Shroud of Turin

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The Lord has put it on my heart to address from his Holy Word the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin. I suppose I will even lose friends over it, since that is what happened when I addressed the idea of Niburu – the newest fad among my brothers and sisters in Christ. Have I become your enemy because I tell you the truth? I guess so.

Before I start there is some truth from God’s Word that we must be in absolute agreement on.

First – That you, as a reader of this blog, are interested in what IS the TRUTH, and are willing to put away any false doctrines that you may hold in order to have the truth. If you just want to keep your pet doctrines, than nothing I am going to say here will change your mind. Have a good life.

Second – That the Word of God is true and has been supernaturally protected by God to come to us in order that we may know the mind of Christ, and may be able to use the Word to determine what is God’s Truth, and to discern truth from error.

Now I know that the word can be twisted to mean just about anything. So there isn’t going to be any fishy twisting of God’s Word here today, just presenting His Word the way it is written and let it speak for itself.

Third – That God is sovereign and CHANGES NOT. The sins of the past are the sins of today unless otherwise specified. (For example – God made all animals now clean to be eaten and confirmed with His vision to Peter.) Many sins from the law are established as still sins in the New Testament – specifically IDOLATRY, or MAKING IMAGES AND IDOLS, is still forbidden in the New Testament.

So here is what God said specifically about the making of images in the Old Testament:

Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves; for ye saw no manner of similitude on the day that the LORD spake unto you in Horeb out of the midst of the fire:

Lest ye corrupt yourselves, and make you a graven image, the similitude of any figure, the likeness of male or female,

The likeness of any beast that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged fowl that flieth in the air,

The likeness of any thing that creepeth on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the waters beneath the earth:

And lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, shouldest be driven to worship them, and serve them, which the LORD thy God hath divided unto all nations under the whole heaven. Deut 4:15-19

Take heed unto yourselves, lest ye forget the covenant of the LORD your God, which he made with you, and make you a graven image, or the likeness of any thing, which the LORD thy God hath forbidden thee. Deut 4:23

The New Testament has this to say:

Wherefore, my dearly beloved, flee from idolatry. I Cor 10:14

You are welcome to look up idols and idolatry for yourself at www.blueletterbible.org.

The bible never has had a description of what Jesus Christ looked like. The only thing it says about Jesus, is that he was not beautiful, that someone should desire him (based on his beauty.) It doesn’t say he had a beard, it doesn’t say he had long hair, it doesn’t say he had a flaming heart with thorns around it. It does, however, say that he was beat up so bad that “his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men” Isa 52:14. Other than that Jesus’ looks are never mentioned.

So I would like to posit right now that based on the fact that the Lord was adamantly opposed to the making of images and/or idols of ANY kind, that He would not break His own Word to supernaturally superimpose His own image onto a piece of linen. I can tell you absolutely He would not. But maybe that in and of itself is not proof enough for you.

So here is a picture of the whole shroud. It appears that the bottom of the shroud would have been placed on his feet and then the shroud would have been laid flat over the rest of his body to his head and then would go over the top of the head of the man in order to get the whole backside onto the shroud. Never mind that even artistically it is bad perspective, but the Word says this:

Then cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the sepulchre, and seeth the linen clothes lie,

And the napkin, that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself. John 20:6-7

It was the custom to wrap the head of the deceased with a separate napkin and God’s Word clearly states that the napkin that wrapped Christ’s head was SEPARATE from the rest of the linen clothes that he was buried in. It says the same about Lazurus: “And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go.” John 11:43-44.

See. No funny business, no twisting of God’s Word. Just the simplicity of the fact that the napkin that was wrapped around the head of Jesus was separate from the rest of the grave clothes proves that the Shroud of Turin is a fake.

Blessings in Christ
Linda