THE REALITY OF THE MESSIAH: Stunning new revelations about the Shroud of Turin
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America – long the freest, most prosperous, most respected and most Christian nation in the world – is approaching its 250th anniversary this July.
With that milestone in view, a look back at the just-completed year of 2025 reveals extraordinarily powerful forces for good and evil – not just political and cultural, but undeniably spiritual – to be in high gear in America … and accelerating in the new year.
The U.S. is currently blessed with a uniquely strong, common-sense, pro-America president. In one year, Donald Trump made enormous progress in reversing the Biden administration's pathologically destructive agenda. First and foremost that meant finally closing the southern border and ending the epically deranged (Trump and others have called it "treasonous") policy of inviting and enabling a full-scale foreign invasion of the United States of America. An invasion not just by many millions of illegal aliens, but by countless convicted murderers, rapists and other criminals, plus hordes of child-sex-traffickers, gang members, Chinese spies, drug dealers and terrorists.
Trump also managed to negotiate the Gaza ceasefire, crush Iran's nuclear weapons program, negotiate multiple peace agreements (between Pakistan and India, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Thailand and Cambodia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, Egypt and Ethiopia, and Serbia and Kosovo), reduce prescription drug and gas prices, lower unemployment, raise military recruitment and dramatically suppress crime in Washington, D.C., among many other major accomplishments in a dizzying first year of his second term.
On the other hand, 2025 also witnessed the continued rapid descent of Democrats and leftists into near-total demonic madness, as evidenced by their passionate advocacy for amputating the breasts and sexual organs of innocent but confused children, pushing for legislation legalizing abortion for any reason up to the very moment of birth, electing people like Muslim communist Zohran Mamdani to run the financial capital of the world, New York City, and fiercely supporting illegal-alien criminals over decent law-abiding Americans. Indeed, in major cities across the nation, most notably Minneapolis, leftists have been fomenting genuine insurrection against the U.S. government by violently defending alien gangbangers and criminals while rioting and attacking law enforcement officers, whom they label "Gestapo!" (That, of course, is an extension of their years-long pathological delusion that Trump is another Hitler and that Republicans are therefore "Nazis" and "fascists.")
How can this be? While pundits daily analyze such deranged thinking and behavior in terms of power politics, ideological indoctrination, racial/ethnic/gender identity, cultural biases, criminality, mental illness and perhaps other paradigms, underlying and superseding all of these is the ultimate stark reality of good and evil. Rev. Franklin Graham summarized the current state of affairs very well when he observed: "It seems like every demon in hell has been turned loose."
In truth, extraordinary spiritual things – both good and evil – are manifesting right now in America.
One hearteningly positive trend is the dramatic turn that Gen Z, widely considered the most troubled generation in American history, is making toward the Christian faith, as evidenced by amazing church attendance statistics. Barna Group research reveals a significant multi-year increase in commitment to Jesus Christ, driven by younger generations, reversing previous trends of decline. One factor powerfully bolstering that trend during 2025, not just among Gen Z but all Americans, was September's assassination of Charlie Kirk and the truly massive outpouring of commitment to Christ that his martyrdom inspired.
Also strengthening the Christian faith of many during 2025 were jaw-dropping new revelations about the Shroud of Turin, widely considered to be the actual burial cloth of the crucified Jesus – revelations that include what many now consider proof of his supernatural resurrection.
Science and tech 'admit they cannot duplicate the image'
Unsurprisingly, over the past few decades, many skeptical researchers have attempted to discredit the legitimacy of the Shroud. This includes the scandalously flawed carbon-14 dating in 1988, when three different labs knowingly tested a small, discolored corner of the linen Shroud that had been repaired with cotton during the Middle Ages after a 1532 fire damaged the sacred relic. Thus, the small part subjected to carbon dating was obviously not original. No surprise, then, that the labs determined the Shroud must be a forgery created in the Middle Ages! Some clever, overzealous monk or artisan must have done it, many conjectured.
Yet multiple research teams pursuing different aspects of the Shroud have recently overturned all of that – including Italian scientists who, using a new dating method called Wide-Angle X-ray Scattering, or WAXS, announced that the linen fibers of the Shroud are indeed consistent with a first-century origin.
Overshadowing all of this is the stunning reality that today's science and technology, despite the modern era's exponential growth in everything from artificial intelligence and computing to biotechnology and robotics, admit they do not understand how the image of the horribly brutalized and crucified man appeared on the ancient burial cloth and cannot replicate it. Yes, really.
Many millions are now persuaded that the Shroud of Turin really is the 2,000-year-old burial cloth of Jesus Christ, whose image at the moment of resurrection was supernaturally preserved on the cloth in a way modern science and technology cannot understand.
One of today's leading authorities on the Shroud, Dr. Jeremiah Johnston, explains how state-of-the-art research labs flounder when attempting to duplicate the mysterious human image – which resides only on the outermost layer of the Shroud's fibers and resembles a photographic negative (many centuries before photography was invented) on the piece of ancient linen, 14 feet 3 inches long by 3 feet 7 inches wide.
"The labs could heat up and essentially tattoo the shroud," he observes, "but it would burn up instantly – it would scorch. This didn't scorch." Rather, says Johnston, the best and most scientifically plausible – however mind-boggling – explanation is that the mysterious image of Jesus Christ was created by a supernatural charge of "34,000 trillion watts of energy in 1/40 of a billionth of a second." In other words, an instantaneous burst of divine energy, which, Johnston affirms, "we believe is that moment that Jesus's body is resurrected."
"It can't be duplicated and it hasn't been," stressed Johnston. "One man in Britain offered a million pounds" – that's about $1.3 million – "to anyone who could replicate the Shroud, and no one's taken him up on the offer."
Thus, in 2026, if one follows the evidence, the most rational conclusion is that what is seen on the Shroud of Turin is indeed a "negative photographic image" of the crucified Jesus being supernaturally brought back to life by God. Literally the result of unfathomable life energy coming back into Jesus's dead body in an instant, leaving his image on the burial cloth. It is thus widely regarded as one more powerful, faith-affirming piece of evidence from God that He really did miraculously raise His Son, the Messiah of mankind, from the dead.
Explosion of irrational hatred
Unfortunately, during 2025 there was also another spiritually inspired phenomenon that continues to play out. And that is an explosion of antisemitism – the irrational hatred of Jews, and along with it, hatred of the state of Israel. Statistics from the FBI and numerous other organizations document an astounding and unprecedented surge in antisemitism, both throughout the U.S. and globally.
But what makes this a "spiritual" phenomenon?
Consider: By all accounts, the radical upsurge of hatred toward Jews and Israel started shortly after terror army Hamas perpetrated the most barbaric and horrifying assault on Jews since the Nazi Holocaust.
In an unprovoked surprise attack on Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas savages killed approximately 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians, including many women, children and elderly. They targeted a music festival where over 360 young people were massacred. They abducted 251 people, many of whom were subjected to horrific treatment – gang rape, widespread sexual abuse, sexual desecration of corpses and other extreme brutality, including burning of entire families in their homes, shooting people in front of family members, then desecrating the bodies by beheading, mutilating and burning.
Hamas even used their victims' smartphones to livestream the massacres and torture sessions and send images of the atrocities directly to their victims' loved ones and to social media to increase the agony.
How, then, did this mass horror perpetrated on Israel and Jews result in widespread hatred and blame … toward Israel and Jews?
Of necessity, Israel fought back. Knowing that it obviously had to destroy the terror army Hamas once and for all, the Israel Defense Forces went into Gaza (a territory Israel had freely given over to the Palestinians, withdrawing all Israeli civilians and soldiers completely in 2005 under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon) to search out and, once and for all, neutralize Hamas, which the Palestinians in Gaza had elected as their government shortly after Israel pulled out.
Understand: Hamas's existence is, and has been since its founding in 1987, entirely dedicated to annihilating the nation of Israel. The charitable aid sent from around the world to help struggling Palestinians in Gaza – for buying food and building homes, schools and hospitals – has for years been redirected by Hamas for weapons, military infrastructure and, most infamously, construction of a vast network of terror tunnels throughout the territory to serve as underground launch-sites for surprise terror attacks on Israelis.
As the Hamas Charter declares up front: "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it."
But wait, some ask. Didn't Israel "commit genocide" by "targeting women and children" in Gaza as part of its campaign to neutralize the Hamas terror army? That is the view sold to Americans and the world by Hamas, the Arab-Muslim world and most of the Western world's left-leaning news organizations.
Here's the harsh truth: Israel's enemies have long deployed their own women and children as de facto military assets in a variety of ways.
In fact, Palestinian militants' heartless use of women and children in wartime as "human shields" is infamous and has been exhaustively documented for decades, not just by the Israeli government, but by international bodies and human rights organizations.
Israel's first prime minister, Golda Meir, memorably summed up the whole vile syndrome in her 1973 book, "A Land of Our Own: An Oral Autobiography": "When peace comes we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons."
It may be hard for Americans to grasp, but Arab-Muslim haters of Israel have long sacrificed their own children for the cause of destroying Jews and the Jewish state. Hamas is notorious for using densely populated Palestinian residential areas in Gaza for embedding their military infrastructure, from tunnels to rocket launchers to command centers, within civilian buildings including homes, schools, mosques and hospitals – including famously beneath the main medical center in Gaza, the Al-Shifa Hospital.
The term "human shields" for women and children is in no way metaphoric; it is their go-to war strategy.
Of course, all wars end up causing civilian deaths, sometimes in large numbers. But the two-pronged Hamas war strategy of weaponizing their women and children makes their sacrifice inevitable, if not intentional:
1) Their war planners depend on the decency and humanity of the Israeli Jews to cause their IDF commanders to avoid striking military targets that have purposely been embedded in residential/civilian areas.
2) When the Israeli military, however reluctantly or inadvertently, do end up killing civilians while targeting the enemy, the public relations victory thus won by the Palestinians – "Israel is committing genocide and targeting women and children!!" – helps them enormously in their cause, perhaps even more than winning the battle itself.
But what about Christian antisemitism?
Muslim hatred of Jews is one thing. After all, Islam is – as top Christian author and broadcaster Eric Metaxas recently put it – not just a religion, but "a death cult." Male offspring of radical Muslims are taught from their youth that blowing themselves up while killing dozens of innocent Jews on a bus earns them an immediate place in paradise, attended to by six dozen beautiful and perpetually virginal women. It's basically a religious salvation message geared to appeal to wildly out-of-control adolescent male sexual fantasies.
Likewise, many American college students oppose Israel because they are brainwashed by their peers and especially their professors, many of whom are Marxists, leftwing antisemites or raving lunatics of one variety or another.
But how does one explain antisemitism among Christians?
Israel is, after all, literally the cradle of the Christian faith and of the Holy Bible, both Old and New Testaments. It's where Almighty God chose to reveal Himself to mankind. It's where Jesus, a Jew (Yeshua in Hebrew, meaning "Yahweh saves") was born and ministered and performed healings and miracles and was put to death … and was resurrected and ascended to Heaven in front of many witnesses. Not only was Jesus Jewish, but so were all of the apostles who wrote the New Testament (except Luke, a Gentile physician who accompanied Paul), as well as everyone who wrote the Old Testament scriptures.
Yet over the centuries, prejudice has manifested against "the Jews" not just for failing to accept Jesus as the prophesied Messiah, but for supposedly being uniquely evil – secretly causing all of the world's problems, as depicted for example in "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," a fraudulent, fabricated antisemitic text purporting to document a secret Jewish plot for world domination.
Today, however, it is "replacement theology" (also known as "supersessionism") – the doctrine that the Christian church has replaced, or "superseded," Israel in God's plan, transferring to Christians all the promises God made to the people of Israel in the Old Testament – that has spread significantly among Western Christians, in clear contradiction to Scripture. This too directly feeds antisemitism.
As God said to Abraham, "I will bless those who bless you, And I will curse him who curses you" (Genesis 12:3 NKJV). And fast-forwarding into the New Testament, the Apostle Paul explains: "I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers and sisters, so that you may not be conceited: Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in, and in this way all Israel will be saved." (Romans 11:25-26 NIV)
When the Messiah returns
Maybe one last question for those who claim Jews are "occupiers" and should be driven out of Israel: When in some unknown future time the Messiah does come back to this earth, as every believing Christian and every religious Jew believes He will, the Bible explicitly says He will touch down in Jerusalem.
As the Hebrew prophet Zechariah wrote: "In that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, which is in front of Jerusalem on the east; and the Mount of Olives will be split in the middle from east to west by a very large valley, so that half of the mountain will move toward the north and half toward the south." (Zechariah 14:4 NKJV)
When the Bible prophesizes that the Messiah's feet "will stand on the Mount of Olives," a mountain ridge located just east of the Old City of Jerusalem, marking the beginning of the Savior's glorious and long-awaited reign on Earth, the question naturally arises:
Do those people who want the Jewish state of Israel to disappear from the earth – you know, the "End the occupation from the river to the sea!" crowd – suppose that the triumphant Messiah, upon His return from Heaven, will touch down in a once-holy city of Jerusalem governed and populated by a Jew-hating (and Christian-hating) army of demonically possessed Hamas terrorists?
Fortunately, that will never happen. As the beloved Christmas carol “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” puts it:
"Rejoice, Rejoice! Emman-u-el
Shall come to Thee, O Is-ra-el!"
*****
The preceding is just a small taste of what is insightfully explored in "THE REALITY OF THE MESSIAH."
Issue highlights include:
* "In 2026, good and evil are both in high gear" by David Kupelian
* "The Shroud of Turin: More than the burial cloth of Jesus. 'It is the moment of resurrection. It's captured in history. Blinding light, 34,000 trillion watts of energy in 1/40 of a billionth of a second'" by Dr. Jeremiah Johnston (based on in-depth interview with Michael Knowles).
* "The scandalously flawed carbon dating"
* "The million-dollar challenge to replicate the Shroud: 'The Shroud is the most intensely studied single object in existence'" by Jerry Newcombe
* "How the Old Testament’s messianic prophecies point to Jesus: 'Infallible guide leading in a straight line from Moses and the Prophets to Jesus and the Apostles' by Lee Strobel
* "Yes, God will keep his promise to Israel: 'A certain theological teaching known as Covenant Theology, or Replacement Theology, suggests that the church has taken the place of Israel and that all the promises that applied to the Jewish people now apply to the church'" by Greg Laurie
* "Christians aren't grafted into a dead tree: Too many believers are on the wrong side regarding antisemitism" by Joseph Farah
* "Young evangelical Christians are increasingly abandoning Israel: 'One of the biggest reasons Jewish people do not believe in Jesus is the conduct of the Church, which at times offered Jews baptism or death, among other horrors'" by David Kupelian
* "It takes a morally confused world to be anti-Israel: 5 characteristics of the Jewish state that today's culture claims are 'bad'" by Dennis Prager
* "The decline of religion is affecting everything: Faith is the glue that holds together a diverse people and a shield against the growing darkness" by Don Feder
* "Pastors should be more involved in politics, not less: The 32 million Christians sitting in the pews each week who refuse to vote are a game-changer" by Robert Knight
* "Only one hope left to save America": Special excerpt from the book 'Religionless Christianity: God's Answer to Evil'" by Eric Metaxas.
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