Imagine with me what it was like early Sunday morning. As the most important event in history approached no one was there to see. But we are. As we get closer, we see the stone in front of the tomb entrance. Inside of the tomb it is pitch black but something unearthly is starting to happen. The body wrapped just a couple of days earlier is slowly starting to levitate off its resting place in the tomb. Initially horizontal it now slowly moves into a vertical position. You hold your breath at what you are seeing but now you witness the Shroud shining brighter than the sun. The ground shakes from a shallow earthquake due to the energy produced from the resurrection. It is felt in the surrounding area. Now you see the Shroud laying on the ground without the body and you turn to see the stone has been rolled away. He is risen!
The Shroud is the basis for our examination of the resurrection. I believe that when you are looking at the Shroud you are seeing Jesus at the very moment of His resurrection. For all the doubting Thomas’s of the world you can see and believe! The facts:
- The Gospel of Matthew 28:1-2 KJV “In the end of the sabbath as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre. And behold there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it.”
- The Shroud image shows the body was in a state of rigor mortis with no signs of decomposition. Therefore, we know the body left the Shroud within 2 or 3 day’s time. (A – P. 234)
- The body disappeared. We know this because of the state of the blood marks. They were not broken or smeared and if a human had tried to remove the body from the Shroud this would not be the case. (A – P. 234)
- Radiation is the only known source that “…can account for all the Shroud’s body image features, its off-image features and the still-red color of all its blood marks.” (A – P. 234) As the body disappeared it left “…behind a very small amount of some basic particles of matter…” (A – P.235) it is the protons that produced “…a uniform straw-yellow coloration, but only on the topmost two or three fibers.” (A – P. 236) As the cloth fell through the disappearing body the image of even areas of the body that had not been in contact with the cloth were preserved. (E – P. 75) Scientists have determined “…only the vertical, straight-line direction from the cloth to the underlying body would consistently correspond with the observable points on the Shroud.” (A – P. 237) The dorsal side of the cloth would have been drawn up by a vacuum encoding the image and the blood marks. Surface and skeletal features were captured in the image as the cloth fell through the body. The entire event occurred in a fraction of a second. (A – P. 238) Because of the vertical trajectory neither the sides of the body or crown were captured by the image. (A – P. 239)
- The neutrons released by the body could have produced enough energy to generate a small surface earthquake similar to that mentioned in Matt. 28:2. (A – P. 266)
- “…The falling hair and the anatomical form of the back of the man of the shroud is that of a man who is upright.” (B – P. 135) “…The man of the shroud is not lying down in burial but is upright as if suspended in midair…and whose feet do not touch the ground.” (B – P. 140) “…We can see for ourselves that the image of the lifted man of the shroud exactly fits that sign that Jesus predicted in the temple: ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up’ (John 2:19). It is the image that the beloved disciple saw in the tomb. It is one of God’s works. Indeed, the image of the lifted man is an event of creation, a sign, a work that we can all see today. It manifests the power and presence of God in the world.” (B – P. 168)
- “Research by scientists at the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy, and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA) suggests that the image was formed on the cloth by a burst of light that emanated from the body that it wrapped. These scientists have estimated that the formation of the image in this way would have required around thirty-four-thousand billion watts. This is the equivalent of a nuclear blast between two layers of the cloth.” (C – P. viii-ix) No laser of this size is in existence and peak power of most nuclear power stations is around 4 billion watts. The shroud image would require more than a thousand times more than this (C – P. 23) The “…dead body may well have shone momentarily brighter than the sun!” (C – P. 28) Still more, Dr. Paolo Di Lazzaro says: “The ultraviolet light necessary to create this image exceeds the maximum power released by all ultraviolet light sources available today. It would require a pulse having a duration shorter than forty-billionth of a second and an intensity of the order of several billion watts to discolour the cloth without penetrating and destroying it.” (D) So based upon the preceding comments I have also done by own calculation. According to the World Nuclear Association there are about 440 nuclear power reactors operating in 32 countries. According to energy.gov around 1 gigawatt of power per plant can be produced. So, let’s do the math. One gigawatt equals one billion watts. So, 440 reactors equal 440 billion watts of power. However, in order to reproduce the Shroud, the laser source would require 34 trillion watts for the smallest fraction of a second to produce the image without burning it up. Sounds like a miracle to me!
References:
A – Test the Shroud by Mark Antonacci where you will find a much more detailed discussion. There are other theories related to the resurrection but I favor Antonacci because as he explains “…only radiation can account for all the Shroud’s body image features…” (P. 234) this process released neutrons which would have increased the C-14 content of the Shroud thus explaining the erroneous medieval carbon date. (P. 248) Antonacci hypothesis on the resurrection was developed over two decades with the assistance of physicist Arthur Lind. (P. 233) Arthur Lind was a “…Fellow at McDonnell Douglas Aerospace and the Boeing Company, spent most of his career as an experimental scientist working on one top secret defense project after another.” (P. 257)
B – The Shroud of Jesus: And The Sign John Ingeniously Concealed by Dr. Gilbert Lavoie
C – A Burst Of Conscious Light by Dr. Andrew Silverman
D – A new documentary about the Shroud of Turin by David Rolfe (https://catholicismpure.wordpress.com/2022/11/07/who-can-he-be-shroud-of-turin-latest-evidence-for-its- authenticity/)
E – The Turin Shroud: Physical Evidence Of Life After Death? By Mark Niyr