November 30, 2023
Evidence Left Behind
(Some information may be too graphic for small children)
“And so Simon Peter also came, following him, and entered the tomb; and he saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the face-cloth which had been on His head, not lying with the linen wrappings, but rolled up in a place by itself.” John 20:6-7 (NASB)
While in seminary, I had the opportunity to take a class on the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. The course was taught by Dr. Gary Habermas. Dr. Habermas was the foremost expert on the resurrection and the Shroud of Turin. He and other experts from all over the world examined the shroud at one time back in the 1980s. His conclusion was the shroud was strikingly convincing, but it would not be the thing that convinced him that Jesus was the Messiah. He said he was convinced through his relationship with Christ. He said when he examined the shroud, he found so many things that matched the evidence necessary to claim it was genuine. I learned so much from the class, that I wished I would have taken better notes as a student. He was truly brilliant. I have forgotten so much. You can however view Dr. Habermas's videos on YouTube as well on other subject areas. He was the chair of the Philosophy Department at Liberty University when I graduated. His research lives on in his books about the resurrection.
“And so Simon Peter also came, following him, and entered the tomb;” What Peter did, was contrary to John. Peter went into the tomb. John did not. It is assumed as well that both arrived with lights to illuminate their way and were used inside the tomb. “...and he saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the face-cloth which had been on His head, not lying with the linen wrappings, but rolled up in a place by itself.” This brings some interesting thoughts from Lincoln: “A contrast with the earlier resurrection of Lazarus is intended. The term σουδάριον for head cloth had been employed previously in 11:44. In the case of Lazarus, at Jesus’ command he had come out of the tomb still bound, with his hands and feet in bandages and his head still wrapped in a cloth. Now the linen wrappings from around the body are lying in one place and the cloth from around the head is rolled up and in a place by itself. Lazarus had had to be freed to take up life again in this world. But Jesus’ own sovereignty over death is shown in the way he has left behind the wrappings associated with death. (ii) There is also an apologetic significance. The tomb had not been robbed and the body stolen, otherwise why would the clothes have been carefully removed? With its claim that others have not taken Jesus away but he himself has demonstrated that death could not hold him, the description of the grave-clothes suggests a narrative fulfilment of the saying about Jesus’ bodily life in 10:18— ‘No one has taken it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again.’”[1] Nothing can stop the power of God.
As I think back to my days in Dr. Habermas’s class, I remember something he said about the shroud. He said that the power that would be needed to place the image of the body onto the shroud would have to exceed ten thousand lasers. This is the only way the image could have been so perfectly well implanted on the shroud. Imagine Jesus, rising up through the garment without disturbing it. It would have been as if the garment simply settled after He rose like a puff of air rising through it. This left the image of the complete body of Christ.
[1] Lincoln, A. T. (2005). (p. 490). Continuum.