Blurry Creatures - EP: 435 The Jesus Discoveries with Jeremiah Johnston

Episode Date: June 16, 2026

Dr. Jeremiah Johnston does not just talk about evidence. He brings it. A first-century Roman crucifixion nail, six inches long, curved from being hammered into flesh again and again. The dice the soldiers cast for a dying man's clothes. Ancient coins. A cup pulled from the waters of Alexandria that calls Jesus a magician and predates the gospels. One by one, he sets them on the table, and one by one, the story of the cross stops feeling like a story. We examine how the Shroud of Turin is scientific proof of the resurrection. We stare at the face of the man of the shroud, 374 scourge marks, a side wound between the fifth and sixth rib, and an image science still cannot replicate. Jeremiah breaks down the 1898 negative photograph that started it all, the flawed carbon dating, the pollen grains that only bloom in springtime in Jerusalem, and the burst of energy it would take to scorch that image into the cloth.Jeremiah is a New Testament scholar, the number one New York Times bestselling author of The Jesus Discoveries, and a man who has carried this evidence to Tucker, Shawn Ryan, and the World Economic Forum at Davos. And he comes to Blurry Creatures because he embraces the same thing we do. The supernatural is real, and the modern church has a truncated view of it. We get into the cup that calls Jesus a magician, the graffiti that mocks the crucifixion, his own angel encounter on a New Jersey highway, and the one question that ends the skeptical argument. Where is the body? This episode is sponsored by: https://livemomentous.com — Get up to 35% off your first order with promo code BLURRY at checkout! https://preborn.com/blurry — Visit the PreBorn! website or dial #250 and use keyword BABY to donate today. https://rocketmoney.com/blurry — Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Elevate your summer wardrobe. Go to quince.com slash blurry for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in Canada 2. That's quince.com slash blurry for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com slash blurry. In my mind, the shroud proves the resurrection of Jesus. It's scientific proof. So this means the body emanated out. What kind of power?

34 billion watts. But it doesn't burn it. Where I want to help modern Christians is this. It is important to have evidence. Yeah. It is important to have an evidence-based belief. That's good, man. When I was on Sean Ryan, my favorite question asked, he's like, I thought it's just about faith.

Like, why do we need proof? Yeah. And I remind people, well, the early disciples, needed proof. There's 138,000 words in the Greek New Testament, and not a shred of those words would have been written had they not had many infallible proofs. That's Acts 1-3 that Jesus was seen. The history of our earth is so different from what we can imagine. The Smithsonian that if they found out about a large skeleton somewhere was to go get it. I'm going to assume at least one person is right. Because it's a lot.

if one person's right to bust the paradigm, it all goes back to the fallen church. And the problem with the modern day church, they have a very truncated view of the supernatural. This backdrop is just pregnant with all kinds of meaning associated with this Mount Herman event. And this guy defects from the kingdom. That's a big deal. Well, we're excited. Welcome back to blurry creatures. Dr. Jeremiah Johnson's in the house. I'm going to read the back of your book. You have new books out. And We're going to talk about the blurious creature, but maybe the brightest creature. And then we're going to get into that. But thank you for coming into our basement.

I'm going to read this. Your elected member of the Preeminent New Testament Scholarly Guild, S&S. I'm not going to read that because I'm going to butcher it. And serves internationally as the president of Christian thinkers society. Jeremiah loves the local church and serves as a pastor of apologetics and cultural engagement at Preston Wood, Baptist Church. He's the author of several books, including proof of the body and the peace of God Bible. This is your new book, The Jesus Discoveries. And we're going to talk all about, there's a lot of skeptics, obviously, maybe not as many in our camp, because maybe we overbelieve in the blurry verse.

But Jesus, you know, it's not a legend. And I think that we have come to have a full understanding. Just when you introduce all the other characters in the biblical story, non-human characters, you start to believe in Jesus in a new way. So we're excited to go down in the rabbit hole today with you. If you are skeptical about Jesus, you probably won't be after this episode. Thank you for coming on. Thank you for flying here. Doctor.

I'm so excited. Call me Jeremiah. This is a learned doctor. Well, he has to prove if he's a doctor. Listen, you forgot the most important part of my bio. I am the overstressed father of tripler boys who are nine, so I've not slept in nine years. We both got a couple kids ourselves. Someone's on the younger.

I got two boys. Another one here coming. So my kids go screensaver mode if I'm not interesting in two minutes or less. So I've perfected. I've perfected. how to answer these questions or two minutes or less. And they get weird here.

I love it. Thank you for being willing to come on how you ended up on our show because I think a lot of people pass. Pass. Those guys are a little strange and weird. But what are your thoughts on Bigfoot? You know the show?

That's what we start. That's where we start with. Well, I take all eyewitness accounts. Seriously, how can you not? I mean, I have an inclination. As a historian, eyewitness testimony is huge for me. Yeah.

And one thing that I've not personally had a big foot encounter, but I actually sent out an email to our societies. People can go on my email list, Christian thinkers.com, and we have a very active society. And I said, I need a real deal bigfoot stories. I need to blow these guys minds with a big foot story. So can I read you what was sent to me? I read it last night. I love your crowdsourcing. I got this big foot question. It's like, I want to be ready. What do you go? Prep. And this gentleman, Josh writes back, I just noticed that he's a. I just noticed an evening. you were asking about a Bigfoot story, I'm sure there are many more engaging stories.

While my father and I were assisting the underground church in China, my dad ended up in Tibet. On a bus, and he was asked by a local to come visit the village. The village was a couple days walk from the last supply town where public transportation ended. Through the meeting, a friendship emerged, and my dad took my sister and on subsequent trips to his village over the years. Yeah, we were Americans, so we did have to sneak around the border to get into China because of the American visa issue. I had read of reports earlier about Bigfoot sightings in Tibet. And so when we were out in the mountains, hanging out with the locals, I thought it would be awesome to ask them directly since that they were so disconnected from the

outside world. Their villagers literally looked like they were, their villages literally looked like they were from a thousand years ago. Anyway, we had a monk that had been with the Dalai Lama and had gotten saved and he was our translator. So check this out. Josh continues. I asked him to ask the locals if they had any experiences with Bigfoot. I forgot what they call it, but I, but I described Bigfoot and they clearly understood.

Immediately, they excitedly related stories that, yes, they did have sightings and encounters. They said how it liked alcohol, the Bigfoot there, in which Tibetans always seem to have their homemade milk. white alcohol on hand and related a story where around a fire one evening on a trail a bigfoot attacked the group and used one of their knives and killed a man there are other stories i don't remember they seemed to think that big foot was connected to evil this was back in the early 2000s and i was just amazed because these people would have no bias on the idea of bigfoot they thought

america was just over the mountains a little ways away that's wild so we have a big foot siding. He likes Tibetan alcohol and he kills people. With knives. Sometimes they get mad when you steal their secret stash. So hey, you know, 60 years of sightings, I take that into account. But here's my big question for you guys. Where's the body? Oh, well, you're going to tell us more about that today. I'm guessing. Yes. I mean, that's, that's always been this sort of skeptical answer. Where's the body? Where are the bones, you know, all these questions that we've tried to answer over the years. There's a few answers for that too. I love it.

They're interesting. I think like we've had a at least one episode that we did with a gentleman that shot a Bigfoot and was really reluctant to come on, said, more or less that he had a visit shortly after from the men in black. The men in black essentially. It said that we know what happened. We're not taking it up there. And we know where it happened, et cetera. And they took him, they took him to the location.

They thought that he stashed the body in the wood. somewhere and they were trying to figure out that was sort of what my after he told the story i was like they were trying to figure out if if he had the body so he shot it and it and it fell off the side of the mountain he doesn't know what happened to it but there's a much more materialistic and naturalistic idea if there really is a small population we've had it postulated before that like yeah if you've ever seen like a time lapse of a deer carcass disappearing in a forest it almost everything is gone you know it's very so there's that idea too then like 40 days too perhaps those things just being so remote and so few, I guess, scarce that you could have it disappear.

But there's also all the weird stuff, right? You talk about the weird stuff and why it matters. There's enough crazy stories of Bigfoot dematerializing or tracking a Bigfoot and having the tracks just dies in a different dimension. It does. Without a doubt. He's like a quantum computer. He just dumps his body into the next.

The stories are that they're pretty intelligent. They can evade all kinds of detection. they know not to be seen somehow. They know to avoid trail cams. I think they can sense those things too. So they would probably bury their dead or they would go to remote places or they go down in caves

and they just go places where you just won't find them. So I think they're smart enough to kind of do whatever it is to avoid detection. Exactly. Have you guys covered any angelic encounters? Yeah. A lot of near death experiences and a lot of... I know I experienced an angel.

You're going to tell a story before we get into? Let's do it. Yeah. I was in Trenton, New Jersey, in a car accident. and I was in seventh grade and we were trying to get back to the big boy restaurant. Remember the big boy restaurant? Yeah, big boys.

And a car hit his head on. My dad was driving and I look up at him as a seventh grader and he's like this. I mean, it looks like he's dead. I can't get the door open and all of a sudden this African American man just pulls the door off the car, pulls me out, helps me get my dad out. And then I look around and he is gone. Like it rips the door off the car?

Yeah. And he is gone. Wow. The ambulance later. It could have been Apollo Creed. But I believe I entertained an angel unaware. I've always thought that was an angel. Wow.

Yeah. We interviewed a guy that was a great story. Remember that story when this guy was driving home and his dad was drunk? And he said his dad was swerving in Atlanta. And these golden hands came out and just grabbed the wheel and during the car. And we hear that all the bizarre stories. Well, scripture even says that. We entertain angels unaware.

I know often. Although they were very aware of the angels in Sodom. Yes, they were. The quote, Sodomites were. Yeah, I don't think they're too much different than us. I think that's sort of our understanding over the years of, you know, there's stories of angels interacting with humans. And again, people get skeptical of how does those things to go together.

We think angels are spirits or something else and there's no physicality to them. And I'm like, well, what's a resting state of an angel? Right. What's the resting state of Jesus? And obviously, we're talking about the physical body of Christ today. and all the evidence that surrounds that, that's this professional of a segue as I can do that. I love that. I've got one too, but Jeremy, like,

I think if people aren't familiar, I'd be surprised because you've kind of, you're kind of having a cultural moment. You have the number one book. Yeah. We were talking about this before. Number one. The Jesus Discoveries is New York Times number one book. Of course, you're on Sean Ryan here in town for Easter episode,

a million views. You've done, you know, Pierce Morgan, daily wire Michael Knowles. You went to Davos for the World Economic Forum. And now you've really stepped it up and gone on blurry creatures. That's right. I mean, this is the pinnacle. I'm sorry, it goes downhill from here.

No, this is peak right now. In academic, you get invited to Davos to talk to the World Economic Forum. That's wild. It's wild. And you're an evidence guy. So it's really good, this line of thinking for us is like you're asking, what's the evidence? What do you think about? Bigfoot?

Where's the body? And you're going to leave people with. any skeptical brains today. Well, and Tucker, too. I mean, Tucker's the one who kicked it all off. The Tucker, yeah. Sometimes you're walking through the woods, Luke. Looking for all things blurry.

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So you have a bunch of, you have a bunch of things you brought with us. We're going to do show and tell. Where do we start? People have got a, well, the place I want to start is I understand how real that experience was. I believe without a doubt I experienced an angel. So I don't discount these testimonies

of people that see things, see Bigfoot if he's interdimensional. I don't discount that. As a historian, I work with evidence and eyewitness testimony, and I want to get as close to the event as possible. And I also know that eyewitness testimony, and half the eyewitnesses think that the Titanic sunk in one piece, and the other half believe that it broke apart.

So two varying views of people that were actually there in 1912. The disappointing part, Jeremiah, was there was probably room for Jack. Yeah, to get on the lifeboat. Exactly. Yeah. Talking about conspiracy theory. See, we're highbrow out here.

I know. I love that. Deep, deep. Deep thinkers. You know, I know your North Star is Heiser. And I mean, he says one, you know, experience of truth can break a whole paradigm. Yeah.

And evidence. And so that's what I've experienced. I've experienced the evidence for Jesus Christ. And it has transformed my life. And so my kiddos who are five, two teenagers, three nine-year-olds, We're at dinner. And they're like, Dad, all my friends on TikTok and Snap, we cannot appeal to the Bible to tell them why Jesus is who he says he is. If he's really who he says he is, there should be archaeological fallout all over the Mediterranean world. And they said, Dad, write a book and let us know everything we can know about Jesus outside the Bible.

And I looked at my son Abel. I was like, hold my diet Coke. So I wrote that book. It took 16 years of research. But I read. wrote it in a month. Yeah, that's right. Don't open a know. Don't open a note. That's what, 1986. Speaking of relics, we have a few here as well.

I have some Luther beer from Martin Luther's brewery, by the way. It's like getting old. But no, that's the answer. And so it's amazing. And I had to stop at 10. I mean, I just picked the coolest 10 pieces of evidence. And so for those that are skeptical, I invite you to enjoy this program because I was too. Yeah.

And I think we've always gone to context. there's so much context, because the Bible gives you sort of these topics and keeps going, and people will ask questions about, okay, what's Genesis 6 really mean? How do we know understand these things? And I think that it wasn't written for skeptics. It was just sort of a linear story. And I think that we're, we kind of bring our skepticism into everything as modern Western thinkers. I think I don't think the ancients were as skeptical about these things. No, they weren't. And one thing, the reason your show is so wildly popular is you embrace the supernatural. And there is a part of modern Christianity that wants to put God in a box and not

embrace the modern supernatural. When you think about the life of Jesus, we have 89 chapters in the Gospels, only for the infancy narratives Christmas. Two-thirds of the Gospels is what the heck happened at a historical moment in time that first Easter weekend. So we have parts of, and people don't realize this. We have parts of 26 days of the life of Jesus in the Gospels. I don't mean parts 24 hours of 26 days. I mean parts of 26 days. And Jesus is made famous first and foremost as an exorcist and a healer in the first century. And that's why I pull out the Jesus Cup, which is a great segue to it. I want to show you guys my first artifact. Can I do that? Yeah, yeah. Because I mean, this, This is mind blowing.

And we know that we know that one interesting thing too, often they brought the demon-possessed or what we'd call demonized individuals at night to Jesus. If you read the gospels and if you actually read them closely, there's an economy of words, but they would often bring them to Jesus at night. And Jesus could exercise demons and he wouldn't charge you for it. He could even exercise demons over a long distance. And so long before the Domenical tradition, his teaching, long before the resurrection event itself, Jesus is a famous miracle worker.

And remember, they come to him. They're like, hey, these guys are over here. They're casting out demons in your name. What do we do with them? And he said, hey, let them do it. You know, those that are not for us. Why are night? Let's do this.

Yeah. And that's just another interesting evidential detail. It says he went throughout Galilee, Samaria, healing, all who were sick and exercising demons. By the way, I see Contra up, up, down, down, left, right, B.A. Select start. Infinite lives. We've just grown. We've just connected. You're just as distracted as I am. I just saw Contra over there. Forgive me. I'm in the middle of my spiel. And thank you God for contract. I've got Titanic down here too. It might be out of view. You can give it to them. If there was super timeable, if there's super tecumable over there. than you guys had had been a little.

Speaking about Jackson, hanging on the wall. Everyone knows about that. It's sorry. So why in I, so we've heard the, it seems like there's an uptick of blurry things that happen at night, specifically like 2 a.m.

It's also just like, as you're getting to, it's an interesting detail. Yeah. Like, it's just a detail that's like, okay, it happened at night.

So it becomes that much more, I mean, as Christians, we believe the Bible, but it becomes that much more believable to be like, why, why put this tiny detail in here?

if it's not real. I think there's a variety of cultural reasons for it. Remember also the rejection that those, there was a health and wealth gospel in Judaism in the first century. If you were sick, if you had problems, God wasn't with you. I mean, this was, the temple establishment

was rife with this teaching. And so a lot of it might be just they were embarrassed. They came at night as sick or, hey, my sons demonized. I don't want anyone to see me. And what's fascinating is, 25% of the Roman Empire is sick, dying, or in need of immediate medical attention on any given day in the life of Jesus. And so most of them were starving. They averaged about two meals a day. So when you have Jesus, this is why we have to do the CIA method of Bible study, context, interpretation, application. We got to get into the world of the text. We've got to see the text in first century with first century eyes, not Western eyes. And so in Luke 7, it's one of my favorite passages, John the Baptist says is having serious doubts.

And why wouldn't he? We know from Josephus that he's in the dungeons of MacIris, where he will lose his head from Antipas. And John the Baptist is like, man, did I get this right? Was he really the son of God? And how does Jesus respond? And this is why your program is so great. Jesus does not shame John the Baptist. I mean, John the Baptist baptized him.

And John's like, hey, did I really get it right? And he responds. And of course, echoing Elijah and Elisha, 722 of Luke, the blind sea, the deaf here, the dead are necros, a gyro, literally the dead stand up. And he responds with evidence. So he doesn't shame him. He sharpens him. So that's another prayer I have for this broadcast right now is all of us go through times, even John the Baptist, where we doubt, we wonder. Is this really true?

And guess what? There's a lot of evidence to back it up. Well, it's also like some of the story of the disciples, which is I think this is such the human story is that people that walked and talked, his brother James, for example, these people had doubts, right? Yeah. I mean, Jesus, when he's sleeping in the boat, is what I think about. Yeah.

And he's like, why are you waking me up? You guys just don't believe that I am why I am. And they lived and ate and joked and hung out and walked around with him. And his family thought he was nuts. He struggled with that. I mean, well, you're getting ahead of me with James. No, but I got to show you this. I got to show you this.

So nothing like this has ever happened. I published this book that now, thank God, is a number one New York Times bestseller. But in the first time in my scholarly career that global headlines were covering a section of my book. And this is a cup that was taken out of the waters of Alexandria by, Frank Gaudio, and I have permission from him to use these photographs. What's cool about my book, there's pictures throughout it. And so parents can read it with their kiddos. So you can see it almost looks like a teacup. One of the handles has been broken off. And this is a picture, Dia Christo on the back. That's a variant form of Christ, Hul, Goystes, and Greek, through Jesus,

the enchanter. Isn't that interesting? Or through Jesus, the magicians. And this was likely a pagan, we don't know for sure, but likely, talking to the archaeologists, they're poking fun at Jesus as a healer. And yet we have all of these different artifacts, including this one. And by the way, this is the earliest writing that we have with the name of Christ on it. This antides the Gospels. This is dated to the 50s, guys, 80-50. Wow. And so Jesus, and it's in Alexandria, it tells us that in his life, lifetime, in his own lifetime, his name is so famous that people are like, hey, if I insert this

in a chant, or if I insert this in a curse, it works because there's power associated with this name. So it's not necessarily like reverence for Jesus's name. No, no, it's it's just what we see in acts, you know, when Simon Magus, you know, they're trying, they, how much do I need to pay to do these miracles? You know, how do I get this gift you have? And people would just know that his name, you know, had power. And again, the point here is Jesus is a famous exorcist and miracle worker. Jesus embraced the supernatural. And that's something that your show, I think, is bringing back into vogue because we can get real boring Christianity if we're not believing in the Jesus of the Bible. You know, you downloaded that app. New Year, New Me. And now it's June, Luke. And you need to cancel

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subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps you lower your bill so you can grow your savings. They saved users over 880 million in canceled subscriptions in the last year. And it'll help you set budgets, goals, personalized insights, regular reports. And the average user who uses a financial goal with Rocket Money save over $70 on average in the first 30 days. So check out Rocket Money. Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Try it for $0.0 at rocketmoney.com slash blurry. That's rocketmoney.com slash blurry. Rocketmoney.com slash blurry. Obviously there's this legend that's kind of spreading after the fact, right? And I think there's people that actually knew him, have a relationship with him, which is the ultimate, you know, called the gospel.

It's like it's more than just knowing about something. It's having a relationship with the son of God. So this is what you said Alexandria? Yeah. Yeah. So I mean. He found it underwater in Alexandria. So if we're like in 80, 50.

2008. This is like the height of the empire? Well, I'm just saying that that's how far the message. And you have to understand in Judaism, we've seen Jewish. magic books, Jewish incantation spells. It took Solomon's name around seven to eight hundred years to be used. Solomon's name was the name that would be invoked by exorcists. Wow. And it took 800 years for his name to climb to that pedestal of being the name that they would use. And this goes back to the Sons of Skaiva in Acts 19. Remember, they go in and they

they have philactories on. They're wearing essentially battle garments. Philactories, they're wearing all their amulets that the demons are supposed to be afraid of. And that's where we get that evidential, that unique detail in Acts 19 that they went out of the room naked, meaning their phalactories had no power over the demon. And that's when the demon says, Jesus, I know, Paul, I know, who are you? Yeah. So they were trying to invoke his power without having that relationship. And isn't it interesting that Jesus has made famous?

And I feel like we miss this. We miss the fact that there's been more documented miracles in the last 50 years of the church than the previous 300 combined. God still works miracles today. So Jesus' name is famous quickly. Yes. And it doesn't take a long time for that.

He'll feed you, he'll heal you, he won't charge you, and he knows you. And he sees your needs. And he can heal long distance. And he can exercise demons long distance as well. But also we know that we, I remember just talking about this, there's also these accounts in the gospels and of the disciples going out and then they, like it doesn't work for it. Mark 9.

Yeah. They're like, we can't do this. And he's like, you have little faith. Where's your faith? Yeah. And but you know what? My heart goes out to them at that point because it's one of the great questions that Jesus asked.

Jesus asks over 300 questions in the gospels. And in Mark 9, that very passage, Jesus has just been transfigured. Some people believe, I think it was RT France, who thought that his body may have still been glistening coming down from the mountain. And the father is under such duress because of his son. I have four sons. I've been under duress before. And he looks at Jesus and he said, if you can do anything, will you do it?

And the great question Jesus asks in Mark 9, 22 to 24, if I can. If I can. All things are possible for those who believe. And he said, Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. And I know that's where a lot of people are at right now. Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. And guess what? That was enough faith for Jesus to act.

Jeremiah, does this, you know, and I want to go back just real quickly because, like, you know, we talked about the book being number one and we have our first, like, piece of evidence here. We've talked in the show before about how there's more evidence outside the Bible for the existence of Jesus Christ and there is for like Caesar Augustus. something like eight references for Caesar, who everyone says, that's a real person. Of course, he ruled Rome, right? And Jesus says all these other, you know, documentation would be Josephus and historians, et cetera, right? So it seems like there's a lot of evidence.

But the fact this book goes number one, I mean, what, and I want to get back to the evidence, but did that surprise you? And why do you think, why do you think people are so interested at this moment in time? Yeah, because people want truth and they want it to be a truth that just. changes their life and they're tired of the Christian fluff. There's been a lot of Christian fluff books, the touchy-feely Christian fluff. And guess what?

The Bible is really exciting. Jesus' life is freaking exciting. And we need to do a better job. And we need to not present the boring version of Christianity anymore. We need to present the supernatural version that changed the world. I mean, you can't, there is no Western civilization

without the Jesus movement. Of course. I mean, Galatians 328 changes the world. There's neither June or Greek, slave nor fee, free male nor female, were all one in Christ Jesus. I mean, that was seditious for Paul to write that. Women were elevated in the early church.

I met with the late Rodney Stark. By 80, 80, 50 years after the resurrection, the church is two-thirds female. The Christianity's closest competitor was a cult of Mithra that was a male only cult. It was dominant in the Roman legions. And so why is it so popular versus just the blessing of God? Secondly, it's dedicated my son, Abel.

We experienced a physical healing with him, so I believe God honored that. And also, it's crisp. The problem with academics is we just want to drone on. And even when I talk about the shroud, less is more. So in about two and a half hours of reading with your kids, you're going to know the top 10 discoveries of Jesus. And it was a labor of love, but I got permission and paid thousands of dollars to have all these photos throughout the book, because it's so cool to actually see it like I'm showing you all. Yeah. So, I mean, I think obviously in the skeptics, when we talked about in the beginning of the show. I mean, disciples are skeptical.

They're like looking at them going. Christianity, we should be skeptical of these ways, shouldn't we? But I think that we kind of come hardwired as skeptical people. I think doing this, it's like there is certain topics. And I was skeptical at first and then I kind of slowly came along to it. But Christians are skeptical. You said there's a little over 40 days documented in the Bible. The Bible doesn't help us in terms of our skepticism. You have to sort of. read it and you only sometimes get a little chunk and you got to go, why, what do I think about that? Right. Why do you think the Bible does things like that? It doesn't give us long, detailed descriptions of things. It just sort of drops it. Because they knew that someday we would want, we would need to see something every nine seconds and our attention spans would be so ridiculously low.

I mean, you think Josephus gives us an account that's 28 times longer than a single gospel. And I think though the Gospels say what they needed to say. They get the job done. And that's why brevity is a gift. You can give the gospel in two minutes. And you can share the evidence. And that's why we've packaged the book this way where, hey, let me appeal to the shroud. Let me appeal to the James Osherry.

Let me appeal to coins, which I have tons of show and tell to show you guys. Let's do it. Just real quick, I like the Titanic sort of story that some people think a broken half. Some people say even eyewitness accounts. We still debate what we saw. Yeah. Was it one angel of the tomb or two? Yeah. Well, I mean, we don't doubt what happened, but people saw what they think they saw.

Yeah. But I think, you know, blessed is those who believe it didn't see. And I think that there's something where you have to have a relationship with God to then see, not with your physical eyes, but with the eyes of your heart. And I think that that is the difference is that the religious of the time knew all the facts, but couldn't see Jesus in front of them. So I think that that that's the difference. They wanted to kill them. Yeah. So it's interesting, though, too, where I want to help modern Christians is this, it is important

to have evidence. It is important to have an evidence-based belief. I mean, when I was on Sean Ryan, my favorite question asked, he's like, I thought it's just about faith. Like, why do we need proof? Yeah. And I remind people, well, the early disciples needed proof, there's 138,000 words in the Greek New Testament.

And not a shred of those words would have been written had they not had many. infallible proofs. That's Acts 1,3, that Jesus was seen. And that's why I love that John 20, verse 8 says he saw and he believed. Edone, this Greek word to see is used 186 times in the New Testament. So the Bible invites people to look and see and believe. Invited Thomas. Come on, come on over. Yeah, he didn't chat. Oh, I hope we can time travel someday. I write about this in my chapter on James, the Lord's brother. I mean, remember John 7.5, not even his brothers believed in him. They were humiliated by Brother Jesus.

James is probably back in the family stone shop working. He's embarrassed. Brother Jesus has been crucified. He's already been achieved. His brother was accused of being a bastard by some. This son of ill repute is not the carpenter's son. And he's there. And there's this amazing appearance tradition in 1st Corinthians 157

where it says, and then he appears to James. And I wish I could go back to that moment where he's like, bro, check out my side, check out my wrists. They really got me. And we know that James then becomes the leader of the first megachurch.

He's a pillar of the church. Paul meets with James to make sure he has the gospel right. And James dies, and we know this according to Josephus in 8062, stone to death, believing that his brother is the Messiah. Yeah. And so I play with the audience. I mean, I have four sons. What would it

take for you to believe your brother was the son of God? Right. Well, I mean, we have to ask ourselves these critical questions. Anyone with brothers is like, yeah. Yeah, it's like, I know that guy. He's definitely not the son of God. Well, they did kind of believe before. Obviously, if you have a false prophet, your brother

is going to know first if you're a false prophet, right? Any family out there, all the guys cashing in on the, you know, sort of the prophetic movement of selling, you know, selling the church. His brothers are going to know. I think your family always knows the real you. And that's why you're not famous in your own hometown. It's like this guy. You know, we talk a lot about mysteries, talk a lot about design and ancient architecture and the things and the beginning of human history. And every single

person walking around this earth is unique. And it started long before we got here, we were thought of. And I think that's why we're so grateful to partner with preborn because they provide free ultrasounds for women. We're facing unplanned pregnancies. And those ultrasounds matter. And it helps bring one more unique life into the world. Here, the Bible's pretty specific that we were knitted together in our mother's wombs and that he knows the number of hairs on our heads. For a lot of people, unexpected pregnancies, they happen. Dads feel overwhelmed.

I'm not sure if they're ready for fatherhood. Mom's, same thing. Like, this is why preborn is so important and why we're so vocal about supporting preborn, bringing pro-life is that pre-born provides free ultrasounds. So expectant parents can see their baby, often for the first time. And these parents often overwhelmed by the unknown are met with support, encouragement, incredible resources. They have to walk this road alone.

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It's interesting to think, why do you think Jesus even in growing up? It's a mystery. We don't know anything about his childhood. We don't know anything about like his teen years, his brothers kind of get probably a glimpse in childhood that he's something different, but they still don't know.

Even till the end, when he has to reappear at the final. Is there something else, a different mission that Jesus is on than just proving to the locals who he is? Well, I think the Bible, I think the gospels answer the question. Yeah.

If we wrote everything down that Jesus did, the libraries of the world couldn't contain it. St. John says that. But these things have been written so that you will believe. The Gospels are extremely missional. And yet, your question is valid because the late, the early church, nascent Christianity,

wants to answer all those questions. Jesus wasn't the greatest playmate. He would do weird things. He would kill things and heal them. So this is where the apocryphal gospels coming in and try to fill those gaps. Yeah. And one thing that's interesting, my expertise is in the extra canonical gospels and the greatest event of all time. You're talking about, you know, blurry creatures, is a blurry event, where's the body. We have no eyewitness accounts of the actual moment of resurrection. And the gospel of Peter comes along, which is not written by Peter in its late second century.

And that purports to tell us what happened at the tomb. Jesus emerges as a giant. Two angels follow after them. The cross follows after Jesus and the cross is talking. We have a talking, hovering, levitating cross. And so it attempts to fill in the. the gaps. So there's a lot of gap filling in some of these extra canonical works. And that's why the early churches look at them saying, no, that's not going to be in the Bible. That's not what

happens. Some of it gives you context, though. It's hard to know which extra biblical literature helps and what hurts. Well, and that's why I encourage my students just to read them and you'll see an immediate difference. I mean, just when you read them, they get names wrong. They don't seem to know the geography, correct. And then they answer questions that later generations of Christians were asking not the first original. Yes, the church fathers, right? And we've started our show with a lot of data. Like, we have a big foot footprint here.

I love it. I love it. We got the scientists on, we didn't just rely on stories alone. And I love that's what you're doing is you're like, these are the artifacts, these are some coins. Bringing all the receipts. This is a shroud. Yeah.

You know, you're piecing together evidence. And like we have is like, this is the hair. This is the DNA. This is the footprints. This is the scientist who says this can't be faked. This is not a fake thing. thing, this is a real creature, whatever it is, right? And I think that you have to appeal to that, Skep, you have to start there and then work your way to the more relational stuff, which is hard

to prove exists or doesn't exist, right? Like, does he love us? Yes. Well, you can't show the shroud and say he does, but we can see the evidence that he was a real person who died and resurrected. And where do we go from the cup? You showed us to that. It's showing tell time. Yeah. Okay. So I want you to hold some first century dice. All right. And check those out. And I don't know if you guys.

Are these real? They are made from bone. They are first century unearthed in Jerusalem. Got it from my friend Zach antiquities store number 24. Everybody needs a Zach. That's right. And you can even throw them around on the table if you want. But I want to, I want you to just know.

We should play craps. That's right. That's right. I'm hot. I'm hot. All four gospels record the evidential detail that and just hold on to them. while I talk and explain it. I mean, they all record this evidential detail

that the executioners were gambling for the clothes of Jesus. Well, the author of life was dying right behind them. And of course, this completes Psalm 22. Literally, they cast lots from my garments. David sees this prophetically a thousand years before. And you know what that tells me? It just reminds me how desensitized I can get to what happened on the cross.

So many of us are there. We're like, no, just scamma. Oh, yeah, okay, he died. Oh. And those dice are a reminder to me of his love. Romans 5-8 says, but God demonstrated his love for us and that while we were yet sinners,

Christ died for us. I said this on Russell Brand the other day because he's a movie guy. I said, it's written in the Greek. It's only one of two places in the Greek where it's written in the continuous. It's like a movie on a loop that never ends. God keeps demonstrating his love for you and me.

And that while we were at our world, worst, he sent his best. And he sent his best for guys that were gambling for his clothes and killing his son at the same time. It's a love so unimaginable. It could only be grace because it doesn't make sense. That's cool, man. So you can see, I just did that in two minutes. So you take the evidence and then it has a context, give you the application. And now the interpretation, the application is, Lord, don't let my heart be cold to what you've done ever. It's hard, though, I mean, people still in our comment section all the time the Bible's you know totally been disproven and and yet you can show them all the prophecies that have come true and all how the books connect

and how all the things there's no way that all these writers could have connect all these things and still it's it's like you can't prove in this day and age something is real or not do you believe the Holy Spirit has to come into that conversation somewhere to help us believe the evidence or well i would say it two ways um the Evidence for the Bible is such that it is the, I view them as unimpeachable historical documents based on text criticism. You don't have to have any faith to believe that.

We can go back to the earliest manuscripts and see that, oh, that's what they wrote. That's what they said. People believe this and oh, look what it did to the Mediterranean world. It utterly transformed the Mediterranean world. It Christianizes Rome. Christians care about sick people.

They care about, they care about, you, university education. They care about women. They love children. There's a letter P. Oxrincus 744 that I published where it says, Eon, ain't they la, eqbale. If it's a boy, keep it. If it's a girl, throw it away. This is a love letter. A guy wrote to his wife. And what changes that, the Jesus movement? So, I mean, we can look at the impact the scripture is made. Now, does the Holy Spirit help us believe, convict us without a doubt? The Holy Spirit is our truth guide. In Greek, he's our, our Hodego. He's literally our truth tour guide. He leads us along the roads. It's Hode Road in Greek. Hodego. He leads us along the road to truth. So there's no question that the Holy Spirit empowers

that belief. But again, we're not believing in fairy tales or legends. The Bible is about real people, real places, real events, and that is evidenced as we see. What's the next thing you got? Oh, man. Let's go. I want you to hold this. This is brand new. Just got this. This is a Roman needle. Don't prick yourself.

And do you remember Jesus is speaking to the rich people? And he is saying that it would be easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. Well, you're holding the eye of the needle right there. A lot of camels getting through this. No. But what's cool about that is to me, that's a picture of great. So again, we're using an object from the first century. This is not a replica. This is an artifact to say, well, Jesus, who can be saved? And he said, hey, with God, all things are possible. It's another reminder of the incredible grace of God that does not make sense. It is too good to be true. And that's how you know it's grace. Some people need to see these things. Some people need to touch the hands. Some people have to have more evidence. What are some stories like when you're sharing these pieces of evidence to people that they've started to believe in this story. I have received messages

every day of these kind of podcast in these books where people come back to Christ. It happened in the airport yesterday on the way here. And it is such a blessing because people want to know they're believing the truth. Everything rises and falls. If we lose our grasp on truth, we lose our grasp on God. And in a world of AI, in a world of where do you get verified information, and that's just growing to know that the absolute truth is found in Jesus. I spell truth, J-E-S-U-S-U-S, it's utterly life-changing. I mean, it is, it is my, it is utopia for me to get these emails because people are saying, I'm using this book to talk to all my skeptical friends. Because I don't, because like you said, I mean, Riley, you're going to get comments all the time

bashing the Bible, the Bible bashers. Yeah. But guess, guess, what? We don't even have to privilege the text. I mean, the first three generations of the church didn't have a Bible. They just had oral testimony and it transformed everything. Well, all the academics. They appealed to the evidence. So academics believe in Jesus. He existed. He was a character in history. What's the difference between when you present this evidence, you have to believe something else about Jesus? What do you think happens there in terms of their changing their view? Like, yeah, Jesus existed to. he was the son of God. Right. And that's what archaeology can't do. That is an act of faith.

But again, this is again, we believe in, there is a body of content that Christianity is content and Christianity is an event and it is facts of the gospel. Jay Packer would always say that. He would say we believe in the person and the facts of the gospel. And so Christianity, our worldview, has content to it. That's why we have to know something. We have to know the gospel. to believe. Now, what's so great about it, we don't have to know hardly anything to become a Christian. It's what we learned. I love what R.T. Kendall said to me, all of Bible study the rest of your life is trying to figure out what happened to you at the moment of conversion. I mean, that's literally all of it. And so I think, you know, but yet there are many skeptics who are Bible scholars.

I mean, the guy that examined me, I did a 93,000-word thesis on the resurrection in Oxford. And literally in Oxford, December 11, 2012, he shows up and my Viva Voce and my living voice. And he said, I just have one question. He said, do you actually believe the resurrection happened? And then he goes, or is that just imaginative storytelling? And I said, Professor Telford, the evidence leads him. David Hume said a wise man, she's probability. The evidence leads me to believe, yes, he physically bodily rose from the grave.

I believe that with all my heart. And he goes, oh, I don't see it that way. Let's start your Viva. and he passed me with commendation. Now, he was a student of William Barclay who, like John MacArthur would use Barclay Bible backgrounds all the time. That guy didn't believe in the supernatural at all. Yeah.

And so there is a disconnect. I mean, and they don't want to believe it to accommodate their lifestyles either. Is that the shroud? That's a point right there. Oh, yeah. Yes. Go to SBL. It's a party culture, society biblical literature, 5,000 Bible scholars.

They know all the facts. they just don't want to believe them because they would actually have to live by them. Because they would have to transform you. Yeah. That's good, man. I mean. And that was my struggle.

I would come home from faculty of theology at Keeble College. And my wife, I mean, I would say, Audrey, I don't know if anyone else is a Christian in the group. We all have our Greek New Testaments on our lap. And I don't mean that judgmentally. I mean that like I'm looking for a brother or a sister in Christ around the room who actually believes in this. and they didn't.

And so it was a lonely road. But I wanted to go that track with my professor Craig Evans found this track to go to Oxford where he could be my doctor, my doctor father, but where I could hold the biblical manuscripts in my hand.

I mean, do you know what that was like for me? I would be in the Griffith paparology lab under a microscope holding a third century gospel of John fragment in my hand. And that's when God really spoke to me and I don't use that term often.

I know God led me to marry my redhead headed wife and I know God spoke to me to to do what I do now. This is the lane I've been called to. So. He doesn't know the context of why you just just, you know. He makes fun of redheads a lot of the show. Really? Yeah. I'm glad she's not here.

I would do it. Out of respect. Nate's one thing. So producer Ben, that's another thing. But I make ginger jokes a lot. Over the years we have like an understanding of why a piece of evidence is important. Right. For the average person, look at this and go, it's just a footprint. No big deal.

But for the nerds, that people will really It's a big deal because, you know, and so someone will look at this and be like, okay, cool, a needle. That's, there's nothing supernatural woven into this. You can't prove that. But you do have an artifact or evidence of an artifact that has that supernatural. Yes. Evidence in. And I think that's why the shroud is such an important part of this conversation.

The shroud of Turin is an artifact that has the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus included. and no other artifact does that outside of the Bible. It is an artifact that is a moment that is the most significant moment of all time. Physicist Paulo de Lazaro, who I interviewed in Turin, Italy, said that the light energy it would take to change the linen flax, which that's what happens. It is 0.02 microns thin. So if you took a piece of your beard and you divided up one of your beard hairs, one, fifth of your beard hairs is how superficial the image is on the shroud. This is why it vanishes. If you get closer than eight feet, you can hardly see it. So this is what science, the greatest

scientists cannot replicate today. So an energy hits this cloth that does not scorch it. And so I'm meeting with the physicist. And he's like, you know, it's pick power. It's cold power. I'm like, yeah, you know, okay, I'm just trying to stay. I'm not a physicist. And I didn't stay at a holiday and express last not either. So I mean, the physicist is telling me, and he said, no, it's pick power. It's 34 billion watts of energy traveling at one 40th of a billionth of a second. That's what he was able to replicate. He has a weapons clearance at a Nia Labs. So he works with one of the strongest lasers on planet Earth. And I actually have a sample of the, they grew from Flacks, a linen shroud that would be identical to a first century linen shroud, Herringbone 3-1, Herringbone Weed,

and it took 34 billion watts of energy, 140th of a billionth of a second, to change the chemical nature to leave an image or an impression in the shroud. But it only happened in a postage-dised stamp. The shroud we have is 14 feet long. It's like a bed sheet. It's three and a half feet wide.

And we, and that's three to four times the power on Earth. I've had many mathematicians and physicists email me since the book came out verifying that we have, we don't have that kind of power. And so when you think about this, this is light power. This is light energy. This is a moment when his body burst back into life. And what I like to say is if a big bang created the earth, an even bigger bang redeemed the worth.

Isn't that powerful to think about it? I mean, it's incredible. I think we did one episode on it before. And I left a believer that something supernatural happened. to that, that, you know, the linen. Why do you think it's, I mean, it's been called the most studied artifact in human history? Because it has. There's not even a close second.

102 academic disciplines have studied the shroud and put their academic reputation on the line. And these are everyone from mathematicians to physicists, to medical doctors, hematologists, archaeologists, et cetera. And they're all saying the same thing. We cannot explain how there's an image in the cloth. The Shrout of Turin Research Project team, Sturp, that went to Turin in 1978, I spoke with the late Barry Schwartz on the phone often.

Sadly, he's now dead. They thought they were getting a free trip to Italy. They go there, they're having drinks in the lobby, and they're all giggling and saying things like, well, give me 15 minutes in the scientific record, and I will prove that the shroud is a hoax. No one was giggling after the first day. They slept next to it. They had one weekend with the shroud that the Savoy family, the Catholic Church would have never allowed it. The Savoy family allowed the shroud to be examined. Because remember, this is 1978. The Catholic Church doesn't take control of it until 1983 when the Duke of Savoy is exiled and he bequeaths

it to John Paul II. So they would have never let it. This is a private family that allows the crowd to be studied. And they're doing all of these different. It takes four years for them to publish all their work. And they prove. And this is the first time I've used the word prove. They prove that it is not a man-made object. It cannot be replicated. What do you do with the, you know, I've watched enough and listened to enough about this. And I want your take. But there's the skeptic argument back is always well that carbon date in 88 and it came back as medieval. And a lot of people take that and run with that and be like, well, this disqualifies everything. It's a medieval forgery.

Of course, we've just gone through why this isn't a painting and why it's not. There's no pigment. There's no dye. There's no brushstrokes. And so the carbon dating happens in 1988. My friend Tristan, Trisian Casio Blanca just did a book on it. The British Library sat on the raw data for 27 years. So we couldn't study what they actually studied.

We couldn't access what they actually, what their raw materials were. There are seven labs were supposed to do the carbon dating. Only three did, Arizona, Zurich and Oxford. Seven were supposed to. The gentleman, they write on the board 1260 to 1390 based on the carbon dating. The shroud of turn research scientific community based, they begged these labs. Whatever you do, don't carbon date the edges. Even the shroud that I travel with, which is a replica, we had to add gaffed, whatever you call it,

way to re-end, it frays. Yeah. And so the shroud has been patched on the sides, because, I mean, it's a linen cloth. Sure. And linen will last forever, by the way. We have the tarcan dress from 3,000 BC, okay? So that's 3,000 years older than the shroud. I mean, given the right circumstances, linen will last forever.

That's what I tell me about home is so far ahead of their time. Exactly. Those shirts are not going out. They never could have them forever. So, yeah. And so what's amazing about it, they carbon date the top left. that's obviously been patched. After 27 years, Tristan gets access to the data.

The data shows that the sample they use is not homogenous with the shroud itself. And then there's a journal of archaeometry, same Oxford study, 2019, that now says the carbon dating is totally untenable. So if you were a skeptic of the shroud, you would be outdated in your skepticism to claim or appeal to the carbon dating. Like, be a skeptic all you want, but you're going to be a skeptic. all you want, but you're going to be laughed out of the room now because no one takes the carbon dating seriously anymore because so many problems with it. One of the professors was given a one million pound chair academically. Isn't that interesting? He was awarded that right after he gave the dating of the carbon. Wow. You have to kind of debunk the debunkers a lot. Totally. And people run with the debunk. Yeah. And they don't look at any of the data. So there's like, you know, a hundred reasons to.

believe this is legit and then someone comes out with one thing. And then we all run with that. Why do you think that happens a lot? Well, because we have the dumbest Christians of all time in our church. They're credulous. They live by sound bites instead of substance. And that's why your podcast is so important. You guys get down into the substance. And that's why you have such a large hearing. People are tired of it. And I think that's why the book's jumping off to. People are tired of being dumbed down by their pastors. They want the facts. They want the truth. They want the evidence. And they want to have the hard conversations. I mean, this is a com. The shroud, it took, I used to be the biggest skeptic of the shroud. I was hugely skeptical of it, but I would get on the phone with Barry Schwartz,

who did the TED talk on the shroud. And he would walk me through patiently, all of my skepticism. We edited a journal where I was a professor in Houston, and I invited Barry to give a wonderful article, which I summarize and give him all the credit, five things Christians get wrong about the shroud. And it's a phenomenal part of my new book. Because a lot of Christians are like, oh, you're violating the Second Commandment. You're worshipping the shroud. You're, you're, you know. And listen, I have never. That trope exists on so many stupid things in the church. And Barry's response was, hey, guess what? It's not manmade. So you're not worshipping a manmade out of that. Why do you think the British Museum held the data for 27 years?

What's happening with that? All I can do is speculate. Sure. Why do you sit on the data if the data is going to erase the... It's inflammatory. Because it makes it legit. Yeah. It shows how rife with problems the carbon dating was.

They didn't date it where it was supposed to be dated. They were you supposed to use seven labs. They only use three. It's all secretive. and then the raw data is not allowed to be seen. I think it's interesting, though. I think go back to what you said a minute ago, Christians specifically. We believe in Jesus, yes, but we're still very skeptical of all things.

The story requires us to continue to believe. I think Peter, for example, they're all in the boat. They all kind of believe in Jesus. They're there following him. But only one of them has a different belief. a little bit further down the path. And obviously in a life of a Christian, you keep going down the path.

You keep trusting more and more. But there is this disconnect between, it doesn't matter how much evidence you're presented with, you have to get past this hurdle in your mind. And you're probably running up against that hurdle all the time with skeptics and scholars and Christians. And we all think, well, I'm a Christian. I'm in a different camp.

Now, we're all still have this human part of us that keeps us from jumping that hurdle, right? Right. And you're blasting those down left and right. There's probably a lot of people you still can't manage to convince. Well, the most dangerous place a person can get is where they stop seeking truth. Craig Evans and I have seen it. We've seen it with Bible scholars where when you stop seeking truth, that's a very dangerous place.

And that's the place that in John 11, the Pharisees, were in. They saw Lazarus rise from the dead. Can you imagine? They saw it. And then they wanted to kill him again. and then they wanted to kill Jesus. So you have a miracle, and that still was not enough to believe.

And so, yes, there are people who have, hey, God is a gentleman, and if you close your mind off to God, you close your heart off to God, God's going to give you what you wish. You are already experiencing hell. Because hell is, I just read the weight of glory on vacation, hell is absence from God.

And God will, I mean, heaven is in, God wants us to enjoy our life, even now and enjoy our lives. relationship with him. And God will give you what you desire. It's just deeply relational. I keep coming back to that. And it's more relational than you can even fathom. It's more humanizing. It's more present and being known. Then I think that part is missed a lot in the way that we're presented with the gospel. So all this data, all these facts, but it's like, but we have, we have relational skepticism as well. That's right. I don't know why that is. But maybe we've been

hurt by somebody or a parent or a father figure. And so we can't see Jesus as a loving father. But we make choices every day based on fewer bits of evidence. I got on a plane here yesterday with both feet. I didn't know the pilot, captain. I don't really know how the plane works, but I knew enough to think it would get me here. Yeah. And so when is enough information enough for you to give your heart to Christ? We have the greatest data that shows that on April 5th, 33, that man physically walked out of the grave alive. He appeared to those who believed in him. He appeared to those who were indifferent to him. And he appeared to those who were hostile against him. And Paul, I love it 20 years later, saying, hey, check it out. The 500 saw, they're still alive

today. You can go ask. Isn't that amazing to think about? And so when do you have the, where I push back on the skeptics is you make all these decisions. You don't know how your car works, but you're going to get in it and drive your Tesla and let it drive you. Sure. You don't everybody else is going to drive? I mean, there's a million variables, right? But like, when is it enough for you to say yes to Jesus? I mean, that, and we have an abundance of evidence. And we can't say that. The other religions can't say that. The other religions do not call Christianity their, or excuse me, archaeology, their closest cousin. I always say that archaeology is Christianity's closest cousin because it's true.

walk us through the rest of the shroud because I mean there's you know one of the things I know you talk about are the wounds and those those impressions yes and kind of how you kind of already talked about some of the physics like this insane burst of energy that we can't replicate right this image on a cloth you really can't see I mean it was really it's really discovered by a negative photograph right it was someone that took the negative of a photograph and was like hey there yes you know and so eight 1998, Secondipia is a lawyer. Professional photography does not exist at the time. And I've seen the actual camera. It's the size of like a dorm fridge from the 1980s over here. And he takes glass plates. This is before celluloid film. I just saw all this in turn. I went to turn to see it all. And the exposures take 14 minutes and 20 minutes. He has to build scaffolding in the church. The church does not have electricity, so he gets generators. This is one of the first flash photography

photos. And so he takes the picture. He's in the dorm room and he sees the picture, which we have, we have it in the sepia kind of normal color that people are used to. But in the dark room, this is what he sees. And you see all of the details in the negative, which is actually the photo positive. And never more appropriately, he says, oh my God. Because he was a follower of Jesus, and Sikonda believes he is the first person since the apostolic era to see the face of Jesus. He's immediately accused of being a hoaxer. He's ridiculed until Henri's photos in 1931. So the guy goes through all of this, just ridicule. You're a faker, you're a hoaxer. You hoax that. With ancient Photoshop?

Yeah, yeah, you literally like ancient AI. How did you do that? It was the old Microsoft thing. Really, your question is great because 1898 is this is what kicks off the scientific study of the shroud. Because until this photo was taken and we see the wounds, we see, you can even, I'm looking right now at the wound and the side. I'm looking at all of the blood. I'm looking at the wounds and the wrists. And this would be a good point to hand you another artifact.

Yeah. Because the shroud gets to hold that up. So this is not a reproduction. This is an actual crucifixion nail from the first century. Now, I'm not saying it's the nail that crucified Jesus. I'm saying it's an actual first century crucifixion nail. We know that beyond any doubt because of the square shaft. And it's been hammered multiple times.

I love this. Let Colossians 214 wash over you as you hold that. that it says that all of our indebtedness was nailed to the cross. So we don't owe that sin anymore. It was paid for, praise the Lord. But it's six inches. Was this used on someone? Yes.

And it was used many times because that's why it's curved. It's cryptic. It'll give you chills. The Romans wanted to minimize movement, but maximize torment. So they would often adjust the nails during the crucifixion, just to inflict more pain. And they were bending the nail. Bending it.

And the amazing thing is the shroud gets it right. I'm pulling up. You know, medieval art has the holes through the palms. Medieval, that's what medieval Christian art got wrong. No, they did it through the wrists right here. And again, that's the shroud gets it right. So if the shroud is a medieval forgery and it's matching medieval art at the time, the holes would be in the palms, not in the wrists.

Which we know wouldn't hold up the body weight of the human. Isn't that fascinating? Jeez. So when did the wrists start to come on to the scene as part of the discussion? Well, the wrist. The arms did. Yeah, yeah. Medieval.

That's when all, so much of what we think we know about Jesus comes out of medieval Christian art. Epheminate Jesus, not a man's man, weak. No, this was a strong Jewish man who probably walked 20,000 miles in his ministry. Jesus probably had a six-pack. You know, he probably was very healthy, strong. Faster than John. That's right. No, no, that's, yeah, yeah, he probably was, even though John was faster than Peter.

Yeah. But Elijah, though, Elijah is like tucks his cloak in. He runs real fat. He can move a little bit. Yeah, absolutely. It's amazing. And what else we have there? So we've got the nail placement correct.

the shroud. You've got, we've got the crown of thorns. Yes. Here's the great side by side. And to your point, right? Like this, at the time of this, of this photo and also at the time of what purportedly would be have been faked in that argument, the wounds, especially in the hands would have been or in the arm or the wrist would have been in the hand. So you have this problem with it being a medieval forgery because none of the medieval artists are saying, just I'm just reiterating.

Right. Would have had it in the wrist. This is not, no. But we know enough now about Roman crucifixion. You know, where do we get our information

about the crucifixion stuff that we can... From all the skeletal remains. We have remains of 21 different individuals who are nailed across us. And it's all between the armos. So do you think this thing's getting passed around from like generation and generation?

Like this is, and then finally in 18, lady we take we can take a photo of the thing yes we know that see it from a different perspective right but there's this history of this thing this was the legit thing and and people believe that obviously to keep it you know in their families absolutely pass it down and they saw it but they saw but what they saw was this faint image the cb image on the left and then boom you see the image on the right and that's like wow and so oftentimes when i'm doing our live events I will actually show a picture of just the sepia looking shroud.

And then you can do a classic invert on your phone. And then you can see it just like secondapia saw it in the dark room, which is really cool. Yeah. I mean, it takes time sometimes to catch up to these things and when you can actually see it. And we've gone over some of the evidence for the blurry things and say it took time and technology to prove that whatever it was, it was used as evidence was actually legit. Exactly. Then, you know, they blew up some of the footage of these old cameras and things like that.

I mean, we've gone over that a lot on our show. It takes time. Well, it does. And again, I just keep coming back to where's the body? I mean, like, where's the body? Yeah. You know, where's the body? All they had to do to end the Christian movement was produce the body.

Yeah. And they couldn't. And they even had to make up a story because they couldn't find the body. Yeah. Again, skeptics. Right. And then this is cool. This is the path that the shroud likely took.

This is a great slide. And there's pollen evidence for it as well. But this is, you know, people forget that the Greek Orthodox Church doesn't get enough credit for protecting the shroud for, you know, a thousand years. So the Church of the East protects it. And then it goes eventually to turn in 1578. How do we know where, how do we know about Odessa? the 544. How do we...

The King of Agbar, because of Eusebius, we have writings about the shroud that go back to nascent Christianity. And then we have the pollen evidence, which is very compelling. What's your conspiracy theory on how it gets to Odessa or who grabs it? I mean, it's obviously I love doing this some blurry because we get theologians in here and we're like, let's just do some postulating. Let's do some... I'm thinking Jude brought it and I'm thinking that it gets lost for a while and then it's found miraculously. And then it is escaping. You see the dates there, if you know anything about Islam. It begins to escape the Islamic caliphate, killing everyone. And that's why it ultimately ends up in Constantinople.

And then we have evidence of it in Athens and 1205. And then all the way up into Europe, France. I was a meeting with a geneticist in Georgia who came to one of our events. And he was verifying the pollen grains. That's what he called them. I used to call them spores. He said, no, You'd call them grains. And he said the pollen grains that are on the shroud did not exist in France in the medieval times. They didn't exist. So you couldn't have faked that. I mean, when you start going down the rabbit hole and get red-pilled on this, I mean, you can't stop.

Yeah. So did it pick up other things? I mean, I mean, did it get contaminated or, you know, what are the skeptics saying that, you know, I mean, these like pollen grains? Is there? How many are there? There's 58 and 38 come from the land of Israel and only bloom in springtime. Let's go. So Max Fry is a criminologist.

And again, there's always people that are doubting his research and new research certainly can be conducted. But what I can say citing Max Fry, who's a criminologist who spent five years of his life studying the shroud, as he said, the 38 of the 58 pollen spores, 308 of them. only bloom in springtime at Passover in Jerusalem. You just can't make it up. I mean, that's the, and then the other cool thing is the image of Christ. So I want to show you something really cool. I'm really into ancient coins because coins are the social media of the first century world. So I want you to hold this one.

This is the Justinian Roman solidus. And if you look on the front of it, you're going to see an image of Jesus. That's Justinian on the back. But if you look on the front, you're going to see an image of Jesus. Now, this is the late 7th century, okay? This is the 600s. Justinian does something really, really important.

This is the first time that we have, and this is all in my book, but this is the first time we have coinage with Jesus' image imprinted on it. And this was an act of faith and defiance against Islam, by the way, because the caliphate was crouching at the door. It's incredible.

And my friend gives me this coin. I was showing him my hair. the great coin if you want to see it and he's like well i've got this coin i was buying gold during covid and i bought this coin and i said well look at the face well the face according to alan wagner a duke professor matches the face on the man of the shroud at 200 points of correspondence wow so you have a coin that matches the face of the man of the shroud how is that possible how is it possible if it's a hoax what years is this yeah that's it says it on there late 600 I see we were going here.

So they were up right there, yeah. Take it from the shrine. Look at this. Here's all of, what is the source material for this coin? What is the source material for all of this art? These are all the icons. They all have the same source material because the whole church knew this is what the face of Jesus looked like.

So that's why we have all of this art. This is the Christ Panto-crotter icon from the 500s, which is in Sinai at St. Catherine's monastery again matching the man of the shroud which again and then look at that see the overlay we do here this is cool wow you see how you get to it wow I mean what that is the source material so what is all this art coming from and then my friend Doug Powell built this he was a shroud scholar and used mid journey AI and he took he took just these two just those two data points and put it in the I don't know if you guys have played with mid journey at all

but he took only those two data points to produce what Jesus would have looked like. And guess what? That became the cover of my book, the Jesus discoveries. So boom, boom. Oh, and then there it is. So this is the Justinian Roman solidus. So we have a sermon in a coin, essentially. This is where the gospel is literally traveling.

So if you and I went back into the seventh century, we would see, wow, Christ is honored here. And wow, that face sure looks like the man of the shroud. Isn't that fascinating? It's fascinating. So you have Christian art now has been impacted by it. You have the coins that are impacted by it. You have pollens. You have blood type. It just goes on and on. I mean, and again, this is what it looked like. Again, these are not images that match these images. He doesn't have a beard, cleanly shave and doesn't even look like a Jewish man. This shows when it gets off the rails when we get a Jesus that's not the Jesus of the New Testament. Well, I think it's incredible because we've done similar episodes on things like, you know, the Ark of the Covenant, where it ended up and the theories of where there's all these famous relics that kind of get passed around and find different.

And there's a whole story of it. Obviously, Jesus is such an impactful character that people held on to these things. And some people get Christians getting hung up on. or you're worshipping the shroud. No. But it's like, no, it's a piece of evidence that you can trust the story. Exactly. I mean, am I worshipping contra over there?

No, but it's a piece of evidence of my childhood that I can remember the cheat code to have unlimited bullets and lives. What in your mind is the, does the shroud prove? In my mind, the shroud proves the resurrection of Jesus. It's scientific proof. So we have evidentiary and then we've got sort of eyewitness, right? Which is basically a bill in the case. Yeah.

And we have appearance tradition. We have empty tomb tradition. We have no body. And then we have this scientific evidence. And I say this now. I believe that the shroud is authentically the shroud of Jesus. And I believe that because I'm not irrational. Yeah.

And so what does it mean? Yeah. For me, and I'll quote, you had Russ Briel on. He's a great guy. He said it best. It's an itemized receipt of how much Jesus loves us. That's good. And I think that, you know, over the years, obviously we can understand some things in like four dimensions.

Like, where you hear near-death experiences where people encounter Jesus and he's like this being of light that you can't describe. He transfigures before, even the angels described and the watchers were like shiny ones. So there is this understanding and the blurry verse and our listeners that certain beings shine in a certain way. And then after the fact, he's even kind of resurrected body, which is different. Moses comes down like he was saying with this glowing, like encounters with God or Jesus himself, he's shining. So he comes back into his body and it basically creates a photo negative on this. Yeah, it's a residue.

It's a signature of that light. Yeah. Jesus is the blurriest of all blurry creatures. Yeah. Because when he manifests himself, he always, manifest themselves in brilliant light. It's Mark 9, the Transfiguration. And people want to hang out in this light.

It's Acts 25, 26, when Paul is giving his testimony, he's on the way to Syria, Damascus, and he sees a light that's greater than the noonday sun. And I have filmed on First Century Roads at noontime. It is hot and the sun is bright. And so I'm wondering, what kind of light did he see it blinded him? Yeah. We know in Revelation 22 that there'll be no need for the sun. because Jesus will give a light to all.

He is the light of the world. John 1-5, Cato Lombano, the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it or take it down. So that's blurry to me. That's amazingly. And then you've got the skeptics even, and I even appeal to them. This is Ed Sanders,

who by no means likely believed in the physical resurrection, but he could not deny, you were just talking about appearance traditions, that Jesus follows. followers and Paul had experiences, talk about blurry experiences, in my judgment, is a fact. What the reality was that gave rise to those experiences, he does not know. But here's a skeptical, he wrote Paul and Palestinian Judaism, I mean, a heavyweight Bible scholar saying these people had experiences and that's a fact.

You have Garrett Ludamon no longer an atheist because he's dead now. But he said it may be taken as historically certain that Peter and the disciples had, and I'm going to add a blurry experience after Jesus's death in which Jesus appeared to the risen Christ. We have Anthony Flew. The evidence for the resurrection is better than for claimed miracles than any other religion. It is outstandingly different in quality and in quantity. And so what I say is, you know, the written and archaeological sources overwhelmingly support the gospel's narratives that are embedded that show the resurrection narratives that are embedded. I love this.

This is Trent. I love what you're doing with this work as well. It's like you speak to, we live in this empirical academic era, right? Where people like, show me the evidence. Yeah. Show me the body. media. All you just got to do on social media. It's cheating in elections. Are they, what, is there aliens? Is it whatever? Is it, show me the

evidence, right? And you're bringing the receipts here. And I think it's really hard. And also it's like the idea that takes more faith to look at all this and be like, no. Yeah. No, it's not. And what I love is it's equipping and resourcing normal people. I did not write this book for scholars. I wrote this book for moms like mine who were in lineups, you know, waiting for an hour. They can listen to the book. They can read it. They can read it with their kids. My nine-year-old was reading it to me the other night. And it is giving Christians a new level of confidence to have these conversations. Because the more I know about my faith, the more comfortable I'm in a faith conversation. That's the feedback I'm getting. I mean, I was just at the National

Mall for the prayer thing. Couldn't walk five feet without someone saying, I read that book. It has given me so much more confidence to talk about Jesus to my friends. What do you think is the difference between the faith of the woman who touched his garment or the centurion who sent his servant to go tell Jesus what to do? And Jesus said, this guy has more faith than anybody here. Right. What's different about their faith, you think? I think it's amazing. We talk a lot about their faith, and yet faith is only defined by its object. We don't have faith in faith, and faith is a mustard seed, is all that Jesus said. But it's amazing. though, that there are people that believe more. And John did. John followed Jesus, his whole ministry. He was the only one who stayed at the cross. And yet when he sees the linen garments, it says, and he saw and believed. So we can believe more. Yeah. So I think that these people, you know, the Christian faith is a living faith. It is a faith that, you know, the deeper you go into Christianity, the more rock solid it is, the more strong your faith gets, the more close you get to Christ. And you're in a

spirit of prayer just all the time, praying with your eyes open just all day long. You're just constantly with the Lord. And that's where it gets exciting. So I think that would be the only difference is they're willing to take God at His Word and they're willing to say, yes, I believe. And yet, let's not put down those that are the dad of Mark 9. Lord, I believe, help my unbelief, because that's where a lot of us are. I think maybe at some point we land there, right? Absolutely. It's a dark night of the soul. You're like John the Baptist did. Yes. And no one greater among men and women had been born, Jesus said, no one greater than John the Baptist. And he had his moments. Yeah, wrestling with doubt is a human experience. And doubt is not unbelief. Sure.

But there's also like scales over eyes. Yeah. There seems to be a description of like almost like a physical blindness. What do you think of that? Well, I think that Satan is real and he is the deceiver. So like spiritual entities keep us from belief or seeing the evidence. And I believe many pastors commit spiritual adultery every Sunday from their pulpits and deceive people. How do you think that happens? Like what are they doing? They are apostates who don't believe the Bible. And they twist the scripture. They make it say things. They commit essentially isegesis and they foist a meaning on the scripture that was never intended to be there. And because we have a culture that goes to AI now and Google instead of God's word,

we have the most credulous Christians of all time. And so they're soft targets. It's laziness, right? It's like you want AI to do your writing and you're reading for you, and you want your pastor to read the Bible for you and tell you what it means. But these guys are knowingly deceiving their congregation. They're deceived themselves. Do you believe like some of the ancient, like Jesus is obviously appearing to Muslims.

Yes, 100%. And he's appearing to people over time and they're seeing him. maybe the artists even and they're painting what they see and then it matches the shroud also. Where are they getting that image from? I believe that the closer this is kind of my blurry thought

we are seeing a controlled revelation of Jesus the closer we get to the second coming of Christ and I believe that we're seeing more and more of it this control what I would call tied to technology

this controlled revelation tied to technology. I mean, we have so many more advances just in archaeology of things we can see now that they couldn't see Grenfell and Hunt when they dug up, you know, manuscripts in Egypt over 100 years ago. This is an exciting time to be a Christian. There's never been a more exciting time

to be a follower of Jesus because these experiences are happening. And God is a God to be experienced. I experience God through all these artifacts. I experience his love, his presence. The first time I saw the helmet of thorns, which here I am a PhD. I've studied what I, I'm supposed to be the smartest guy in the room on Roman crucifixion. You are in this room, sure.

And no, but I'm saying to myself, I think, yeah, he is. And I thought, I thought it was just a little headband of thorns. And then I see the shroud. We have a minimum of 30 to 50 puncture marks. and then I see this crown of thorns. I posted on it on my social media, the actual thorn that they used, and it's pictured right in front of the Eastern Gate in Jerusalem,

and then the crown of thorns. And it just took my breath away of God's love for me. It should have been my head in that crown. It should have been my hands, but it wasn't. And God knows me at my worst, and he sent his best for me. And so to experience it, the love of Christ, and that's what the Bible's about.

It's about relationship. It's about redemption. No one is beyond his redemption right now. And I think that's why the shroud is reaching so many people right now is they're seeing what lengths Jesus went through to pay for our sin. And we get desensitized to it. The dice remind me of that. And when you get a reminder, a fresh reminder of this demonstration that,

Luke that, excuse me, that Peter, or excuse me, that Paul says in Romans 58, God demonstrate it in a way where his love is undeniable. He demonstrates it in the most, the most visceral way possible, how much he loves us. Yeah. What about some of the other things you write about? Can we talk about a few of them quickly? Like, what about the James Ossewer? Oh, my gosh. Well, let me show this, too. Have you heard of the Alex Salmonous graffiti? So, this. So this. This is another chapter. I mean, when you have hostile witnesses, and I've written about this extensively,

if the Jesus thing didn't happen, why are so many people upset about it for a few hundred years? This is what this is called the Ale. This is the Alex Saminos Graffito. So that's Alex Saminos, Sebite Theon in Greek. And on the left, this is called the Palatine Graffito, because it's on Rome's Palatine Hill. This was the 902.10.0 area of Rome. Okay. This is where all the fancy places were. This is found in 1867, but it dates to the late 2nd century. And notice that they're mocking Christians for worshipping an ass. That's the head of a donkey. And what's amazing, that's likely a soldier. And he has his arm up. He's worshiping Jesus, but he's being ridiculed.

for it. Look, he worships his God, the God that has, you know, the donkey head. And what's interesting is on the adjay, on the room inside, and by the way, this reminds me the passage of the preaching of the cross is foolishness to those who don't believe, but to us who are believing, it's the power of God into salvation. And so this, the point of this, though, this is the earliest image that we have of Roman crucifixion. Hmm. From late antiquity. and it's ridiculing a faithful man for worshipping Jesus. Isn't that interesting? Out of all the crucifixion victims.

Out of all the things you could. This is the OG illustration of crucifixion. We do not have an earlier depiction of crucifixion in the Roman Empire before the Palatine Grafito. How old? And it's mock. This is late second century. Okay.

So it's mocking Rome, Palatine Hill. But on the inside of the building, and I'll quote my friend Paul Foster on this from the UK, a great Bible scholar. There's another inscription, this one in Latin, and it says, Alex Salmonos Fidelis, Alex Saminos is faithful. Because sometimes we've got to stand alone. You know, I've had more hate on me, you know, because people hate the truth. And so this chapter reminds me, A, we have hostility towards it, but that hostility

just like you have hostility towards the Bigfoot stuff. I mean, hostility actually proves some things to me. Because you look at Kelsus and Porphyry that ridicule, these are early, they're like the early new atheists that are ridiculing the Christian movement for being dumb. Like you have women as your eyewitnesses. Why didn't Jesus appear to pilot or to the elites of his day? And that's where you have the apocryphal gospels come in

and who does Jesus appear to? He appears to pilot. he appears to the high priest. And it tries to fill in those gaps because I presented a paper at SBL 20 Society of Biblical Literature, Chicago 2012, what the writers of the gospels should have done better if they were inventing the gospel narrative

and not telling the truthful one. You wouldn't have women witnesses. No, there's so much embarrassment in it where it's like you wouldn't write it this way unless it actually happened. And this is where I learned this, for my mentor, Craig Evans. I mean, nobody believed in resurrection

outside of Judaism. And even in Judaism, it was an eschatological resurrection that was gonna happen someday, not an individual resurrection. There's no psychological motivation to invent a resurrection narrative unless it actually happened. Judaism is a coherent religion.

They already had a resurrection in the end. They could have honored Jesus as a great rabbi. or prophet, but no, they speak of his body being resurrected, which was an anathema to the Roman mind. I mean, they would have mocked. I mean, we live in the Walking Dead Day where it's cool to talk zombies and it's fun to talk about bodies. Nobody believed in resurrection. And so this was truly innovative, but the worst possible talking point to start a religion would be that. And that's why I think you have the skeptics in Luke 2421, Cleopis, and likely his wife, Mary, they said, we had hoped that he was the Messiah, but he was just killed. And then they don't realize

Jesus is walking the seven-mile journey with him. And they later say, we're not our hearts burning within us. I've been in more first century tombs, by the way, than probably anyone you've ever met. And it is fascinating to go in these tombs and to see what they would, it approximates what they would have experienced at that first Easter morning. We can date the resurrection to April 5th, 8033. We know according to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory that sunrise was early, 543 a.m. that morning, women are going to the tomb. Why? To spice the body, to do, to sit Shiva, to worship, to pray. All first century tombs, they look like your hand. You've got the stone cover. You go inside. You'll worship, mourn, pray, spice the body. And you do that for seven.

So they're just following Jewish burial traditions. And that's why women are the first witnesses of the empty tomb. Interesting. Why'd they close it then? Do you think? Close the tomb, right? They rolled the rock in front of that. Was that to prevent?

Was it the Roman preventing them from? And they sealed it. Yeah. And so you can't come in and do your things. Yes. Exactly. Because they had heard, they had heard, you know, remember Antipas thought that John, Jesus was John the Baptist resurrected.

He was afraid that... Judaism in first century is very blurry, very superstitious. Ghosts, phantom stories. We've seen Jewish magic books that have mummified bats on them. We have photographs of. Well, I don't, I mean, I think that stuff still happens today. Yeah. Well, I mean, they think when Peter gets out of prison and shows up as his ghost.

I mean, it's really wild stuff in the Bible. They knew what it goes for us. Yeah. So, I mean, the Bible is obviously like poetic too. I mean, I think that some people think, well, more. more information is going to help people believe, but I think if you're a writer or your or your musician, you know, just layer on 50,000 layers because this fits, there's a, there's a balance there. So the gospels are not going to put everything in there. It's not going to be the, uh, the buffet or what's your, you always say the menu at a cheesecake factory. Yeah. It's not going to be a cheesecake

factory. You can order everything you want and need. I mean, that's a beligerless point, though, but it's like it's such an interesting piece of evidence, this graffiti, because this is not a believer of Christ being like, I'm putting this for posterity. Right. It's actually someone saying it's an ancient banter. You guys are idiots. Yes. And your God as a donkey head. Literally. And this is what I'm choosing to spend my time etching into a wall. So just sort of begs. Because people believed in Jesus at the time and they were telling people, obviously. And then you had the skeptics of his day, making fun of it. Totally. Yeah. And again, with learning from hostile witnesses. Sure. And that's where I appreciate the hostile appearances to Saul of Tarsus

and to James. And so let me apply this. Man, this really is helpful. This shows all of the correspondence of the wounds, the abrasions that match the way in which Jesus is crucified. Nobody is crucified the way Jesus is crucified. The Crown of Thorns puts it beyond all doubt that the man of the shroud. Do you see the wound patterns in the head? Do you see the, scourge marks. Are you all aware of how many scourge marks are on the man of the shroud? No. No. You want to guess? Two hundred? Three seventy-four. Three-seven four. Three-seven. 374 lashes. Are you still discovering new things about the shroud? Oh, yes. Oh, and there's a resurgence of new science going into it. Yeah, if you're listening with us right now and not watching,

we've got the shroud picture up and Jeremiah's got, is pointing to the wounds, wound patterns, shoulder abrasion, scourge marks. And I'll let him walk through it. This is what we're looking at. The trines. Yeah, those are scorch marks because those are the con. And then you've got, remember, it survives a fire. And I've seen the silver box where the molten dripped on it. Those are those 16 triangles. But look at the side wound. I mean, we've got the side wound perfectly between rib five and six. We have arterial and venous blood. The blood is flowing in the right direction if you're being crucified. I mean, it gets every detail right. He's in rigamortis. And another interesting thing,

think about the scriptures that wash over you, his body will not see decay. There's no bodily decay on the shroud. So Jesus is in rigamortis and then resurrected out of that rigoritus. So that's why his body almost looks like it's flexing, even in the buttocks. His head is up, his knees are,

because it's in rigamortis and then he emerges, resurrected from that. The shoulder abrasions get me every time. Jesus carries the pititulums. I love the passion of Christ. but the one thing that they didn't get right, he doesn't carry the whole cross. That would have been like 500 pounds.

He carries the cross beam. And so you can see there's abrasions at a diagonal from the top right shoulder down to the left where he's holding and he falls. Now this always gets to me and may it never not. We have limestone from the grottoes of drizzles of Jerusalem in three spots, his knees, his feet obviously, but also in the nose. When Jesus collapses, and he's lost one third of his blood volume from the scourging, the hematologist's report

show he has high levels of ferretin, high levels of creatin, his kidneys are failing, he's dehydrated, he can't carry the cross any further, but when he falls, he face plants on the ground. And so that's why you have on the tip of the nose, this same limestone signature. Again, only found from Jerusalem. He faceplants, I believe this is the point where his shoulders are likely separated. Pierce Morgan, Jeremiah, anatomy is all off on Jesus. You know why? Let me quote Psalm 22 to you. My bones are out of joint. Remember Psalm 22, my bones are out of joint. So again, all of this, we're looking, at a visual picture of how our Savior was crucified, and it matches not only Psalm 22,

it matches Isaiah 53, the forbidden chapter, in all the correct ways. And so I'm a visual learner, and so I would encourage anyone watching. And then here's the mathematician that I interviewed Bruno Barbaris. He has seen the actual shroud over 100 times. He did a probability of all of the fact, factors that we went through. And his probability is that there is a one and two hundred billion

chance. It is not the Jesus of the Bible. Wow. And I said, sir, you at telling me you believe, you know, I'm an American. I'm like, okay, that's cool. The probabilities. So are you telling me you personally believe? He's like, how can I not believe? Yeah. The numbers compel me to believe. Yeah. So we're seeing here an amazing amount of evidence that I think is just fabulous. So, I have a couple of more things to show you if we have time. So on the inverted image of the shroud we just saw, there's a detail that many miss. We have to ask ourselves what truly kicked off the scientific exploration of the shroud. We talked about the 1898 photograph. Let me introduce you to two physicists, Eric Jumper and John Jackson. John Jackson and I just keynoteed the International

Shroud conference last year together. They're at the Air Force Academy and they have a VP8 image analyzer in their possession because they have weapons clearance. They work at Sandia and Los Halamos Laboratories. And this is where we got to get things correct. There's a lot of bad information. Some say that the VP8 image analyzer is used to study the moon surface. That's not correct. The military had the VAPA and image analyzer to study the effects of the nuclear bomb on the surface of the earth. So they have this as an analog VP8 image analyzer. And when they put an image of the shroud through the VP8 image analyzer, it had top,

it had literal 3D encoding in the image. So lightar kind of or what is that? But when they put like their kids, it's all murky, muddy. But when you put the image of the shroud, look at that on the left. it has this holographic 3D encoding that, and it's showing light depth, okay? So I want to do this live. That's why I'm trying to actually, so if anyone out there has a VP at image analyzer, I'll buy it from you for our ministry's sake.

So it's so cool, though. And this is what Eric Jumper and John Jackson could not explain, that you have this holographic 3D, Star Wars looking. output and no one can explain this. And this isn't the shroud itself. They didn't have the shroud itself. They just had a picture of the shroud. When they put it through this machine, all they could see was this essentially topographical

3D information. What does the VPA do? So it looks at light densities. Light density. And that's how it would study the density of the atomic bomb, how it would affect the surface of the earth. And so they put it through there. And so this is 1976.

Two years later is the shroud of turn research project, the Sturip team that goes to Italy to research it. So this VPA image, a lot of people don't know that history. It has, it showed that there is a three-dimensional nature. You talk about blurry. Yeah. The shroud is three-dimensional. It's crazy. So the body itself, every single, you know, part of the body.

body is illuminating the light. It's not like a light behind it. But here's the crazy part. It's illuminating even where the cloth is not touching the body. So this means the body emanated out. Yeah. What kind of power? 34 billion watts is the estimate from Paulo de Lazaro. But it doesn't burn it. But it doesn't. It's cold pick power. And it's the, it's the speed at which the power. And, you know, you think about the passages. Well, and think about first. Corinthians 15, our bodies will be changed in a flash, the Bible says, in the twinkling of an eye, Paul says. Isn't interesting?

He says our bodies will be changed in a flash. It's crazy. The only thing that we can get that kind of power is a bolt of lightning. Yes. But unfortunately, you don't know where one's going to strike. But what if we do? This is almost like a computer. This is another image of what it approximates that moment.

He comes back to life. Wow. So the flash light is he just, do you think he just disappears? He emanates out of it and his body no longer needs. And that's how the shroud would cover, by the way. This is an important, this is the X-ray dating, the wax. I go into all the ways the shroud has been dated in my book, The Jesus Discoveries. Yeah.

So that's very important. It's been dated in several other ways besides the carbon dating. This is the Heritage Scientific Journal. White angle x-ray scattering shows that the shroud has been getting old for 2,000 years. It compares it with other shrouds, which is, fascinating. So quick question. Yeah. Could there be a way today to forge this or is it's kind of like the pyramids? We still don't know. No. There's no way even still with our tech. A British guy put up a million pounds for anyone that can replicate the shroud. He'll pay him to do that. Okay. So we still

can't. How strong's a dollar right now? Is that? Yeah. It's like, it's like, how's that conversion? So check this out. This is, this is a, this is a herringbone weave. Yeah. Aramathy is a wealthy man. We believe that Arimathea, and again, imagine this, okay? I want you guys put yourself in the world of Jesus for a second. Jesus dies at 3 p.m. They have to get them buried by 6 p.m. We know Nicodemus asks pilot for the body of Jesus. This is where it gets, I have a chapter in my book that was written by Doug Powell.

I actually read it recently because it had been a while since I read it. I began to weep because he has a chapter on the Sudarium, the face cover, that we should talk about that covered Jesus. Imagine these two older men, Nicodemus and Arimathea, trying to get Jesus' body off the cross. Do you think the Romans helped? Of course not. And they have to get his body to the tomb within three hours. The tomb is close by 200 feet.

And what's fascinating is they cover his face with a face cloth because according to Leviticus, the life is in the blood and Jewish burial. traditions, they cared for every part of the body, even the blood. If the blood touched the ground, they wanted that buried with the body. And what's interesting is they carry him and they lay his body on the shroud. They take off the facecloth at that time and they put it in the corner of the tomb. This is where there's three terms for burial, Sindin, Athonia, and then Sudarium. The face cloth does not have the image on it. A lot of people are like, a lot of Christians,

who are fine Christians, they read the Bible, they don't realize that the face cloth was used to transport his body. They even have it where they're plugging his nose because so much blood is oozing out of his corpse. So I have images of the pseudarium. But the pseudarium is removed then and then the shroud covers the body and the blood stays red. This was another thing the skeptics were jumping all over because they would say, well, blood doesn't stay red. It turns like a dark browns unless the blood has been traumatized red blood cells break down in the plasma and billy rubin is excreted which caused the blood to still stay red to this day so there it is where is that where's that blood at it's all there's blood all over the shroud so it's all in the same color and it stays red and it

stays red because because of trauma because the blood has been traumatized the red blood cells break down and it forms this bilirubin which keeps the blood red. Where else do we see this happening? Is this like something happens at murder scenes? Yes. Yeah. Okay. So we know it's traumatized blood.

We can say confidently but not conclusively. It's type A.B. blood. It's human blood. A.B. blood is Semitic blood. And if you really want to unlock the key of the shroud, that's the exact same blood type on the Sudarium, which is an OVO to Spain right now. type A, B, blood. So what do you know about that type of blood and sort of the lineage of?

Well, as a generalist, I quote the scholars. And so, and there are those that disagree with it, but there are published articles that the blood is human blood and it's type A, B blood. And then I read the reports that studied the blood that showed the high ferritin and creatin that he was suffering his body. body was shutting down. Through saying kidney shutting down. That's... Isn't that interesting? So wild.

This would be a rich guy's burial shroud. Yep. It's the herringbone weave. And we have other shrouds as well. And I believe that he purchased this for his own death planning. I believe he gives Jesus his own burial shroud, not only his tomb. He's trying to get more crowns. I know.

That's right. So I have something else to show you guys. Yeah. That really was touching to me. if I can find it here. So I'm in CS Lewis's home. Everybody needs to see this. I've been in CS Lewis's home many times living in Oxford.

So, dude, well, I live there. Not in his home, but we were in Oxford for so many months. But I took my pastor, Jack Graham, to see Oxford. He'd never been. This is 2023. And this is about the time. This is right. I was in Israel a few days before the Hamas attack filming at all of the

resurrection sites. And that's when I really came to believe the shroud was authentic. So this is a few months before that. And this was so, this is only 13 seconds. This is a female obviously, C.S. Lewis scholar. She's taking us in Lewis's bedroom. And I had never seen this before. So check this out. So Lewis kept an image of the shroud of Turin, the book his mantle pieces, a reminder that our God had a face. of the incarnation. Wow. We're in his bedroom right now.

Lewis kept an image of the shroud in his bedroom to be reminded every day that our God has a face. So Lewis is no Catholic and he's the greatest mind of the 20th century and he revered the shroud. That's the 1931-on-Rae photo, by the way. I'd never seen that before until 2023.

Did you see his wardrobe too? Yes. They have one. that approximates it in the house. You went in it? I didn't. Did you come back? Yeah.

You see where I was going. Yeah, I did. So my point is serious, these scholars take the shroud seriously, so I think we should too. So until like the late 1800s, nobody really kind of knew like what was on it. Right. The pollen, the blood, and all the image, which made it so clear how it corresponds. And when was the fire? crucified. Well, it survived three fires.

Three. In fact, oh my gosh. You think that's like a demonic attack? Yes. And I just got, you know, I received recently the coolest email. I didn't realize the guy that saved the shroud was an agnostic. So there's a 1997 YouTube video. You can pull it up. And the shroud is behind bulletproof unbreakable glass. And the church is burning down. And this heroic fireman goes in with almost superhuman strength and you see him with an axe just it was like he had the strength of samson and he breaks the glass saves the shroud he i'm giving chills talking about this he himself was an agnostic and someone just emailed me the story the rest of the story of

this guy who god used this fireman to save the shroud in 97 but then just come to faith I hope so. I'm trying to find the email. How many fires we have here? So it survived three fires. Okay. So when's the first one? 1530s, I think. Somewhere 1532.

How often fires breaking out in these random places? Yeah, I know. And then it's been doused with water. It's, there's burn marks on it. It was used probably as a, as a worshipful tablecloth. So there's these L-shaped burn marks in it as well. So people would cut off strips in the medieval time and sent, you know, If you were, if you had a baby and let me just send you a piece of the shroud is a good luck charm for your child.

Make a key chain. Yeah. So regardless, it's got a, you know, it's got a colorful history of. Yeah. And that's the thing. A lot of people have to get past. It's just all the contact points with the shroud and then to get to the actual image on the shroud. Which probably is why some people get skeptical of it because we begin to worship the item, not the.

the reason why it's popular is the person it was laying on top of, you know. And I think that's, I don't know, like that's kind of what we run into a lot on our side is that like the evidence is about, you know, to give you context to believe the story. And then that sort of becomes sort of, I don't know, like we were talking about a minute ago, like New Age, we start to worship, you know, the way that it's done or the things behind it and not understand that this all points back to Jesus is real. He was, and he's worth having a relationship with, that's the point.

Well, and the point is it gives context, which it helps us interpret the Bible and read the Bible with greater accuracy. It helps us read the Bible. To me, the shroud is just like going to the land of Israel. It's seeing it, walking where he walked, understanding that I can interpret scripture with so much more precision when I understand the culture

in which he was performing these miracles, I understand the battles that early Christians were facing in the book of Acts. It really brings it to life. It's incredible. Because here's all we need is Jesus in no context or the Bible in no context, and we have heresy. And that happens all the time. And so these findings bring context. I mean, here's the temple tax coin I want you to hold.

This is 14 grams. That's very expensive. And this is, Judas would have been paid 30 of those to betray Jesus. This is the Tyrion silver temple tax currency. So if you were paying your temple tax, you had to get it in this currency. And I don't know if you all have ever been ripped off on a currency exchange. Oh, yeah. This is real.

That's legit. That's very expensive. Wow. And so that's 14 grams. So half shekel was the temple tax. Full shekel would have paid for two. Remember, Jesus tells Peter to catch a fish. And in the mouth of the fish, there's a coin.

and that's what it would have been, go pay our temple tax. And so this is why Jesus overturns the money changers on the south part of the southern steps of the temple. Contemporary to Christ time? This is contemporary.

Oh, absolutely, yeah. Literally from the 20s. This is silver? Tyrion silver. They would only accept the Tyrion silver temple tax coin. Malchirk, a pagan deity,

which is interesting, almost like a bail-like figure. That's wow. was the temple tax coin. So there they're holding it. Is that a hand with like a shekel or something? It's, uh, what's on it in the front? It's like a bird, actually.

And the, uh, it is a bird. So it looks like a hand. But, and then I have coins of everyone who tried to kill Jesus. By the way, have you ever held a denarius? No. So this is a denarius. Denari plural, denarius. So that's a Tiberius denarius.

That one cost me a lot more money from my man, J.R. Bizzle, because it has this nice green hue to it. But I want you to hold that because remember, I'm taking you into the world of the text. And this is why my book, Jesus' discoveries, is so helpful. When Jesus holds up the DeNarius and says whose likeness is on us, they say Caesar. And he says, well, give Caesar what's. But the point is give God your life. God's likeness is on you and me. He made us in his image.

He said, give to Caesar with Caesar, but give God your life. I love these things. Here's Herod the Great. I just got this one. This is dated to 37. And by the way, it's always in the genitive. It's of Herod the Great. It's interesting.

It's in the genitive because all the money ultimately belongs to him. So even if we're trading right now, it still belongs to him. That's why it's in that genitive. That's crazy. So that's Herod the Great, who tried to kill him. Jesus. We have the wonderful coin of Augustus, again, mentioned again in the infancy narratives, that's a Arias. Now that is very, and by the way, gold's gone up a lot lately. So, yeah. So these are, what I love about this is these are just parallels to the past.

My favorite, though, is the Tiberius aureus, where it says Pontiff Maxim, you know, where on the back it's chief priest and on the front he is the divine son of God, son of Augustus. Unfortunately, we read the Gospels far too quickly that when Mark 1-1

opens up in the Greek and it says Jesus is the true son of God not Tiberius. I mean, can you imagine he was signing his death warrant? Because they would have said, wait a minute, the son of God, that's Tiberius.

And he's saying, no, I'm giving you the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, son of God. So when you hold a coin like that, you see how powerful and how bold these gospel writers were. See, I'm just guiding you by the hand, using evidence. This is what Jesus, and so the point is then, it brings you closer to Christ. You realize these things actually happened.

And I get to have a relationship with this man who resurrected, and I'm promised 39 irrefutable benefits, It's the minute that I say yes to Jesus and salvation. So I want to ask, and kind of like wrapping some of this up, like you go, we made a joke pre-roll and people get mad about, we don't share a pre-roll, you know, about Davos. You go, you speak at Davos, the World Economic Forum, about the resurrection as an academic.

The only person never really do that. And then, of course, you do Sean Ryan, a massive show, you know, Navy SEAL is seeking Christ. And you talk about the resurrection. And it's reaching all these people. Why do you think evidence is reaching people that the church is missing? The church is dumbed down our messages, and we have forgotten that we are an evidence-based faith. Unlike any other religion in the world, we have evidence that backs up our faith.

Islam doesn't care about archaeology. They actually ran an op-ed in the New York Times that the Jewish temple never existed. I mean, they don't care about archaeology. Hinduism doesn't. Buddhism doesn't matter. But what's amazing about the Christian faith is it all comes down to what happened that first Easter morning. And that showed that God will love us. He will forgive us.

And yet he has work for us to do. You were mentioning, you know, we wish there were more details. This is why Ephesians 1 and 2 says, we're all going to go to graduate school someday in eternity to figure out what it actually took to redeem us. Jesus is going to keep the scars. I believe that physically. And we're going to see him. And to see him face to face. You think of 1st Corinthians 13, Revelation 22, 4,

the Christian wants to see the face of Jesus. And that's why I feel like the subtitle was apropos. These findings, they bring us his face into sharper focus, I'll say, in our lives. And again, I want, yeah, that's a blurry. And what's neat about this is I just can't say. this enough. We have evidence-based medicine. We have evidence-based therapy. Christian, we have evidence-based belief. We believe in content, facts, and a person. And that evidence is life-changing. How has Jesus changed for you after acquiring all this evidence and like your perspective before?

Obviously, a lot of us get saved when we're younger or we read the gospel. We don't have any evidence, but we just believe in our heart because it's compelling. versus what you believe now and how you see it today. It has made me as bold as a lion. I am like David right now running after Goliath. I was full of so much adrenaline pumping through my veins. When Gillian Tett, the provost, you have to say like you're from England of King's College, Cambridge, on the editorial committee of the Financial Times was interviewing me.

and there is a room full of, I mean, you've got the AI people there. You've got all the new, what's the not, I have cryptids on the mind, cryptocurrency guys. There's a lot of reptilians. Yes. I've got all of them in the room. And I just was so excited and bold. I couldn't, I had to calm down.

I mean, this is a cool thing. When you unlock this truth in your life, it not only sets you free, you become effective. and not in a bulldoze way. I feel like I'm so much more relaxed now in a faith conversation because this is why I so badly want to go on Joe Rogan now. He's been given some information and seems fascinated by the shroud, but I want to give him all of the information. And it just, I'm getting stopped by military guys.

A lot of men are stopping me saying, I'm coming back to faith because of your content. And so that's what I'm called to do. And so, but again, And the only reason I'm really doing it, and I don't know how well I'm doing it at this point, but I wanna pass on a legacy of faith to my five kids. And if I'm not gonna do that, if I'm unsuccessful,

I'm gonna go work at Home Depot or Lowe's because all, I'm the pastor of my home. You know, Jonathan Edwards said every dad is a pastor of his home. And so really all of this is just to reach my kids. And so I'll buy them a museum, I'll buy the shroud, whatever it takes for my kids to love Jesus. So they've all have come to Christ.

They've been baptized at our church. And I want them to have a faith that they own. And so it works in my house. I feel like as a father too, I just went to my grandma's funeral. She was 103 and the whole thing was about her faith. And at the end, my 10 year old is like, I want a Bible. Wow, that's powerful.

Yeah, I was like, man, you know, you talk about all this stuff all the time. And you're like, you hope it connects in a way. Obviously it is. And we just live in this fake. world right now. Fake food, fake news, you know, even the sky, everyone says is fake, fake clouds, everything's fake. We're living in a simulation. Yeah, AI everywhere. And now it's like, what do you think is, are people just their hearts are ready for the truth?

And I think we should pause about the implications of all this. I mean, that's, that's the key. the implications are your life matters to God. God loves you. And he has a massive plan for your life. And you need to bow the knee to God and say, yes, Lord, I'm ready. And that's when life is truly fulfilling. And you change us to enter and in our story. Change our story, right?

The implications are huge. So it validates everything Jesus taught, everything he said. it validates it. That's what rises and falls. That is what is at stake with this conversation. Yeah. I mean, someone encourages that too, because I was reading something recently, Jeremiah. That was so interesting is that all these kids that grow up and go to Christian school, for example,

and a crazy number of them walk away from their faith when they get to high school and college. And I think the thread that they're saying is that, oh, I was told to believe, but not why to believe. Right. So this idea of even evidentiary apologetics, this idea of like, here's why we believe, not because we're told we're supposed to or because our parents believed or because grandma believed or whoever, but because I can testify to the realities of Christ, to the realness of Christ. And I think for a lot of folks, I reason I think this is resonating so amazingly, number one, New York Times in millions of views all over the internet is, because again, people want a reason to point back to say, this is why I believe. I can put my, you know, the power of testimony is really what, you know, it's the power of testimony that changes people's lives. It's your story.

But in order to have that story, you've got to start somewhere with Jesus. And you've got to believe on some level that he is who he says he is. He really exists that he walked. He did the things the Bible says. And I mean, I think this is just, I mean, you talk about leaving legacy for your kids. I would hope that most, the parents listening and kids listening would say, like, here's a place to start to say that I can, I can believe within, within reason, my, within my own reasoning that Jesus was real, that he did what he said. He,

he is who he says he was, and he died and rose again on the third day. And here, and here's what here's why. And I think that's so powerful because I think we all grew up in the 80s and all these things. I remember going to Christian school and you're just, you do what you're told. Yeah, you don't ask, you just believe, you don't ask questions. There's not a lot of like, here's why. You know, I think the why is where we're at now with the information of our fingertips and the things that are happening in our world. Well, there's a lot of emotional coercion that happens if you grew up in the church.

It's almost child abuse level at some of these camps. Yeah. Like it's, you know. But VBS was awesome. Yeah. Well, it's hard. I mean, there's, there's. But I know what you're saying.

There's legitimate conversion. Yeah. But then there's the, we got to teach these kids why why it's so fruitful. to walk with Jesus because they're all looking for fulfillment. We live in a culture of despair right now. And this shows that my life matters to God, that I will live forever with him. We're going to be given charge over galaxies someday in eternity. I mean, I is not seen, can I quote 1st Corinthians 2.9?

I is not seen nor ear heard, nor has entered into the heart of man, all that God is prepared for them that love him. That's Old Testament. by the way. I mean, that's... Yeah, I mean, I think that when they get to the evidence, when they get to college, when they come out of the emotional experience, and then you have professors telling you, well, that's all a hoax.

Then they sort of get frustrated and then, like you say, they deconstruct walk away from their faith, but you're kind of presenting them with irrefutable evidence. And I would guess, like, when you encountered Christ and you were skeptical, you are emotional. There's a part of emotion when you finally see the evidence, but you're not coerced into believing it. You can't help but look at it and go, this is real.

And then I believe. And then I have an emotional connection to my faith after the evidence. Right. Would you say that's the steps of? Yes, I became a truth addict. I met Craig Evans, who's in our audience, who's the finest Jesus scholar in the English-speaking world. Let's go, Craig.

800 publications on Jesus. I had never seen the Dead Sea Scrolls. I had never seen the artifacts presented this way. And in 2006, I stood in a 300 person book signing line and I just shook his hand. And I said, I want to know you. And then I asked to study with him a year later. And he took me on as his Padawan. And I've never looked back.

I mean, it has changed my life. And so I think if people are willing to give a little more time to their faith as well, and I don't want to talk down to anyone, but the truth is exciting. and if you'll just be a truth addict, it'll say you free. And it will put you on a mission for a mission, for a purpose. And so my purpose now is, and my only advice is we've got to learn to do it faster. What I'm learning to do is use these artifacts in like two minute clips, like boom, and they change people's lives. We don't have to go on and on in a faith conversation.

We don't have to beat people over the head with it. It's like, hey, hold this nail. This really happened. I think that's it. I mean, like we've nine second. our kids. Nine second intention spans, right? How are you going to communicate that? You know, we do a long form thing here and we've had a couple hours of talking through, which is amazing. But yeah, these younger generations, they want that 30 second snippet. And they build their

cognition, their whole worldview off of that. Yeah. I mean, think about how crazy that is. How much stuff is out that people say, well, that's the truth. But another way to look at it, I mean, like Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural was 700 words. He said it in five minutes. and we all remember it to this day. Or Teddine Roosevelt got shot in it 84 minutes with the chest. Less is more, I'm on. Yeah. Well, and the truth speaks for itself.

You know, you just, the truth is a lie and you just let it out and it'll do it. It's worse. Yeah, like you said, four, four gospels less than 40 days or four over four. 26, parts of 26 days. But I want to also say this. I mean, it took 16 years to write that book of research and going to all these places. Sure. Took money.

It took, it took a lot of effort, a lot of nights away from my family. in places that I didn't necessarily want to be but I needed to be to learn it. So where do people find that? Where do they find your book? You show some really cool videos. I think we're going to include some of that in the episode for sure.

I'm just happy to be a blurry creature member now. Am I blurry enough for you guys? You got it, dude. You're in. I hope I've elevated the blurry game. And don't forget about the Yeti that drinks alcohol and kills people. Yeah, not all stories of Bigfoot or bad.

A lot of them are. I was bringing my egg and props to the Christian thinker society for giving me these stories. I got some freaky ones too. Well, I appreciate it because I think that it's a unique blend of belief that is required to kind of want to sit here. But guys like Heiser and a lot of these theologians have come to see like the full circle of all the weird stories in the Bible and how we can believe in today as Christians.

And it's cool to like kind of blow the doors off of some of the, the boxes that we've put God in over the years. And like you said, the church has notorious for doing that in it. If I'm a skeptical person and I want to like look at Jesus from outside of the Bible, what's the first thing you would tell them? Read the Jesus discoveries because we only went through three of it. Okay. Because they might, the Bible may be too intimidating for them first.

And they need somebody, they need somebody to translate it to them. So I would start with the Jesus discoveries. That's why it's written to reach as many as possible. It'll guide you by the hand for, on the, top 10. And then what unfortunately I never get to is we've lost, I have a whole section in the book, we have lost the notion of Jesus as the most intelligent person who ever lived. Time Magazine published the top 50 thinkers of all time. Jesus was not listed. Wow. So we have to recover the great intellectual tradition of our faith as well. So I think that's another cool

Shocking. His life and ministry and resurrection changed the entire trajectory of humanity. This might not make the show, but I, on Mother's Day, I was doing some research. I was like, why didn't Jesus appear to his mother in the New Testament? And there was, I think a saint had a vision that when he, the first person he sees when he comes back is his mom because she would be there crying at the hill or saying prayers. Like he was just saying there for seven days. Yes, the women.

He appears to his mom first, but they don't include it in the Bible because it was such a deeply relational connection that it would have diminished the relationship he had with his mom. Yeah. And I thought, what a, what a powerful concept that the Bible is so relational that even just trying to like, you know, when people post their love story. out on the world, it kind of diminishes this private thing that happened. And I thought, I want to believe that's true. It's interesting. One footnote on that, when you look at

1st Corinthians 15, the women are left out. When Paul goes through all the appearance tradition and the empty tomb tradition, the women are not mentioned. And remember, that's written before the gospels. So it took a lot of boldness for the gospel writers to say, by the way, it was really the women that were the first witnesses. Yeah. Just a little footnote. So I think his mom would be the most devastating. Oh yeah. Without a doubt. She had the first relationship with him. What about Joseph, bro? He gets no bones. He was dead already, right? On that point, was they say Joseph was already dead by the time. So Mary was left. Yeah, she was a, she was a widow. That's what that's the research I was doing because I was just like, others day, you know, thinking about it. But I don't know.

Something to maybe write a book about it. Yeah. The great story. We only got through like three of the discovery. So we've got to come back and do this again. We'll do part two. I want to hear of the ushuary and the pilot's, pilot stone and next time. Yeah, it's what's wow. I think it's incredible. I think that it's cool that all these mainstream podcasters and people out there having you on, Tucker and this is the one I really wanted to come on. All right. You guys have to know that. Tell it. Everybody. That's all right. I mean, this blurry. I've been hearing about it. Brian Bailey's in the audience. I've been hearing about blurry creatures for years. So you have no idea how excited I was. That's cool, man. That means a lot. I appreciate.

being here. Well, thank you guys. Spending time with us here in the basement. Thanks for having me, man. Thanks for having me in studio. It's always better. Way better. Try not the damage in your items. Here's the book again.

Check it out. Put a link in the show notes and it'll be on our website as well. You can click it, get it, and learn some things. So thank you. And I'll send the Bigfoot story for the show notes as well because I was emailed that. I love it. All right. All right.

Thanks, man. Thank you guys. All right. Thank you.