He Died for Us, and He Lives!

We’re just about to begin Holy Week, which culminates in celebrating the greatest event in human history. Christmas would not celebrate an important birth had not the resurrection also happened some thirty-three years later.

While we go through this life depending on faith more than knowledge, there are some things that are evidence for our faith. And we can use those things to strengthen our faith, but they don’t replace it.

Dr. Jeremiah J. Johnstone talks with Glenn Beck about the 
Shroud of Turin, with a replica displayed behind them.
Screenshot from here.

A couple of months ago, Glenn Beck interviewed Pastor Jeremiah Johnstone, an evangelical pastor who has specialized in the study of Christ’s death and resurrection (BlazeTV version here, YouTube version here). He tells that, when he defended his dissertation at Oxford, his supervisor, a good person and scriptural expert, was going to give him full marks, but hesitated and asked, “Do you actually believe the resurrection of Jesus happened?” Johnstone answered that, yes, going by the evidence, the most likely explanation was that it really happened. And this brilliant scriptural scholar says, “I don’t see it that way.”

The hesitancy to believe—among pastors and biblical experts—is something I’ve been aware of for some years. Only about half of pastors believe in the literal resurrection of Christ, our Lord and Savior.  I don’t know what they hang their faith on, if not that. It must take some mental gymnastics to preach of Christ, but only as a historical figure worth admiring for his teachings.

Evidence doesn’t seem to convince some people. And the people it would likely convince probably already have faith. But that is not always true. Sometimes the evidence opens an unbelieving mind up to think, “What are the ramifications for my life if this is true?” And whatever brings people closer to Christ is for the good.

Johnstone’s purpose on Glenn Beck’s program was to provide evidence for the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin. Until the last few years, I hadn’t thought much about this. Catholic relics may or may not be interesting museum pieces, but I wouldn’t see them as necessary for faith. And many are inventions, albeit old ones by now. As Glenn says, you could make a forest of the supposed authentic crosses of Jesus.

Back in the 1980s, the Shroud was carbon dated as a forgery made around 1200 AD. That is pretty damning evidence. But it turns out the sample piece used for that carbon dating was taken from a repair patch. The Shroud has survived at least three fires, and has singe marks to prove it. There are multiple places where new fabric was woven in to make repairs.

More recent sampling—avoiding the repairs—has been different. Now there are newer techniques and technologies for dating. They used a something called WAXS—wide-angle x-ray scattering—comparing the Shroud of Turin to a shroud from Masada, both showing decay approximating 2000 years.

Experts in some 60 scientific and scholarly disciplines have studied the Shroud. There was careful examination of the pollen found on the Shroud. One would expect, since it has traveled quite a bit, that it would have pollen and other microscopic bits showing its European locations. But it turns out most of the pollen actually shows plants from the Israel area, and not just any plants from there, but plants that bloom and have pollen in the spring—at the time of Passover, which is when Christ’s death and resurrection took place.

Another remarkable thing is that the image on the Shroud is a negative, as in a photographic negative. If it were a forgery, it was made as a negative centuries before the invention of photography and any understanding of photo negatives. In other words, if it were forged, it was done in a way that neither the forger nor anyone seeing it would understand what they were seeing. Also, there is no evidence of paint, oxidation, or added pigmentation. The image isn’t stained through. A linen thread has between 70 and 150 fibers; the image penetrates only about 3 fibers, although I believe blood stains penetrate through.

I don’t know for certain that the Shroud of Turin is authentic. But when I listen to Pastor Johnstone and others who have studied it, my mind is certainly open to the possibility that it is.

If it is authentic, there are some things we can know about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The image on the Shroud is of a bearded man of Semitic features. His shoulders were dislocated, which Johnstone explains would have been the result of the weight of the body on the outstretched arms.

The image on the Shroud has 30 to 50 puncture wounds on the head, as could have been caused by a crown of Bethlehem thorns. Johnstone demonstrates that the crown was more of a helmet than a wreath, as often depicted. The thorns are long and sharp. Even a single poke would cause significant pain.

Crown of thorns replica made with Bethlehem thorns;
9-inch nail replica in the background.
Screenshot from here.

The crown of thorns was not a usual practice of crucifixion; there is only record of this one instance. It was an added misery, mocking our Savior as “King of the Jews,” which the Romans posted on a sign above him. You might recall, the Jews who called for His crucifixion protested that it should say He called himself King of the Jews, implying that He wasn’t really. But the Romans didn’t acquiesce to that wish; they left the mocking label that identified him accurately.

There was a lot of blood on the Shroud. It was identified as human blood, type AB, which is rare; we know it as universal receiver blood. It’s possible to differentiate between blood spilled while alive and post-mortem blood. There was blood related to the scourging; this torture was so severe that many crucifixion victims did not survive it to be hung. They’ve counted over 372 wounds from the scourging—where two Romans used flagrums, causing six wounds per strike. The count does not include the sides of the man, because the image is two-dimensional.

Glenn Beck holds a replica of a Roman flagrum, used for scourging.
Screenshot from here.

There’s blood where the nails were placed. These were 9-inch nails, and the Romans knew how to place them for maximum pain; in the hands only would not have held the weight of the body, so they placed nails in the wrist, where nerve endings would cause even more pain. The feet, or ankles, are nailed together with one nail. Excruciating doesn’t begin to describe the pain our Savior went through on the cross—only shortly after his ordeal in Gethsemane, which caused sweat like blood from every pore, beyond the endurance of a normal mortal.

So, blood from those sources was shed during life. But there’s blood near a wound in the side, where the Romans used a short sword, or lance, to ensure his death (rather than breaking leg bones, as was typical, but that would happen to go against prophecy—not that the Romans knew this). This blood, mixed with water, was post-mortem blood. And, while Pastor Johnstone didn’t mention this, I’ve understood that the water mixed with blood coming from that piercing of the side, up and into his heart, showed that His heart had burst. Jesus literally died of a broken heart.

Glenn Beck holds a replica of a spear or lance used to wound
Jesus in the side, penetrating up into His heart, to ensure death.
Screenshot from here.

The image shows a man with bent knees. That would have been his position when rigor mortis set it, which lasts about 40 hours. Dr. Johnstone estimates that Jesus would have been dead for 39 hours, rising just before rigor mortis ended and decay set in.

One of the fascinating things the Shroud may be telling us is of the flash moment the resurrection happened and the image was created. Pastor Johnstone says,

Another scientist, another school has given five years to study this, just the amount of electromagnetic energy or even radiation it would take to produce an image on a shroud like this. But the fascinating thing is the timing, because, when they sample it, it takes a lot of time to get the image on the shroud, but then the shroud would burn up almost instantaneously.

So we know the image of the Shroud, based on five years of study on light—and again, you can read all this; it's fascinating—we know that it happened in one 140th of a billionth of a second, and it took 34,000 trillion watts of energy emanating from the body in a flash of one 140th of a billionth of a second to produce that image. So in other words, God took the first selfie.

I don’t know how they figured out how to measure those things. But, wow! I’m picturing the tomb, with that flash of light emanating from it. I don’t know whether the angels who rolled the stone away were there before or after that moment. I’m picturing them rolling the stone away first, so they could have entered and witnessed the moment. So I’m picturing a bright flash coming from inside, through an open doorway, rather than smaller streams of light escaping around the not-quite-airtight stone. (I’m trying to think how to paint this, although it would be better if a real artist gave it a try.)

The tomb, with the large stone to be rolled away, was not the typical tomb. Usually such family tombs would be about a meter square with indentations cut into the stone, like fingers, where multiple bodies could be laid. The bodies would remain until decomposed, about a year, and then the bones would be collected and placed in an ossuary. We saw this age-old process practiced in a cemetery we toured in New Orleans a couple of years ago.

But this larger tomb would have been for a wealthy man—or a king. It is believed to have been newly purchased by Joseph of Arimathea, for himself and family. It had never been used. And the Shroud, measuring 14 feet 3 inches long by 3 feet 7 inches wide, would have been what Joseph of Arimathea had prepared for his own eventual death.

The replica that Dr. Johnstone displays in Glenn’s studio—an exact photograph to scale—is about as close to examining the actual Shroud as most of us will get. The Shroud is kept in Turin, Italy, and the Archbishop there, at this point, has decided that in this coming jubilee year it will not be displayed. There are new and improved ways to safeguard such an item while making it viewable, but so far that is not being done.

As we said, the image is a photo negative. The positive shows white hair—"like wool”—which we would assume is different from His earthly hair color. I’m fascinated by the images that come from the Shroud. An image, even a photo, doesn’t always give us a full idea of how someone looks. But it’s something.

This is the actual image, turned into a positive, from the Shroud.

Image of the face on the Shroud, turned from negative to positive.
Screenshot from here.

There’s an AI rendering—I’m not sure which of these, below. The one on the left comes up in the video on BlazeTV, but the one on the right is used in the same place in the video on YouTube, near the 10-minute mark. The conversation between Glenn and Jeremiah is this:

GB: What is the most famous icon painting of his face that's, like, split in half, right?

JJ: Yes, this is fascinating, because I actually have a dear friend, Doug Powell, who's taken that icon in the image of the shroud, and he's put it in Midjourney AI to produce what I think is the best, closest image of the face of Jesus. And it is a Semitic man; it is a man from the land of Israel.

AI-generated images based on the Shroud; left is from BlazeTV; right is from YouTube.

I don’t know either way. The left one feels more peaceful; the right one looks a bit angry, although it could be pained expression or simply not smiling. Jesus would definitely look like a man from Israel. Johnstone mentions iconography from coins and early depictions that look more like the image on the Shroud than the weaker, less manly medieval depictions, and that seems true to me.

The summary of all this is that the real Jesus of Nazareth died by crucifixion, was buried in a borrowed tomb, and rose from the dead on the third day.

What evidence do we have that he rose and physically lived again? Many testimonies in the scriptures. Mary Magdalene was first to see him. Then there were the remaining eleven except Thomas, and then there were the disciples again with Thomas. He ate fish and honeycomb with them, showing that He was not just a spirit; He had a physical body. In the interim, there had been the two men on the road to Emmaus.

And then there is the long period of time, up until Pentecost (50 days after Passover, if I understand right) teaching and training His disciples, setting up His Church, during which some 500 people witnessed him.

In the Book of Mormon, He visited the people on this continent sometime after the resurrection—and were told they were whom He had referred to as His other sheep of another fold, and that there were others He would visit as well. There are similar such stories from various places around the world: northern America, Central America, Russia, Africa. In the Book of Mormon, the record shows He had them come and see Him up close, and witness the wounds in His hands and feet and side. He taught them. He blessed the children. And He set up their church structure, as He had done with the apostles in Jerusalem. I would think He did similar teaching and instruction with any other scattered sheep He visited.

In 1820 He was seen by Joseph Smith, a 14-year-old boy in upstate New York. And there are multiple times Joseph Smith and others witnessed our Lord and Savior as a resurrected being. One notable visit was after the Kirtland, Ohio, Temple dedication, April 3, 1836, after which there were also visits from Moses, Elijah, and Elias, conferring their priesthood keys with laying on of hands—meaning they had physical bodies as resurrected beings as well. (There’s a good video covering both ancient and more modern encounters with the risen Lord, here.) 

There are many stories of people interacting with Him in near death experiences. And in dreams. (I had such a dream once, although mine was clearly only a dream, not a vision, for which I had to spend some time working out the symbolic meaning, but I couldn’t describe His appearance afterward.) I have known of people in our day who testify with knowledge that He lives and has a tangible body. It may be that there are more such experiences than we know, but they are not spoken of because of their sacredness.

It seems much more likely to me that the resurrected Jesus lives, and it’s all real, than that thousands of accounts, both historical and more recent, are all a lie. That is logic and reasoning. But beyond that, there is the Spirit speaking to me, telling me that He lives, and He went through what He did because He loves me—and loves all of our brothers and sisters who have lived or will live on this earth.

And if this is all true, then what I need to do is try to live like Him—not the going through crucifixion, but the obedience to the laws of Heaven, the living a life of integrity, love, truth, and mercy—so that when we see Him in the flesh, we shall be like Him. Compared to what He went through for us, His yoke is easy, and His burden is light.

I have for some years celebrated Easter by concentrating on the scripture stories of Holy Week, and the art and music—some of the most glorious music ever written (see here, here, here, and here, for example). I celebrate Easter with eggs and bunnies and chocolates too, because those things are available, and fun, and remind us that spring is a time for rebirth, which we celebrate as symbolic evidence of the resurrection.

This year I hope my testimony here today may help someone celebrate Easter with more recognition of the grandeur of the most glorious day ever to have happened—until He comes to live among us again for the prophesied thousand years.

Please enjoy this video I found touching: "Greater Love."