By Dr. Don Bierle, FaithSearch President

I did a brief article on the Shroud of Turin about a year ago (Happ-O-getics, May 2022, Vol. 2, Issue 5). The Shroud is thought by many to be the burial cloth of Jesus (Matthew 27:59). What was already known at that time?

• Jesus was crucified at Passover in March-April.
• The extant burial cloth size (about 14’ x 4’) is typical of first century Jewish burials.
• The image on the cloth is of a scourged, crucified, and bearded Semitic male approximately 5’ 11” tall, whose blood serum shows evidence of great trauma.
• The blood stains correlate with the wounds in the biblical description of the crucifixion of Jesus.
• The image, a photographic negative, defies all known explanations of its formation.
• The Shroud is infused with Middle East pollen.

Additional evidence has now advanced the authenticity to make it nearly certain to be the burial cloth of Jesus. The Shroud is the most studied artifact in human history.

The Date

The radioactive measurement of the cloth in 1988 that indicated a thirteenth century origin, has now been conclusively shown to be based on a fiber of a reconstructed part of the Shroud (repaired after a fire). New evidence is two-fold. The flax fibers in the Shroud contain a compound called vanillin which decays at a fixed rate. If the Shroud was medieval in origin there should be at least a third of the vanillin left. There was none left, meaning the fiber is much older. Second, a new X-ray method of dating was used to make many measurements of the cloth. A first century date has been established. The cloth is from the time of Jesus.

I will identify these briefly as a series in each of the remaining issues of the Happ-O-getics in 2023. The first is the central truth.

1. A global flood is taught in the inspired Word of God 

• What did God say He would do? “And behold, I, even I am bringing the flood of water upon the earth, to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life, from under heaven; everything that is on the earth shall perish” (Genesis 6:17). The literal reading here is clearly global. 
• What did God say He did? “Thus, He blotted out every living thing that was upon the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky, and they were blotted out from the earth; and only Noah was left, together with those that were with him in the ark” (Genesis 7:23). Again, clearly global.

By Dr. Don Bierle, FaithSearch President

Beginning with Abraham, God chose the Jewish people to be a separated and divinely prepared people – His witnesses and blessing to the nations (see Genesis 12ff.). Furthermore, God gave Old Testament Scripture which prophesied the coming of a Messiah who would atone for the sins of all people. Rather than extend the hope they had received to the whole world, the Jews viewed God’s offer of salvation in a nationalistic sense. Nonetheless, God was directing history, and whether they intended it or not, He used the Jewish synagogue both as a means to prepare them to anticipate their coming Messiah and as a place for Jesus to proclaim the Gospel of the Kingdom quickly and widely.