is a laser pointer. I get to use a laser pointer today. And they they bought it for me, and I'm like, this looks like it could survive Armageddon. Like, this is the real deal. It's good to be with you. My name is Mac. I'm one of the pastors on our team. It's good to be with you. If you're joining us from home, welcome. We extend a warm welcome to you as well. So last week for Easter, I gave an apologetic uh for the resurrection. I tried to build out a case for here's why I believe that Jesus actually rose from the dead. And I submitted that a good argument makes a positive case. Here's why you're to believe I believe this to be true, but also gives a negative case. It responds to the most common objections. So I tried to do both of those things. I said, okay, here's why I believe Jesus actually rose from the dead. And then I sort of responded to very briefly some of the most common objections to the resurrection. And today I want to take us a step further. I want to look into a very specific detail in John's Gospel. This is going to be a very different sermon, so I'm just going to let you know that. I've never done anything like this before. But I want to start by just reading the text. So this is John chapter 20, verses 1 through 8. This is John's account of the resurrection. And here's what it says. It says, early on the first day of the week, that's referring to Sunday, so early on Sunday morning, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she's the first one at the tomb. She notices the tomb has been removed. The stone from the tomb has been removed. So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved. By the way, this is John's gospel, and this is John's way of alluding to himself. Kind of snarky, like, I'm the one he really loved, okay? So he's like, okay, uh, she came running to Simon and to Peter, and the disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don't know where they have put him. So notice Mary at this point is like the body's not there, but her assumption is someone took the body, and we don't know who it was or where they took Jesus. So Peter and the other disciples started for the tomb. Both of them were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. So he's like, okay, we start running to the tomb, it kind of got competitive, and I won. I just want you to know that. I won. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there, but didn't go in. So John gets there first, he bends over and looks in the tomb, sees these linen strips are in there, but he doesn't go in the tomb. Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. You know the guy lagging behind. And this kind of fits Peter's personality because he's pretty like bold and bombastic. He just kind of steps into things, and so when he gets there, he doesn't pause, he just goes right into the tomb. Then it says he saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus' head. The cloth was still lying in its place separate from the linen. Finally, the other disciple who had reached the tomb first. Remember that? He also went inside and he saw and believed. Apparently, John didn't get the lesson that the first will be last, and that whole thing Jesus talked about still sinking in. Here's what I want to focus on today. I want you to notice that the tomb wasn't empty. At least it wasn't completely empty. Um, Jesus' body wasn't there, but the author, John, draws attention to something that was left there. He actually returns to it a couple times and describes it in detail. That is the linen cloth that had wrapped Jesus' body, and then the face cloth that had been wrapped around his head. Both were in the tomb, and they had been positioned just so and had remained just so. They were still laying in their places undisturbed. John draws attention to this, and he says that when they saw the linen cloths, they believed. So just notice that it wasn't just the empty tomb, the fact that Jesus' body wasn't there. Um, if that had been the case, they would have had the same response as Mary, that someone had taken Jesus' body, and we don't know where they they put him. But it's actually the combination of, hey, this tomb is empty and these linen cloths that have been left behind that prompted their belief. You guys noticing this? Now, what if I told you that a case can be made that we actually have these linen cloths in our possession? Not like me here today, but like we know where these are, we we have them, and I'm gonna submit to you that it's not only possible, but I think it's highly likely. Now, if you are like, okay, Mac, um I've trusted you for a lot of years, and now this is getting weird. Um I get it, you have every reason to be skeptical. Um, it doesn't help that throughout church history there have been thousands of relics that have been claimed to be authentic, which many, quite frankly, are super ridiculous. From like the actual nails that they use to crucify Jesus to bottles of Mary's breast milk to the actual foreskin at Jesus' circumcision. This isn't a joke. These are real claims. It gets pretty ridiculous. So I get it if you're like, okay, uh, this is a little bizarro. I get it. But I want to submit to you, I want to make a case today, that these aren't just relics, these are historical artifacts that point to the truth of Jesus' physical resurrection from the dead. So, a couple disclaimers before we get into this, okay? The first disclaimer is that for me, this is just fun exploration, okay? So my faith doesn't hang on what I'm gonna present to you today. I wanna be really clear about that. Um, if what I present to you today was disproven tomorrow, it would not change my belief in the resurrection. I gave you my reasons for believing in the resurrection last week. So this is just kind of fun exploration that um for me has strengthened my faith. It definitely has strengthened my faith, but it doesn't like depend on it. Okay? The other thing, the other disclaimer I want to give is that everything I'm going to present to you today um is highly contested. Like every detail I'm gonna present to you is um is hotly debated. And I'm gonna try not to overstate the case. Um I'm gonna be honest. What makes it hard as well is I'm not an expert in the fields I'm going to be talking about. Okay? So we're gonna talk about two linen cloths today and whether or not they're authentic. And one of them, the shroud, which we'll get into in a moment, it's had over a hundred scientists ranging a whole variety of academic disciplines try to test it in various ways to determine its authenticity. But note I'm not an expert in any one of those fields. And so I'm sort of dependent on their expertise and I'm sifting through the data trying to present it to you. Does that make sense? So I'm not an expert in any one of these fields, um, but I find it very fascinating. In fact, I first read about these two artifacts. The first book I ever read was in the ninth grade, and I've been studying it kind of on and off in an obsessive way for like the last 30 years. So I've been really excited to present some of this to you today. Um, but here's what I want to do. Let's get into this. I want to start today um by discussing what's commonly known as the shroud of Turin, and then I want us to consider its potential correspondence to what's known as the pseudarium of Oviedo. So that's where we're headed today. And we're gonna start with the Shroud of Turin. Now, real quick, what is a shroud? A shroud is a very long rectangular-shaped burial cloth that would have been used in the ancient world to cover a corpse. That's what a shroud is. We have um dozens of these from Second Temple Judaism, which is the time that Jesus lived. And um and the one that we're gonna look at uh today, it was um well, it was discovered, and what makes it unique is it has a very faint image of a crucified man on it, the both front and the back. Okay, and so I want to show you a picture of this, this shroud. Again, this is just a burial corpse. This is the lengthwise. So this is 14 uh feet four inches long, and then three uh feet seven inches wide, and this is what a shroud would have looked like in the ancient world. Now, what's interesting is this is a uh a shroud made out of a three to one herringbone uh twill pattern, which is very different than all of the other shrouds we have. It's a more refined, high-quality shroud than any of the ones, the other ones we have possession of. And so, right there, just note, at least for me, that that actually corresponds to a detail that we have in the Gospels, because the Gospels tell us that Joseph of Arimathea was the one who buried Jesus in his own tomb. Joseph of Arimathea was a member of the Sanhedrin, so he was a very wealthy and well-known individual, and it seems that he used his own tomb to bury Jesus. It seems as though Joseph of Arimathea had sort of prepared for his own burial as a wealthy individual, had his own tomb selected, as well as some of the preparations, like a shroud. This is a high-quality shroud, and so to honor Jesus, he used his own tomb and his own shroud during the burial process. Now, um note on the shroud, as I mentioned before, there's a very faint image of a crucified man on both the front and the back, the front of the man and the back. So on the bottom part you'll notice is the front image, and on the top part here is the back. Experts um have assessed that this man was somewhere between 5'7 and 5'11 in height, weighing roughly 170 pounds. It also, the image you'll notice reflects everything we know about ancient Roman crucifixion. There are scourks from flogging on this man. There's nail marks in his hands and his feet. His body has been um abused. And I'll just plant this seed. We're gonna return to this in a moment, but experts and scientists have no idea how this image got on this shroud. It's actually a 3D image, and scientists are stumped with regard to how did this actually get on this shroud, and I'll talk about that more in a little bit. The history of the Shroud of Turn is very complicated, so I'm just gonna name that. Um, it's possible that we have some early references to it in early church documents like Eusebius in 325 AD, but the first uncontested date, the first date where everybody agrees the shroud is in existence, and we can sort of track its history from there is in the year 1354. So back in the 1300s. And what happened is someone purchased this, the Savoy family purchased this shroud for the price of two castles in Leary, France. So this family wanted the shroud, and they bought it by giving two castles in Leary, France. From there, it has a very adventurous history. It's been passed through multiple hands, it survived three fires. There's actually watermarks where they had to put fire out on the shroud. It's been mended numerous times. And it's actually not until 1983 that the Catholic Church ends up in charge of it. It was given to the Pope. So technically, uh the shroud belongs to whoever is Pope. And right now it's in a preservation chamber in a church in Turin, Italy. Hence the Shroud of Turin. Following so far? Yeah?

unknown 13:06

Yeah.

The Mystery Of The Image

Carbon Dating And Objections

The Sudarium Of Oviedo Links

Trust Faith And Living Like Jesus

Community Invite And Closing Prayer

SPEAKER_00 13:07

Okay. Now, in 1898, in 1898, um, an Italian photographer named Secondo Pia took the first picture of the shroud. He took a photograph of the shroud. And when he did, something really interesting happened. When he was developing the photograph, he saw the negative, and the negative caused all of the details that's on the shroud to pop with new clarity and sort of vividness. And so this negative has actually become the most famous image of the shroud because you can see all that's on it with such greater clarity. So let's show the image of the negative, if we could jump to there. There's the front and the back, side by side, and here's the negative. You can see a lot more detail in this negative photo than you can in just the um the yellowish color that we saw earlier. Um by the way, just so you know, I'm not taking crazy pills, because you might be thinking, oh, what's gotten into Mac? This is not good. Um, C.S. Lewis, uh C.S. Lewis, who was an artist skeptic before he became a follower of Jesus, um, he had actually had a picture of the faith of the face of Jesus on the shroud in his home, in the kiln in Oxford. And purportedly, when he was asked why he kept this in his bedroom, he said, to remind us that our God has a face, and it's Jesus. So I just think that's interesting that if a skeptic like C.S. Lewis found this compelling, it might be reason to look into it ourselves. So, what's so compelling about the Shroud of Turin? Well, what's so compelling about it is its correspondence between what's on the shroud and what we know about Jesus' death and burial. Note that everything on this shroud, and that is not an exaggeration, every detail on this shroud actually matches and corresponds to what we know about Jesus' death and burial. Every detail. And we know more about Jesus' death and burial than we do any other person in ancient antiquity. We have a very thick description of everything that happened up to, during, and after Jesus' death. So let me just highlight some things for you. This is how the shroud, I think, comports with um Jesus' um death and burial. So let's start with the face, okay? Uh scholars have noted that this man's face is pretty uh battered and bruised. It has tons of abrasion, especially on the right cheek right there, our left, his right. Um some scholars and experts have actually said this man was beaten so many times in the face that he's likely blind. And of course, we know from Jesus' trial that when he was being tried, they began striking Jesus in the face with their fists and with rods and reeds and saying, Who did that? Tell us, prophesy, and so on. And so it fits that Jesus was likely struck in the face numerous times throughout his trial. Um, additionally, you'll notice that there are tons and tons of scourks from his flogging. So on the back side, there's over 200 scourge marks that start up here, towards the top of the back, and go all the way down the calves. Over 200. And on the front, there's over a hundred, there's 172 scourge marks starting on the chest, going all the way down to the shins. This, of course, matches what we know about Jesus' treatment before his crucifixion. He was flogged by the Roman guards. And if you've ever seen The Passion of Christ by Mel Gibson, you might have a reference point for exactly how brutal uh that was. And this person in the shroud bears the marks of that type of treatment, the scourging. In addition to this, up on the scalp, notice that, there's a big drop of blood right there, and numerous other little ones. Um, there's over 50 puncture wounds on this man's scalp that they've counted, 50 of them. And they're both on the front and the back over here. You can see them over here, which suggests something placed around the man's head that caused these puncture marks. Well, we know from Jesus' trial that they put a uh a crown of thorns on his head to mock him as the king, the supposed king of the Jews. And look, we don't have any, there's nobody else in history that we know was forced to wear uh a crown of thorns like this. Like we Jesus is the only one uh we know who is who is treated that way. In addition to that, you obviously have the uh nail marks right here on the wrists, and uh there's also uh down on the feet nail marks from the uh the nails going through, and and that matches Roman crucifixion, which we know Jesus died from crucifixion. Then most interestingly, you have a big uh blob right there, and that corresponds with Jesus um being um speared in the side. You'll remember that they were kind of in a uh a rush because Sabbath was coming, so they needed those being crucified with Jesus to be taken down and buried before Sabbath began, and so they began breaking the legs of those who were with him, and they got to Jesus and he was already dead. And a Roman guard to ensure Jesus' death took his lance and speared him in the side, right in the heart, and blood and water flowed out, according to the account. So, right there you're just noticing, hey, there's a lot of correspondence here from the way we know Jesus was treated during his trial and his execution and what's showing up on this shroud. We'll discuss the image in a moment because that is super fascinating, but there are other layers of correspondence that are super compelling, and I want to give you a couple examples, okay? So one is um the blood. There's blood on this shroud. Um, wherever you see a major wound, up here, over here, and so on, there's blood on this shroud. And experts and researchers have confirmed that it is human blood. It's human blood. In fact, more specifically, it's type A B blood. And that's significant because type A B blood is unique, it's Semitic blood. It's unique to Jewish people. And only 6% of the global population has type A B blood, and the highest concentration is i in and around Jerusalem, around the Promised Land. And so we have type A B blood here. The blood also indicates that this person had experienced significant trauma. It has high creatinine levels, ferritin levels, um, dehydration. It's consistent with liver and kidney failure. This person has obviously undergone some significant, some significant trauma. Um, there's also that place that I named right here. Um some scholars say it's right between the fifth and sixth rib. Um there's uh pulmonary edema there. Pulmonary edema. Um six parts palm six parts pulmonary edema to one part blood, um, which is consistent with the account that again, blood and water flowed from his side. And so we have nail marks that match crucifixion. You have this uh side mark right there. In addition to the blood and the pulmonary edema, you have soil samples. So there are three parts on the shroud that have soil, and that is right here at the feet, and then on the knees, and then on the nose. So there's three parts where there's soil, and they've been able to trace that soil, the soil samples match the soil found in Jerusalem. The accounts don't tell us that Jesus fell. That's sort of a Catholic tradition that Jesus fell three times. Um, but the the reason why they conclude that he fell at some point is because that cerebellum, the beam that he had to carry to the cross, weighed about 125 pounds after severe beating. He probably didn't have the strength to do it. And you'll remember that Simon of Cyrene was forced to carry the cross, which is an indicator that Jesus was running out of strength to do so. It's likely that at some point he fell to the ground, and that's how it got on his knees and on his nose. In addition to that, on this shroud are our uh pollen spores. So pollen is from flowers and it's embedded in the cloth itself. And what's interesting is that the pollen spores, there's over 50 of them, uh, match where we know the shroud has been. So there's pollen spores from Lyri, France, and where it is in Italy. But there's also a high concentration of pollen spores from Jerusalem in the springtime. And you'll remember that Jesus was crucified during Passover. When does Passover land? In the springtime, right? And so right now you'll just notice there's a strong correspondence between. From the gospel accounts, how we know that Jesus was treated, from the abrasions on this man's face to the crown placed on his head, to the scourge marks on the front and the back of his body, to the wounds where he was crucified, to the puncture wound on his side. In addition to that, the blood seems to suggest it's type A B blood belonging to a Jewish man. Also, you have the soil sample, the pulmonary edema fluid, and the pollen that all points to this likely belonged to a crucified man in and around Jerusalem. What's most extraordinary about this entire thing, if that doesn't already blow your mind, is that even the best scientists cannot figure out how this image got on this shroud. So know this that the image was not painted on this shroud. There is no pigment, no dyes, no brush strokes, there's no evidence that this is sort of like manufactured or created in a way that people can figure out. If you were to paint something on a piece of cloth like this, the uh substance you would use would seep through the cloth, like the blood on this shroud, right? If you're painting, it would seep through to the other side. But what's most remarkable about this image is that it is only on the outermost layers of the fibers in the linen. In fact, it only goes about 0.2 microns deep. So it doesn't go through the shroud, it's only on the outermost layers of the shroud, of the linen of the shroud. It's essentially a chemical alteration of the cellulose in the linen, and the exact cause is unknown. When scientists run the shroud through an image analyzer, the image is clearly three-dimensional, which is also fascinating. It's not two-dimensional, it's three-dimensional. Um, it's almost as if the parts of the shroud that were closest or even touching the body were lightest, but the parts that were furthest away from the body, right, or not touching the body are darker. And so right now there's no way that we can figure out how to authenticate it because we don't know how it was created. How would someone uh create something like this? And the closest anybody's got is this guy named Paolo Di Lazzaro. He was an Italian physicist who worked with lasers. Okay, so I'm not a laser expert, but he wanted his goal was like, how do I recreate this? And he got the closest as to anybody else has in terms of altering the fibers on a piece of cloth. What he used was a high concentration of UV, using as much energy as he could in a burst. He used 34,000 trillion watts of energy, an insane amount of energy, in a burst only involving a 140th of a billion of a second. So boom. And he was able to create an image on a two by two centimeter cloth that was similar to this one. That's an insane amount of energy to produce an image on such a small piece of cloth. And that's the closest anybody's gotten. So one of the challenges for critics who don't believe in the authenticity of this shroud is to explain how in the world did this image get on here, a three-dimensional image only on the outermost fibers of this shroud. How did that happen? Scientists today have no idea. They take guesses, but nobody knows exactly how it got there. And part of the challenge is you can't just go, oh, here's how it got here. You have to explain how someone in the 1300s or before had the technology to produce this. So, like in the 1300s, they didn't have a super laser. You know what I mean? So, like, you have to explain, based on the evidence of, hey, here's what they knew how to do at that time, it's likely that they produced it in this way. It's a big, it's a tall order. So here's my view. I'm just gonna be honest with you, this is what I think. You're free to disagree with me. But I think that the shroud of Turin is authentic. I personally believe that this is the burial shroud um used during Jesus' burial. And I think, this is my view, I think that um something happened when Jesus was raised uh from the dead similar to the transfiguration. So let me flesh this out. Um you'll remember uh three of the Gospels talk about uh Jesus' transfiguration. And what what that was, if you're not familiar with it, is Jesus took three, the three closest disciples, the three he was closest with, Peter, James, and John, up onto a mountaintop. And there it says that he was transfigured, and it describes two things that happened to Jesus. His body started to exude light. His body was like um putting forth light. And in the process, we're also told that his clothes changed in appearance, so they became bleach white. You remember this? So his body is sort of like exuding light, and it changes the appearance of his garments. And then a voice from heaven says, This is my son, the one whom I I love, and I'm well pleased. Listen to him. And then things kind of go away. Peter opens his big mouth and it's like, oh, we should erect, you know, like uh things to stay. We this is good that we're here. And Jesus is like, okay, be quiet, Peter. Here's what you need to know. And then Jesus connects what just happened to his death and resurrection. Right after that transfiguration, Jesus names that he's going to suffer and be crucified, but be raised from the dead. Notice that? So the transfiguration, immediately Jesus connects it to death and resurrection. And then he tells his disciples, but don't tell anybody about this until that's happened. Okay? So here's my view is I actually think that was really intentional on Jesus' part, and it was in preparation for Easter Sunday morning. I think that Jesus was crucified, died, and was put in the tomb by Joseph of Arimathea. And sometime on that early Sunday morning, the first day of the week, divine power resurrected Jesus from the dead. And it boom lit up his body like a Christmas tree. Similar to the transfiguration, so much so that it altered or put an image on this shroud. And this is why when the disciples come to the tomb, unlike Mary Magdalene, who looked at the tomb and concluded, oops, someone's taken the body of Jesus, we don't know where they put them. They saw, they saw the empty tomb and these garments, and it reminded them of the transfiguration. And that's why it says they saw and believed. They remembered up, Jesus already planted the seed for us, oh boom, the it looks different, and they believed. This making sense? Now, this is not a slam dunk. Again, I want to be clear, I don't want to overstate my case. Everything I've shared with you is contested. Perhaps the biggest objection to um what I'm telling you today is the carbon dating of the shroud. In 1988, three independent laboratories um carbon dated the shroud, and they um determined it was somewhere between 1260 and 1390. Now there is a ton of debate about how they reached that conclusion. Uh part of the challenge is that the sample they used was from one of the corners of the shroud, and it was very different in appearance from all the the rest of the shroud. And so even before they tested it, people were demanding, hey, you need to take a different sample because that one looks different than the rest of the shroud. And some have argued that they actually were testing a patch, a men job, rather than the shroud itself. There have been other um dating methods used that have actually dated it back to the first century. And so the dating of this is highly contested. There's all sorts of challenges about, and I don't think, quite frankly, they're gonna open it up to retesting. So that's one of the challenges, is like the the time of testing is sort of over. They'd have to reopen it up in order to get more clarity here. So here, that's my view. You can think differently on it. Um, there's a lot more that could be said about the Shroud of Turin. Again, I've kind of had an on and off uh study um uh with this for about 30 years. There's over 2,000 books and articles written on the Shroud of Turin, and I have not even read close to a fraction of those. So um I am not an expert here. I'm just giving you my best take. Um, but here's where I want to turn a corner. I want to turn a corner and look at something else that was found in the empty tomb, and that is the facecloth. So here is a picture of the suderium of Oviedo. Um this is this is the suderium of Oviedo, and the word suderium, if that sounds confusing to you, it just means face cloth. Okay, so the Greek word in John chapter 20, when it refers to the face cloth, is suderium. That's the Greek word. The Latin transliteration is suderium, and it's currently uh located in Oviedo, Spain. Hence the suderium, the facecloth of um Oviedo. Kind of like the shroud of Tern. It's a shroud located in Tern. You guys getting kind of how they're coming up with these names? Okay. All right, so in the ancient world, a face cloth, kind of like this, would have um been put over a person's face, wrapped around a person's face, and tied or even clipped um right when they died, as a way to honor and give dignity to the person who passed away. And you can actually see right down here that this, those are clip marks where this was clipped to whoever had this um face cloth uh placed over them. And uh this is just in terms of um metrics, this is uh 33, 33 by 21 inches. So much smaller than the shroud, okay? It's much smaller. And it does not have a 3D image on it, like the shroud. Um rather, those are blood stains. So all of these things that you're seeing on here, those are blood stains. And what's interesting is what these blood stains reveal, okay? So the sudarium is covered in blood, and not surprisingly, it is type A B blood. So it matches the kind of blood that is on uh the shroud. In addition to that, there is pulmonary edema on this puderium, uh right here uh around the nose and down here by the mouth, which is consistent with someone who dies of asphyxiation or crucifixion, they would be sort of uh vomiting pulmonary edema. And so this person clearly died from crucifixion, whoever wore it. And then the stain patterns are really interesting. Experts have um been able to tell that this shroud was placed on the person's face while they were still hanging on the cross. So it was while this person was still upright that this shroud was wrapped around their head. And what's very interesting is they can actually tell which direction the head was leaning, it was leaning to the right side based on the patterns. From there, we can tell that the person was taken down and then transported to a tomb, at which point the shroud uh or the face cloth was removed. All right, so just note this isn't like random staining, it's got like forensic evidence. It's telling a story, it's it's providing details about how this person was treated. What's on the pseuderium matches, I think, how Jesus died. So if I were to kind of paint a picture for you, uh when Jesus died on the cross, they uh lanced his side, and from there someone probably climbed up and and wrapped Jesus' face. And there are probably a couple reasons for this. One was to give Jesus dignity, but the other one was to stop the flow of blood, okay? Because for first century Jews, blood is not just a biological substance, it ha it's a life source. Life is in the blood, and so they wouldn't want this blood continuing to flow out everywhere. They'd want to contain it. And in fact, uh people are often, if there was any bleeding, they would be buried with their blood for the purposes of resurrection in the ancient world. And so uh they're trying to contain the blood. And then they take Jesus' body down. There's actually marks on this where someone clearly tried to pinch the nose of this victim to try to get the blood to stop. From there, the body, Jesus would have been carried to the tomb, laid on top of the shroud, at which point this face cloth would have been removed, and then the shroud would have been wrapped over the top. Is this making sense so far? What makes it super fascinating is how much it corresponds with the shroud of Turin. Okay? And so let me just highlight some of the correspondence that is uh super interesting and I find compelling. I've already named the correspondence between blood, it's type A B blood on this pseudarium. I've already mentioned the pulmonary edema, which is also on the shroud. But the blood stain patterns also match what's on the shroud. In terms of where the blood is located, what direction the blood is flowing, there's a match between the two. Let's go to that next slide and you can see some of the analysis that people are doing. Those are like dots uh connecting all the matches between the shroud and the pseuderium. The wound locations are exactly the same on the nose, the mouth, the beard area, and the back of the head all match. In fact, some have suggested over a hundred matches between the front and the back. 70 points of correspondence on the front and over 50 on the back. And in addition to that, the um dimensions, when the facial structure, when these two are overlaid, so if you put the suderium on top of the shroud and they're sort of overlaid, there is a perfect structural matchup between the two. For example, the length of the nose is the exact same. We can tell that the facial features of the person in the shroud and the person wearing the suderium are exactly the same. In fact, there's even dirt on this puderium right around the nose, and it matches the dirt that is found in Jerusalem. There's also pollen in this puderium, and it matches where it's currently located in Spain and has pollen spores that go back to North Africa, which we know there's a strong early church presence there, and then pollen spores from Jerusalem during the springtime. Unlike the shroud, this does not have nearly the contested history that the shroud does. Um, we know for certain that this has been in Spain since the 7th century. And again, based on the pollen spores we know from before that it was in North Africa and then Jerusalem. So when you put this all together, friends, I think there's a pretty compelling case. You've got the Shroud of Turin with all the marks of crucifixion, of torture, being beaten by rods, wearing the crown, the marks on the hands and the feet, the piercing of the side, the flogging, all of it. You've got the blood type, the pulmonary edema, you've got soil samples and pollen. Then you look at the pseuderium and the blood matches all the spots on the shroud. The facial structure is the same, the pollen is the same, the soil is the same. I think there's a pretty strong case that when John and Peter looked at the empty tomb and saw these two articles laying there, they saw and believed because they had been there for Jesus' transfiguration. This making sense? Now, again, I want you to note this is just fun exploration for me, okay? You don't have to nerd out like me. This is my deal. But I've been excited to present this to you to go, hey, here's what I think, and for me, it strengthens my faith, but it doesn't completely depend upon this, right? Remember that we all exercise faith. If you're here and you're not a follower of Jesus and you're like, well, I just believe in science remote. No, you're putting your faith in, you put your faith in things. The question is, what are your reasons for believing in that thing? What are your reasons for trusting this, that, or the other thing? As I said last week, all of you trusted the brakes in your car this morning to get you here. You had good reasons to believe that. If you flew on a plane, you trusted that the pilot would know how to get you where you were going. You had to trust, you put your faith that they had the ability to fly a plane. Right? You trust other people all the time because you have reasons to. Up, I trust my wife, Josie, because she's proven trustworthy. I have reasons to believe that she's trustworthy. You're trusting the chair to hold you up right now. The question isn't whether you'll exercise faith or have trust. The question is, what is the object that you're putting your trust or your faith in and what are your reasons for doing so? Is this making sense? And I think there's a lot of good reasons to suggest not only that Jesus rose from the dead, but that maybe God like took a picture of that for us that we still have today on the Shroud of Turin and left some correspondence with the Suderium of Oviedo. I want to return to a moment that I mentioned earlier, which is why C. S. Lewis had this in his home. So if we could just put the uh maybe the face picture up, do we still have that? There it is on the right. This is the picture that C.S. Lewis had in his home, matching again here the uh pseudarium. Um remember when asked why did you keep this in your home? He said, because our God, our God has a face and it's Jesus. Our God has a face and it's Jesus. Uh that might be Jesus. You know what I mean? If I'm right, you are looking at the face of Jesus that's been preserved on a piece of linen. And that face tells a story, doesn't it? It's the face of a man who is beaten, potentially blind in his right eye, who had to wear a crown of thorns, right? Was beaten and mocked, crucified. But a God on a shroud because through a burst of divine power he is brought back to life. What does this picture tell us, if authentic? It tells us of a God who is cruciform, cross-like, who is willing to go to the furthest extent possible, out of love, to rescue us and save us from our own mess. That's what this face reveals. It's a face of a God who saw us in our worst moment and out of love said, I'm not giving up. In fact, I'm gonna take on all the consequences, all the brokenness. I'm gonna bear it in my body out of love. What's more is that this face tells us how we're supposed to live. Doesn't it? First John tells us this is how we know what love is. Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. This is how we know what love is. Look at his face. He laid down his life for us. And then it says, and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. In other words, when I look at this face, it's not just an artifact, it's a deep revelation of here's who God is: a God who loves us and bears our brokenness, and then invites us to follow in the same way, to pick up our cross and love one another with the same self-sacrificial love that Jesus loved us. Amen. If you're not convinced, that's okay. I still like you. Um we have our coffee hour. I like to call it donut day. Um when we were branding this thing, I called for donut day, and they shot me down and said, nope, it's coffee hour. Umut day is better, don't you think? Yeah. All right, so we have donut day. There are donuts out in the foyer with coffee, and you're not gonna stay for an hour. That's the other reason why it's like not, it doesn't work. It's not a coffee full hour, but I would encourage you, I would encourage you to stay for some time. You know what I mean? We want to be a connected community. This isn't just like come to church, watch uh watch people worship, take in a sermon and go. We want to be a community where we're actually connected, going deeper in relationships, supporting one another through the challenges of life, growing towards Christ-likeness. So hang out, get to know some new people, enjoy a donut, and grab some coffee. Let's stand and I'll pray for us. Father God, we thank you. We thank you that you took on flesh in Jesus on a rescue mission to save us and deliver us from the power of sin and to forgive us of our sin and to give us new life. Um, we look at these ancient artifacts, and it's complicated. Um, but at least for me, I see your face in this. And I pray that for every person here, they would at the very least consider um your love for them, and then respond by giving their life to you and to growing in their love for one another. For we ask this in Jesus' name, Amen. Go in peace.