Why Does The Shroud of Turin Still Exist?

In an imaginary “ranking” of Christian topics that elicit the most fervent discussions, Jesus Christ is No. 1. But near the top is the Shroud of Turin — believed by millions of Christians to be the authentic burial cloth of Jesus. This “ranking” was inspired by you — Townhall readers who wrote over 500 impassioned comments in response to my July 21 piece, “Shroud of Turin: New Test Concludes 1988 ‘Medieval Hoax’ Dating Was a Fraud.”

I purposely read all your comments to gain insight into my role as an adviser and fundraiser for a groundbreaking exhibition about the Shroud of Turin at the Museum of the Bible in Washington D.C. This spectacular museum, among the largest and highest rated in the city, is located only three blocks from the Capitol. And just prior to the January 20, 2021, presidential inauguration is when this high-tech Shroud exhibit is scheduled to open.

Threaded throughout hundreds of your responses about all aspects of the Shroud was one overarching theme summarized by these three comments:

“Anyone who requires physical evidence to underpin their faith doesn’t understand the concept of faith.”

“JESUS CHRIST died for all. HE is what is important. Making such a fuss about this piece of cloth is a distraction from HIS work of SALVATION.”

“I respectfully submit that the only ‘relic’ which really matters is the one which was left us on that first Easter morning: The tomb is empty! He is Risen! He is Risen indeed! Alleluia!”

Of course, “He is Risen” is also the foundation of my Christian faith, (made slightly more complicated by having been born Jewish). But I feel compelled to discuss and explore the comment that reads in part, “…such a fuss about this piece of cloth...”

And my response is simple: The Shroud of Turin exists because HE exists. An answer that echoes what God said to Moses, “I Am Who I Am. Say this to the people of Israel: I Am has sent me to you” (Exodus 3:14).

Thus, the existence of the Shroud of Turin raises two questions that I will attempt to address: First, what exactly is the Shroud? And second, a deeper dive into “Why does the cloth exist?”

The Shroud of Turin is a 14.5-by-3.5-foot linen cloth with a linear front to back mirror image of a crucified man. The Shroud has the distinction of being the most studied artifact in the world, yet the cloth’s numerous mysteries remained unexplained by modern science.

At this moment the Shroud lies in a fireproof box in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Turin, Italy, as it has continuously since 1578. (But secretly relocated between 1939 and 1946 when Italian authorities feared Hitler was seeking possession.)

Among Shroud historians, there is no dispute that in 1352, over 200 years before the Shroud was housed in Turin, Geoffrey DeCharney displayed the cloth in Lirey, France marking the beginning of the Shroud’s documented "modern" dating.

There is also much circumstantial Shroud evidence through art, artifacts, and coins that pre-dates 1352. Moreover, scientifically verified botanical evidence found on the cloth in the form of pollen, dust, flowers, and even the weave and type of linen traces the Shroud back to first-century Jerusalem.

The cloth with its mysterious properties has survived wars, invasions and the ravages of time including numerous fires — most recently in 1997 at its home cathedral in Turin.

Most harrowing was the 1532 fire in Chambéry, France. Miraculously the entire cloth was not destroyed but left those distinctive linear markings along both sides of the Shroud that we see today. Hard to imagine, but the linen cloth was stored in a silver box, folded in 48 layers, when drops of molten silver burned through the cloth’s outer folded edges.

The point is, against all the odds, the Shroud exists. And, as stated earlier, because He exists. There is also a significant Bible-based reason found in the Gospel of John known as “Doubting Thomas” (John 20:24-31).

But first, a “guest” who will explain this passage needs a proper introduction:

It turns out that the many Townhall readers who commented about not needing the Shroud’s “physical evidence to underpin their faith,” represent a large swath of Christian believers. I learned this when asking Russ Breault— my fellow Shroud exhibit team colleague, and a world-renowned Shroud expert and speaker — if he had experienced similar attitudes after over 30 years of hosting his popular “Shroud Encounters” to sell-out crowds.

“I get that statement all the time! When someone says, ‘I don't need the Shroud for my faith,’ I usually say, ‘That is fantastic! But that doesn't mean the Shroud was not meant for someone else.’ ”

Breault continued: “In the Doubting Thomas story, Jesus pronounced a blessing on those who ‘believe yet have not seen,’ but Jesus did not condemn Thomas for his unbelief. In fact, a week after the Resurrection, Jesus appeared a second time, and the first person he spoke to was Thomas, who was not there to witness Jesus’ first appearance. Jesus then quotes Thomas' words back to him, ‘Thomas, thrust your hand into my side and place your fingers into my nail wounds and be not faithless but believe.’

At this point, Thomas — forever known as "Doubting Thomas" — makes the strongest profession of faith in the New Testament saying, "My Lord and my God." Then Jesus pronounced a blessing on those who can believe without seeing. So we are blessed if we can believe without seeing, but we are not cursed if we can't get there without some additional evidence.

Therefore, perhaps the Shroud is a silent witness to the world offering all of humanity the same opportunity Jesus gave to Thomas. In some proverbial sense by looking at the Shroud, we too can thrust our hand into His side and place our fingers into His nail wound and find our faith in the process.”

If blessed with great faith, you are free to ignore or downplay the image on the Shroud showing Christ’s great suffering and victory over death. Yet, take comfort in knowing that the Shroud is there to supplement or reinforce the faith of others while potentially witnessing to the ever-increasing number of Doubting Thomases found throughout the world.

In the end, I believe that the Shroud exists as proof of God’s greatest gift to mankind —the Lord Jesus Christ — who lives and reigns forever and ever. Alleluia!

imardmd1: they slaughtered their opposition, and only the survivors get to write the history.

infool7: Really?

Yeah, really. I already told you that this could be proved, and here is a book that shows when and how this Trail of Blood began.

From "Origin of the Baptists," Chap. 12 by Samuel H. Ford (1818-1905), an excerpt. Please review this study, with my emphases on boldface added, to see the history where in time the Catholic form of religion was adopted as the State Religion of the Roman Empire, and began the long history of persecuting the Christians holding to the New Testament form of gathering into independent autonomous assemblies of local Christian believers to live in holiness and proclaim the true Gospel according to Christ's commands.

================A minority of the church at Carthage, on the shores of the Mediterranean, called a council to investigate the validity of the election and ordination of its newly-made pastor or bishop. He had by management secured the majority vote, and hurried on his ordination by the hands of a self-excluded pastor of a neighboring church, who was not recognized by the surrounding churches or their pastors. (I have condensed these facts, which will be found with a unanimity of detail in Hawei’s Mosheim and Neander). These associate pastors (of Numisia) were not invited, nor their counsel or approbation sought. The council decided that the minority was the true church. It then proceeded to ordain Majorius, elected by it as pastor or bishop. The neighboring Churches of Africa, in sustaining this church and its pastor against the dominant party and its bishop Celilanus, gave voice to a great principle, which involved the Christian world in discussion and interminable contest. The principle was this: "That every church which tolerated unworthy members in its bosom was itself polluted by the communion with them. It thus ceased to deserve the predicated of purity and holiness, and consequently ceased to be a true Christian Church, since a church could not subsist without these predicates." (Neander, p. 203).

This principle was a protest against hereditary church membership. It proclaimed that none but those who were born from above, had any right to the ordinances or admission into the church. Neander, an apologist for infant baptism, says:

"It was still very far from being the case, especially in the Greek Church, that infant baptism was generally introduced into practice. Among the Christians of the East, infant baptism, though in theory acknowledged to be necessary, yet entered so rarely and with so much difficulty into the existence of the church during the first half of this period." (History, vol. ii, p. 319). [That is, the first half of the fifth century.]

It is thus most evident from the investigations of the great pedobaptist historian, whose researches took a wider and more thorough range than those of any other man, living or dead, that infant baptism was not as yet introduced when the division took place in the churches in Carthage and Numidia, and when the majorities expressed and battled for theories which were in direct antagonism even to their own practice. Even Augustine, who rose to eminence during the conflicts in Africa, though a child of pious parents, was not baptized in infancy. The question of infant baptism soon necessarily rose into prominence. The principles of the Numidian pastors and churches, that none but regenerate believers could be received into a true Christian Church, and that those who received any others were not true churches, utterly condemned the theory of infant membership, and condemned the practice which the majority soon after introduced.

MAJORIUS, the first pastor of the Carthage Church, died soon after is ordination, and Donatus was elected to fill his place. Schisms occurred in almost every church in Africa, and extended into Asia and Europe.

Henceforth, those who declared for the Numidian pastors, and indorsed the principles they expressed, were denominated Donatists. Their ground was that Cecilanus had acted the traitor during the persecution of Diocletian, as had many members of the Carthage Church: that these traitors were nevertheless sustained by, and continued in the church, and had by management elected Cecilanus pastor: that Felix, a notorious traitor, was selected to ordain the new pastor, against the protest of the minority and without the council of neighboring pastors: that the majority, in thus countenancing unworthy and unregenerate members, and declaring that spirituality was not essential to church-membership: in fact lost the predicates of a true church. They had remained in the dominant church until they had seen in it the signs of apostasy. Braving and enduring confiscation, imprisonment, banishment, and death; refusing position, power, the smiles of great Constantine, and the terrors of imperial indignation, they stood steadfast to those principles which were cherished by thousands who ad long before broken all connection and communion with dominant party.

A council of foreign interested bishops was appointed by Constantine, the emperor, to settle the dispute; but compromise was a word unknown to these Donatists. A spiritual church was with them everything, nothing else was a church. But these principles would have unchurched those very bishops who were appointed to adjudicate. Of course the decision was against the Donatists. Accordingly they were denounced as heretics, and persecuted by the Emperor, now at the head of the so-called Catholic Church. As a consequence, all who held these principles, now so manfully sustained by the Donatist, united with them, and were known by their name; and thus were found in various countries separate and independent churches, which baptized into their communion none gut those who gave evidence of a change of heart and life, refused all union and communion with the religious organizations around them, and rebaptized all who had been immersed in any other society.

Such were their principles, that Osiander, a historian of great note, and an apologist for infant baptism and a worldly church, said: "Our modern Anabaptists were the same as the Donatist of old." And according to Long, an Episcopalian, who wrote a history of the Donatists, " they did not only rebaptize children, contrary to the Catholic Church." (History of the Donatists, Orchard, p. 60).

Then, the Donatists of Africa were Baptists. Did the denomination originate with them?

================ I want you to note that there is none of the bigotry shown here that you've claimed, no the religious hypocrisy that you've engaged in while criticizing my previous remarks. The only thing involved here is indisputable fact that this chapter describes the point at which the Roman-influenced mafia of religious powerbrokers initiated the formal embedment of their supra-church network to grab off the plums of seats in the state religion, and in which they began their centuries-long grasp of the sovereign's authority to squash and extinguish the lives and religious freedom of the true New Testament church assenblies by using the power of the secular state to do it.

And that is what I was talking about when I used the word slaughter," which was in no way hyporbole.

Now, stop pestering me, please.

I don't have time for a heavy discussion.But this ties in to within the last 24 hours or so, when I posted I was reluctant to accept LaTourette automatically; because i didn't have the background to know whether or not he was cherry picking, or (so to speak) putting his thumb on the scales, or what not ? (You know, like you said "the victors write the history" and all.)

I Wiki'ed Donatism and the article there says (far from the Catholic Church being the State Religion of the Roman Empire being the "cause" of the attacks on Donatism)...it was when Catholicism was outlawed; some of the Church leaders turned over relics/artifacts to avoid execution; and a LOT of people got pissed at them and didn't want them allowed to, hmm, vernacular, "administer" the Eucharist since they'd been cowards. Out of that came the idea that "only the sinless could officiate the Mass" which was the Donatist heresy.

That article, in other words, didn't even touch on Infant Baptism as the main point.

Therefore, I conclude, there's more than one narrative floating about.

Remember, this was Wikipedia, which is mostly SJW-converged, not an arm of Rome or anything.

Incidentally...your quote from Neander:

"That every church which tolerated unworthy members in its bosom was itself polluted by the communion with them. It thus ceased to deserve the predicated of purity and holiness, and consequently ceased to be a true Christian Church, since a church could not subsist without these predicates."

sounds *very* much like the Chapter Protestant from Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon Days: (*)

"Unfortunately, once free of the worldly Anglicans, these firebrands were not content to worship in peace but turned their guns on each other. Scholarly to the core and perfect literalists every one, they set to arguing over points that, to any outsider, would have seemed very minor indeed but which to them were crucial to the Faith, including the question: if believer A associated with Believer B who has somehow associated himself with C who holds a False Doctrine, must D break off association with A, even though A does not hold the doctrine, to avoid the taint.

The correct answer is: Yes. Some Bretheren, however, felt that D should only speak with A and urge him to break off with B. The Bretheren who felt otherwise promptly broke off with them. This was the Bedford Question, one of several controversies that, inside of two years, split the Bretheren into three branches.

Once having tasted the pleasure of being Correct and defending True Doctrine, they kept right on and broke up at every opportunity, until, by the time I came along, there were dozens of tiny Bretheren groups, none of whom were speaking to any of the others."

(Yeah, it's satire. And yeah, there are dangers of allowing heresy to flourish unchecked.

But it does make it hard for newcomers to keep a scorecard with any confidence...)

(*) Keillor is a flaming lib who in addition to being the author of this book, and impetus behind National Public Radio's A Prairie Home Companion, also was an early casualty of #MeToo.

From what I read; if a person loses the FAITH that Jesus can and will save them, then they've lost it.

Please tell me what you read that gave you that overall impression.

Exodus 32:32-33
But now, if you will forgive their sin—but if not, please blot me out of your book that you have written.” But the Lord said to Moses, “Whoever has sinned against me, I will blot out of my book.

Ecclesiastes 9:11
The race is not given to the swift nor the strong but he who endures until the end.

Matthew 24:8-13

⁸All these are the beginning of sorrows.

⁹Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name's sake.

¹⁰And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another.

¹¹And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many.

¹²And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.

¹³But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.

1 Timothy 1:18-20
This command I entrust to you, Timothy, my son, in accordance with the prophecies previously made concerning you, that by them you fight the good fight, keeping faith and a good conscience, which some have rejected and suffered shipwreck in regard to their faith.

Hebrews 6:4–6
4 For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, 5 and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, 6 and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt.

Revelation 3:5
He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels.

Revelation 20:11-15
"Then I saw a great White Throne and him who was seated on it. Earth and sky fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and THE BOOKS WERE OPENED. Another book was opened WHICH IS THE BOOK OF LIFE. The dead were judged according to their works as recorded in the books. The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to their works. Then death and Hades were thrown into the Lake of Fire. The Lake of Fire is the second death. If anyone's name was not found written IN THE BOOK OF LIFE, he was thrown into the lake of fire."

Revelation 21:27

Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

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