The following "Question" was asked by a member of the congregation at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, and "Answered" by their pastor, John MacArthur Jr. It was transcribed from the tape, GC 1301-R, titled "Bible Questions and Answers Part 20."  A copy of the tape can be obtained by writing, Word of Grace, P.O. Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412 or by dialing toll free 1-800-55-GRACE.  ©1982. All Rights Reserved.

Question

There has been much in the media about the shroud of Turin; I’d like for you to comment on that and tell us what you think.

Answer

Well, the shroud of Turin is a very intriguing situation. The basic problem that I have with the shroud of Turin is that it is a one-piece shroud. If you know how that thing works, it’s a big long thing twice as long as a man that was folded in the middle so that half of it came down the front, and half of it came down the back. But in the gospel record it says that there was a separate piece that covered the head that was lying by itself. And I’m sure they’ve come up with some way to answer that thing, that I haven’t read—I was reading this week a book called The Shroud of Turin, and I was not satisfied with their attempt to answer that.

Now the thing about the shroud that is interesting is that it apparently has an image on it. Now if you lay in your bed at night, you get up in the morning, you don’t see your image there. If you bury a person in a shroud, and then you take them out and take the thing off of them, they don’t leave their image. And that is the key to the thing. They can’t figure out how that piece of material picked up a photographic image of the body that was in it. And they in all their tests, they say that it’s obviously not painted on there, you know, it’s somehow transferred on there like a negative is, it’s like a positive actually. So that’s the real mystery, how do you get a photographic positive on a piece of linen? And I don’t know the answer to that. There are some people who are really convinced that the only way to do that would be through some cataclysmic transfiguration, some effervescent light, and that would tie in of course with Jesus Christ and the shekinah and the brilliant light in His resurrection, and the power of the resurrection and all and so forth.

You know my own feeling in the thing is, if it is the real thing, so what? You know? And if they don’t believe the Bible, they’re not going to believe that thing. And if it isn’t the real thing, so what? It’s like Noah’s ark. Everybody wants to climb up and find Noah’s ark—who cares? We know in here it was there. If you don’t find it it doesn’t matter to me. You know you can get carried away with that stuff. Somebody said that they’ve got bottles, vials of Mary’s breast milk, you know in Roman Catholic churches. They’ve got enough of that to feed a family of six. They’ve got teeth from Peter, if all those teeth are Peter’s, he must have been a baleen whale. So they’ve got enough pieces of the cross to build a three-story building, so you know, I mean that kind of stuff is a very big preoccupation with the Roman Catholic system and the relics. And I’ll tell you another thing, it’s a big money maker for them too because there’s a lot of pilgrims who come to see that thing. Twice a year they pull it out and they come by the millions, and they pay to see that. I guess I have to just say at this point, I think the case is not clear as to what it is, but it’s sure giving some people a lot of stuff to do.

Added to Bible Bulletin Board's "MacArthur's Questions and Answers" by:

Tony Capoccia
Bible Bulletin Board
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