The Shroud of Turin and What It Represents

The Shroud of Turin is a centuries old linen cloth that bears the image of a crucified man. A man that millions believe to be Jesus of Nazareth. Is it really the cloth that wrapped his crucified body, or is it simply a medieval forgery, a hoax perpetrated by some clever artist?

Modern science has completed hundreds of thousands of hours of detailed study and intense research on the Shroud. It is, in fact, the single most studied artifact in human history, and we know more about it today than we ever have before.

The Shroud is a single piece of linen cloth about 14 feet long by 3 feet wide. The twill is a 3 over 1 herringbone weave. It is bloodstained and shows faint front and back images of a man who, by the visible wounds appears to have been crucified. He seems to be resting in in burial repose.

The bloodstains
The bloodstains on the Shroud are composed of hemoglobin and give a positive test for serum albumin. Numerous tests confirm that the blood is real human blood.

The images
The Shroud's images are superficial and fully contained within a thin layer of starch fractions and saccharides that coats the outermost fibres of the Shroud. The coloration is a caramel-like product or the product of an amino/carbonyl reaction. Where there is no image, the carbohydrate coating is clear. There is also a very faint image of the face on the reverse side of the Shroud which lines up with the image on the front of the cloth. There is no image content between the two superficial image layers indicating that nothing soaked through to form the image on the other side.

Until recently, it was widely believed that the images on the Shroud of Turin were produced by something which resulted in oxidation, dehydration and conjugation of the structure of the fibres of the linen itself. This has been shown to be incorrect. The images are now understood to reside within a coating a coating of raw starch and various saccharides.

The images as they appear on the Shroud are said to be negative because when photographed the resulting negative is a positive image.

The Turin Shroud was examined with visible and ultraviolet spectrometry, infrared spectrometry, x-ray fluorescence spectrometry, thermography, pyrolysis-mass-spectrometry, laser microprobe Raman analyses, and microchemical testing. No evidence for pigments (paint, dye or stains) or artist's media was found anywhere on the Shroud. Nor is any photographic emulsion found on the Shroud.

The Peculiar 3D Phenomenon of the Shroud of Turin Image
For simplicity, let's confine our discussion to black and white pictures. The Shroud, after all, is monochromatic: brown and white actually.

Like any painting or photograph of a face or an entire human body (or for that matter a vase, apple or any three dimensional object) brightness represents light. Look at a full frontal picture of a man. The tip of his nose approaches white and the depth of the recesses of his eyes are darker. The roundness of his face from his cheeks towards his ears is progressively darker. At first glance, the face on the Shroud of Turin appears to be such a picture. It isn't.

How do we know this?
All regular pictures, be they paintings or photographs, represent light coming from some direction and being reflected towards our eyes. The eye of the painter or the camera lens is a proxy for our own eyes. The reason the recesses of a man's eyes are darker than the tip of his nose is because less light gets to into the recess. Image analysis shows us that this is not so with the facial image on the Shroud. There is no direction to what seems like light. Something else is causing the lighter and darker shades. That is looks like light to us is an optical illusion.

Look at the black and white picture that looks like a smoke ring. We might think that this is light reflected off of the smoke. It is not. This is an analogue data file of elevation, sometimes called a bump map in the world of computer graphics. With special computer software we can plot the data, the brighter and darker tones, as an elevation. That is exactly what we can do with the image on the Shroud of Turin: plot it as an elevation.

Let's be clear: You cannot plot a regular photograph this way. Nor can you do so for a painting, even a brown and white painting. You can do so with a precise copy of the Shroud, however.

Not only does this show that the image on the Shroud is not a photograph or painting, it shows that something extraordinary occurred to form the image.

Concluding,
There does not really seem to be any great doubt at all that the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, has left us an image of his earthly appearance which undoubtedly shows his outside persona as he was when he walked here on the earth amongst men. After all, his physical self was shown to the disciples, his mother, the Roman soldiers and many, many others who he made contact with while here on the earth as he walked and talked and preached.

As that is the case, then why would it not be plausible that he would reveal his earthly appearance to those here on the earth after he had been crucified and descended up into Heaven?

However, the outside appearance the world was shown while he was here on the earth was only the outside shell and was not the real appearance of Christ of Christ as we will see him after we descend up into Heaven ourselves. That appearance shall be far more radiant and glorious than what we have seen for the short time he was here.

There are several mentions in the word that tell us that instead of being rugged and handsome and charismatic he was nothing more than an ordinary looking man in so many ways. After all, if he were all of those things while he was here on the earth (and was not just an ordinary looking sort of a fellow) there are some whom he may not have saved if that were the case?

Accordingly, he would have had to have looked just the same as everyone else. For that reason so what he looked like while here on the earth is neither here nor there as far as this fundamentalist Born Again Christian is concerned.

However, what the Shroud of Turin does show us by the miracle it represents that it proves beyond any doubt at all that the son of God was here on the earth and that he was sent here as the saviour of mankind as an ordinary looking man which is more important than what he may have looked like while he was here. However, as has been mentioned above that fact alone does not really count for all that much at the end of the day. God bless all who come to this BlogSpot.

Carbon pricing means 'bye bye Oz' says climate change sceptic Lord Christopher Monckton

There is no other subject matter being discussed with more regularity and verocity on the late night radio stations that I listen to in the wee small hours of the morning than the Climate Change debate gripping the nation at the moment.

They used to say Global Warming, but as most of those who have any real savvy about them now say the planet is cooling down and not heating up?

Accordingly, the terminology of Global Warming has now changed to Climate Change.

The facts of the matter are that the planet has been going through one climate change after another for as long as man has been around here on the planet. Climate Change is evidently only the pretext for the introduction of a Carbon Tax?

More and more of the general population are now starting to become aware of just what this carbon tax charade is really all about as most of the money to be made out of this new and insidious tax is (of course) is going to be syphoned off to set up a New World Order - or World Government.

Independent Senator Andrew Wilkie has already given his approval for the new tax. What a vain and stupid fellow he really is?

The Australian Prime Minister Ju-liar Gillard, is going to address the nation today to try and sell what her political masters have quite clearly told her to introduce into law - something that is so evil that it really defies description - the Carbon Tax.

It now seems that those who were saying the idea of a World Government a few years ago was nothing more than another one of those wild and fanciful conspiracy theories have now done a complete turnaround and are openly admitting on public radio that the idea of a New World Order is not as ridiculous as what they first thought it was.

The late and great Barry R Smith said in that in order for nations to accept a New World Order, each and every nation had to be systematically destroyed through an ominous and ever-increasing dangerous system of taxation. The plan was that after the nations had been brought to their knees by being taxed to the hilt they would readily accept the New World Order without hardly a whimper at all being uttered.

That is exactly what is going on at the moment, just as the planners behind the New World Order had planned it all along with this new and insidious Carbon Tax being brought in even right now as I write this piece.

There really does not seem to be any real rhyme or reason attached the introduction of a Carbon Tax other than for the reason that I have mentioned above, and so the wealth of the nation redistributed out of the hands of the average person and into the hands of the very few global elitists? In other words sheer greed, and to benefit just a scant few of the worlds populace.

At the moment we have a great man visiting Australia. He is climate change sceptic Lord Christopher Monckton and here is what he had to say relative to the Carbon Tax.

IT'S "bye-bye Australia" if a price on carbon is introduced, British climate change sceptic Lord Christopher Monckton says.

During a colourful presentation in Sydney today, Lord Monckton had a message for Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

"Julia, baby, you're not going to introduce a carbon tax, because if you do, it's bye bye

Australia," he said to roars of approval from the few hundred paying audience members.

Lord Monckton said he had come back to Australia to give his "right of reply" to former prime minister Kevin Rudd, who he said "made some very rude remarks about me".

"But Rudd, baby, you're gone," he said.

And Ms Gillard - who Lord Monckton said has also made some rude remarks - should watch her step.

"Julia, darling, I'd be very careful before you do that again. Look what happened to the former prime minister.

"It may happen to you."

Lord Monckton declined to devote much attention to climate change adviser Professor Ross Garnaut, "bless his cotton socks", but he derided the $180,000 salary Tim Flannery is receiving as chairman of the government's new Climate Commission.

Nor did the ABC escape Lord Monckton's scorn after his stormy interview with Sydney radio presenter Adam Spencer this morning.

Referring to the ABC as a "high-heeled woolly, weirdy, beardy set" that is largely funded by the taxpayer, Lord Monckton told the audience, "I think you ought to stop paying."

Lord Monckton ended the presentation with a rousing set of questions to the audience, which gave him a standing ovation.

"Do we want a carbon tax? Do we need a carbon tax?"

The rousing answer was "No".

Speaking to reporters after the presentation, Lord Monckton was more forgiving towards the ABC, which he said had apologised to him for that morning's episode.

In an unprecedented move, Spencer hung up on his guest before calling back to resume the heated interview.

"It doesn't reflect very well on the ABC," Lord Monckton said.

"But what does reflect well on them is that afterwards, both the producer apologised and then (Spencer) rang and apologised in person and I think the appropriate thing for me to do in the those circumstances is to forgive them all and god bless the ABC."

Lord Monckton maintained that introducing a price on carbon would be "economic suicide" for Australia.

"A nation which utterly forgets to try to make sure that what it offers to the world is at least within shouting distance of the price of what others are offering... will soon go out of business and as a nation die and fade away," he said.

"This could be the end of an independent Australia. You may think I'm overstating this, but just sit and watch."