Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of youf're the cure. Dr. Ben Edwards here. Man, am I excited about this one. I think I've shared this in the past.
You know, I was born and raised in a Baptist church and that's great. Learned a lot of good stuff.
And then I was also raised up in the church of Darwin in evolution, you know, public education and even private in my college years. But my freshman biology teacher told me, my professor told me and told the whole class, if you don't believe in evolution, you, you're not going to be able to be a scientist or a doctor. This is a pre med biology class. So I mean I was inundated with tons of secular thoughts in the science realm that contradicted the Bible, did not support the Bible, Genesis in particular.
So long story short, although going to church all my life and hearing, you know, part of the gospel, the gospel, salvation, not fully, I'd say the gospel of the kingdom, but anyways, that's another story.
So lo and behold, here we go.
We're a few years into our marriage. Jamie and I had our first baby, no problem, got off birth control, had got pregnant the first month, got back on birth control a couple years later. Our plan was to have four kids two years apart, blah blah blah on our calendar, our timeline, our me, me, me, I, I, I, self centered.
But anyway, second baby couldn't get pregnant that first month or second or third or fourth or fifth or sixth or 12th or 24th, 24 straight months.
And I read that verse in Matthew one day as we were on this roller coaster of emotion every month, crashing and burning when that negative pregnancy test came.
But I was reading Matthew 6:33, Seek you first the kingdom. And it hit me. Stop me in my tracks right there. And I grabbed Jamie, I said, look at that. We're seeking a baby and a big family and a lot of other things, but mainly this baby. It's totally our total focus and we're wrong, we're out of line, we need to seek the kingdom. We ask God for forgiveness. And then my very next confession was I don't know what the kingdom is, so you're gonna have to show me that. Been in church my whole life, but no one ever taught me kingdom. So what is that? My very next confession was I believe, but help me with my unbelief because I remembered a daddy in the Bible said that.
And so I said that because I knew although I was reading the Bible, praying to God, I also had a ton of unbelief, including God, I don't know if you're even real. If you are real. Why are you doing this to us? Why aren't you answering my prayers?
So much there.
But here's what happened right after that.
I was earnestly seeking. And it wasn't for the second half of that verse. It says, after you seek the kingdom first, then all these things will be given to you. Meaning get pregnant. I didn't even think that at all. I truly thought. One baby we have. Thank you. Just whatever we want. The kingdom. God knew. I'm so left brain intellectual. Prove, prove it, prove it, prove it. And raised up in that way. And I'm naturally bent that way. Here's what happened. The ensuing two to three years apologetics. And that's just factual, intellectual proofs. Look at this proof. This proof, this statistical analysis, this, you know the odds of these prophecies. It's 1 times 10 to the 157th power. Basically infinity. There's no way this book can't be true. All this scientific, from geological stuff to archaeological stuff to extra biblical stuff. But one of the most powerful things is what we're going to talk about today.
And Dr. Jeremiah Johnston is going to join us here to talk about. This is the burial cloth of a man that matches perfectly with the description in the Bible of this crucified man named Jesus. Now, why does that matter? Why does that have anything to do with your health?
[00:03:44] Speaker B: This program?
[00:03:45] Speaker A: You're the cure. I'm a doctor. Patients come see us, they're hurting, they're suffering, they have all these diseases. Well, as you know, you've been a listener. These diseases are rooted in inflammation. Inflammation is rooted in the mitochondria not working right. The mitochondria is not working right sometimes because of lack of physical nutrients, minerals, vitamins, probiotics, sunlight, exercise, oxygen, all the things, but ultimately fight or flight, chronic fight, orf, flight, stress. Stress, stress, cortisol, adrenaline. It shuts down your mitochondria. You can't eat, hydrate and exercise your way out of that. You've got to get to the truth that sets you free.
If there was a man that came along and spoke a message to this very thing, a truth that could set you free where you could have peace and joy attend you when you're rightly aligned.
The kingdom of God is not about food and drink, actually, and exercise profited a little bit, but it's about righteousness, peace and joy. A rightly aligned belief in your heart should produce some peace and joy and other fruits of the spirit. Naturally flows out of you. You don't have to make it. It naturally comes. Apple trees make apples. These fruits, including peace, should just flow. But it's a heart belief. But can I really believe this guy? Was this guy real?
Is what he said real? Is what they say about him real?
And if you have questions on that and doubts on that, get ready, buckle your seat belts. Hold on. I'm about to ask one question And I think Dr. Jeremiah Johnson's going to take that one question and get ready. It's going to be a fire hose. I think I just recently met Dr. Johnson. About five minutes ago, I saw him on an interview with Tucker Carlson that someone sent me a little bit ago. And that's when I first and I knew about the shrouded trend, the barrel cloth of Jesus. But the way Dr. Johnson has researched this lays it all out. Oh, I can't wait for y' all to hear. Dr. Jeremiah Johnston, welcome to the program. Thank you for joining us today.
[00:05:39] Speaker B: Dr. Edwards, I'm delighted to be with you. Thank you for your ministry. And I say that because the work that you do medically is a ministry to all of us. I've already learned just listening to, to you and I'm just benefiting being your friend and just really excited to jump into this conversation. There is breaking news on the physical bodily resurrection we need to talk about. I'm just delighted to be with you. I've been looking forward to this conversation.
[00:06:05] Speaker A: Well, me too. Because personally, I can tell you my life, the, the freedom that comes when you truly have a relationship, not just knowledge. Now we're going to talk about a lot of knowledge, lots of facts, lots of proofs, but ultimately to get you to a belief point where you can have a relationship with a person who did walk the earth and is still alive today in a spirit form. And actually that's what we are, spirit housed in the flesh. But when you can really, really get this, it's just to me it will further your, your faith, but further your ability to truly walk in peace and love loving your neighbor as much as you love yourself.
It's game changer, guys. So I'm so excited. So, Dr. Johnson, let's dig in. You know, I've had some apologetics on in the past Jay Warner Wallace case, excuse me, cold case Christianity.
We've had some other, you know, geologists, scientists on gene genetics. Guys.
But this particular artifact, a burial cloth of a man from around the time Jesus lived, that's what we want to get into. But really, I just want to first, kind of introduce a little bit of your background. How did you get into this topic?
Why are you so passionate about it? Also, do want to, you know, talk a little bit about extra biblical for people that are new or maybe not believers. There's other books that talk about this man named Jesus, but then obviously we'll get into the barrel cloth. But just kind of introduce yourself to the audience a little bit on where you came from, how you got here.
[00:07:38] Speaker B: Absolutely. I. My desire is to follow Jesus's greatest commandment, Dr. Edwards, which is to love God with our heart, soul and our mind. Jesus is only he could changes the Shema, which is love God with your heart, soul and strength. And he messianizes that passage and he says, love me with all your mind. And that is called the greatest commandment, the great commandment. And I wanted to love God with all my mind. I had questions, though, that I didn't know the answer to at the time.
And for myself, that ended up going to England, moving to Oxford, where I read for my PhD working on the physical bodily resurrection of Jesus. Three years later, I published and defended a Viva voce in Living Voice in The Latin, a 93,000 word Uber Lieferungsgeste in the German, a history of resurrection belief in the Judeo Christian motif. And since then, I have dedicated my life to defending the physical, bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. And I am a Christian because on April 5, AD 33. That's right, we know the exact Sunday morning Jesus physically walked out of that tomb alive after he had been crucified under a demonic way under the Roman jurisdiction, Pontius Pilate. He walked out of that grave alive, physically. The tomb was empty. The most ardent skeptics, his disciples, who didn't expect it, saw him alive with women. Evangelists, proclaimed the empty tomb. And the church, which had in all practical ways failed, actually began with that proclamation that Jesus is alive from the dead. And that became the X factor in the Roman world. It overtook the world by storm. Acts 17 says that these people have taken the world and turned it upside down with that message. And so I wanted to know, Dr. Edwards, are there good arguments for the physical, bodily resurrection of Jesus? What is the evidence? What has the most explanatory power to proclaim that Jesus is physically, bodily, alive? This was no phantom, this was no ghost. I'm saying his body came back to life, a body that had been dead in the tomb 39 hours, just before rigor mortis sets in. And so that became my expertise. And but doing that, I wanted to Replicate it. People ask me all the time, how did you get this brand, this cool brand, Christian thinkers? What consultant did you pay? None. I often tell people probably like you in your practice. I became my ministry before I ever realized I had a ministry. I wasn't a Christian thinker and I wanted to be. My wife and I became Christian thinkers. And now the Lord has allowed us to begin a global movement of other believers like yourself, intellectuals who love God with their heart, soul and mind, who want to have great conversations about why the Christian worldview makes the best sense of the world around us. And make no mistake, I want to say this with all due respect to your other guest, who I all love. I love all of them. The center point of a Christian worldview is the physical, bodily resurrection of Jesus. If that didn't happen, our worldview falls apart. And most Christians need to know more about that. That's why I'm excited about this conversation and the artifact we're going to discuss.
[00:11:00] Speaker A: Me too, and I don't want to spend a whole lot of time on this, but it was new to me when I first started looking and seeking. But other books, other documents that talk about this man, Jesus back in the day. Can you just touch on that briefly? And then we'll go into the burial cloth.
[00:11:15] Speaker B: Not only books. I was quoted in global headlines last week. We have a cup that's likely the earliest artifact that has the name of Jesus. It's dated to the 50s AD anti dates or predates the Gospels. It's called the Jesus cup. It says in Greek die crestu through Jesus the magician.
Jesus was known as a powerful exorcist and a healer even before his resurrection. Jesus fame as a physical healer was so powerful that even pagans who didn't believe or know the gospel knew that if you inserted this name Jesus, it had more power to it. And there is an artifact of that from A.D. 50, discovered by Frank Baggio, a colleague in Oxford in 2008. A marine. Marine biologist. And we actually have over 11 witnesses of Jesus. We can build 65 facts about the birth, the life, the death and the resurrection of Jesus before we ever open the historical library that is the New Testament Jesus. I often say. Well, I said this in my book Body of Proof. If we cannot believe that Jesus died by Roman crucifixion, we shouldn't believe in anything, including the emperors of the Roman Empire. The that's how solid the evidence is for Jesus of Nazareth.
[00:12:37] Speaker A: Amazing. Well, explain what will probably refer to what most people refer to this burial cloth. The Shroud. But for someone who's totally new to any of this, explain what a barrel cloth is or shroud is and the fact that there's lots of them, hundreds of them, I think you said on Tucker, but just kind of explain that and the uniqueness, obviously we'll just go through all the unique features of this particular cloth.
[00:13:00] Speaker B: And Dr. Edwards, if you don't mind, I'll say this. Three years ago I was a complete skeptic about the artifact that we're discussing. I thought it was a Catholic relic relegated to the status of the 20,000 other relics that the Catholic Church has that, you know, called a relic because you can't test it by the sciences. You know, is it really Thomas's pinky? Is it really the three wise men who are buried in Cologne, Germany in the cathedral? Well, we can't really test that against him. History. And so I dismissed the shroud unwittingly and I was in a dangerous place that a lot of your viewers are, that we know enough to be dangerous. We have the sound bites, but we've never actually looked into the substance. And I knew better than that. And I have to humble myself as a researcher and say I never actually read the peer reviewed journals. I had never read these scientists who had staked their academic reputation studying the shroud. And so the shroud, that word shroud is, is all it is, is the burial cloths, the burial clothes that Jesus body is wrapped in after he is brutally murdered on a Roman cross. If you and I have loved ones that we, we, they die, we put them in their Sunday best for a viewing or a funeral. I've given leadership to many funerals. Well, in the first century you didn't put them in a suit and tie. You wrapped them in a fine linen cloth.
We didn't Jews, I say we Jews did not practice embalming, they did not practice mummification. If your loved one died, you buried them that day. You would mourn the dead for seven days at the family tomb. Family tombs were generally rock hewn tombs. They were the shape of a palm. You would go inside the tomb, the entrance here, you would go inside, you would pray, you would worship. And then in the niches is where the bodies would be inserted, not naked, but with a burial shroud because the body was sacred and dignified even in burial. Everything that we see in the juridical procedure in the Jewish burial traditions that is recorded in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John is verified by archaeology. And what we know of Jewish burial traditions in the first century World. So, Nicodemus, those of you who read Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, you know that Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, two members of the Sanhedrin asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Why, according to the Mishnah, if the Sanhedrin condemned a criminal to death, it was the responsibility of the Sanhedrin to bury said criminal. Jesus body was properly buried. I have to correct some people. He was not buried in honor, but he was buried properly. So Jesus, his body is requested of Pilate. Pilate is shocked that he is dead so soon. This talks about the brutality. We can talk if you want, about the hematological reports of the shroud. His body's placed in a shroud. It's placed in a known tomb. The women return to continue spicing the body after Shabbat. That's their first opportunity, Sunday morning. To their absolute amazement, they are bewildered. There is a tomb. The stone is rolled away. There's the burial shroud, unmolested, untouched. And it's like the body has vanished from it. And the Bible says in John 28 that when John saw this, the linen cloth, the Athonia in Greek, then he believed. And so it is that burial cloth that we're being in, that we're discussing today. Because this burial cloth, unlike many of the other Jewish burial cloths, is unique in that there is an image in the cloth, the front and back bodily image of a tormented, crucified man that matches with a one to one correspondence, the description we have of how Jesus was crucified on a Roman cross. And I'm sure that probably sounds too good to be true to some of your audience, as it did with me. And then I realized that in the this artifact, we have the death, we have the burial, and we have the resurrection. And one artifact called now the Shroud, the burial cloth of Turin, it's in Turin, Italy. So that's why it's called the Shroud of Turin. And nothing does that outside the Bible, but the shroud. So it is a very unique artifact.
[00:17:27] Speaker A: This image. And we'll get into this detail in a minute. I'm sure nobody can explain it. There is a theory you, you talked about on Tucker that we'll get into, but it can be reproduced it that that image is, oh, the key to the whole deal. I mean, with all the science and technology we have now, nobody can explain that. Well, maybe we should just go there.
When did this image, who, who first saw it? How did they see it?
And I know there's been some more Modern people taking different images. The VA vpa, I think, or something. Let's just maybe talk about the image itself and then we'll get into all the markings, the blood, the water, the edema, all that.
[00:18:07] Speaker B: It's. It's so amazing, truly, because every shred of what we're talking about is evidence for your audience, our physical, bodily resurrection. So I hope everyone's taking notes, because every part of this is. This is not some kind of academic exercise that Dr. Edwards and I are doing. Every evidence for this is evidence of your future physical, bodily resurrection. If you make the same decision that Ben and I have made to follow Jesus as Our Savior. John 14:19 says, Because I live, you will live also. This is amazing. I was just on Piers Morgan debating two at once who denied the resurrection and denied the historicity of the clothes. And I said this to them because a nuclear physicist has helped me understand this. The shroud is not a death cloth. The blood was there. There was no image. Jesus's bloodied body is wrapped in a burial shroud. They have to hurry. He's dead at about 3pm Friday. Shabbat would begin at 6pm Friday night. They have to bury him in haste. They might have wiped the body down a little, but that's why there's blood all over the shroud. That's why the women are coming back Sunday morning to finish spicing the body. So the blood precedes the image. That's very important. There's blood and no image, because the image does not happen until Sunday morning when a radiation event occurs. This is what the nuclear physicist explained to me, where his body is physically resurrected, but his physical body has new characteristics and abilities, such as the fact that it could pass through physically, this shroud. The Gospels record interesting abilities of Jesus. He can appear in a room and disappear. He doesn't need to use the door. He can appear in Galilee. And you know, it's interesting when you Compare that with First Corinthians 15.
Paul takes 57 verses to describe this resurrection body. Yes, it is physical. Yes, it is real. You can touch it. It's no ghost, but it has different qualities. It has a deathlessness quality. There is no inflammation. It will not decay. It has no need of any kind of cosmetics, because the body never gets old, because there is no sin there. It is a redeemed body. And we see the signature of that on the physical shroud because the only way there could be an image. And this is what's interesting. And stay with me.
There is blood all over the Shroud. And that blood obviously absorbs the cloth. The blood goes all the way through the cloth as if this was the cloth. Okay, that doesn't surprise us. It seeps through like it would on a band aid. But the image. The image is 0.02 microns thin, meaning it's barely there. If you look at the Image Closer than 8ft, it vanishes. You actually have to stand by. I. I've been to turn. You have to stand away about 8ft to. To see it. Oh, I see it. Okay.
And then you notice there are characteristics within the negative image which is really the positive. Now we have to help our audience, Dr. Edwards, because there was a time when, you know, our phones did not take pictures. We actually had to have film developed. And in 1898, second de Pia takes a photograph. It's one of the first ever flash photos. He has to bring in generators. He's a lawyer, and he follows Jesus. And in his spare time, he's a photographer. I've seen the actual camera, if you could call it that. It looks like a refrigerator, glass plates. The exposures take 20 minutes and 14 minutes. He takes a picture of this shroud, which. This is 1898 for two. For 1898 years. It's kind of looked like a man. You could see. See it? Yeah, I see the image. If you look at it long enough. He goes in the dark room, he pulls out those glass plates, and he sees the photo. Positive, truly, and never more accurately says, oh, my God. That is an exact quote, because he believed he was looking at the face of Jesus. All of the pathology, as you would call it, matches what Jesus went through. And you begin to see that the. There are holes in the wrists. The Greek word is the same for wrist, hand, forearm.
In fact, the calcaneus where the nail went through is consistent with what we know of Roman crucifixion. There is actually a wound in the side penetrating through rip 5 and 6, where blood and water come out. That blood tested by Adler and Heller, post mortem blood in the side wound. And so if we were investigating this, Dr. Edwards, you begin to see very quickly there's no way this could be replicated. There's no way this could be a hoax. And so that photograph sets off the scientific fury about the shroud that culminates in 1976, when two weapons specialists, as you said, have an. Have a. The best technology at the time was called a VP8 image analyzer. These are people that work in Sandia Labs, Los Alamos Laboratories. These are men and Women who work on nuclear bombs, they're not theologians, they're not pastors. They have no theological axe to grind.
In 1976, Eric Jumper and John Jackson. I was just with Dr. Jackson, the physicist. They put a picture of the Shroud. They don't have a Shroud. Okay, they're in America. The Shroud's over in Italy. They put a picture of the shroud through the VP8 image analyzer.
This is shocking.
This seems like science fiction.
The Shroud has a holographic quality to it. Words fail. There is 3D information encoded in the Shroud that doesn't have correlation. There's image even where there is no contact between the Shroud and the body.
So this best physicist of the day cannot explain this. And it results in two years later, 1978, if people are taking notes. Where 33 scientists called the Stirp team Shroud of Turin research team go to Italy. They place bets over drinks in the hotel lobby of how many days it would take to prove the Shroud is a hoax. Robert Rucker famously says, I might have the name wrong. One of the Stirp team members, I think I have the name wrong. Says, give me 15 minutes in the scientific method and I will prove it's a hoax. He wasn't saying that. He later died defending the authenticity of the Shroud. And so the shroud team, in 1978, after all of their testing, they took years to publish. It showed that there is no pigment, there is no paint, there is no dye. We as scientists have failed to explain how the mechanism is. There is an image in this cloth. A chemical change took place to the Shroud at the moment of resurrection and a radiation event that left this image. I'm sorry for the long answer, but I get excited about this.
[00:25:16] Speaker A: No, that's. That's amazing. I mean, the top scientists can't explain this image to this day. And I think I heard you talk about on another show, there's like a million pounds or dollar reward if anybody could reproduce an image similar to this.
[00:25:33] Speaker B: There's a million dollar reward still. If you can replicate all of the qualities and no one can, you would have to kill someone to have separate the blood into postmortem blood. I mean, there's. So it gets beyond the pale. There's 58 pollen spores. Max Fry, who participated in the Nuremberg trial, spent five years of his life as a criminologist studying all the pollen signatures, all the flowers, all the allergy on the shroud. And 38 of the 58 spores come from Jerusalem. And they only bloom at the time of crucifixion, Passover, springtime. Again, you would have to know 30 different things, including the blood type, type AB blood, which you could regale us on. If there was ever a priestly kind of blood type, it would be type AB blood. Fewer than 6% of the world's population has type AB blood, and that is a Semitic blood in origin. And that's the kind of blood sample that comes on the shroud. It's human blood and it's male blood, and it's Semitic type AB blood that.
[00:26:38] Speaker A: Also, correct me if I'm wrong, also matches the blood on a second cloth we can touch on the face cloth, which is totally separate cloth. Exact same blood, correct?
[00:26:48] Speaker B: Correct. You're talking about the sudarium. That's another Greek term. The face cloth, the sweat cloth of Oviedo, Spain, where it's been since the 7th century. Also type AB blood. Now, there's no image on that. Okay. When Jesus dies, I mentioned at 3pm Friday, he. He's bleeding everywhere. Jewish sensitivities. Even though this is a crucified criminal in the eyes of Rome, he was still a Jewish brother and his blood was still sacred. The life of the body is in the blood, Leviticus says. And so they quickly wrap the face with this face cloth called a sweatband. Dr. Edwards, there's even evidence that they pinch the nose.
[00:27:28] Speaker A: Why?
[00:27:28] Speaker B: He had a separated septum. He was bleeding so profusely out of the nose. So they want to wrap the face until they can get his body situated in the tomb, at which time they take off the face cloth, they put it in the corner of the tomb so it matches the blood type, but there's no image because it wasn't wrapping the face at the time of the resurrection. That took me six months to learn, by the way.
[00:27:52] Speaker A: Wow.
And correct me again if I'm wrong, but multiple hundreds and hundreds of other burial cloths from that same time. No image on any of those.
[00:28:03] Speaker B: A pathology on some. Of course, the biblical Christ Denier said that leprosy was invented by the biblical writers, that there was no evidence of Hansen's disease in the first century. Fascinatingly enough, the Shroud, the tomb of the shroud was discovered in Jerusalem. It was so airtight that there is flesh, decaying flesh, 2000 years old on a shroud. A friend of mine, like a actually crawled in there and put his head there. I mean, who knows, There could be pathology there that's 2,000 years old. I didn't touch him. The rest of the trip, I can assure you. But there was actual. There was a shroud there that gave evidence, the first century shroud, that the man who was buried there had died of leprosy, Hansen's disease. So we do have shrouds with pathology, with DNA, but we have no other shroud with an image on it like we have of the Shroud of Turin.
[00:29:01] Speaker A: Yeah. Can you talk about some of the other wounds you mentioned in the ribs, the stab wounds, as consistent with scripture, but I'm thinking about the beating with the whip and the cord, three stranded cord. Can you talk about some of those wounds?
[00:29:16] Speaker B: I'd be delighted to. That is my area of expertise. And so if it's not a. If it's not a forgery, what is it? Well, I happen to know that my area of specialty is Roman execution of the first century, specifically the Syrian province. There were 30 provinces in Rome at the time of Jesus. And there wasn't like a manual that the Romans handed out to each of the. Like, here's how you kill a guy. No, they all kind of practice it in different ways. According to the archeology evidence, we have 21 different areas of evidence of criminals being nailed to crosses in the Syrian province of Rome. And what do we see in the Gospels? Jesus is nailed to the cross.
These, these nails are interesting. I have replicas of them at our Shroud of Turin tour, which is crossing America right now. And these nails are very interesting. They're iron spikes, they're 6 inches long. They were more valuable than the people that were killed, the bodies. The Romans would often reuse the nails. If you could. Can imagine, think if you could reuse bullets that were used to kill people. The Romans did that. And so I actually have recently come into possession of an artifact from the Roman period, a crucifixion nail. It's rusted and Dr. Edwards, it's even bent. Because we have evidence that when criminals were killed by Rome, they wanted to minimize torment but maximize pain. So if you can imagine this, they would actually adjust. The nails live on the body while the person was expiring on the cross. And over time, that would create curvature, it would flex the nails, and then they would reuse them. And we see that consistently in the shroud. There are no hands in the palm, there are no holes in the palm that would not have held the 180 pound body of Jesus up. It would have torn right through the flesh. But they know how to do it just right through the wrists. And that's exactly where you see the bodily the hemorrhaging, that's where you see the holes.
There are. And this is really interesting, 372 scourge marks on the body of Jesus. 200 on the back, 172 on the front. This is a medical show. I want to speak medically. There is not a region, there is not a part of the body where there is not scourging, including the pelvic region of the crucified man of the Shroud. This was, there was a demonic, intimate brutality to what this man experienced. We have evidence that he was being tortured and scourged by two executioners. Well, one was cocking back the Roman flagrum, the flag room to be flogged. Another was hitting him. The flagrams had three chords and then they had two barbell shaped ends, bits on the end. They look like dumbbells on the end. And so with every lash it would incur six puncture marks. If you count up those two barbells on three of the cords each. And we have, we can estimate, we can estimate because we don't have the lateral sides of the image, we only have the front and the back.
Jesus body literally resurrects up.
There's likely 700 scourge marks on the man of the Shroud. Think about that. 700.
The hematological reports are the most interesting that I've been reading.
And there's evidence and I've actually updated my research. I've often heard that Jesus would have died from asphyxiation. He just simply suffocated. But there's actually evidence that he died of a massive heart failure, that his heart literally gave out. And just think about all the theological implications of that. One expert from the hematological reports hypothesized that he loses one third of his blood volume and the scourging. And then after he scourged, the Romans place a helmet of thorns around his head. I have a replica. These are three inch Bethlehem thorns. When they dry, they're as sharp as nails. And we have 30 to 50 depending on how you count the back of the head. Puncture wounds in the head of the crucified man. This puts it beyond all doubt. We have one, we have evidence of one criminal who was mocked to such an extent that the Titulus in three languages says this is the king of the Jews. And they mocked him to a point of putting a crown of thorns on his head. Jesus is standing there, he's been brutalized. 700 wounds, crown of thorns. And this is when Pilate brings Him before the people. And in Latin echo homo. Behold the man. And that's when they say, crucify him. No wonder Jesus couldn't make it to the cross with £125 patibulum. He falls. And when he falls, he falls face first, likely when he separates his septum. And we have a travertine soil signature in three parts of the shroud image. Tip of the nose, the knees and of course the feet. So when Jesus collapses, we actually can postulate he not only falls face first, but it's probably at this point that his shoulders are separated. And if you've read any parts of the Messianic psalms, the messianic prophecies that you mentioned in your opening monologue, these truths begin to wash over you. My. They separated my joints.
Psalm 22, 15 and 16. They nailed my hands and my feet a thousand years before crucifixion was perfected by the Romans. David, he sees this prophetically and all of that is on the shroud. So you literally can read the Bible and then look up at the Shroud and see the one to one correspondence of these evidential details.
[00:35:01] Speaker A: Guys, I just, we need to pause right here. I mean, if you just heard what Dr. Johnson just said. The travertine, dirt, sand, what soil?
I mean, Jesus bound up with the crossbar on his shoulders, already bound up onto that, trying to walk to his final place of torture and death after being beaten by those Roman executioners. 700 scourge marks, losing a third of his blood.
Weak as can be, falls face forward, knees, nose and chin. Is that what you said?
[00:35:45] Speaker B: Feet? But we have, it's on the knees, nose and in the, in the tip of those. And then the feet where he was.
[00:35:50] Speaker A: Walking, tip of the nose, the knees and the feet have this particular type of dirt that was found, is found in Jerusalem.
[00:35:57] Speaker B: Grottoes of Jerusalem. Only.
[00:36:00] Speaker A: Only found there to go along with the pollen he mentioned earlier.
Only in that particular season even. I mean, just unbelievable.
[00:36:12] Speaker B: It hits hard, doesn't it? And you know, you realize when he says I thirst, he was dehydrated, literally. He had lost that much blood. The hematological report said that he would. That the blood on the shroud, there's high levels of ferritin, you know, that means he was. I only know this, I'm not a medical doctor. My dad was dying right in of front in front of me. And when his Ferritin was 19,000, he was having organ failure. The end of the shroud has high levels of creatinine, high levels of ferritin. He's experiencing kidney failure, renal failure, liver failure. His body is shutting down and he still went to the cross. That's the powerful thing to me is the Bible says he set his face like flint to go to the cross and that Jesus, his love held him there. There's so many principles here that, you know, I, I can so often forget how much God loves me. And then Romans 5:8 comes along and says, but God demonstrated his love for me and that while I was yet a sinner, he sent his best to die for me when I was at my worst. That's the beauty of grace. That's the beauty of the gospel. That's the beauty of this artifact called the Shroud.
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[00:39:00] Speaker A: Yeah, powerful, powerful, powerful.
In Takon you touched on it but the water in the blood when that spear went and because the gospels talk about, I think John said water came out and blood came out. But can you speak to that a little bit? And how can you tell that on.
[00:39:17] Speaker B: The Shroud I was just the. This is brand new information actually since I was on Tucker, I was one of the keynote speakers at the international Shroud of Turin conference which was held at the Augustine Institute in St. Louis, Missouri, Rome of the west, as they call it. And Kelly Curse a male, not a female, was Produced. He's an immunologist and he was giving some fascinating information about the translucent serum oval that is around all of the blood. And he was verifying that, yes, this blood was not placed on there. This blood is consistent, these blood, the blood all over the shroud of what you would have with a corpse that was quickly wrapped and buried.
And he was talking specifically about the, the serum halo like effect. Effect that is almost see through, it's translucent on the shroud. Listen to an entire presentation on it that was phenomenal. And we see that this was real blood, it was male blood, it was human blood. This, this blood that was shed for us. There's blood all over the shroud. And yet the blood is the science. The hematology, hematological reports say the blood on the side came later. It's truly postmortem blood. It has a different pathology to it than the rest of the blood. And you know, you're looking at it because there's this middle section of these, these triangular patches, and just above the triangular patches, there's like this peanut looking, peanut shell looking, or figure 8 looking pool of blood that fluoresces. The image doesn't fluoresce, but the blood does. And that is the concentration of that blood and it has that halo serum around it. And that is when the blood would have come out. Literally there would have been a pool of blood from when he was stabbed through rib five and six. And it's just remarkable to think that they didn't break his bones and normally Romans did. There's no broken bones on the man of the Shroud. In fact, another thing we should point out, there's no decay. Remember the messianic prophecies, his body will not see decay. Rigamortis would begin starting in. You can educate us. Maybe beginning at four hours, lasting up until hour 40. And then the body would start to break down. There is no decay on the shroud. There's no bodily decomposition. In our Shroud of Turin tour, which I would encourage people to check out, you can find it's all free everywhere we go, no tickets, no cost. We actually, I'm a visual learner, Dr. Edwards, and we commissioned a bronze statue that matched what Jesus body would have looked like on Rigamortis, how it looks on the shroud. And people can look at the shroud and then they look at this bronze image of the moment before resurrection. His body is forward, his body's flexed. Why he's in Rigamortis. And other skeptics have said, oh, why are his arms so long. That seems wrong anatomically. Well, no, you, obviously you betray yourself when you say that Jesus's shoulders were out of joint. When you think about Psalm 22, my bones are out of joint. His shoulders didn't stay together when he was on the cross. His shoulders were separated. They were dislocated because of the brutality of it. I'm sorry, I could talk about this for hours. And all of it is consistent of the. Of the. Not only the Jewish burial traditions, but we see that the Gospels are authentic. They present sober, real narrative of exactly what happened to Jesus, how he paid for our sins and the glorious truth that his payment was accepted. He did rise from the grave. And you know what that means that we can't do anything to add to our salvation. The only thing we can bring is our sin. Jesus paid for it in full. And this is a new way. I've been describing the Shroud.
The Shroud is like an itemized receipt of how much God loves us. When you read the transactional terms in the New Testament, it says, we've been bought, we've been paid for, we've been ransomed, we've been redeemed. These are financial terms.
No wonder Jesus at the end in Aramaic, tetelestai paid in full. I've paid for your love. I'm here. Follow me. I mean, that is the message that calls to us.
The Shroud is truly love in its most radical form. I'm so thankful that God didn't send me a text with Chat gtp. He literally wrote in blood how much he loved me, that if I was the only one who ever believed, he still would have allowed his son to come. And as a father of four sons, one daughter, I don't understand that level of love. It doesn't make sense to me. And that's why it's called grace.
[00:43:56] Speaker A: Amen. Couldn't said it better myself.
Well, I hate to even bring this part up, but we need to. It's fine. And I know it's totally. But for those who have doubts, which how could you after this?
But I know in the past, you know that's a fake or it's a. More of a seventh century, not a first century or whatever.
There was carbon dating at one point, just kind of some of the top skeptical things that used to be. I think those have been all answered. So I don't know if it's still considered a skeptical thing.
[00:44:33] Speaker B: It is. We need to be very clear on that because even our opposition, we want to explain why they're Opposing, opposed to it in the most generous terms possible.
In 1988, CR14 samplings were done by three labs and those lab results were published famously. And the carbon 14 data pointed to a date of 1260 to 1390 or 1380. So they said the shroud is not more than 700 years old, based on the CR14 dating. And we could do an entire podcast on this, but it's. People need to know that a 2019 Oxford University Archaeometry journal article. So I'm not quoting a newspaper article, I'm not quoting something that is just trending on social media. Archaeometry, October 2019 Authors point out, because the data of the CR14 was suppressed for 29 years, we finally got access to it and we learned, oh, they actually took the one part of the shroud that they were asked not to. That is the top left quadrant, the far left, the fringe. They didn't date the middle of the shroud. They dated the one part that the scientists said, whatever you do, don't date that part. It's been handled so much. Get in the middle of it. Get in the middle of that carbon dating. And of course, the shroud has survived five or three fires. There's carbon all over it.
And they dated that. And then we realized that the shroud sample they dated is not homogeneous with the shroud itself. This is not me saying this on a YouTube. This is the 2019 archaeometry journal that anyone can go read for themselves. And so that shroud dating is no longer untenable or, excuse me, tenable. It's untenable. There is, there is, there is no reason that anyone should not believe on the shroud. Based on the carbon 14 dating, it gets very strange because every inch the shroud grows 91 to 97 years earlier.
So that means if you go to the middle of the cloth, the carbon dates to a time that has not even occurred yet.
So again, the carbon dating is very specious. And there are there, I've summarized it as quickly as I can, but it is a rally. And the shroud has been dated by four other mechanisms to the first century. Wide angle X ray scattering being the most recent by the Institute of Crystallography that compared it with the shroud from Masada from 8070. Turns out the shroud has been decaying for 2000 years. There's no vanillin in the shroud itself. There's a lack of vanilla. And that takes thousands of years for there to be no vanillin traces in the shroud. There's other fascinatingly thing, fascinating stuff, studies that people can study for their own. But again, the CR14 dating is certainly not a reason to doubt the Shroud.
[00:47:32] Speaker A: And part of it was patched after the fire. Correct.
[00:47:37] Speaker B: There's cotton in it in these samples which that shows that it was a patch sample from the 16th century. The Shroud does not have cotton in it. And the other parts of it, the non patched areas. So again, this is where we have to be careful Christian thinkers, we can't just read the headlines, we can't be inflicted by, oh, these sound bites. I actually need to read it for myself and study it and see that there are men and women scientists like yourself, Dr. Edwards. They've staked their academic reputations on the fact that this is authentic. 102 academic disciplines have spent 600,000 academic research hours on the Shroud to prove it's not man made, it's not a hoax. And guess what? We can't explain how it's there and it's left to theologians to tell us why it's there.
[00:48:27] Speaker A: Wow.
Do we know how it got handed down over the ages or is that kind of splotchy?
[00:48:37] Speaker B: We do we know Again, how can we know anything from history? How do we even have the New Testament? I mean historiography is an area of specialty of mine. Do you know that the four documents that tell us more about Roman execution called crucifixion, the four most prominent documents, they're not Josephus, they're not Philo, they're not Tacitus, they're not Suetonius, they're not Lucius, they're not the Roman laws of the 12 tables, the most detailed accounts that we have historically of how Rome crucified people. You may have heard of these for four books. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. So again, how we do history is just an interesting topic to begin with. And we do see the Shroud popping up throughout history, beginning with Eusebius. That's a great place to start in the 4th century. The Mandelion, the face cloth of Agbar, Eastern Turkey. You know, the Catholics take a lot of credit for the Shroud, but the Eastern Church, the, the Orthodox Church protected the Shroud for the first thousand years.
People often and conveniently forget that. And the Shroud then has a signature, a pollen signature on it. And I have great images about the pollen is not just from Jerusalem. The remaining 20 pollen signatures seem to trace the provenance of the Shroud from obviously Jerusalem through Eusebius, up to eastern Turkey eventually. Then Constantinople, Then Athens and then finally to France, Italy and Europe where it has remained the last 500 or so years.
[00:50:14] Speaker A: Wow, that's a lot.
Where can people go to learn more? Your book you mentioned. But so books website.
The tour is going on right now. We're recording this mid September of 2025. But talk a little bit.
[00:50:33] Speaker B: Two more event. We have two events a month. I have a 32 page booklet I've put together called who is the man of the shroud? It's like ChristianThinkers.com can't hardly keep them in stock and it's simply all of the latest science. I put this together in partnership with several other scientists related with our partner organization called Athonia, which is again that Greek term for fine linen burial cloth. And so that's probably honestly the best resource I've seen. It's certainly the most current. It's full of pictures because I'm a visual learner. So it's, it's 32 pages of the best science on the Shroud and Scripture. I have a book called Body of Proof and then there's so many great YouTube resources that are free. But I do want to encourage people, get beyond YouTube, build your library. Read this stuff for yourself.
Study the gospels, study the resurrection accounts in scripture first and then compare it for yourself. The Holy Spirit's really good at his job. I've spent 30 years now studying the resurrection. I believe the Shroud is authentic, Dr. Edwards, because I'm not irrational. How much evidence do I need before I actually am convinced? There's an overwhelming amount. It goes beyond what's accepted in the modern court of law for the authenticity of the Shroud. So I want to make sure I don't apply a hyper skepticism to the Shroud that I wouldn't apply to anything else I believe in in life.
[00:51:56] Speaker A: Yep, that's A good point. Christianthinkers.com yes sir. Website and lots of good information there you can follow. Is that the best place to get to your social media and follow you and everything you put out?
Okay, awesome. Well guys, I just want to say as we got to wrap this up, I mean it's so clear this is obviously a tortured man in the image of that on this cloth totally inexplicable. Modern science cannot replicate, cannot explain. The million dollar reward will never be claimed.
I hope that encourages you. Not only as Dr. Jeremiah Johnson pointed out, the love that God, your creator God has for you individually and all of us, but you unique and individual, but that there was a purpose in this.
Why Did God, the Creator of all have to do it this way? Why did he have to send his son as a man, laying down his divinity and walk around and come into the womb of a human woman and grow in this womb and come out the birth canal and pee and poop and breastfeed and all the things babies do and grow up and grow up and grow up and do all that. He did amazing things. Never once was he accused of. Of, you know, you know, hurting somebody, murdering somebody, you know, some kind of fraud and bad things, illegal things.
It was nothing but pure and innocent and sinless. Tempted in every way just like me and you, but yet never ever gave into that thought that lied and that fruit comes from these lies that we believe. I mean, the perfect man. But there is a purpose in it. That's what I want to really drive home because there's so much chaos in the world right now and we're looking for answers and so much corruption is being exposed. And I know a lot of. Because I see a lot of patients every day and there's a lot of people down and out and kind of given up in some ways and just desperate and kind of just trying to hang on for heaven, which I get that in our hope is that there is more beyond this corrupt world.
But put. Trying to put our hope in any. This political party, that political solution, this solution, that solution. Now Jesus came and said there is the way, the way. He came with answers, he came with solutions. It came to. It was just. If you study what Jesus was really teaching and really saying, you know, my great, great, great, great, great, great. Think it's times 11 grandpa came. He was a separatist separated from the Church of England and had to move, I think to Amsterdam. And then him and a bunch of the congregation on a boat called the Mayflower to come over here. And they voted him to be the governor 30 years in a row. They voted every year. And they kept re electing him for. For 30 years. And he said, there's only one government that could work in this country. And that's when God's law is written on a man's heart.
And God even told David that you can go ahead and build that temple if you want to, but one of your descendants is going to build a spiritual house made of living stones. And I'm going to write my truth or my law on their heart.
There's a heart restoration that comes as you get to know this man named Jesus of Nazareth.
And it's just. I can't put it into Words. And this will turn into a whole nother podcast. But I just want to encourage you that there's a reason, amazing, amazing reason for this and that reasons alive today wants to speak to you. And scriptures say, actually if you believe in this way, you're seated in him in heavenly places and he's in you.
And we can hear and see and communicate and, and we can be not. We're not fully Jesus, we're not fully God, but this little piece that he put into you, you can be the light, you can be love.
You can actually love God, meaning trust God and love your neighbor as much as you love yourself. You don't have to walk in fear and be self preserving, self protection, self provision, self, self, self.
No. Jesus came to set you free.
We are bound up in so many ways with this heavy burden because we're trying to do all this in our own strength, our own ways, our own plans, our own control to try to protect and provide for ourself and get our identity and what we do. All this garbage that he came to set you free from so you can walk in true peace.
So just want to encourage you to keep pursuing the kingdom first, because there's peace and joy that we're that just like Dr. Jeremiah Johnson said, this is an itemized receipt. If you go down through the scriptures of what all Jesus bought and paid for, it's way more, way more than your ticket to heaven when you die.
It's something for the here and now that you can walk in. So I just encourage you to explore that. Seek the kingdom first. Talk to him, talk to God, talk to Jesus, Holy Spirit, and just let the Holy Spirit lead you into all truth, because he will. Dr. Jeremiah Johnson, I'll give you the last word. Thank you so much for being with us today. It's been awesome.
[00:57:13] Speaker B: Dr. Edwards, my word is he is risen. The promise we're given with more frequency than any other promise in the New Testament is what I said in John 14:19, that because Jesus lives, we will live also. Isn't it a blessing to know that that kind of hope can reassure our soul? It comforts us, it makes us healthy, it heals us. And that's why I'm so thankful for you and your science. I'm thankful for your faith. I'm thankful for all the ways you help us at our greatest point in need. It's been a delight to be on with you.
[00:57:38] Speaker A: Well, thank you. It's been my honor and I know this will be so impactful for the audience. So thank you for all you do. And y' all, check it out. Christianthinkers.com get all the resources there, the books, everything. Follow Dr. Johnson on social media and spread this far and wide, because the way is what will set us free from all the chaos and fear and pain. So we'll be back next week with another great show. Thank you all for tuning in. Bye. Bye.
