Well, it's great to be here tonight, and I'm going to be speaking on Oops, I got to learn to turn the thing on. Oh, I need the mic. Yeah, this is it. Well, it's great to be here tonight. And let me see if I got the pointer working. Yep, the pointer is working. I'm going to be speaking on, did Jesus really exist? Refuting the Jesus myth hypothesis. For those who don't know who I am, and I head the Institute of Biblical Defense, I asked Pat Fisk, who's kind of promoting the whole thing, doing a great job working on the sound and all. But I asked him to get me a couple, just randomly choose a couple of emails. from supporters of the Institute just to show what kind of an impact that we're having so that you know that you're not listening to some loser up here. And so these have been randomly selected. Here's Ethel from New Jersey. And it says, I have suffered from insomnia for decades. When Dr. Fernandez came to town and began to speak, I was healed. So that's a I'm happy for her there, but here's Lenny from Texas. This one should be a good one, I'm sure. He says, I have listened to your online lectures for years and I have learned so much. Finally, I got to meet you when you spoke in Dallas. You're much shorter than I expected. So whatever the case, we do have people all over the country that listen to our stuff. But what I want to talk about tonight Is did Jesus really exist? Refuting the Jesus myth hypothesis. Let's go to Lord in prayer one more time Father in Jesus precious name. I just thank you for these people that came here tonight And they love you lord, and they love your word And they not only want to share their faith, Lord, with others, but they want to defend the faith and disciple others as well. And so I just pray, Lord, you would anoint me and the other speakers to just proclaim your truth, that you just cancel the man, and that you'd open hearts and minds to receive truth from your word. We just love you, Lord, but we pray that you help us to love you more. In Jesus' precious name we pray, amen. Okay, so the Jesus myth hypothesis. There's a lot of really good information from evangelical Christians, Bible-believing Christians, people like J.P. Moreland, Ronald Nash, Michael Lacona. Edwin Yamauchi, Paul Eddy, Gregory Boyd, Jay Warner, Wallace, Mary Jo Sharp, Mark Foreman. There's a lot of good information. You can search their names online if you want to get more into this. We also have booklets out there on the Jesus Smith hypothesis, a paper that I presented at the national meeting of the International Society of Christian Apologetics a few years back. So we've got some booklets for free that you could take. and just a 20 page article and then some of my notes. I did get to dialogue with Robert Price, probably the leading proponent of the Jesus Smith hypothesis. Unfortunately, the atheist moderator kept interrupting and asking kind of non-scholarly questions. And so you could listen to it online, but it wasn't really an equal time debate. So I'd like to debate Robert Price going with equal time. But basically what I'm saying is that what I'm telling you tonight, there's a lot of resources that are out there. Before we get to Bart Ehrman, the Jesus myth hypothesis says is that either Jesus of Nazareth never existed, it's just the early church borrowed from pagan myths, okay, Greek and Roman, Egyptian pagan myths, and they borrowed this and they created this Jesus character, but this Jesus never really existed, or Maybe he existed, but he lived a normal life, didn't perform miracles. And so, but again, they borrowed from the pagan myths to come up with all this stuff on Jesus. Well, to get started, I'm going to be quoting from Bart Ehrman. Bart Ehrman is like public enemy number one for Christianity. He's a New Testament scholar. He teaches at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill campus. But he's an agnostic. He's not sure that God exists. And he doesn't believe the Bible is God's word. But he makes his living studying the New Testament. And so he attacks the New Testament and tries to go out of his way to destroy the faith of Christians. However, he's written and authored books like Misquoting Jesus. But he also wrote a book, Did Jesus Exist?, and it got a lot of the Jesus mythicists very upset because he made a really strong case that Jesus of Nazareth did exist. and was crucified by Pontius Pilate approximately 30 AD. And so we're going to look at a quote from this leading anti-Christian New Testament scholar. Even though he argues against inerrancy, against the reliability of the New Testament text, he still acknowledges that no serious historian or New Testament scholars should deny that Jesus of Nazareth existed in the first century AD and died by crucifixion. So here's a little excerpt from his book, Did Jesus Exist? He states this. At a reputable university, of course, professors cannot teach simply anything. Members of the academy, that's from page 220, did Jesus say this. And so he's basically saying, look, If if you want any credibility and scholarship, you're going to have to acknowledge that Jesus of Nazareth existed. He spoke on YouTube. You could see Bart Ehrman speaking to an atheist conference. And one atheist raised his hand and Bart Ehrman called on him. And he said, what do you say to all those stupid people who think that Jesus actually existed? And Bart Ehrman looked at this crowd of young atheists and he said, well, he did. And then everything got quiet. And Bart Ehrman, you could tell he was losing his patience with these younger atheists. He said, look, guys, if you want to play this game and spout these weird ideas on the internet, go ahead. But if you want any credibility and scholarship, I recommend you just drop the issue. Just drop it. Get over it. Jesus of Nazareth existed in the first century A.D. and he was executed by crucifixion. And and so he also did that on the Reggie Finley show. I've been on the Reggie Finley's The Internet. infidel, with the Internet infidel guy or something like that is the name of his program. And he told Reggie, you know, Reggie said, well, nobody wrote about him while he was still alive. And Bart Ehrman said, yeah, nobody wrote about anybody while they were still alive in the first century A.D. Paper and writing utensils were expensive. You wait till after a guy dies to decide, hey, did this guy have a big enough impact? And so, but basically what's going on is, so you might be thinking, well, if this is not a position that historians, that credible historians or religious experts embrace, why are we even talking about it? Well, we're talking about it because we love people. We're talking about it because we care about people. We're talking about it because on the internet, this is becoming more and more popular. And a lot of, I really think we've got to, each generation, we've been more dumbed down than our parents and our grandparents. And so you could spout off this kind of crazy stuff on the internet and you can actually get away with it. And so I think that's what we're seeing. And so if people are going to argue, that Jesus didn't exist, we're going to have to address it, even if it's not a position that is respected in academia today. So Bart Ehrman argues there's no unambiguous evidence for pagan dying and rising gods before Christianity and no evidence that such gods were worshipped in rural Palestine or in the land of Israel. He's basically saying, look, if there were stories of pagan dying and rising gods before Jesus, It never got to the land of Israel. Nobody heard of that stuff. But then he's saying, to be honest with you, there's no evidence that there were any stories of a pagan dying and rising gods. Now, by the way, you can come up with dozens. of pain. Now, I'm going to not hurt Christianity, but at this particular point, we have no evidence for it. In fact, C.S. Lewis didn't have access to the amount of historical information that we have today. So he entertained the possibility of stories of dying and rising gods that predate Christianity. And his response was that that was God just through nature, showing us vegetation dying in the fall and the winter and then coming back to life in the spring. and this cycle going over and over again of death and rebirth, that God was just giving mankind, ancient man, a hint that someday Messiah will come, he will die for us, and he will rise from the dead. But whatever the case, at this particular point, we have absolutely no evidence that these pagan dying and rising gods actually were reported to have done that in the past. By the way, the ancient mythology The guys who wrote this stuff didn't believe that these guys actually existed. They didn't believe Osiris actually existed. Adonis. They didn't believe that any of these mythical God-like entities actually existed. With Jesus of Nazareth, we're going to show that there's so much historical evidence, and it was sincere eyewitness testimony, and so we can be very confident that Jesus of Nazareth actually did exist. In fact, I would go a step further. We can be confident that not only did he that he exists, he also performed miracles and claimed to be God and Messiah and Savior, and bodily rose from the dead to prove that to be true. So Barton Ammon argues that even the enemies of Christianity admitted that Jesus was a real historical person. Like 150 AD, Justin Martyr, in his dialogue with Trifo, he's arguing with a Jewish lawyer about Jesus, and Trifo never once in 150 AD suggested that Jesus never existed. In fact, most of the enemies of Christianity, like the early Jewish rabbis that rejected Jesus in the Talmud, they even acknowledged that Jesus not only existed, not only was crucified under Pontius Pilate, but they called him a sorcerer. So they acknowledged that there were supernatural aspects to his life. And of course they were arguing he was coming from the other side. They were rejecting that Jesus had come from the Father and that he was God incarnate and the Jewish Messiah. But they acknowledged he existed and that he performed miracles. And then we have Bart Ehrman acknowledges early oral traditions about Jesus that date back to the early 30s AD, the earliest times of Christianity, the earliest days of Christianity, within just a few years, if even that. of Jesus's death and resurrection. And these are, how do we know they exist? They're actually quoted in the New Testament. And scholars have identified dozens of these ancient creeds and hymns that were recited or sung in the early church. So Bart Ehrman argues that there are too many early sources written immediately after Jesus' life to deny his existence. He even acknowledges that the sermons in Acts chapters 1 through 12 are very early, the early 30s AD. That's the earliest preaching of the church. The theology there is very primitive and undeveloped. And so scholars, even like Bart Ehrman, anti-Christian scholars like him say, yeah, that's the earliest preaching of the church. Just a side note, you got a problem, Bart, because they're not only teaching, those sermons not only teach that Jesus lived and died, but those sermons also teach that he rose from the dead, and like Peter would say in Acts chapter 2, he rose, God raised him from the dead, and we are witnesses of this. So, you know, Bart Ehrman would say, yeah, there's lots of evidence for Jesus' death. by crucifixion under Pontius Pilate. Yeah, well, there's just as much evidence that he rose from the dead. It's just Bart Ehrman's worldview doesn't allow for that. And so he just tosses out the historical evidence there. He argues that Paul, Paul the apostle, knew about the historical Jesus and that he met Peter, the lead apostle, and James, Jesus' half-brother. So he acknowledges all this as being historical. This is in Galatians chapters 1 and 2 right down the block from here or the very next building on Sunday mornings I'm preaching on the book of Galatians and we're going over this stuff and he's saying yeah Galatians is one of those books accepted even by radical far-left New Testament scholars. They're not even Christians, acknowledge. Paul wrote Galatians. He personally knew Peter, and he personally knew Jesus' half-brother, James. Then Bart Ehrman argues on page 173 that no one would have invented the idea of a crucified Messiah, that these were Orthodox Jews. They were very patriotic. The Messiah is going to be our ultimate king, and he's going to conquer our pagan enemies. Why in the world would they invent a story of their messiah dying in the most shameful way possible, naked and nailed to a cross by the pagan Romans in public so that he could be a spectacle for others, that's not something you make up. That's what New Testament scholars call the principle of embarrassment. You're not going to make up embarrassing details that would work against your case. So if you tell these embarrassing details, you're probably telling the truth. So Bart Ehrman concludes there is far too much early evidence for Jesus' life and his death by crucifixion. But keep in mind, Bart Ehrman is the leading anti-Christian scholar. So I'm going right now to the enemy. and showing that even the enemies who are trained and are schooled in the field of New Testament studies and in early Middle Eastern history, they acknowledge, yeah, it's a historical fact. Jesus of Nazareth lived in the first half of the first century AD and died by crucifixion under Pontius Pilate in approximately 30 AD. Now, some of the leading guys that are promoting this, Richard Carrier, what's happening now is that you get these guys with their bogus ideas, and they don't have the credentials. And so then they continue to promote their bogus ideas, and they get their credentials. I think Richard Carrier just finished up his doctor of philosophy degree, I believe it was at Cambridge, in classical studies. But they held it. Well, this isn't something their professors taught them. This is something they came up with. before they did all the research. And then now they get their PhD degrees and act like it's a scholarly view. The Zeitgeist movie on the internet has destroyed the faith of many professing young Christians. Christianity is just this big conspiracy all borrowed from pagan myths. And then there's Robert Price. Nice guy. I really enjoyed dialoguing with him. I'd love to debate him someday in equal time, formal debate. so that I would actually have the time to make my case and tear down his arguments. I asked him during the debate, because he would say he would only accept testimony from eyewitnesses. And I said, well, do you deny the Holocaust? And he said, no. And I said, well, why not? And he said, because my father liberated one of the camps. And so my follow-up question, obviously, was going to be, OK, so then your grandson If your father dies before your grandson is born, he should be a Holocaust denier. And unfortunately, I was interrupted by Reggie Finley, it was either a commercial or, but he never really gave me the time to respond to Robert Price. But that's how, I even told Robert Price, I said, if your view is correct, if we rejected Jesus' existence, we'd have to reject all of the history of the Caesars, and everything from the first century AD. And he said, I'm OK with that. And I said, yeah, but that's the problem. Nobody else is. And then he got offended, which I really wasn't trying to offend him. I was just trying to point out nobody else on the planet Earth does history like Robert Price and Richard Carrier. And it's kind of convenient. It's just like, look, I don't want Jesus. So I'll change the rules of how we do history. I'll change anything. I'll embrace anything rather than acknowledge the existence of the carpenter from Nazareth. And so Price's attack on Jesus is that the early church borrowed ideas from pagan myth. Jesus never really existed. He was merely a myth. Now this is a revival of the discredited Christ myth theory of the 19th century, so the late 1800s. So Price wants us to ignore over 150 years of progress in critical studies. Even the guys who are criticizing the Bible, they keep finding more and more things that they have to accept as historical truth. So you have guys now that are embracing Jesus's bodily resurrection. They don't even believe the New Testament is reliable. But using even their critical biased methods, they found certain core doctrines they couldn't deny, certain core events, historical events that they could not deny. So Price assumes without evidence that miracles are impossible. So he's going to deny the incarnation, that God the Son became a man. He's going to deny the bodily resurrection of Jesus. And then his bias against miracles dictates his views about Jesus and how he does history. It's like when I debated an Australian in an internet debate. Dr. Mark Fulton, it was about, does the historical evidence support Jesus' resurrection? And I asked him, I said, what's your worldview? He said, well, I'm an atheist. I said, well, do you believe in the possibility of miracles? He said, no, I'm an atheist. He was acting like a dumb Christian. And I said, OK, well, then how much historical evidence would you need to see before you believe Jesus rose from the dead? And he said, I said, I'm an atheist. I said, oh, so you're saying no matter how much historical evidence there is for Jesus' resurrection, you won't believe it? He said, exactly. And I said, well, then. Dude, why in the world do you even take this debate? We're supposed to be talking about historical evidence, not your worldview and your biases against miracles. But if you're going to just start out with, hey, I don't believe in God, miracles are impossible, then automatically you're not going to believe in the miracle working Jesus of the Bible. And so Price argued that the early, you know, in our response to Price, the early church was not influenced by the Gentiles. OK. The early church was rooted in Judaism. You want to find the roots for Christianity, just read the Old Testament. This idea of Gentile influence was supposed to be really big, according to Robert Price. No, I mean, here the Jews were. They refused to say Caesar is Lord. They had an exemption for a while. Eventually, eventually they were being put to death and executed for that. The Jews were not influenced. They would butt heads with the Gentiles. So our first point in response, the early church was rooted in Judaism, not not Greek and Roman mythology. Christian philosopher J.P. Moreland just got to be reunited with him. Hadn't seen him since 2001. Just a great brother-in-law. He's won three battles with cancer. One of the most brilliant Christian thinkers alive today. And he talks about these mystery religions, the dying gods who came back to life. Number one, they were never intended to be historical. They were associated with yearly vegetation cycles. So they were just stories that were kind of originated because of the cycle of vegetation dying in the fall and the winter and coming back to life in the spring. The similarities with Jesus are apparent but not real. Okay. You know, right away, if you have a religion, automatically you're going to have to talk about, okay, something's wrong. What's the solution? How do you get saved? How do you find eternal life? How do you get initiated into our religion? So there's going to be parallels automatically between any kind of religions. But what ends up happening, though, is they start retelling these ancient pagan myths very conveniently by using Christian terminology. So I could tell you a story about, you know, a football game. And if I just start talking about, yeah, like the quarterback went out there and and he just sacrificed for his team and he was like the savior for his team. And it was like they were they were down. But now they're like born again. And if I just keep throwing in a whole bunch of Christian terminology, eventually you're going to say, wow, look at all the parallels between football and Christianity. Well, yeah, but I stacked the deck by using Christian terms. And that's what's going on here. The pagan religions were polytheistic. They worshiped many gods. Syncretistic, they loved blending together different religions. They were always taught in a non-moral context, nothing like the accounts we have of Jesus in the Gospels, there's no real resurrection in these pagan accounts before 100 A.D. It was only after Christianity began to gain adherence and grow in numbers and popularity that all of a sudden People started saying, oh, yeah, well, my my pagan god rose, too. It was like kind of to compete with Christianity. They started stealing from Christianity. So a borrowing occurred. Since the real parallels dated after Christianity, a borrowing occurred. It was the pagan myths that borrowed from Christianity, not the other way around. First century Palestinian Jews rejected pagan beliefs and practices. The New Testament scholar Martin Hengel goes way out of his way to point that out. Also, the existence of synagogues throughout first century Israel, the ancient Jews could read. That's why they translated the Hebrew Old Testament. into Greek was because a lot of Jews could no longer read Hebrew, but they could still read Greek. They were literate synagogues. They were taught the word of God. These were illiterate people. Why did the was it so important to teach them how to read as little children? Because they believe they had God's word in the Old Testament. OK, Robert Price and these guys act like they're a bunch of illiterate people. who couldn't read, so they just believed oral stories that they heard. And they started hearing the pagan myths and then created Christianity. And so Jesus was a real historical person. We have excellent historical evidence for his life and his works. The creed of 1 Corinthians 15, three to eight, this goes back to the earliest days of Christianity. Even Marcus Borg and the late Marcus Borg and Gerd Ludmann of the Jesus Seminar, two far left radical New Testament scholars actually dated this creed to within the first year. after Jesus's death. Yet the creed, you know, it's like Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures. He was buried. He rose again on the third day according to the scriptures. Then he appeared to Cephas. That's the Aramaic name for Peter. Then to the apostles. Then he appeared to James. Then he appeared to over 500 people at one time. He goes through this whole list. And then Paul adds his own account here in 55 AD. And as to one untimely born, he appeared to me also. Because it was the only post-resurrection appearance of Jesus to one of the apostles, to Paul, after the Ascension. All the other ones were before the Ascension. Well, this is early evidence that this is just within a few years, maybe even within a year. that this creed was formulated, and it talks about the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus. An excellent book on this topic written by Gregory Boyd and Paul Eddy. Gregory Boyd is not the most conservative scholar out there. Paul Eddy's pretty solid. But their work, The Jesus Legend, they talk about these dying and rising gods, Adonis. You got no death or resurrection. And any stories of any data that we have on Adonis until after Jesus and after Christianity is popular. Attis, he's not even a deity. He got a death, but no rebirth, no resurrection there. Osiris is murdered and dismembered, reassembled, missing one part, and becomes a powerful god in the underworld. So some scholars say that's a zombification. That's not a resurrection. Tamaz, recent find of Sumerian text shows no resurrection or rebirth. In other words, you go before Christianity and all of a sudden these dying and rising gods, you don't hear stories, you don't see stories of them rising until after Christianity. And Eddie and Boyd also talk about Baal, Isis, Dionysus also fell as dying and rising gods. Now here's what's happened with this movement I think they know that their case is so weak that Jesus did not exist that they have a plan B. And they go to plan B really quick. And so they say, OK, well, just in case I can't win the debate that Jesus never existed, Let's have plan B and say, OK, well, maybe Jesus existed. But they made legends and myths about him shortly after his death. And they use as an example Apollonius of Tyana, who died in 96 and 98 AD. Now, when I debated atheist Dr. Doug Kruger at State University of New York in Oswego, New York, kind of right on the border with Canada, kind of was right across the water. And in the cross-examination, he started reading. He said, in the first century AD, a healer, a miracle worker walked the land of Palestine. He would give sight to the blind. The deaf would hear. He would raise the dead. And I knew exactly what he was quoting. It's a bogus paragraph that starts a book on this stuff that's like 100 years old. And but I knew it was going to have a big impact on people because at the end you end the statement by saying and his name was Apollonius of Tyana. And it shocks Christians because they think, well, I thought he was talking about Jesus. And so I didn't want it to have that effect on the audience. I kind of broke debate protocol and I interrupted him and I said, I said, oh, come on, you're not going to bring up that bogus, bogus quote about Apollonius of Tyana, are you? And you know what this guy said? He said he got red in the face and he said, I guess not. And then he just moved on to another question and all. But that's the kind of stuff, that's the kind of propaganda that our kids are getting hit with on the internet. These guys make it sound so, you know, comparing Jesus to like Mithras, who also had, you know, Mithras had 12 disciples and three kings visited him. And they go on and on. Mithras, there's no evidence he had 12 disciples. And three kings? Did we know three kings visited? No, they weren't kings, they were wise men, and we don't know how many there were. They brought gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And so you'll find these bogus claims being thrown at us. So we have to be ready to provide an answer there. But Apollonius of Tyana, the data about him was written 100 years after the gospel and after the gospels were written. They're not historically accurate. I mean, they talk about Apollonius of Tyana ministering in Babylon and Nineveh, which were uninhabited in the first century AD. And there's not even any resurrection appearances of this guy anyway. So more than likely, it appears that, in fact, the Roman empress tried to resurrect the little cult. He was like a Benny Hinn faith healer type guy. But he was proven false, so she tried to rehabilitate his reputation by paying a guy to rewrite his biography. And the guy was obviously stealing from Christianity, because it was his job to make Apollonius as popular as Jesus. Well, guess what? It failed. Nobody changed the calendar. based on Apollonius' birth. With Jesus in Nazareth, everything changed. And some would say, sabotage Savi. He was a failed messiah. He was actually forced to convert to Islam, then try to convert his Jewish followers to Islam. And then he ended up dying. Most people think he was mentally ill. And there's no reports of seeing him after death. Do you see the parallels with Jesus there? Because I don't. OK? Now, Simon Kimbongo, this is interesting because he was a miracle worker in the Congo. He died in prison in 1951 because the communists didn't like him, so they imprisoned him. So already I'm liking this guy. But apparently, he never claimed to be God. So at worst, he was like our Thal evangelists with their pseudo miracles. Or at best, you know, if God decided to send a Christian miracle-working prophet, this guy had millions of followers to the Congo in the 20th century, I'm okay with that. OK, it might weird me out a little bit, but I'm OK with that. But this guy never claimed to be God. Some of his followers after he died, they had come from polytheistic backgrounds. They had worshipped many gods, and some of them tried to turn him into a god. But those are heretical offshoots of this guy. Whatever the case, you look for a parallel with Jesus in Nazareth, you don't find any. If you had one word to describe his life, unparalleled, be a pretty good word for it. Mark Forman, Christian philosopher at Liberty University, he talks about the fact there's a revival of a discredited late 19th century history of religions school idea. And he starts out saying, hey, look, there's going to be similarities in all religions because they're addressing the same issues and trying to come up with a plan of salvation. But he says there's a fallacy that temporal priority means the earlier cause the later. Just because you hear the rooster crow before the sun rises doesn't mean the rooster crowing causes the sun to rise each morning. So he says the entire theory assumes Jesus did not really exist in history. In other words, they start out by assuming he didn't exist. And then they start doing their research there. It goes against contemporary scholarship. And it arbitrarily combines all religions into one universal model of a dying, rising god. And that's just not the case. They're not only overgeneralizing, oversimplifying Christianity, but they're doing the same to the pagan religions as well. Foreman says that the mythicists use Christian terminology to describe pagan beliefs. And this creates a superficial resemblance. They make claims about Jesus not even found in the Bible. Like for instance, December 25th was a pagan celebration feast day. But that wasn't changed until hundreds of years after Christianity had been founded. That was because Emperor Constantine wanted to convert pagans to become Christians. So instead of taking away their pagan holidays, he tried to Christianize them. That's a whole different thing. What's happening in Christianity in 350 A.D. is a lot different from what's happening in Christianity in 30 A.D. And we already talked about the three kings. We don't know how many wise men they were and they weren't kings. And and then Foreman argues there's no evidence of pagan influence in first century Judaism. No evidence of dying and rising gods before Christianity and the pagan religions may have borrowed from Christianity as it began to grow. So borrowing occurred and went the other way. By the way, they're always quoting sources that are not scholars in their field. So they'll quote when they're talking about history, they'll quote a guy who's not a historian. When they quote on religions, they'll quote a guy who's not an expert on religions. And even on their Egyptology, they'll quote guys who have no expertise in the culture and the language and the practices of the ancient Egyptians. They overemphasize similarities while ignoring differences. And he gives an example of this faulty logic with the Kennedy. You could argue that if you use their logic, you could argue that the Kennedy assassination was just a myth. It did not really occur because it's just a myth that was based on either the Lincoln myth or the Lincoln real historical assassination. For instance, both were elected to the presidency in the year ending with 60. 1860 Lincoln, 1960 Kennedy. Both had a vice president who succeeded them named Johnson. Both were killed supposedly by a lone assassin. Both were killed with a head shot, a bullet wound to the head. And the list goes on and on with these parallels. But guess what? Kennedy was really assassinated, and Lincoln was really assassinated. You can find parallels sometimes. You've got some real parallels, sometimes you've got some bogus ones, some fiction is thrown in there, like supposedly Kennedy had a secretary named Lincoln, and Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy. Mark Forman wasn't able to find that. So you throw in like fake parallels with real parallels, it still doesn't prove that one was borrowed from the other. two different historical events here, and we would not say that Kennedy's assassination was just a myth, but if you reason like the Jesus mythicist, that's probably a conclusion you should draw there. Let me say this, too. Greg Kochel, who just spoke down the block from here a few months ago, but in his latest book, he even points out that there was a book, originally the novel was called The Titan, Then they changed the name, maybe, I don't know if it was after the Titanic they changed the name, but it was in the late 1800s. And it was about a cruise ship that would take passengers from New York City, from New York to Great Britain and back. And that it hit an iceberg and sunk and it killed lots and lots of people. That's a novel. Now, about 20 years later, a ship called the Titanic that really took passengers from New York to Great Britain, did really hit an iceberg, did really sink, and nobody's claiming, okay, the Titanic, that's just a myth. based on the novel that was called The Titan. And so, I mean, sometimes you just get these weird parallels, but it doesn't prove, it doesn't wipe out historical evidence. And that's what you have for Christianity. You have ancient creeds or sermons found in the New Testament that predate the New Testament that go back to the early 30s AD. You have Paul's letters. Even the most liberal of New Testament scholars accept seven of Paul's letters as being authentic. And he's proclaiming a Jesus who really existed. And he even knew his half-brother and knew some of his disciples. The four Gospels, I would argue the four Gospels could be dated between 35 and 55 AD. If you want to see my reasoning on that, just pick up my Hijacking the Historical Jesus book. It's for free at the table there. and my chapter on redating the New Testament. But even even scholars who are not conservative would date the entire New Testament between 67 and 110 A.D. OK, so this is still all early evidence. I think it's even earlier than most pastors think. Did I go back to before historical criticism? What were Christian scholars saying based on what the early church fathers taught? And they gave much earlier dates than we're hearing from our pulpits today. You got manuscript evidence from the New Testament, more copies, greater accuracy, smaller gap between the earliest copies and when the originals were supposedly written. We got the pupils of the apostles, selected by the apostles to lead the early church, writing from the 60s to about 107 AD. And they taught us the same stuff about Jesus, not just that he existed and died by crucifixion, but he bodily rose from the dead. and that he claimed to be God and proved he is God by rising from the dead. We've got archaeological evidence. We've got evidence for Jesus' resurrection and deity. You know, to celebrate our 30-year anniversary, my wife and I did not go to Greece or Europe to check out the historical sites for Zeus or go to Egypt and check out the historical sites for Osiris. You know, we went to Israel. We walked where Jesus walked. You can visit those sites today. They're finding more and more sites as the years go on. where you could see where the Pool of Siloam was. You could see the synagogue where Jesus preached at in Capernaum. They even think they found Peter's house. And so we've got all this strong evidence. We've got on university campuses. My old professor, Gary Habermas, he debates on European campuses, as does William Lane Craig, and American university campuses. and debates some of the world's leading thinkers arguing for the bodily resurrection of Christ. Give me a pagan parallel for that. Richard Dawkins has made millions of dollars attacking Christianity and attacking Jesus of Nazareth. How much money has he made attacking Osiris or Adonis? When Richard Dawkins says that believing in God is like believing in the flying spaghetti monster. My response is, sir, your analogy stinks. Nobody believes in a flying spaghetti monster. Nobody's providing evidence for a flying spaghetti monster yet. We're providing evidence not only for the God who sits enthroned, but for the risen son of the Lord Jesus. You can even go to secular authors. They'll tell us what the early church taught us. And so Josephus will tell us that the followers of Jesus, he's writing in 97 AD, a Jewish historian, and he'll tell us that The early followers of Jesus believed they saw him after being crucified under Pontius Pilate. They saw him alive on the third day after he had died. Dallas is 52 AD, a Greek historian. He's still trying to explain why the why the earth got dark. when Jesus was on the cross. Second century, Pliny the Younger, Emperor Trajan, Emperor Hadrian, Suetonius, Lucian, the Jewish Talmud, Tacitus, they all acknowledged that Jesus existed and at times were trying to explain away his miracles. There's so much historical evidence for Jesus that he's mentioned by 42 different authors, most of whom were not Christians, but he's mentioned by 42 different authors within 150 years of his death. Now compare that with Emperor Tiberius, the Roman emperor of that day. He's only mentioned by 10 different authors within 150 years of his death. So I would say Bart Ehrman, not only does Jesus exist, you're right on that point. And not only did he die by crucifixion, but why in the world would four times as many people talk about him within 150 years of his death than about a Roman emperor? I mean, he was if he was just a carpenter from Nazareth and that was it. Why all the popularity? And I would say that Bart Ehrman needs to look at, you can accept the historical evidence for Jesus' death, you need to look at the historical evidence for Jesus' resurrection as well. And so finally, I'll just run through these 13 problems with the G.S. Smith hypothesis. It's more of a review than anything. Number one, current scholarship acknowledges that Jesus existed. The day we change our history books and delete Jesus from them, is going to be a mess. The fact of the matter is current scholarship acknowledges that only an uninformed person or a deceitful person would deny that Jesus of Nazareth existed. Number two, the early church had Jewish Old Testament roots. Number three, the ancient Jews did not embrace pagan beliefs. That's what got them persecuted by the pagans. Number four, by the way, If you want these notes, I forgot to hand them out. They're at the table. So everything that's written up there without the pictures of the mugshots, you can get the handouts at the table there. The ancient enemies of Christianity acknowledged that Jesus existed. whether it was the Jewish rabbis in the Talmud or Trifo debating Justin Martyr. Number five, there's no evidence of dying and rising gods before Christianity. Number six, seven of Paul's letters are accepted by even the most critical and liberal New Testament scholars today. And Paul proclaims not only that Jesus existed, and died, but that he died for our sins and bodily rose from the dead to prove that he is Savior, God the Son, and the Messiah. And there's a list of the books, Romans, 1st and 2nd Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, Philemon, and 1st Thessalonians. Problem number seven, similarities between Christianity and pagan religions are greatly exaggerated. They're not as parallel as these guys want us to believe. change Christianity a little here or there, or they change the pagan belief system here or there. Number eight, pagans rejected the concept of resurrection. How are you going to get a rising God when the pagans don't even believe in a bodily resurrection? The pagans thought, it was like Plato's thought, the pagans were looking for the soul to escape the prison of the body. They did not want to see their bodies raised forever and ever. In fact, Paul, when he preached at Mars Hill, to Stoic and Epicurean philosophers, once he mentioned the resurrection, they thought, oh, this guy's a nut. This guy is a fool. Because at first, they thought when he was preaching about Jesus and Anastasis, they thought maybe Anastasis was another god. Once he explained, no, I really believe that God raised this guy from the dead, then it's like, oh. We don't even want to hear about that. So the ancient pagans, they didn't even believe in the concept of the resurrection. Number nine, there exists much evidence for Jesus' life and death. The ancient sermons and creeds, evidence for the New Testament, apostolic fathers, secular authors, Jewish authors. Number 10, the Jews would not, even Bart Ehrman admits this, the Jews would not have invented a story of a crucified Messiah. They would just not make this stuff up. Number 11, pagan beliefs are often deceptively described using Christian terminology to make them sound more parallel with Christianity. Number 12, pagan myths are based on seasonal cycles, not history. And in number 13, what we talked about already, parallels. Even if parallels exist, and they don't, but even if they do exist, We find some evidence someday that there's some parallels there. Parallels don't automatically prove borrowing occurred. Parallels don't automatically wipe out. true historical fact, as we see with the Kennedy and Lincoln assassinations. Many parallels, yet both were true historical events. And then a novel and the Titanic. The novel predated the Titanic by 20 years. The parallels are there, but the Titanic really did sink. I hope I didn't ruin that in case you haven't seen the movie, but it sunk. And so in the end, what we have there? is that this idea that Jesus never existed in the early church borrowed from pagan myths, that itself is a myth. It's unfortunate that atheists will just ignore history and stoop to the level of presenting arguments like this. But this is becoming a very popular argument that's destroying the faith of a lot of young people today. And that's why we need to address it. So make sure you pick up the notes before you leave the conference on this. And thank you for your patience. I know it was a lot of data and a small amount of time. I hope you enjoy the conference. God bless you. Thank you. Oh God, my God, will you reach out to me this time? Cause I'm so lost and confused I can't find my way home without you You're strong enough to carry me through all of my guilt and my shame With every breath I take, I will praise your name. Take my life for it's all I have to give. Now you've found me, I know where I belong. Sing alleluia. Sing alleluia. Love so amazing. Well, thank you so much for coming and hanging out with us at our church. Really excited to have you guys here. But first, like my people get stuck with, a joke. So there's two sailors stumble out of a bar. Big shocker there. Two sailors stumble out of a bar in London. It's the middle of the night. It's very foggy. They have no idea where their ship is. They're looking for their ship. And they're completely lost. They're stumbling around the streets. Lo and behold, around the corner comes this fleet admiral. You can hear him, you know, you can hear the clanking of the medals as he comes around the corner. And he walks up to these two sailors and the two sailors say, hey mate, do you know where we are? And he says, do you know who I am? Are you seriously talking to me? Do you know who I am? And the two sailors said, well, that's just great. We don't know where we are and he doesn't know who he is. I think a lot of times when we talk about the real Jesus from the pulpit and in our communities, sometimes we don't know who we are and we don't know where we're going. And we don't know that because we don't study that. And that study begins in the Old Testament. What I'd like to talk about tonight are Christophanies. The appearance of Jesus in the Old Testament. Because, like Dr. Fernandez said, Jesus Christ was a real, actual person, but we also must acknowledge that Jesus was in fact a real and actual God. Amen? And He didn't just begin to exist at His birth. Amen? He existed in infinity. That's really small. I'll read it for you. What is a Christophany? A Christophany is an appearance or non-physical manifestation of Christ. So that means something that occurred either pre-incarnation or post-resurrection. Does that make sense? That's a little bigger. Appearance. Appearances are typically seen in the New Testament. Examples include the resurrection accounts, the road to Damascus with Paul, John's vision of the Son of Man in Revelation 1. Those are some of those appearances. Non-physical manifestations. These are the types of manifestations that you will see in the Old Testament, where Jesus did not have a physical body yet, so he didn't really have a look yet, as we would understand it. But I assure you, he's there. Now what I'm proposing to you tonight, and this is what, and it's really easy to do this when you wrote your thesis on it, what I'm proposing to you tonight, that we as Christians have to acknowledge that Jesus Christ existed in the Old Testament. Amen? Okay. We also have to admit that there was a resurrection and that people saw him after his resurrection. Amen? Amen. What I am proposing to this amazing group tonight is we can not only recognize Christ by His physical traits, but by the evidences of His personhood in Scripture. And what I mean by that is, if you met me when I was 15, I'm glad you didn't. It was my BC life, we don't talk about that. Even though I wasn't a Christian yet, there would still be mannerisms about me and things that I would do or say that might catch your attention. Fast forward to 37. Yes, I'm 37. That usually gets a bigger laugh. OK. Yes, I'm 37. If you met me today, you might be able to recall me from some of those things that you remembered of me when I was 15, some of the things that I said that I may still say now, right? But there's a consistency between 15-year-old John and 37-year-old John. Now, looks have definitely changed, right? Just like Jesus, looks have changed, but it's still the same personhood. So what I'm proposing to you tonight is when you go home and read your Old Testament, like, Well, I don't know if all of you are Bible geeks like I am, but when you do get a chance to look at the Old Testament, look at these Christophanies. Now, I cite about 27 of them in my paper. We're only going to do three tonight. I thought I'd really get applause for that. Okay. All right. Stay with me, people. Trinitarian doctrine. Now, this is essential to Christian faith, amen, and also It is essential to what I'm proposing to you tonight. The truth of the Trinity is based on three presuppositions, or propositions, I'm sorry. The first, there is only one God. Amen? Amen. There is one God, maker of heaven and earth. Okay, we won't continue. That one God, There are three personhoods in God called God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Still with me? All right, that's good. Because if you're not, you're at the wrong church. I'm sorry. This is what we preach here. Each of these persons is not the same person. You know what modalism is? The idea that there is one God that shows himself in three different modes. That is not Trinitarianism. We have three persons in one God, and if your brain is exploding right now, that's okay. Because this is a really hard doctrine for the finite mind to understand. We're talking about an infinite God that a finite mind is trying to wrap its head around. So, for example, God the Father is not God the Son, yet both personhoods are in the Godhead. Does that make sense? Are we still together? All right. The personhood of Jesus Christ. The three persons of the Trinity are distinct in their personification. They do different things. They interact with us differently. Now, they interact with us. To look for Christophanes in the Old Testament, we have to understand the personhood of God the Son. So in what ways does He deal with us that differ from the other two personhoods? Now, we could do probably a seven-day or a seven-Sunday seminar on all three persons, but you're going to get the very, very small, cliff-notes version of the person of Christ tonight. The doctrine of the person states this, Jesus must have had these traits. He must be infinite, having no beginning and no end. Amen? He must have the ability to create, and He must have the ability to destroy utterly. Because these are the traits of what? God. Jesus, the way He works with us, is He reveals God in a very special way to us. And this is something that's very personal in the life of every individual believer. Jesus bears our salvation. Jesus communes with man in this distinct way, and all three personhoods commune in very distinct ways. Now, when we look for Jesus in the Old Testament, we can absolutely find Him by these traits, specifically the first one up there. That's not hard to do. But I encourage you to remember that this is a personhood. This is not some abstract God. This is Jesus Christ who's interested in your Tuesday. Does that make sense? We can see him by a straight. We can see them in the New Testament when he actually speaks to people in the New Testament. And we can actually draw parallels, just like 15-year-old and 37-year-old John, we can draw parallels between Old Testament Scripture and New Testament Scripture. And I will try to show you some examples of that tonight. And if I see you're kind of going sideways with it, we'll break into nothing but the blood and I'll exit and it'll be great. Remember, it's my church. I'm kidding. It's not my church. It's God's church. Amen. Okay, I'm going to read this for you because there's a lot going on here. Genesis 16, 7 through 13. And the angel of the Lord found her by a fountain of water in the wilderness. by the fountain in the way to shore. And he said, Hagar, Sarah's maid, whence comest thou, and whither wilt thou go? And she said, I flee from the face of my mistress Sarah. And the angel of the Lord said unto her, return to thy mistress and submit thyself unto her hand. And the angel of the Lord said to her, I will multiply thy seed exceedingly, that it shall not be numbered for multitude. And the angel of the Lord said unto her, behold, thou art with child, and thou shalt bear a son. And thou shalt call his name Ishmael, because the Lord hath heard thy affliction. And he will be a wild man. His hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him. And he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren. And she called the name of the Lord that spoke unto her. Thou, God, seest me. For she said, have I also here looked after him that seeth me? Let's break that down. Let's talk about the angel of the Lord for a second. So I was educated at Liberty under an amazing professor. A lot of amazing professors. But I ascribe to this. I ascribe that when we see the term the angel of the Lord in the Old Testament, it is not simply an angel of the Lord. It is the angel of the Lord. There's a specific difference there. Words mean things. Angel means messenger, or more basically, the message or word. Jesus is referred to what in the New Testament? In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God and the Word was God. He has a conversation with the sinner. This is something that we can look at in the New Testament and see that He does regularly. Amen? This is something that you can actually look into your own personal life and your personal walk with Jesus Christ and know that He does this. Agree? So based on this divine conversation, I would argue that this is a Christophany. She is actually speaking to the personhood of Jesus Christ in the Old Testament. Now, let's look for a New Testament reference that might be the same. John 8-10, Jesus stood up and said to her, Woman, where are they? As no one condemned you, she said, No one, Lord. And Jesus said, Neither do I condemn you. Go, and now sin no more. Notice in both interactions, the compassion for the sinner. What had happened with Sarah? What had occurred there? Why are we in this position? Why is she hiding from Sarah? What had occurred? A sin. Amen? Would we agree? Now some would argue, well, Sarah said it was okay. Well, I'm here to tell you, humans don't get to pick what's sin and what's not. Okay? We also preach that here. So, we don't get to pick and choose what's sin and what's not. Adultery is adultery. Amen? So, Isn't it interesting that both interactions show compassion of salvation while not approving of the action? See, what we have here is the BC Jesus and the AD Jesus in synthesis in how they speak. This is why I love being a Christian, because I serve a God that is stable, and he does the same thing every time, from everlasting to everlasting. Christophany 2, Numbers 22, 22-27, and God's anger was kindled because he went. I love this story, by the way. There's so many ways to go with it. We'd be up here all night, but we'll just, we'll stick to the Christophanies. And the angel of the Lord stood in the way for an adversary against him. Now he was riding upon his mule. I had to change the word there, because we're live. And his two servants were with him. And the mule saw the angel of the Lord standing in the way, and his sword drawn in his hand. And the mule turned aside out of the way and went into the field. And Balaam smote the mule to turn her into the way. But the angel of the Lord stood in a path of the vineyards, a wall being on this side and a wall on that side. And when the mule saw the angel of the Lord, she thrust herself into the wall and crushed Balaam's foot. And he smote her again, this poor animal. And the angel of the Lord went further and stood in a narrow place where there was no way to turn either to the right or to the left. And when the mule saw the angel of the Lord, she fell down under Balaam. And Balaam's anger was kindled, and he smote the mule with a staff." Hmm. There's a couple of things that we can gather from this. So we already know about the angel of the Lord. God's anger is kindled, so the angel of the Lord. Two persons here. God the Father and the angel of the Lord are in this epic. The Lord, there are two different personhoods. The concept of standing in the way of sin is specific to the personhood of Jesus Christ. Amen? How does Jesus stand in the way of sin for us? He died for us. His very resurrection is part of his personhood. It's part of who he is. And what we're seeing here is that same stance in the way of sin. Later in verse 32, the angel of the Lord says to Balaam, I have stood in your way because your way was contrary to me. Interesting that he doesn't say, what the angel does not say is you're not contrary to God. This statement assumes divinity of this angel. The angel doesn't say to God, he says, to me. But earlier in the verse, it said that whose anger burned for Balaam? God. Notice the air of repentance in the turning away from sin. Notice what Jesus is trying to get Balaam to do. To turn away. We see this same concept play out in multiple gospel stories. I'm careful to use the word story, just bear with me. They're true stories. I don't like that word. This interaction, I would argue, is with the pre-incarnate Jesus Christ. Matthew 5, 17 and 18. Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Notice that staunch, I'm standing my ground, this is the law, this is what is happening. Notice that air, that attitude in numbers. So to me, we can see through the personhood of Jesus Christ, His personality, we can see in both the Old Testament and the New Testament. Number three, Judges 6, 12-22, And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him, and said unto him, The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valor. And Gideon said unto him, O Lord, if the Lord be with us, why then is all this befallen us? And where be all his miracles which our fathers told of us, saying, Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt? But now the Lord hath forsaken us, and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites. And the Lord looked upon him, and said, Go in this thy might, and thou shalt save Israel from the hand of the Midianites. Have I not sent thee? And he said unto him, O my Lord, wherewith shall I save Israel? Behold, my family is poor in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father's house. Does that sound familiar to the type of person that Jesus speaks to in the New Testament, in the Gospels? And the Lord said unto him, Surely I will be with thee, and thou shalt smite the Midianites as one man. And he said unto him, If now I have found grace in thy sight, then show me a sign that thou talkest with me. Now he gets a sign, and there's a victory from the Midianites. I just couldn't fit the rest of that on there. John 4, the Sumerian woman's conversation with Jesus. Does that ring a bell? with the conversation that we just had? John 20, doubting Thomas. Once again, we have the angel of the Lord. Gideon is doubting the angel of the Lord. He is not even sure if it really is him. Does that sound familiar? What did Thomas think? Unless what? Unless I put my finger through his hands, he's not real. It didn't happen. Just like in John 20, we have a doubting Thomas, here we have a doubting Gideon. And in the same way Jesus makes a very real and physical display for Thomas, so does he with Gideon. With Thomas, put your hand in my side. With Gideon, assured victory against the Midianites, that does happen, that is recorded in scripture, and is historically accurate. Jesus is an infinite God. He is part of the Trinity, and He existed long before His incarnation. These we know for sure. We can see these appearances usually under the title, The Angel of the Lord, in the Old Testament. What I believe is not only through His might and power, and His infinitude, like those things, those traits of a God, we know. Amen? We know. who God is, and we know that God is infinite, and we know Christ is infinite, but we can actually see him as a person in the Old Testament. Why does this matter? Because his interactions with his beloved peoples can be seen and acknowledged in the Old Testament, just like in the New Testament, just like in your life right now. It is the same Jesus Christ, from everlasting to everlasting. Why does it matter when we go to defend our faith? Because just like the story of the sailors, a lot of times we don't know where we're going. Sometimes we don't even know who we are. If we aren't acknowledging the pre-incarnate Jesus Christ as much as we acknowledge the incarnate and the resurrected Jesus Christ, we have a massive fault in our belief. Jesus Christ didn't just start existing when he was born, amen? He didn't begin existing ever. He has always existed. And that's hard for our minds to comprehend. It's hard for humans to understand. And that's why we kind of shy away from the Old Testament Jesus Christ. Because it's the hardest one for the feeble, finite mind to wrap its head around. Because the incarnate Jesus, we can touch with our hands. Right? We put our fingers in his side. The resurrected Jesus, we know that in our heart. When you came to the Lord, you found that. You're with Him every day. He walks with me, He talks with me. See, I said if I started to lose you, we'd start singing songs. Okay? But that pre-incarnate Jesus, it's a little harder for us to look at. So I would encourage you, look at the Old Testament. Find your Savior in the Old Testament. I assure you, He's there. Thank you very much for having me tonight, and thank you for your time. I wait below Searching so aimlessly For something good, for something great For something that can separate My listless thoughts and words From all that I call yours Cause I'm falling now Further into pointless musings Grey confusions Everything you've removed I've brought back from the grave And all the words I seem to say Are all the ways I've gone astray Please take my hand and lead me back To when I adored you A powerful, a childlike faith You threw it all, I want to say You made the earth, I cannot state How glorious you are No longer lost You chip away the hardened stone I find my peace in you alone The righteousness I hold No longer mine to own I am completely yours And I am completely yours All the words I seem to say Are all the ways I've gone astray Please take my hand and lead me back Now I fall and shout like faith And through it all I want to say You made the earth, I cannot state But how glorious you are Glorious you are Glorious you are you Grace like a river Flows through me now Love like an ocean Carries me out He gives and He takes Blessed be His name My Savior, my Father Grace like a river Flows through me now Love like an ocean Carries me out He gives and He takes Blessed be His name My Savior, my Father He eases my pain Wonderful Savior, my great Redeemer Beautiful, flawless, mighty Creator The first and the last, the future and past You have given me life and a second chance Grace like a river flows through me now. Love like an ocean carries me out. He gives and he takes. Bless me, him. My Savior, my Father He eases my pain Hold on to me Help me to see That what once was lost By your words will be Found and restored Giving new breath Life now renewed A hope beyond death Grace like a river Flows through me now He carries me out He gives and He takes Blessed be His name My Savior, my Father He eases my pain He gives and He takes Blessed be His name My Savior, my Father He eases my pain Your steadfast love endures Though all the earth may fade You alone, you are good In everything you do, you are mighty to save Your word is the lamp to light my way The covenant you make, you'll never break In all the ways you love me You are forever holy And could be uncompared You're steadfast love endures You're steadfast love endures Through all the wickedness I am In the trials and the tears Will the sorrow melt my soul And strengthen thy your word Give me understanding, God Embrace the one that keep your love Turn my eyes to you, Lord Guard me with your spirit Restore my broken heart Step past love and doors Step past love and doors You are my hiding place, my shield If there is nothing I can say If there is nothing I can make Deserving of your love Hold me up and keep me safe Regard me in your warm embrace I'll be great and holy But beautiful and mighty My lovings say they are Step past love and go The best love he knows My God, my God, will you reach out to me this time? Cause I'm so lost and confused I can't find my way home without you You're strong enough to carry me through all of my guilt and my shame With every breath I take, I will praise your name Save my life for it's all I had to give Now you've found me, I know where I belong Sing Alleluia Sing Alleluia Love's so amazing, I can hardly believe that it's real So with all that I am, I will praise your holy name So what you have done for me is much more than I can comprehend You're strong enough To carry me through all of my guilt and my shame With every breath I take I will praise your name Take my life for it's all I have to give Now you've found me I know where I belong Sing hallelujah Sing hallelujah Sing hallelujah Sing hallelujah Cause you're strong enough to carry me through all of my guilt and my shame So when you will say that I will go save you Yes, thank you. I will point out that in the back, we do have items out there for you to pick up a trifold brochure that we published. And just also wanted to let you know that my work has been done in association with Mark Antonacci. I've only been working on this project for six years. He's been working on it for 38 years. He wrote a book on the Shroud of Turin in 2000, the title was The Resurrection of the Shroud. And then in 2015, he wrote this book, 500-page book, Test the Shroud. The purpose of this book was to try and encourage additional testing on the Shroud of Turin. And there has been significant progress on that even this year. Now, as I get into this project, I will let you know that, first of all, the young people are probably not familiar with the Shroud of Turin. And that's because of the history behind it. But it has been on the cover of Time magazine. It has been on the cover of U.S. News and World Report. A few years ago, I bought the book 100 Greatest Mysteries, and it had one full page on the Shroud of Turin. being included as one of the greatest mysteries in the world. Probably the high point for the media, though, was the June issue in 1980 of National Geographic, where they had a four-page foldout displaying the Shroud of Turin and discussing it. So after the carbon dating that was done in 1988, publicity on the Shroud of Turin has fallen off dramatically, as well as funding and research. But there is a resurgence of research on it now and increasing funding of that research. So the title today is Holistic Solution to the Mysteries of the Shroud of Turin. The mysteries of the Shroud of Turin would include the image, the dating, and the blood, those three areas, and they can all be broken down into sub-issues. Holistic refers to one solution that encompasses everything, and that's the beauty of the concept that I'm gonna be presenting to you tonight. And this is basically the same presentation that I gave at the International Shroud Conference that was held this last August 14th to 17th in Ancaster, Canada, just southwest of Toronto. That was about a two and a half day conference. And I presented this with good receptivity. Now, let's go over just quickly an outline. I have a lot of material to cover, so we're going to be covering lots of this briefly. So we're going to do an introduction and a brief history on the shroud. And then what is the shroud? History of the research on the shroud, including the first photo, the first eight decades of research. Shroud of Turin Research Project in 1978, and then the Radiation Hypothesis Solving the Various Mysteries of the Shroud of Turin. Now, my background, I earned a master's in nuclear engineering from the University of Michigan, graduated in 1971. spent 38 years in the nuclear industry doing all sorts, primarily doing calculations, computer calculations on nuclear reactor design, criticality, safety, and statistical analysis of measurements. And most of that has been applicable to this current project on the Shroud of Turin. I also organized the International Conference on the Shroud of Turin in 2017. I, with my wife and daughter organized this. It was a four-day conference. We had 28 researchers from around the world, including Italy, Spain, France, Mexico, Australia, and the United States. We put together 34 hours of PowerPoint presentations and panel discussions. It's all available on my website, shroudresearch.net. Pick up my business card in the back with that information on it. I also organized the Shroud Research Network. This is a group of about 10 individuals that are working with me in Richland, Washington. Richland is one of the premier nuclear sites in the country, because just north of us is the Hanford nuclear site, about 580 square miles dedicated to nuclear research. And on my website of shroudresearch.net, I have 23 papers that we've published so far, and they're all available on that site. Now, this is the picture of our Shroud Research Network that we have in the Richland area. Richland is part of what they call tri-cities, Richland, Kennewick, and Pasco in Washington. We drove over this morning. It took us six hours. to get here with a little bit of slowing down with traffic on Highway 5. But this was taken a year ago in October. And I'm seated with the blue tie on, similar to this tie. On my left is Mark Antonacci, author of this book. Now, the goals and the methods that we have for our group. Our goal is very simply stated, to solve the mysteries of the Shroud. It's not to prove one thing or another. We're trying to do good science using the scientific method. Now, what that means, we have four different components to the scientific method in this. We determine what is true about the shroud. That's where we start. Then we develop a concept or a hypothesis to explain what is true. In other words, the concept has to be consistent with what's true. If it's not consistent with what's true, it can't be true. And then we use the hypothesis to make predictions. And we are into that phase now. And this coming year, we're going into the phase of testing those predictions. So we're going to be attempting to solve the mysteries of the shroud using the scientific method, following the evidence where it leads. Now, that's an important aspect. And it's important because the objective individual has to dissociate himself from presuppositions. And that's a difficult thing to do. So we're going to follow the evidence where it leads. In other words, we're going to try and have a neutral mindset without presuppositions. Now, whether you're an atheist or a Christian or whatever religion you are, you would have certain presuppositions that in this methodology, you have to dissociate yourselves from those, that belief system. For example, we have to dissociate ourselves from religious and naturalistic presuppositions, religious presuppositions. We have to say that maybe the shroud's authentic and maybe it's not. Maybe God exists. Maybe he doesn't. Maybe Jesus was raised from the dead. Maybe he wasn't. And maybe a unique event happened, and maybe it didn't. It was outside of our understanding of physics. So we have to take a neutral mindset in all those things. If you want to get further into naturalism, then look at my paper 19. Go to my website, shroudresearch.net, go to the research page, go to paper 19, look at section 3. That's where I go into more detail on naturalism. rather approximate map of the history of the Shroud of Turin. Now, I should say that Turin is up in the northwestern corner of Italy. The Shroud has been in Turin since 1578, except for a short period during World War II when it was evacuated to a secret location. It arrived, it was up in La Rue, France. and displayed as a burial cloth of Jesus in 1355 or 1356. We do have a continuous history from that point in 1355 or 1356 until it arrived in Turin, Italy. It was in a fire in Chambray, France, located about there. Now, the dashed line here indicates that we really don't know the route. So sometimes people say that the Shroud of Turin can only be traced back to 1355 or so. That's true for the continuous history. But you have to realize that there are locations where we have good evidence that it was also located. in Constantinople, and we'll get into that. We believe that it started in Jerusalem, based again upon the scientific evidence that there was a small chip of limestone found down near the feet that was identified based upon the impurities as Jerusalem limestone. found a few other places in the world, but primarily in Jerusalem. There were also pollens that were found on the Shroud of Turin that were unique to the Jerusalem area. So therefore, there's good evidence that it was in Jerusalem. There's also DNA found from the Jerusalem area. And then when the Christians evacuated prior to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, Based upon the evidence, they primarily went down to Antioch, down on the Mediterranean coast, so that it could very well be that the Shroud of Turin was taken down to Antioch at that point, though we don't have any historical evidence specifically to what we call the Shroud of Turin today. Now, you have to realize that when we call it the Shroud of Turin, it's only been called that since it came into Turin. So when it was up in Chambray, France, it would be the image of Chambray, or the image of Luray. Down in Constantinople, it would be called the Mendelian, or the image of God incarnate. Different names for different locations. So over in Edessa, we believe it was the image of Edessa, for example. So that's part of the problem in doing historical research on this. So that the evidence that it was down in Constantinople, there are several different evidences actually, but the primary evidence is what's called the Prey Manuscript or Codex. Codex is just a word that refers to something that's bound like a book. And it was discovered by a man named Prey. It's the oldest manuscript in the Hungarian language in the library in Budapest, I believe. And so this is actually just one of the pages in that manuscript, and just the bottom section of this page, which is a color diagram. And so we see an angel here, three women over here. We see here what we would call the Jesus burial cloth. There are several indications of that. It's not any kind of a stone box that he was buried in. Some people say this. Hard to believe how they'd say that. There's no three-dimensionality to this. This is extremely thin. There's just no evidence of a three-dimensionality to this item. It shows the blood of Jesus here in orange or red crosses on the lower piece. On the upper piece, it has this stair-step pattern. Do you see that? here and here. This is indicative of the three-to-one herringbone weave that the Shroud of Turin is made out of. And thus, this stair-step pattern indicates that it is what we call the Shroud of Charm today. But primarily, do you see this whole pattern right here? One, two, three, right angle turn, four. Do you see that? That pattern, those little circles. Very unusual. Why would you put that onto a diagram like this? Because he had seen, evidently, when he went to Constantinople, he had evidently seen it, or at least maybe heard evidence of it. Those holes in that pattern are also on the Shroud of Turin. So that this, even though it's dated to 1192 to 1195, 65 years before the carbon dating, this proves that it was in Constantinople, and this proves the carbon dating. We have historical evidence that contradicts the carbon dating, and there's much evidence like that. So this is where it's located today, in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist. And this picture was taken, I believe it was 1978 when it went on display. After the exhibit, that's when the Shroud of Turin Research Project came in and we're given five days, 24 hours a day to do research on the Shroud. But this picture shows it on exhibit for There's several weeks that they usually put it on exhibit. And about two and a half to three million people filed past it and saw the image that's on it at that point. So it's a real item. People can see it. It goes on display just a few times a century. It was on display in 2015 from April 19th to June 26th. We hear rumors that it's going to be going on display again in 2025. It usually goes on display in commemoration of some important events. It went on display in 1978 as the 400th birthday of it being present in Torrance. Now, when you go to see it, if you were to do so, they usually show it under very dim light, and you're looking at it maybe through an inch and a half of glass or plastic, as the case may be. So it's rather difficult to see. You actually see it better under a photograph, but the upper picture here shows something like you would see it at the cathedral with the image being very dim, the front image from the head down to the feet and the back image from the head down to the feet, so that it's a head-to-head image. Look at my one-third size replica of the shroud out here, and you can see why. Because they didn't wrap it like an Egyptian mummy, they wrapped it up over the head and then down the front, so that it formed a front and back image. Now, when it was in Chambray, France, 1532, the church caught on fire. They ran in to save what they regarded as one of the most important relics of Christianity, were able to pull out the silver box that was housed in it. It appears as though one corner had melted, dripped down onto the folded shroud, burned through one corner, and scorched one edge. When they unfolded it, this was the pattern of scorches that they obtained on one side and on the other, and you can see the patches that were needed. Four patches, four patches, four patches, four patches that had to be put on where the material had fully carbonized. Fortunately, the image was largely unhurt just over here at the elbows is where it was damaged so that we can actually see it a little bit clearer in the negative That would be this. Now, it appears as though it's a positive, but it appears as a positive only because on the image is actually a negative. And let's tell you more about that. Now, this was a famous painting that was made in the mid-1500s. I just wanted to show you this, for this was how it was wrapped up over the head and then down to the feet, so that the front image on the front image. Now the purpose, I'm going to show you the front image and the back image. The main takeaway here is that what we see on the Shroud of Turin is identical to the description of how Jesus of Nazareth was crucified. There's no difference. This is identical. For example, up at the top, we have real blood running down from puncture wounds. On the side, we have the side wound with a hole in the skin, elliptical hole just the size of a Roman thrusting spear. with post-mortem blood running down, where it's post-mortem after death because the red blood cells had separated out of the clear blood serum. So that as the spear thrust came in, out first ran the red blood corpuscles, and then out ran the clear blood serum, could be easily called water. So that you see that the blood running down with the correct angles on the arms. At the wrist it's very interesting that all the paintings from the Middle Ages have the nails going through the middle of the palms because the Bible says that the nails were put into his hands, not realizing that in Jewish culture the hand goes down to about here. So that when experiments were done with the cadaver, they found that nails through here only supported 62 pounds. Wouldn't support a man of about 170 to 175 pounds, 5 foot 10, approximately. So that the wounds were not in the palms. They would have gone through here. Interesting, there's one point in the wrist here where if the nail's put through there, it won't break any bones at all. and just spread them out, the little bones in the wrist. But in doing so, what they didn't know in the Middle Ages, in the Middle Ages the paintings all show the thumbs very prominently. When the nail goes through the wrist, it automatically folds the thumbs over, because it crushes the nerve that collects all the feelings from the hand. Can you imagine the amount of pain that was involved in that? The Shroud of Turin didn't follow the custom of the paintings in the Middle Ages. The Shroud of Turin gets it right. No thumps. That's one of the many evidences that this was not done during the carbon date of 1260 to 1390. Let's see what else we have. We have scourge marks all the way down. We have the feet, actually two holes we'll see a little bit clearer on the back image. We have abrasions on one knee and the tip of the nose. and those abrasions have dirt in them. Let's see what else. Okay. Let's go to the back image. Back or dorsal image. Again, we have the blood running down from the scalp. It's interesting that experts on blood can actually tell whether blood coming out of a wound is blood coming from arteries or veins. And the blood shown on the shroud of Turin is correct. The blood that's coming out of arteries are over arteries. The blood that's coming out of veins are over veins. Gets it right. Across the shoulders, we have abrasions across both shoulders. Scourge marks coming all the way down. The blood from the side wound was seeping out of the wound while this person was laying on the cloth and it ran across the small of his back. Scourge marks all the way down. You can see one hole in his heel and one in his foot at this point. You notice this foot bends. Can you see that? This foot also bends. So in other words, they put one nail through the foot, then they forced one foot over the other and put one nail through both. The reason being that would allow the one foot with only one nail to rotate so that he could push up and down on the cross in order not to suffocate. In the down position, his ribcage would be expanded. He couldn't get air in. He has to push up to get air in. They were experts on maximizing pain. Okay. Okay. Now, this is the picture, a close-up picture of the fibers. Now, I want you to look at that and tell me what image you see there. Do you see an image? If you get close, you don't see the image. You have to get back eight or ten feet to see the image. Isn't that fascinating? So in other words, if this were a painted item, it would have to be done by an artist with a 10 foot long paintbrush. Wow. So anyway, what you see here, this is what's causing the image. These fibers have been discolored with a straw yellow or sepia color. And it's just the top one or two layers of fibers that are so discolored. Now you notice it's discolored here, it's discolored here, but it's not discolored here, it's not discolored here. So the discoloration on the fibers is modeled. All that has to be explained. Any theory you come up to explain, the image on the chart has to explain not only why we have discoloration on only the top two layers, but also the modeling of the discoloration on the fibers. And so that's what we've tried to do. We've followed the evidence where it leads. In other words, we're trying to do forensic research, essentially reverse engineering. Those are terms for what we're trying to do. OK, there we go. That first picture was taken by Segundapia in 1898. His camera is still on display in the museum in Turin, Italy, in the Museum of the Shroud there. Now, it's interesting. 1898, he goes in. Everyone believes it's a painting at that point. So he goes in, his hobby's photography, takes the first picture, takes the big glass plate into his dark room, takes it out of the camera, puts it in the fixer, he's developing it. Now, on the image, if you just looked at it with your eye, it's a very low contrast image. So he knows that on his film that he's developing, it should be a negative, so he was expecting a low a low-resolution negative image. As it's coming up, probably under red light, he raises it up, and he's shocked to find a high-resolution positive image. And what does that mean? Well, that means that on the shroud itself, it's a negative image. Now, what does that mean? A negative image can't be painted by a painter. especially in 1898, had no concept of what a negative was, had never seen a negative. An artist couldn't paint such a thing. He'd never seen one. So that was the evidence that it wasn't a painting, which disproved everyone's concept of this. They all accused him of being a liar and using fakery on his photograph. They wouldn't believe it. A few did. A few did. We'll get into that. So if it's not made by the artist, and if they couldn't think of any way to forge it, then what does that mean? It was made by the body. You see where we're going with this? Just keep that thought. Now, there's something interesting here about the nose, the image on the nose. On the nose, the cloth would have been touching the nose, but it would not have been touching beside the nose. Yet on the image, we see the nose, dark in a negative image, but it doesn't just... The image doesn't cease to exist down the nostrils. No, it's a smooth gradation down the nostrils, even where the cloth wasn't touching, would not have been touching. What does that mean? Well, that means something very important. It means that the image was not made by contact with the shroud. It was made by something passing across the gap between the body and the shroud. Now, isn't that interesting? Now, as it comes further down the nostril and further away from the cloth, it gets lighter and lighter. What does that mean? We're just following the evidence where it leads. What does that mean? It means that the greater the vertical distance between the body and the cloth, the more whatever it is, is diminished. So something coming from the body to create the discoloration on the cloth that's traveling vertically from the body to the cloth, which decreases as that distance increases. My background is nuclear engineering. And so immediately, there we go, immediately I think that's a perfect explanation of radiation. That's my immediate thought. Radiation, as it would pass through air, would diminish due to absorption or scattering, and possibly even decay. So my initial thought here, upon realizing this, is that we're dealing with radiation, because that's what the evidence indicates. OK, so smooth gradation of coloration not due to contact, something flowed from the body to the cloth to form the image. So again, this again would indicate if we have something flowing from the body to the cloth to form the image, the body has to be there, has to be related in some sense to the formation of the image. Now, I like this, Yves Delage, isn't that a beautiful name? You know, you can say that over and over at night as you go to sleep, Yves Delage. He was the discoverer, very famous scientist by the way, he was the discoverer of the functions of the inner ear. agnostic or atheist, a very prominent member of the scientific institution in Paris. So he got interested in the Shroud of Turin after Segun de Pia took the first photograph and he went and he spent about two years with his assistant investigating it. He went in to this very prestigious institution and he announced that it is the very cloth of Jesus. And he was astounded, they were gasped, so much so that they refused to document his presentation. even though it was the best attended presentation since Lister had spoken. Interesting. His conclusion was that there's only one in 10 billion chance it is not authentic. The first investigator of the Shroud of Time. This goes through the investigators over the first eight decades of research. We have Yves Delage and his assistant Paul Vignon. Look at Paul Vignon, 43 years, 44 years of investigating the Shroud of Torn. Isn't that amazing? Some of these even spent five decades examined. Notice they're all have their doctorate degrees, professors, medical doctors. Some of them were surgeons under war conditions, where they'd be very familiar with wounds and blood. So these were the individuals who, their basic thing that they were investigating was the nature of the blood. Because it was so weird, so strange. It looked like it was the shroud itself that was bleeding. Yet how could that be? It was the body that was bleeding. Very strange. So their conclusion, let's go on to it here. So, the characteristics of the blood marks. First of all, the pristine edges. They found pristine edges, like the cloth itself was bleeding. There was no cracking or flaking of anything on the shroud itself. Now, if you have a wound on your hand, And let's say if you wait for two hours, put a cloth down on it, there's not gonna be any blood transfer. It doesn't soak in. Dried blood doesn't soak into a cloth. If you put the cloth on while it's wet and leave it for two hours and then take it off, everything cracks and breaks. I've tried it. You don't get what you see on the Shroud of Turin. And that's what they were struggling with. And so they concluded that there must have been a human body that had died by crucifixion that was wrapped in the shroud in order to create the evidence on the shroud. They were following the evidence where it leads, instead of depending on their presuppositions. So that not only the pristine edges, but also the depressed centers and the raised edges of where the blood had coagulated. There's a certain shape to real blood when it coagulates. And then there's also the presence on the shroud of serum halo rings that were only visible under ultraviolet light. I doubt if a forger would know to do that in 1356 or whenever. Wouldn't know to do that. The conclusion, the blood came from a body that was wrapped in the shroud, not due to an artist or forger. Okay. Now, this is Dr. John Jackson, physicist working at that point at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. And he was looking at the shroud and thinking about investigating it. Someone sent him an electronic device called a VP8 image analyzer. And so he took the face from the Shroud of Turin and put it under the viewing area of the VP8 image analyzer. And up on the oscilloscope screen came what appeared to be a three-dimensional image of the face. Now that was fascinating, because there is no three-dimensional information in either photographs or paintings. It doesn't exist. Yet there is three-dimensional information in the image on the Shroud of Turin. How is that possible? And how do you create that? That's just part of the mysteries here that I think we have a solution to. That would actually be created automatically by radiation coming from the body if, as it makes the transition across that vertical distance between the body and the shroud, if it's diminishing due to absorption, scattering, or possibly decay. In the process of diminishing, it would register, the further the distance through the air, it would register a weaker signal, thus encoding the information that defines the vertical distance between the body and the cloth, which is what the three-dimensional information on the Shroud of Turin is. So he let it be known amongst his friends and others of this amazing thing, three-dimensional information on a two-dimensional piece of cloth that's been in Turin, Italy since 1578. How can that be? So he gathered together a team of people. and $2.5 million worth of equipment. And in 1978, the Vatican allowed them to go to the Shroud of Turin, to the cathedral in Turin, Italy, and they spent five days, 24 hours a day. They worked at three shifts. They slept in the room, where they had a whole sequence of experiments. First experiment, half the group said, well, it's obviously a painting. It has to be a painting. And so they said, OK, well, you take the first half hour. So that was simple. They just come up to it with high-powered microscopes. Is there pigment there or not? So in the first half hour, they said, well, there's no pigment there. Can't be a painting. So the next half hour, they said, well, it looks like a scorch. It has a coloration of a scorch. Maybe it's a scorch. So they said, well, simple experiment for that. They turned off all the lights, came in with a black light, and ran it over the shroud. All of the scorch marks along the side fluoresced, but the image did not. So it's not a scorch from a hot object, at least. Now, there is such a thing as a cold scorch from radiation. As you go out on not a hot day, just a cool day, you can still get a sunburn. That's a cold scorch. So now the experiments, the conclusions here, let's read down through the conclusions of their experiments. No pigment, no carrier, no brush strokes, no clumping of fibers or threads, no capillarity. Now that means soaking up of a liquid so that there was no liquid involved in the formation of the image, no capillarity. No stiffening of the cloth, no cracking of the image along fold lines. Now all of those would be present if it was due to paint, dye, or stain. But none of them are present. So go with the evidence. It's not due to paint, dye, or stain. Also, there's no body decay products detected. So that rules out any interaction between body decay products and any possible ointments put onto the body. Their conclusion, the image is not due to paint, dye, or stain. Liquid scorch, body decay, it's also not a photographic process. Now, that needs a little bit further explanation. A lot of different factors here. We can just, due to maybe time constraints, we can just hit on a couple of them. I've already mentioned three-dimensional information. Photographs don't have three-dimensional information in them because it's a two-dimensional object. There's extreme superficiality. The discoloration itself, we'll get into that. But most amazingly, what causes the discoloration? Let's hold off. We'll get into that a little bit later. No capillarity. Most photographic processes involve liquids in some way. The fiber discoloration is modeled. We have an explanation for that based upon radiation. There's no residual materials from a photographic process on the shroud. In other words, many people have tried to put together an hypothesis that depends on photography. But you realize, in order for it to be true, it has to agree with both the macroscopic evidence. That's just, as you look at it, does it look like, in every respect, like the shroud? As well as the microscopic characteristics. That is, when you take a very close look at it with a microscope. light microscope, and even with an electron microscope, is it the same? And there's been no hypothesis consistent with all of the evidence. In addition to that, of course, it was first shown up in Lorraine, France in 1355, yet the first photograph was in 1826. So how does that allow it to be a photograph? Isn't that interesting? So let's go on. Now this is a diagram that I've made. A typical thread could have 200 or more fibers in it. A linen fiber, linen is made out of the flax plant, grows about so high they harvest it, let it rot to decay the outer material from the long stems, then they take the long fibers from the center of the stems and weave that into thread to make into a fabric. And so what I've pictured here is just 150. But you see, I don't know if you can see under this lighting, the top two layers of fibers here are slightly discolored. Can you see that or not? I'll just tell you that they are. Okay, but you can also see there's nothing clumping in between those fibers. Now, if this was due to paint, there'd be something clumping the fibers together. The threads would also be clumped together, on and on. And you see no capillarity. In other words, it's just the top two layers. You don't have any bleeding from one fiber into the next. There's no capillarity taking place. So there's no liquid involved here. So that once they, in the Shroud of Turin research project in their investigation, after 1978, they found that the discoloration was just on the top one or two layers of fibers, and then they said, well, where on those fibers is the discoloration located? So they're just trying to investigate in every way that they can. Now, a fiber, linen fiber, is about one-fifth the diameter of a human hair. It's 15 microns in diameter. A micron is a millionth of a meter. About a thousandth of a millimeter. A millimeter is a tenth of a centimeter, if that helps you. Two and a half centimeters per inch. 2.54. I have to be accurate to be loyal to my engineering background. 2.54. But what we have here is the discoloration is all the way around the outer circumference of the fiber, and it's less than 0.4 microns thick. 0.4 microns thick with the inside of the fiber not discolored. How do you do that? That's always the question that comes up. Whatever the correct explanation is has to explain these features. So following the evidence, where it leads. We have a negative image. What does that mean? It's not made by an artist. We have a smooth gradation of coloration. That means it's not due to contact of the cloth. It means that something flowed from the body. Now, another feature here is that in the weave, the upper fibers that may be discolored, if they are, over a lower fiber The lower fiber can be discolored except where it was covered by the upper fiber. In other words, the shielding. That also indicates the image contains three-dimensional information. There's three things that are needed to form that image. You need a discoloration mechanism that can discolor the fibers. But that's not adequate in itself. You need energy to drive it. Every mechanism needs energy. And in this particular case, the energy is involved in actually rearranging the atomic structure in the cellulose, and I'll get into that in a minute, to actually form the discoloration. So the third item, besides having a discoloration mechanism and energy to drive it, you need to have information to control it. If you don't have information to control these items here, Well, I prefer the word photon emitters, if that's OK. These photon emitters, light, the smallest packet of light is called a photon. And so these photon emitters are emitting photons throughout our room. And so that, for example, why can you see me? Why can I see you? You ever think about that? Well, you open your eyes and there's light in the room, you see. But, you know, let's go a little bit deeper. What's going on here? Well, when I look at you, what's happening is these photons are bouncing off you in all directions. Some of them go into my eyes. And those photons carry the information that defines your appearance. so that that information is deposited on the back of my eyes, on the rods and cones. That information is then transferred into electrical energy that goes up the optic nerve to my brain, where my brain has learned to recognize those electrical signals as the information that defines a person's appearance. That's what's going on when you see someone. In other words, it all relates to information. You look out in the scene in front of you, everything is based on information coming to you based upon photons carrying the information to you. The colors that I see are transferred on the energy of the photons. The shade, light versus dark, is carried on the number of photons. the location of any particular color and shade, like from this point, the position of that is determined by the angle that that photon goes through the lens of my eye and on the broader cone that it hits. So all that information is being transferred by photons. And what are photons? Radiation. Radiation has almost been ideally, you might say, it seems like radiation has been ideally designed to carry information. Now, that is true for photons of light, ultraviolet light, and infrared radiation. It's also true for particles having mass, such as electrons or protons. So any of those types of radiation would do to carry the information to finding the appearance of the body from the body to the cloth. Now, sometimes people say, well, yeah, I realize the image was created by radiation, but maybe there was an earthquake or lightning strike nearby creating radiation from the limestone. That's not going to work. Why is that? Because the information that defined the appearance of a naked, crucified man was not in the limestone. It was not in the air. Where was that information? It was inherent to the body. Did you have a question in the back? Yes. Radiation. Did the cloth have any radioactive exposure above background? What was the cloth exposed to any radiation above background? No, I've never been given that opportunity. Okay, so the question is, has the Shroud of Turin been tested for radiation? No, it has not been. That's why we need another round of testing of the Shroud of Turin. And that's what we're trying to obtain. So what we're saying is that the radiation came from the body. We think the image was formed by particle radiation primarily, and I'll explain why. Though there may have been electromagnetic radiation, such as visible light, ultraviolet, or infrared radiation being involved as well. So where are we? Upper threads. So the only radiation could transfer the required information from the cloth, from the body to the cloth. That's an interesting aspect of it here. I thought of six different ways that information can be transferred from the body to the cloth. That's my paper number six on shroudresearch.net. Paper number five is on information content on the Shroud of Turin. So paper number six goes through the analysis of how the information could have been transferred from the body to the cloth. The conclusion was that only radiation is the only possibility to do that. Let's go on. Why can we see the image? Now that's an interesting question. One of the mysteries was the image. Now, we break that down into two parts. Why can we see the image? And how is the image formed? We break it into two parts because why we can see the image helps us to understand how the image was formed. So why can we see the image? Well, if I held up a black and white photograph here, or a color photograph of a person, why can you see that? Because why can you see and identify the person that's on that photograph? because the information that defines their appearance has been encoded into the position of the pixels that make up the image. That's why you can see it. Same thing applies to the Shroud of Turin. We can see the image on the Shroud of Turin because the information that defines the appearance of a naked crucified man has been encoded into the pattern of discolored fibers that form the image on the Shroud. Let's do that again. Why can we see the image? Because the information that defines the appearance of a naked crucified man has been encoded into the pattern of discolored fibers that form the image on the Shroud of Turin. In other words, it's all about information. So how did the information get there? Characteristics of the radiation. Let's go into some of the details that we can learn about this radiation as we follow the evidence where it leads. First of all, This radiation transferred not only the information that was needed to form the image, to control the discoloration mechanism, but it also carried the energy that was needed to drive the discoloration mechanism. Now, the other interesting feature here is that on the image, at the feet, I'm sorry, at the teeth, under the gums, and in the hands, some reports, that also lower part of the backbone, and in the skull, they can see bones. See the separation of the bones, even in the skull. I think on a good photograph, I'm not sure if mine are good enough in the back here, but on a good photograph, I think that you really can see teeth. Below the lips now, what does that mean about the radiation? It wasn't just coming from the surface of the body. It was emitted from within the body To go through the bones to be altered by the presence of those bones In order to carry that information to the cloth and deposit that information on the cloth To form the image of the teeth on the image Just amazing now you realize that there's there's no image. I'm sorry. There's no lens between the body and the cloth and Now when you take a picture of a person, there's a lens in the camera. In order to focus, the radiation is coming off in all different directions. To focus that down onto a plane, either a film or a digital material. But there's no lens between the body and the cloth. So how in the world do you form an image for radiation being emitted from within the body? There's only one way. The radiation with a horizontal body, that radiation couldn't be going off like that It had to be going off like that, vertically collimated, both up and vertically down, in order to form both the front and the back images. It's the only way, as we follow the evidence where it leads. Now, we found that only the top two fiber layers were discolored. This has led to investigations with lasers. on how to form discoloration on linen fibers. And what they found was that you have to use an extremely rapid burst of radiation. In this case, it was either ultraviolet or infrared radiation to form this type of discoloration on linen. So we follow the evidence where it leads. Therefore, we conclude that this pulse of radiation, this radiation that came from the body, occurred in an extremely brief pulse. of radiation, extremely intense, extremely brief pulse of radiation. And we also find that only a 0.4 micron discoloration on the fiber means that there was probably a static discharge from the fibers. And if you have a static discharge, for example, if you have a cloud going over, lightning occurs, Do you know what's going on at that event at the instant of the lightning strike? There's huge electrical currents flowing both in the ground and in the cloud to the location of the lightning strike. And so what we believe is that there was a static discharge due to this extremely intense burst of charged particle radiation, which caused the fibers to emit a static discharge. a static discharge from the fibers on the inside of the wrapped configuration that were pointed toward the body, because that's what the evidence is. The image is on the inside of the wrapped configuration. You can tell, based upon where the blood is located, where the inside was versus the outside. The image of the discolored fibers is on the inside of the wrapped configuration. What we believe happened was that there was an extremely high burst of charged particle radiation, which created static electrical discharge off the fibers, which created an extreme electrical flow in the fibers. Now, some of you may know, if you have an extremely high electrical flow in a conductor, where in the conductor are those electrons flowing? Anybody know? on the outside, on the circumference. Well, it happens to be that that's exactly where the discoloration occurred on the fibers, just around the outer edge. So that what we think happened, following the evidence where it leads, was that to form that 0.4 micron discoloration layer, it occurred from one of two sources, maybe a combination. One would be the extremely high electrical current flowing just on the outer circumference of the fibers, causing extreme electron flow and thus extreme heating, and or ozone production, which would then attack just the outside surface of the fibers. Now, this leads to the radiation hypothesis. An extremely rapid, intense burst of radiation was emitted from within the body. That's essentially the radiation hypothesis. Charged particles in this radiation burst cause static discharge from the high points of the fibers. Electrical heating and ozone cause the discoloration of those fibers. There's something called radiation pressure. Now, you know that You can move something by hitting it. Same thing for radiation. If radiation hits something, it can move it. Both particles and electromagnetic radiation, such as visible light, infrared, ultraviolet light, they all carry momentum. So if that momentum is transferred to an object, it can move it. So the concept here is that in an extremely rapid, extremely intense burst of radiation from within the body, what effect would that have on the blood on the surface of the body? It would thrust it off the body, and if it's vertically collimated radiation, it would accelerate it vertically away from the body onto and into the shroud. And that's what we see. So one by one, Can you hold your question still afterwards? I don't want to be... We'll have time, I think, afterwards. So that radiation pressure caused the blood transfer from the body to the cloth and neutron absorption, because in this burst of radiation, you realize Our bodies are made up of organs, which are made up of tissues, which are made up of organic molecules, which are made up of atoms, which are made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons. So if we have a burst of radiation from the body, what kind of materials are available to compose that burst of radiation? Well, you certainly have to say protons, neutrons, and electrons. So if we say charged particles create the image, well, you have plenty of protons and electrons. Have you ever calculated how many protons and electrons you have in your body? I bet you haven't. I have. There's 2 times 10 to the 28th. 2 followed by 28 zeros would be the number approximately of the number of protons or the number of electrons in the weight of a 170-pound person. The number of neutrons is about the same. So there's plenty of neutrons. How many neutrons would be needed to be emitted from the body to create the carbon-14 shift in the data, the shift of carbon-14 dating from 33 AD to 1260 AD? I've calculated that as 2 times 10 to the 18th. followed by 18 zeros. Now that may sound like a very large number of neutrons, but when you compare that with the number in the body, it's only one neutron in 10 billion. So that if only one neutron in 10 billion, every 10 billion that are in the body were released in this radiation event, it would shift the carbon dating from 33 AD to 1260 AD. Now we'll be going into that further on Saturday tomorrow. So is it the image of Jesus? Now, a lot of times people ask this question. I can talk about all these other things, but what they want to know is, is it the image of Jesus? And sometimes people say, well, you know, we don't have the DNA of Jesus. The blood on the shroud is so old, we've not had a complete genome developed on that blood yet. So there's no really way to tell, but I think there is. There's four different criteria that we've developed here. today in our discussion. There's four different requirements for this individual to help us to identify him. First of all, it was a man who died by crucifixion. And he died by crucifixion exactly as Jesus was crucified, according to the historical text. And number three, the body, the dead body, emitted a burst of radiation while he was wrapped within the cloth. And number four, that burst of radiation encoded an image on the inside of the linen cloth in which he was wrapped. Now, the way I like to phrase it, if you look through all of our historical documents that we as human beings possess, you can go back as far in history as you want, there's only one person that qualifies for these four different criteria in any remote sense. And that is Jesus. So I say that the most reasonable conclusion is that based on that, that this really is the image of Jesus. And so that the image that we see on the Shroud of Turin, because it is totally unique, there's no other burial cloth with an image like this. And even if you took a person and just tried to crucify him, even in Jerusalem, just the way Jesus was, you would not get an image, because it requires a burst of radiation from inside the body. So that because this is a totally unique phenomenon, front and back image of a crucified man on a piece of cloth, that existed in 1355 to 56, it's a totally unique event, that caused this totally unique phenomenon. And that was the result, the image of the face. Any questions? Question? Okay, that's the one thing I haven't talked about. That's the one mystery that I haven't fully solved yet. Yes, what he's referring to on the front, the facial view, if the cloth was indeed wrapped around the face like this, and even if, in my explanation, if there was a vertically collimated burst of radiation, that the image, when you unwrap it, should be much whiter. But it's not. And there's indication of that on the back image as well. So that we don't show the wrapping effects. And there are two different explanations that I'm familiar with. One explanation is that perhaps the burial ointments were in the form of flowers. in like a long tube, like a long pillow or something, a long tube placed on either side of the body so that the cloth across the face was relatively flat. That's one explanation. That's the explanation that Giulio Fonte, a shroud researcher in Italy, I guess, Now, my alternate explanation, and I'm not sure which is correct here, is that perhaps the electrostatic effects of my explanation could elevate the top, based upon the artistic appearance of the image as we see it, that there was no wrapping either of the front or the back, so that the body was elevated over the cloth. So some parts of the body don't indicate the flattening that you would expect to see. Maybe that was from rigor mortis, I'm not sure. But that's being worked on. So there's no certain explanation on that yet. Any other questions? Yes? Yes, there's been various different attempts to recreate something like the image. The very best product of the face came out just a few months ago from a researcher that was using a infrared laser called a femtosecond laser. Now a femtosecond is 10 to the minus 15th second. That would be a radiation burst which would last a millionth of a billionth of a second. And he used that laser and he produced a very good image of the face. But he combined that with one important element, and that was information to control it. And that's exactly what I'm saying here. It was created by radiation, controlled by information. So it's a confirmation of what I'm saying. Yes? Blood question. Is that something that could be exacerbated from the job he was? I would think it would. Ron Wyatt makes all kinds of fantastic claims, and I'm not sure what to make of them. That might be a good way to say it. I'm just not sure what to make of them. Yes, the blood is male, but as to how many chromosomes, I wouldn't... You realize Jesus was a real human being, so that wouldn't... It wouldn't surprise me if he had normal chromosomes. Yes, go ahead. Did you mention that the flax could be controlled? Yes, there's been some report of them seeing the hairline cracks or the joining points of the various sections of the skull. Question? There's no paint pigment. There's real blood on the shroud, yes. There's real blood that's been tested, I don't know, 12 or 16 different ways as to whether it's human or not, and it's passed all of those tests as being human blood. Those tests don't necessarily exclude every other animal, but every test that they've been able to do is consistent with it being human blood. Yes? Did the shielding of the fire effect both sides, or so were both sides even in this color? Or was it one side more than the other? That needs further investigation. I think in places it went all the way around. Maybe not toward the edges of the discoloration, you know, the start and end of the discoloration may not have gone all the way around, but that needs to be further investigated. Question? What about coins on the eyes? Yes, I list 14 different ways, and I'll mention some of them tomorrow. 14 different date indicators have been recognized for the Shroud-of-Jones. It's not just carbon dating. There's 14 different options. 13 of the date indicators are consistent with the first century and contradict the carbon dating. One of those is the possibility of a coin being over one eye. There are some reports of another coin being over the other eye. But over the one eye, after extensive enhancement of the images, they can see what they believe to be three, possibly four different letters up at the 11 o'clock position, which would identify that coin as a Roman lepton, which would be minted by Pontius Pilate between 29 and 32 AD. Now, some people doubt that. They think that it's really just the result of our enhancement of the image, and that you stop enhancing it once you get what you want. I tend to think that it's real. Any other questions? And that was supposed to be found on the Shroud of Turin? Okay. There's often evidence that's come out like that, and a lot of times we have to just wait and see on further information like that. There's a lot of things that are claimed to be found in the image, whether it's a plaque something around the neck, chain attached to the head, which shows movement, thus indicating multiple radiation pulses. These are all possibilities that need to be further investigated that we've heard of. And we're kind of taking a wait-and-see attitude on that. Yes? Nothing. Just a laser. That'd be the only option. In other words, what we're talking about, what we've done here is we've followed the evidence where it leads. And what we've come up with is that from a dead, crucified body, there has been an extremely rapid, think in the terms of milliseconds or maybe even microsecond range, extremely rapid, extremely intense burst of radiation. The radiation that formed the image, probably charged particles, had to be vertically collimated. So realize that we're talking about something that's outside of our current understanding of the laws of physics. That's the way that I see it. OK? Now, that's the way I lead it. So I'm just approaching this in a scientific fashion. So I'm just saying that we're talking about something that is outside or beyond our current understanding of the laws of physics. Yes, question? You say that images, like 3D images, Yes, the History Channel has the best one out on that. Well, that's true. That's basically taking the three-dimensional information that's on the shroud, and then they work back how a cloth would be draped over a body to determine the vertical separation between the body and the cloth. And based upon that information for every point on the body, they then relate that to the density of the image on the shroud in order to create a statue. So that's one of the features of the Shroud of Shurn. It contains three-dimensional information related to the vertical distance between the body and the cloth at each point. Hey. Well, I'm not sure I followed your question. The radiation is diminishing as it travels vertically due to absorption, scattering, and possibly even decay, so that it gets weaker as it travels that vertical distance, so that for vertical distances over about three or four centimeters, about that far, there's no discoloration. Yes, question. Yes, yes, it's in Oviedo, Spain. The Greek word is pseudarium. I didn't mention it. I will mention it on tomorrow's presentation. The pseudarium of Oviedo, the Greek word is pseudarium. Pseudarium is translated either face cloth or head cloth. It could be translated either way. And this was an item that was put onto his head after he dies. They climbed up and they wrapped it around his head to catch the blood that was coming out of his nose and his mouth in order to bury that blood with his body. Because in Jewish culture, the life is in the blood, Leviticus says, interpreted to mean that the soul is in the blood. So, they have to bury the blood. On television, years ago, I saw someone... There was some type of an event where someone was blown up. The ladies were out on the Cobblestone Street, sopping up the blood on the Cobblestone Street in order to bury it with the person. Okay, so the head cloth would be put on, head cloth or face cloth, would be put on, it was actually put on partway, his head was evidently over, it couldn't be put all the way over, so they had to double it back, so the pattern on the Sudarium of Oviedo correlates well with the Shroud of Turin, except it doubles back. But it's the same type of blood, AB, male, high in bilirubin, we didn't get to that, but that's an evidence of extreme damage to red blood cells, as would occur with flogging. Of course, a forger or an artist would not know to put Billy Rubin into the blood in 1355. Of course. So, you know, you draw your own conclusions here, but I know what my conclusion is. Yes. Okay. Did that end? One more? All right. Yes, the distance between the body cloth has just been determined experimentally by draping cloth over people. There were other parts to your question. What were some of the other parts to your question? The technology to make this image has never existed, has never existed in the past, does not exist today. Now with laser technology and computer technology you might be able to get close to it, but see in my concept it wasn't produced by a laser. emitting infrared, visible, or ultraviolet light is primarily charged particles. So in my concept, what you'd have to control would be charged particles to create an extremely rapid single burst of this radiation to create the static discharge off the fibers so that the result of heating and production of ozone could then create the discoloration. All that has to be explained. As far as can be determined from the experiments that have been done so far, and realize that the Shroud of Turin is not just open to anyone that wants to go there and do experiments on it. time in history that it's been thoroughly investigated was 1978. Not before, not since. We're trying to get a second try at a serious investigation of the Shroud of Turin, hopefully in 2025, when it goes on display. Question? Inverse square law doesn't apply if you have collimated radiation. The diminishing of the intensity of the radiation basically falls off fairly linearly. with distance. Now you can take a laser and with a powerful laser you can point it at the moon and you can see it on the spot on the moon that it hasn't spread out much. So in other words, the inverse square law doesn't apply to any kind of collimated radiation. But you're welcome to talk with me afterwards and please look at things on the back table. Thank you. I think we're charging $20 for the books, 500 pages. I wrote 10% of it. Appendix G. My Lord, my Savior, forever You're faithful My Lord, my Savior, forever You're good to me Your love's enough to ransom us Your voice will calm the seas Your arms stretched out to grant us life It brings me to my knees My Savior, my God, how can I remain standing, being washed by the flooded gates of heaven above? When grace so amazing meets the spiritual rain, the love of our Savior did He freely give. And I just can't imagine what He wants for me. Please open up my ears. Song of creation, my perfect melody To you we sing, hope of the nations Fill us with your holy fire It's you that we seek, and I'm so overwhelmed My life is painful, I'm finally free When grace so amazing meets the spiritual rain The love of our Savior, that He freely gave And I just can't imagine what He wants from me He's the one of my eyes My Lord, my Saviour, forever Your faithful My Lord, my Saviour, forever Your good My Lord, my Saviour, forever Your faithful My Lord, my Saviour, forever Your good My Lord, my Saviour, forever Your faithful My Lord, my Saviour, forever My Lord, my Savior, forever You're faithful My Lord, my Savior, forever You're good to me When grace so amazing meets the spiritual rain The love of our Savior that He freely gave I just can't imagine what He would do My Lord, my Savior, forever You're faithful My Lord, my Savior, forever You're good to me