Shroud of Turin Debate and Israel

You're listening to The Bible Guys, a podcast where a

couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun in

practical ways. Hey, everybody, welcome, Welcome, Welcome to the Bible guys. Man.

It's good to be back. It's another amazing week.

It is an amazing week. In fact, we are doing

something that we promised that we were going to do.

We're actually keeping our promises.

Jeff, Yes, which is I think an important thing for

us to start doing. We should start. We're starting now.

I'm gonna start right now because in the past not

so much.

But we're going to start keeping our promises. Yeah. But hey,

before that, you you had some fun with your with

your family this weekend.

I did. I did so, interestingly enough. I went down

to finally go to the Steve Martin Martin Short concert

in Clearwater, Florida, which is last.

Year you got canceled.

Yeah, literally in November. This was this was a year

in the making. You had said on the Bible You're like, oh,

I saw Steve Martin Martin Short, and I'm like, darn it,

I missed it, right, And then somebody had sent me

by way of instant messenger and they said, hey, they're

still playing in clear Water in January. It was the

only show left. So I bought it because my daughter

lives down there and it was her birthday. So I

spent a good amount of money. I bought two excellent seats,

and I thought, Okay, I'm gonna fly down there and

we're gonna do a daddy daughter date, which.

And you have a grown up daughter. She's married.

Yeah, she's thirty one.

So you you had a daddy daughter date with your

grown daughter. Yes, what a good idea, Yes.

A great idea. So so anyway, the day before the

La fires happens, happened, and Martin Short's house gets burned out,

so they cancel everything. They rescheduled from January all the

way to October.

October fifth, Well, I wish he'd planned that better, you

know what I mean, Come on, Martin, if you're gonna

burn your house down, wait until after christ It wasn't.

I'm pretty sure it wasn't, Martin Short. No, okay, but anyway,

so now it's a year in the making, and so

like almost a year later, I finally go down and

I said, you know what, this better be good.

And it was. It was really good.

It good Martin, Steve Martin, and Martin Short, but especially

Steve Martin is so sophisticated in a humor and I

think I think he is my favorite all time comedian.

I think he's substantially funnier today than he was when

he got famous in the seventies. Well, he's timing, it's

so much better than Yeah, it was more slapstick.

Yeah, and lot of that. But like, if you ever

watched even really really funny things sort of go out

of style, yeah, sure, right, even the Brian Reagan things

that we watched twenty years ago that were so funny,

you watch it now and you're like, oh, humor's changed.

Yeah, yeah right, So but his timing is perfect, his

dry wit is fabulous.

Yeah.

And then Martin Short does such a good job of

kind of being the goofball, yeah, you know, trying to

live up to Steve Martin's sophistication. Yes, so funny man, Yes,

it was.

It was super good, great And who would have thought.

I mean, you go there and you spend all that

money and Steve Martin's eighty and Martin Short's seventy five,

and you're like, this is gonna be a great night.

Yeah, And they're running around like a bunch of sixty

years Ye.

I'm telling you amazing. I'm so glad that you got

to do that. You so Hey, this week, we are

keeping a promise, Yes, and we are doing the entire

week with stumped the pastor questions. People send in questions.

We don't always get to all of them, but people

send them in. We had a bunch of really good

questions sent in this week. Yeah, and one of the

questions got sent in, and it's not on this list,

thank goodness, because I didn't want to talk about it.

But now I find myself bringing it up. One of

the questions we had. Somebody asked, so, how did it

turn out in the fantasy football between me and Desiree?

Oh yeah, And the answer is Desiree is dominant.

And she dislough delroyed my team.

Everybody.

She destroyed my team. It was so bad. So I'm

not able to talk directly to Desiree for all last week.

I would walk in and whoever else was in the office,

I would say, hey, could you tell Desiree I need

whatever writ in front of But now we're back to talking.

I talked to her this morning. Okay, we're fine, I

forgave her because it was a week later.

But that's really fun.

Yeah, so that was number one. So keeping our promises.

Stumped the pastor how did it go? Between Jeff and desire?

Fantasy Football has killed me?

So every day this week we are going to also

invite you, if you like this segment, especially to send

in a question that you don't have, so just email

us at info at the Bible guys dot com. Hopefully

we can put it right there on the screen if

you're watching info at the Bible Guys dot com. Or

you can just comment on a YouTube video or something

that you're watching if it allows comments, and we'll be

glad to read those and consider those for perhaps future episodes. Yeah.

Good. So this first question, Chris, I think, is it

really fun these kinds of things. I love these historical pieces.

So Bill F brings it up. So Hi, Bill, Hey, Bill,

Bill F, thank you for asking this first question on

the first inaugural episode of Stump the pastor with the

Bible Guys. And here's here's his question says, not necessarily

part of the Bible, but do you believe the shroud

of Turin is genuine? Or is it a hoax or

just art.

Here piece of artwork?

Sincere piece of artwork?

Yeah, well that's an interesting question. And by the way,

if I'm sure that there are readers that have absolutely

zero idea what the shroud of Turin is, right, So,

the shroud of Turin is a linen cloth approximately fourteen

feet long by three and a half feet wide, burying

the faint brownish image of a crucified man, believed by

some Catholics. Is how it reads here to be the

actual burial cloth of Jesus Christ. However, scientific scientific studies,

including nineteen eighty eight radiocarbon dating, place the shrouds origin

in the Middle Level period at twelve sixty it says

ce dating dating, and then it says the exact method

of image creation remains a scientific mystery, with various hypotheses

including radiation, artistic creation, or even a combination of methods.

But the process that created this unique photographic negative image

with no apparent pigments or dies is not fully understood.

So basically it is if you believe that it is

a genuine artifact of Jesus, then you believe that it

is the strips of linen that were wrapped around Jesus.

Yeah. In John chapter twenty, it mentions when Peter and

John run into the tomb, and it says, then Peter

arrived Simon Peter rabb and went inside the tomb, and

he also noticed the linen wrappings lying there, while the

cloth that had covered jesus head was folded up and

lying apart from the other wrappings. So the Bible acknowledges

that Jesus was wrapped up. Imagine kind of like a mummy, right,

kind of like that, but it was one big sheet

wrapped up, so they would have bundled his body up

under one big sheet, which was traditional. And then also

the Bible acknowledge.

Is that Luke chapter twenty four in the other Gospel,

first number twelve also says the same.

Thing, same thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so yeah, I like

this stuff. I like archaeology. I like all of these things. Historically,

I watch, you know, documentaries and things like that. I

bet you I've probably watched fifteen documentaries on this. I've

probably read that.

Is actually fifteen more than me.

Yeah, all I thinks, and it's always interesting.

To me, which, by the way, let me let me

squeeze this. In John chapter nineteen, verse forty actually talks

about them wrapping Jesus' body. It says, taking Jesus body,

the two of them wrapped it with spices and with

strips of linen. This was in accordance to Jewish burial customs.

So a few of the facts that they that everybody

agrees on. This is clearly the image is of a

crucified man whose body had been through tremendous stress. Right,

so almost everybody, yeah, trauma. Everybody acknowledges that part of it.

The other thing that everybody acknowledges, those for it and

those against it. Every scientist who goes it's fake, every

one of them admits nobody knows how to make it.

So as sophisticated as we are proving that it's fake,

we're not sophisticated enough to reproduce it. So I've always

thought that was interesting. It always feels to me as

I read the documents or watch the documentaries, it always

feels to me that if the speaker believes it, or

if the interviewer believes it, it's all skewed. This is true,

and if they don't, it's all strongly skewed. It's not true.

That seems to be how it does.

Before this podcast art, I looked it up and I

was trying to google it, and then, of course, you know, Wikipedia,

the most reliable thing on the.

Internet, absolutely reliable.

It came up and it was interesting because it listed

and again I mean, it's just edited by people, right,

but it was interesting because it listed that it was

the evidence stemmed all the way back to the twelve hundreds,

as was mentioned six yeah, and then somewhere around thirteen

forty eight or somewhere right around there, I think it was.

It was what I read said that it was then

proven to be a forgery and it was like painted.

But then somebody came along after that and couldn't, like

you said, couldn't identify how it could be, and they

did that through like masking tape and they took like

samples off of it, and it was just really interesting.

How you know, it's listing, you know, how people have

gone back and forth on this thing. But like you said, yeah, yeah.

People, so the Catholic Church protects this this thing now substantially.

There was a period of time where it was just

in a trunk in a cathedral, right and after the Crusades,

and then they pull it out and go, oh my gosh,

this is the shout of turn. So so the Catholic

Church protects it substantially. Now it's getting so old that

you know, they're afraid of it deteriorating. The carbon dating.

The main carbon dating was back in the eighties and

the Catholic Church one allowed them to take just a

couple of tiny samples, and the one that they used

for the dating, the Catholic Church claims that they used

a patch. It wasn't the actual main portion of the

of the thing. So they're frustrated with that. There's been others,

so there are some that are coming out and they're going,

absolutely it's a forgery. We just don't know how they

did it. There is no paint on it. It clearly

is a negative image of some sort. Maybe it was heat.

Some people think maybe it was it was created by

some of a heat on there. You know, could they

heat up a statue and then wrap it with this

fabric and then you know, get the same kind of

a thing. It's it's kind of it's interesting, but here.

Just recently in August of twenty twenty five, a group

of scientists came back and said that the coloring. There's

clotted blood on it, and it appears that the body

was ritually cleaned or cleansed, and the clotted blood would

be after death, right, not before. And so they're saying

this isn't a painting because you know, they found cloud

of blood or whatever, so they have that. Another one,

another scientist in October of twenty twenty five, came out

and said that there appears to be.

Twenty five like this.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that there appears to be negative evidence

of teeth, you know, in that like an X ray,

only it's a neg at a X ray, so it's

out instead of in. And he says he thinks that

that's evidence of the fact that this was energy and

light emitting from the body that was wrapped in it

rather than being imposed on the linen. It was shot

out at the linen, right.

So, which wouldn't make sense unless the body could glow.

Yeah, so you get you get both sides, both sides.

You get scientists going Nope, the fabric is too it

is wrong, it's too new or whatever, and others go, no,

you tested the wrong part of the fabric. So it

goes back and forth. But here's what I know Jesus

says this. You know, you and I We've been in

cathedrals all around the world. I've been in I was

just in another cathedral a couple of weeks ago. They

have all these relics, and people come up and they

touch the relics and they weep over the relics, and yeah,

they're hoping for good luck, right from these these relics

blessing or yeah. Yeah, And well, if you're touching a

thing and hoping for blessing, what you're hoping for is

good luck, right, that's what that's what that's what you're wanting.

It's the same thing as touching the best you're hoping

Buddha bless you. But really we both know it's just

asking for luck.

Well, by the way, that's a deeper conversation too, because

because people there's a lot of people that would have

anybody ever come up to you and said, here, bless

this object. Yeah right, and so that's a whole other conversation.

Right, right, So I was so maybe one of my favorite,

and this is crazy, the Coptic Church in Egypt. They

were founded by Mark the Apostle, or the writer of

the Book of Mark. Right, it's the oldest NonStop church

on the planet is the Coptic Church. And they have

the bones of Saint Mark. And they've had the bones

of Saint Mark since he died, he was martyred in Alexandria.

They've had him all this time.

Wasn't he dragged behind a horse, Yeah.

Something like that. So they had him. Well. Then when

Venice was getting rich back in the early medieval to

mid medieval times, they realize, man, what we need is

in order to build a big cathedral, we need like

a patron saint. We need a saint to take care

of us and to give a focus to our nation.

And so they sent some merchants down and some mercenaries,

and they stole half the body of Mark, right they

put they put the body in uh in these barrels

and snucking back, and now they have half the bones

in Venice. Right. So when you and so that's Saint

Mark's cathedral in Venice is because there's part of the

bones of Saint Mark in Venice. So there's this real

odd obsession throughout Christianity to get a hold of the relics.

I'm not going to be able to sleep knowing that

half of Mark bodies is gone.

Yeah, yeah, it's Egypt. Half of it's in Venice.

I would have preferred for somebody to steal all the bones.

And they have in the the murals up on the

walls in Saint Mark's Cathedral upon the exterior, it shows

the story of them bringing these things back to the

body back in barrels. Yeah. So anyways, that to be said,

there's been this odd obsession of Christianity that man, here's

a nail, here's a here's a splindor of the wood

from the cross, here's a cup that caught the blood

of Christ. Here's here's here's the bones of Saint Mark.

Somehow there's good luck on that found that one. Yeah, yeah,

he found that one. And and and there's nowhere in

the Bible that says to venerate these things. Right. As

matter of fact, God says everything on this earth is

going to pass away some day. It's all gonna be gone,

it's all gonna be obliterated, right right, And.

So Jesus says, except for ark of the Covenant, yeah.

Right, yeah, in heaven, in heaven.

Yeah.

So in John chapter twenty, Jesus says, you believe because

you've seen me blessed are those who believe without seeing me.

So whether the Shroud of Turn is true, whether it's

real or a hoax, we don't put our faith and

trust in a shroud or in we we put our

faith and trust in in the one we think was

in the trout, the stroud, the shroud, right, or if

that's what you believe. So, yeah, it's it's it's not

in a relic. It's on the resurrection. That's where we

have our faith.

So ultimately, I mean a lot of times stumps the

pastor question normally would end in I don't know, right, yeah,

but here's my opinion. Here all the facts. So it's

good conversation, and sometimes it is that we know right.

But but ultimately, what we're saying is we're saying, whether

it's real or not, it doesn't matter. That's what you're saying.

You're saying, you're saying it could be real because certainly, listen,

I have not watched any documentary on the Shroud of Turren,

not a single one. I've seen it referenced before. I've

not sat down and watched it. I'm probably seeing clips on.

It seen like so much as I think most most

people and I.

Would, and I would definitely say this. I have very

much a skeptic mind, right.

Yeah, me too, So I.

Would say, can God allow a piece of cloth to

exist for two thousand years after Jesus rose from the

grave just because he wants there to be evidence of

like you know, of course he can do that absolutely,

But it doesn't seem to go along with anything that

God lines up with faith? Right, So God doesn't. God

doesn't you know, He's not going to jump off a

building and called legion of angels to swoop and save him.

He's you know, he's he chooses to appear to Thomas,

he chooses to resurrect Lazarus and not other people. I mean,

God is very selective in what he does to make

people go, oh my goodness, that's the son of God.

There's the proof.

But for us modern you know, postmodern church people, you know,

he says, bless her you who do not see and

yet still believe, and he asks us to go on faith,

He asks us to trust his promises. Right, So, it

wouldn't seem to me that a shroud of turin or

anything like that would actually line up with anything that

has to do with faith.

It certainly isn't necessary. Right, So I think my response

to this question from Bill is maybe maybe it'd be neat.

It'd be neat if it's real, but it doesn't matter.

In my response to the question would be probably not.

Yeah. Well I think my response is probably probably not also,

but maybe yeah, it's kind of neat. It'd be cool

if it was. They'd be okay, if they ever find

the Noah's Ark, that'd be cool. There's a guy right

now who thinks he's found that Noah's Ark, right, So okay,

that'd be cool. I don't need it, but that's cool, right, right,

And so it's the same. So hey, if you're looking

for help along some of these lines of discerning what's

true and what's not and all those things, I would

say two things. Josh and Sean McDowell wrote the New

Evidence for the New Evidence that demands a verdict. I

love it. It kind of helps you dig through a

bunch of questions answers like that. And then I think

along those same lines as far as just critical thinking

and research and those things, especially, how do you embrace

faith without absolute proofs All the time, I still think

the case for Christ and that whole argument by least

robel is tremendous. So either one of those books or

both might be really really helpful to you. So that's one. Okay,

here's the second one. We just have six minutes and

I think we've got enough time for this one.

Really.

Yeah, as believers, how do we navigate our supportive Israel

the country versus Israel the people?

Yeah? Yeah, So Israel is, by the way, both a

state and it is a country.

Did you know that, Yes? And so Israel and biblically

it's a group of people.

Yes, And biblically is a group of people. So it

is referred to as the Jewish people, right.

The Hebrew people, the Hebrews people.

Yeah, And so how do we navigate the question exactly

is how do we navigate?

Yeah? Yeah, So how do we navigate our support of

the people versus is the country? Right as well? The

people versus Israel.

Well, it's a it's such a tangled tapestry, isn't it.

They seem they seem to sort of go together because

you know, the conflict in the Middle East is it's

one of the running jokes that all comedians use. They're like, so,

I don't know what to say. So what do you

think about the conflict in the Middle East?

Right, it's always happening, and.

It's always there, and it's and it's age old. So

when I was over in Israel in two thousand and nine,

I actually sat down at Bethlehem Bible College and they

brought in somebody from the Palestine position, and they actually

tried to build a case as to what the promises

were given by God to the people of Abraham and

the nation of Israel, and and they actually like used

all of it to support the fact that that the

land was for Palestine, like it's Palestine's land. And then

there were people that they brought in from you know,

that were Jewish, they were acidic Jews actually, and they

actually sat down and they actually went verse by verse

and presented and I'm talking like a sixty minute presentation

right as to as to you know, the land was

is clearly promised by God for the Jewish people, and

so therefore the Palestinians need to get out and how

it's unjust right? And so it's are we talking about that?

Is that?

How the question is? Yes? So so well let's let's

let's unpack it. Why so By the way, this question

was from Stacy. Oh hi, Stacy, Oh h Stacy. Oh

so glad that you asked this question. It's a good one.

So Stacy's asking, how do we navigate our supportive of

Israel the country versus's people. So she's assuming we support

Israel in some way, right, So America does. Right. So

the idea of supporting Israel comes from Genesis chapter twelve.

The Lord said, Abraham, leave your native country. I'll make

you into a great nation. I will bless those who

bless you, and curse those who treat you with contempt.

All the families on earth will be blessed through you.

And he's he's promising Jesus is the blessing to all

the nations of the earth and all the people of

the earth. But he does say, for the people who

bless your people, I will bless them. The people who

curse your people, I will curse them. And that keeps

going on over and over and over again. And so

the Bible tells us to pray for the peace of Jerusalem.

There's all these things. So for a Christian, we should

support the people of God, Israel, the Jews, Hebrews, right,

the people of Abraham. But it's possible for me to

support the people of Abraham without always being excited about

the behaviors of a legislature, right and so, And I'm

not passing judgment on the current situation. I think that

Israel finds himself in a very difficult situation. You know,

they were reformed as a nation in the nineteen forties.

In the sixties or in the sixties and the seventies,

they got invaded by all of their neighbors. And then

the terrorist groups that stand against Israel don't believe they

deserve to exist on the planet, right they and so

they live for the purpose of annihilating that entire nation

in the sovereignty of that nation. So, you know, it's

very difficult to live when you're completely surrounded by enemies

all the time, and then you tend to be heavy

handed and you make more enemies. And so the political

side of it is very confusing. But here's here's my

best explanation of this. Whether our listener is a Republican

or a Democrat or something in between, there have been

times when you didn't like your Congress or your president,

but you still loved your nation, Right, I mean, I'm

still proud to be an American, right right. Even whether

I like my president or I don't like my president, whether

I like the current laws or I don't like the

current laws, whether I like how we're behaving globally, or

whether I don't, I still support the American people. I

still think that families deserve to exist. I believe that

everybody deserves to live in peace. I believe everybody deserves

to live in freedom, you know that kind of thing,

And so I think it's along those lines. As a Christian,

we have to use biblical discernment understand that Israel finds

himself in a very difficult position where everybody around them

wants to wipe them out. God promises to bless every

person that blesses the people of Abraham and curses every

person who chooses to curse the people of Abraham. So

we have to be very careful about how we treat

the Hebrew people, the Jewish people. At the same time,

in the same way that I might, you know, criticize

my governor, I'm still proud of being from Michigan. I

may criticize my president. I'm still proud to be a

part of America. It's possible for me to disagree with

the legislature or the government and still love the people

and bless the people. And so it's very very difficult,

quite honestly, to come up with one solution. But if

you're going to make a mistake, make a mistake on

the side of blessing the people of Israel.

Yeah, and then also to recognize that those are God's

chosen people with blessing and they have been singled out

clearly in history, right and have been on the victimized

side of some of the most horrific stories and our

entire existence.

Yeah, you know, I remember Norm Geisler dealt with this issue.

Let me see if I can find it. I had

it written down for a minute.

Oh we're twenty five minutes.

Yeah. Norm Geisler wrote a book and Where is this Question?

A popular survey of the Old Testament, And he's dead now,

but he's one of my favorite theologians. And Norm Geisler

unpacks some of this issue of supporting the people and

then always challenging government, whether it's my government or somebody

else's government. So that's great.

Yeah, all right, Well that looks like our time for sure.

And we squeezed two INDs, so hey, wait yeah.

And and I gave a shout out to Dez that

she beat me in fantasy football.

Yeah, that's important to throw in there.

So we covered all three of those big questions today.

All right, hey, we'll see you hopefully tomorrow. And the

Bible guys, yeah h