Jason Smith

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New Testament scholar Jeremiah Johnston explains why he believes the Shroud of Turin is authentic, tells story about how Jewish technical photographer Barrie Schwortz became convinced it was authentic. "If you're a medieval forger, how are you gonna know about AB blood?" "I believe that based on the evidence in the 102 academic disciplines that have studied over 600,000 research hours in it... I believe that because I'm not irrational." "I went from skeptic to believing in it based on the science..." "It is an itemized receipt of how much Jesus loves you." Remarkable. Video: @ShawnRyan762

This video will help you understand the explanation above

In 1986, the American Medical Association published an article titled "The Physical Death of Jesus Christ". It details the entire process of Jesus' trial to His death on the cross. In Luke 22, before Jesus is arrested, it is written that He was in great distress & sweating blood. Although rare, it is recognized as Hematidrosis, a condition caused by high levels of stress. At the time, the crucifixion was considered the worst death for the worst of criminals. But this is not all Jesus faced. He endured whipping so severe that it tore the flesh from His body. He was beaten so horribly that His face was torn & His beard ripped. A crown of thorns, 2-3 inches long cut deeply into His scalp. The leather whip used to flog Him had tiny iron balls & sharp bones. The balls caused internal injuries while the sharp bones ripped open His flesh. His skeletal muscles, veins, & bowels are exposed, causing major blood loss. Most men do not survive this kind of torture. After Jesus was severely flogged, He was forced to carry His cross while people mocked & spat on Him. Crucifixion was a process meant to instill excruciating pain, creating a slow & agonizing death. Nails as long as 8 inches were driven into Jesus' wrists & feet. The Roman soldiers knew the tendons in the wrists would tear & break, forcing Jesus to use His back muscles to support Himself to breathe. Imagine the struggle, the pain, the courage...Jesus endured this reality for 3 hours! The Gospel of John writes that after Jesus' death, a Roman soldier pierced His side with a spear & blood & water came out. Scientists explain that from hypovolemic shock, the rapid heart rate causes fluid to gather in the sack around the lungs & heart. The accumulation of fluid in the membrane around the heart is called a Pericardial effusion & the lungs is called a pleural effusion. To the world, Christianity is as foolish as it can get. They believe it's for the weak. But when you are confronted by the reality of the cross, it's clearly not a pretty sight. It is brutal & horrific. This is the weight Jesus carried. The weight of the sins of the world, all so that we can live. God's wrath is fully satisfied in Jesus. This is what it took. Repent & believe! Jesus is “God among us” in the flesh. Jesus is our Savior. Jesus loves you so much that He went through this spiritual and physical punishment for your sins and mine. Jesus is the LORD, Almighty God, Everlasting Father. Thank You, Jesus.

Understand this: The movies and shows about the crucifixion have been tame when compared to what He actually went through. Even The Passion Of The Christ was forced to hold back a little in order to avoid an X rating. Crucifixion was, and still is, arguably the most excruciating death someone can experience. The night before in Gethsemane, He was sweating blood. This is known as hematidrosis. This would have caused His skin to become extremely sensitive, thus making the beatings to come even worse. The fear He felt was the beginning of His feeling the weight of our iniquities being laid on Him. Yet - in this moment, He didn’t demand that the Father take it from Him. He only asked for the cup to pass Him over if it was within the Father’s will. Up next came the Cat of Nine Tails, or a Roman Flagrum. This was a weapon with long leather “tails”, each embedded with sharp bones and metal. He was flogged 39 times as Jewish law mandated “40 minus one”, because 40 was said to kill a man. This flogging wasn’t like being punished by your father’s leather belt. Every strike tore flesh, every strike exposed muscle. Every strike exposed nerve endings. Every strike tore flesh to the bone. This would be like getting struck with razor blades over and over again, leading to hypovolemic shock from blood loss. Oh, and the crown of thorns? These weren’t rose thorns. These were thorns which were 2-3 inches long. Beaten into his skull. These thorns would have pierced his skull, tripping the trigeminal nerve, thus causing unimaginable pain and even more blood loss from the dozens of head wounds. At this point, extreme nausea and dizziness would begin to set in. What came next? Carrying the cross. Which weighed around 300lbs. This would be like carrying two full kegs on your back. Splinters and wood grating against the open flesh on His back. And He had to carry it 650 yards, or close to a half mile. Imagine carrying a log on your back after being skinned alive. Up next? He was nailed to the cross with spikes 5-7in in length. Piercing His wrists - this no doubt pierced the median nerve, causing extreme burning sensations up and down His arms. A spike was driven through his ankles - severing nerves and tendons. This would have felt like standing on broken glass every time He pushed Himself up in order to breathe. He suffered for 6 hours. His chest muscles collapsing, making every single breath a fight for life. His shoulders were dislocated, His arms stretching unnaturally long. His heart was struggling to pump blood. He was extremely dehydrated, His lips cracking. His heart more than likely literally ruptured from the stress. And on top of all of that, He had to feel a separation with the Father for a period of time in order to REALLY bear the weight of our sin. He took up this burden for ALL sin before Him, and ALL sin which came after Him. HE DID IT ALL FOR US. To free us. To defeat sin. To give us a pathway to the Kingdom. Every sin we commit is exactly why He had to do it. And the real kicker? He knew what was coming when He rode into Jerusalem … and He didn’t turn around. He kept going. For us.

This never gets old … John MacArthur explains the greatest gospel verse in the Bible: 2 Corinthians 5:21 - “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

Me: Okay, God, here's the thing. I'm scared. I'm trying not to be, but I am. God: I know. Want to talk about it? Me: Do we need to? I mean, you already know. God: Let's talk about it anyway... We've done this before. Me: I know, I just feel like I should be bigger or stronger of something by now. God: *waiting patiently, unhurried, undistracted, never annoyed. Me: Okay. So, I'm afraid I'll do everything I can to protect my family and it won't be enough. I'm afraid of someone I love dying. I'm afraid the world won't go back to what it was before. I'm afraid my life is always going to feel a little bit unsettled. God: Anything else? Me: EVERYTHING ELSE. God: Remember how your son woke up the other night and came running down the hall to your bedroom? Me: Yes. God: You were still awake, so when you heard him running, you started calling out to him before he even got to you... remember? Do you remember what you called out to him? Me: I said, "You're okay! You're okay! You're okay! I'm here." God: Why did you call to him? Why didn't you just wait for him to get to your room? Me: Because I wanted him to know that I was awake, and I heard him, and he didn't have to be afraid until he reached the end of the dark hallway. God: Exactly. I hear you, my child. I hear your thoughts racing like feet down the dark hallway. There's an other side to all of this. I'm there already. I've seen the end of it. And I want you to know right here as you walk through it all, you're okay. I haven't gone to sleep, and I won't. Me: *crying. Can we sit together awhile? Can we just sit here a minute before I go back to facing it all? God: There's nothing I'd love more.

A guy in my sister's class (5 years ahead of me) joined us for dinner one night. He was there once. Then never again. I didn't know why until 30 years later. This guy grew up in a troubled home. No dad. Mom was a mess. They were super poor. One day my dad went to pick my sister up from school & saw 5 kids picking on him..... He was cowering in a corner. My dad ran over immediately.

Mike Macdonald is a special coach and leader. He's a Super Bowl champion. I was blown away by his response to a question at the League Meetings. From this week's "The Schrager Hour" live from the league meetings. 📺: bit.ly/4sJnNWh  🎧: bit.ly/3Nyymw4

He drives a school bus in Dallas, Texas. But the kids on his route call him something else — Dad. Every morning before the sun is fully up, Curtis Jenkins pulls his yellow school bus to the curb and waits. Not just to pick up kids. To see them. For seven years, Curtis noticed things other people missed. The little girl who folded her paper lunch bag perfectly every day but left it on the bus — because there was nothing inside. The boy whose shoes were too small. The kids who got on quiet, eyes down, carrying weight no child should have to carry alone. So Curtis did something simple. He made his bus a community. He gave every child a job — a greeter, an assistant, a "police officer" keeping order in the aisles. Every morning he'd call out, "We're going to care about each other and love everybody, right?" And 50 small voices would answer back. But it didn't stop there. Over the years, Curtis spent thousands of dollars of his own money — money he saved by skipping his own Christmas gifts with his wife — on birthday cards, bikes, backpacks, turkeys at Thanksgiving, and 70 hand-wrapped Christmas presents. He didn't buy random gifts. He asked each child what they wanted. Then he went and got exactly that. No donation page. No announcement. No cameras. When the story finally got out and people questioned how a bus driver could afford it, Curtis just smiled. "It doesn't take money. It takes discipline." But here's the part that will stay with you. When a reporter asked the kids what they loved most about Curtis — not one of them mentioned the gifts. A fifth grader named Ethan, whose parents had divorced when he was four, looked up and said quietly: "He's the father that I always wanted. In some ways, I wish my dad could have been like that." Curtis heard it. Didn't flinch. Just nodded. "That's the paycheck right there," he said later. "If I can get that, you can keep the money." He wasn't looking for a medal. He wasn't going viral on purpose. He was just a man who decided, every single morning, that his bus would be the safest place those kids walked into all day. Sometimes the person who changes a child's life forever isn't a teacher or a coach or a counselor. Sometimes it's the person behind the wheel of a yellow bus at 7 a.m. — who chose to show up, and chose to care, when nobody was asking him to. Tag someone who needs to read this today. 💛

Well that settles it 🤠

@reduzivert9 Speak on it!

Aaron Judge is in the Yankees lineup for the Yankees series opener in Seattle He's 3-for-16 with 8 strikeouts to begin the year and had to pick up Cal’s walkoff base hit in right field.

@shakeitupbabyy Hilarious!

⚔️ Christianity isn’t for the COWARD, it’s for the WARRIOR.

Pastor @howertonjosh helps explain the misunderstandings behind Matthew 5:27-30, "You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better for you to lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better for you to lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.” The context behind the Sermon on the Mount: This follows the Beatitudes and continues Jesus’ intensification of the Law (Matt 5:17-48). He moves from external acts (“You shall not commit adultery,” Exod 20:14) to the heart: lingering, intentional lust equals adultery internally. “Right eye” and “right hand” (dominant side, symbolizing what we value/control most) use vivid hyperbole—dramatic exaggeration, not literal self-mutilation (no biblical examples of followers doing this; Jesus never commands it elsewhere). The point is this, that Sin (esp. sexual lust) is deadly serious—it leads to hell (Gehenna). Radical amputation of temptation is required: cut off whatever feeds it (habits, media, relationships, apps, environments). Better to lose something valuable now than lose everything eternally. It exposes our inability to achieve perfect righteousness on our own, driving us to Jesus who fulfills the Law and offers grace. Misunderstood as promoting mutilation or mere behaviorism; actually, it demands heart-level repentance and decisive action against sin.

What can the enemy do to a believer who isn’t afraid of death?