S1E3 What Killed the Man in the Shroud

In this episode, Pat and Lee discuss what killed the man in the shroud. A unique look inside the mechanism of injury.  

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

If you're a first responder, you know the chaos that comes with answering the call. Join Lee and Pat now as they share another story of resilience, process the heavy burdens of profession, and rediscover the divine purpose behind the badge and the uniform. It's time to move beyond just surviving the shift. It's time to find peace in the pressure and faith in the chaos.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

Welcome back to another episode of Answering the Call. Pat, thank you. And um it's good to see you again, my friend. And um, I'm really excited about today's episode talking about um the new book, uh Eyewitness, um, that is um is is published, is is for sale, is is um is reaching the hands of people who need it. Again, this is not about you, this is this is about um sharing some information within this book that's gonna be really important to folks.

SPEAKER_02 0:55

Uh Lee, thanks so much, man. And for those of you who don't know, Lee and I were paramedics together in um nearby county for 20 years, and we've worked together as as paramedic educators for that same amount of time. So all together we've been together for 35 years, man. Yeah. Last night Lee arrived at my house from the mountains and we had a snowfall, and we went out and stood by my fire pit and just really enjoyed nature and the beauty of that.

SPEAKER_01 1:21

And and just talking about, you know, we're talking about this. Talking about this kind of stuff, right? Things of God, right? And um directions for us to go. Now, this is not your first book, though, is it, Pat?

SPEAKER_02 1:32

No, and and let me just give a preface here about that. This book, the the title of this podcast is Answering the Call. Because both of us feel like we answered a call to get into EMS. But we've also answered other calls since. For example, traveling to Africa together to share with missions, to do missions work over there with nurses, training them in medical simulation. My writing, all these are different ways that we've answered the call. And so the writing is just something that kind of came naturally out of this experience.

SPEAKER_01 2:06

Well, answering the call um, you know, it could mean a lot of different things. You know, I I know um we're using that as our podcast name, but it's also has a history for you as well. Um that was one of your early books. It's more devotion, it was more devotional book, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_02 2:19

Yeah, you know what's interesting, man. W in 1999, I first started writing. Um I was riding with a friend named AJ. Um A.J. Stocks was his name. Old friend of mine. AJ's um no longer with us. He was actually killed in a tragic car crash as a high patrol officer.

SPEAKER_01 2:38

In the line of duty.

SPEAKER_02 2:38

In the line of duty, man. He was answering the call. He was. He was. But anyway, AJ and I, I I started writing short stories in the late 90s for my students where I was teaching in the community college. I would write a short story about uh an EMS call and then ask medical questions how they would respond to, you know, which drug should they push or, you know, whatever. But that led to um uh a number that led me to writing uh devotions. In other words, I started writing stories with the same characters that that expressed my faith. Because I felt like it was just something I needed to start sharing with people. Yeah, my relationship with Christ. And as a result, a good friend of mine who was starting a publishing company got a hold of them and said, Why don't we put these into a book? And I said, That's a great idea. Uh so we we did, and we combined it, and he says, I need a title. So I said, How about answering the call? And it naturally, and that little book's still out there. Uh it's written for first responders about actual calls that I and and friends like you have been on and what we learned in those things.

SPEAKER_01 3:40

Well, I I loved it. I I it's probably the one book I've given away more to other people, uh the answering the call, the original book that you had there. I um because it really does make an impact. It's it's talking to people who are experiencing things that we've experienced.

SPEAKER_02 3:56

Such as PTSD, depression, anger. Um you know, we you see a lot of stuff on the street, uh, regardless of which branch of um first responder you're involved with, you see a lot of pain, a lot of suffering, and it takes a toll on you.

SPEAKER_01 4:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:12

And I just wanted people to know that, you know, again, as I said in one of the earlier podcasts, it's it's about hope. And it's about dealing with the scars that are on your heart. Yeah. And that's why I started writing.

SPEAKER_01 4:24

I I loved it. I think it it is. It's a it's a it's a very important book, I think, for people who are looking for um for hope, for faith, and within the midst of a healthcare setting like it is. Now that wasn't your only book. You also uh wrote a couple of books in a genre maybe you can help me with a little bit. It's well it's a unique genre of of writing.

SPEAKER_02 4:45

When I first started writing, I mentioned AJ earlier, I need to get back to that because I didn't finish it. AJ and I were sitting in the bay one night and I was telling him about the short stories that I was writing, and there were two characters, one was Sid Drake. Sid Drake, that was me, my alter ego. And the other character uh was AJ's, but I couldn't think of a name for him. So one night I said, Well, AJ, what should your character's name be? He says, How about um Jim Stockbridge? Huh. I said, That's perfect. So he became Jim Stockbridge.

SPEAKER_01 5:16

Well, and being reading your books, I know I feel like I know them really well.

SPEAKER_02 5:19

Well, it Jim, Jim and said was killed in the first novel. That was my character was killed off, but Jim was a paramedic who was uh dealing with all kinds of troubles and uh how it built his faith. But that led to a book called uh Tested by Fire. And my first book about uh this was about A.J. Stocks or Jim Stockbridge Tested by Fire. It was full of anger, Lee. I'm not proud of it. Uh it reveals an old part of my my soul that I really am not proud of. And you can see the anger and the frustration coming out in that book. I wrote a sequel to it called Paramedic Killer. Paramedic Killer is is still a little bit angry, but it's a little bit softer because the writer, the author of me, is is starting to calm down and deal with the hit the pain a little bit. And the third one is called Eyewitness, and it's kind of a it's kind of a new series, but it's about an ER doc that has a um a life-changing experience. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:24

I read it a couple months ago and really enjoyed it. One of the things I noticed is that you're back in the book though, aren't you?

SPEAKER_02 6:30

Every time I write a book, my my wife says, That's you, isn't it? I said, Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:34

Well, you but you actually within the book, you have a a small role in the colour. Oh, I have a cameo. A cameo, I guess you'd call it.

SPEAKER_02 6:41

One of my favorite authors growing up was a guy named Clive Cussler. He wrote the Dirk Pitt novels. Uh, some of you have seen the movie Sahara, you know, and that's a Dirk Pitt novel. But Clive Cussler always did a cameo um in his book. Uh somewhere in the scene, Dirk Pitt would run into an old prospect or or something like that, and it was, you know, by the way, old timer, what's your name? I'm I'm Clive Cussler.

SPEAKER_01 7:05

So well, it in that in Eyewitness, your cameo is is giving a lecture on the Shroud of Turin, which is a central figure or central part of Eyewitness. Is that true?

SPEAKER_02 7:17

Yeah, the main character in Eyewitness is a guy named uh Mike Peabody. He's an ER doc uh in a fictional town, and um he's he's kind of an angry, arrogant guy. He's the kind of a doctor that would say, I am God. You know, years ago there was a movie um where Alec Baldwin was playing a doctor, and uh at some point they said, You you act like you think you're God. He says, I am God. And that's kind of the way Mike Peabody acted. Yeah. But uh he gets severely humbled, seriously humbled in this novel and has a change of change of heart.

SPEAKER_01 7:52

You know, we watched that movie last night, um Code 3, and that physician had that kind of mentality as well. I saw some kind of things that kind of crossed over there a little bit. But you you wrote this book. Um, first of all, I I asked a question before about genre. It's a kind of unique genre. How would you classify this this this novel?

SPEAKER_02 8:10

Well, historical science fiction. And and one of the taglines that my publisher put on is fantasy, because it's it's not based on re it's based on a real story, but it's somebody going back in time. So this ER doc who has a life-changing experience where he actually um has a near-death experience. And during that near-death experience, he wakes up back in time during the time of in Jerusalem where Jesus was crucified. And he witnesses the entire passion of Christ from the Garden of Gethsemane through to the burial and resurrection. He's there for the whole thing. And I'm not gonna spoil the book for anybody who might want to read it about what happens next, but it changes everything for him. He has a life-changing um uh he has a life-changing experience when he encounters the cross.

SPEAKER_01 9:05

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 9:07

And that's what our faith, Lee, I I'm not holding back here. That's what our faith is based on. Yeah, it's the cross of Jesus Christ and the power of the resurrection. Yeah, and that's what this book is about. I'm not trying to sell books. When I wrote this book, I was writing it so that people I've got tons of experience with with the crucifixion. We can talk about the Shroud of Torah in a moment. I've been studying that for 40 years and have lectured extensively on it. And and I just want people to understand what it is that Jesus really went through for us. Because you know, when we see the portraits of Christ up on a cross, they look very serene and peaceful. It was anything but that. Yeah, he's not high up on the cross looking peaceful and dying comfortably. He's about maybe two feet off the ground, almost eye-level with tall people. Yeah. Um and he's completely naked, and he is experiencing excruciating pain. He can't breathe. And we can get more into this later about the pathophysiology. Yeah. But the death was it was a horrible experience, and this is the degree of suffering to which Christ was willing to go for us. And that's why I wrote this book. I want people to see that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:20

I think it's really important too to understand that when you're reading this book, it is written by a healthcare provider, it's written by a paramedic, and it's written by a paramedic educator. So woven throughout this is understanding physiology, pathophysiology, what happens in the body during trauma. And you really explore that in in great depth. And honestly, during the reading of it, um, you learn something from it. You learn about the body's function and how that works. And I know that's kind of not the primary um focus, but it certainly is an aspect I think that could be attractive for um first responders of not getting of getting a realistic type of understanding of trauma and what how is it affecting the body.

SPEAKER_02 11:04

Let's look into this just a little bit, Lee. Let's analyze this. Um if you know the story of Jesus' Passion, you know that the night before he was crucified, he went into the Garden of Gethsemane to pray. Yeah. It was in the early morning hours. And there was one uh part that says that when he went off to a place among the in the garden among the trees to pray by himself, he was under such tremendous stress that he was sweating blood. Now that is a physical phenomenon known as hematohydrosis, which means blood in the sweat. And it happens when the body is in under such intense pressure that small capillaries in the skin and sweat glands are bursting. Is this primarily driven by increase in blood pressure? Yes. Now, in our in my years VMS, we we dealt with a lot of high blood pressure, but I had one patient that really stuck out to me. When I got to her house, she was complaining of severe headache. And she had blood coming out of her eyes, out of her tear ducts. Okay. And when I got her to the hospital and took her into triage, we checked her blood pressure, and it maxed out the blood pressure machine. You know as well as I do that the highest that that machine will read is 300 systolic. That's the top number. Yeah. That means her pressure was above 300, and she had blood coming out of her eyes. The Bible tells us that Jesus had blood in his sweat. This is a very rare phenomenon because most people will die when their blood pressure gets that high. He had blood coming out of his pores all over his body. And so it is my contention that 2,000 years ago, before any type of hospitalization or modern medical care, he would have died. Jesus could very possibly have died from that high blood pressure event alone. Before even going to the crucifixion. Before even going to the next stage, which was uh in Pilate's palace, the the scourging, which we can talk about in a minute. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:05

So, you know, over this time, this is not this book is not just come up quickly like this. This is an ongoing um research that you've been doing. Um it's centered around the shroud because it's showing the trauma. And could you speak a little bit what is the shroud? Why is that such an essential part of this of this story? And is it real?

SPEAKER_02 13:27

Yeah, I I would love to leave. I also want to make sure we get back to the scourging and the crucifixion of passaphysiology there. The Shroud of Turin is an artifact, um, if you will, owned by the Roman Catholic Church. It's actually a piece of cloth, fine linen, herringbone twill, that's 14 feet 3 inches long and 3 feet 7 inches wide. And when you stretch it out, it bears the recognizable image of a man, the front and back of the of the man's body, um, as it was folded over him under and over him, that bears a recognizable image of everything that Jesus went through in his passion. Okay. You can see the scourge marks on the body, you can see blood, you can see the signs of crucifixion uh from nail holes in the wrists to nail holes in the feet. And it it shows the long-drawn expression of a nomadic Jewish male who was uh horribly tortured. It's I've seen it with my own eyes. I worked on the Shroud of Turin Research Project back in 1978 when I was a student of photography out in California. Um the researchers from a group called STERRP, or the Shroud of Turin Research Project, had just come back from Torin, where they'd spent five days studying the Shroud 24 hours a day, taking photographs and x-rays and all types of modern imaging at that time.

SPEAKER_01 15:00

So that's early 3D imaging, right?

SPEAKER_02 15:02

Um yes, exactly. And they brought their information back to the United States and started studying it. Now I worked as a student for Vern Miller, who was the chief scientific photographer on that project. And I worked with him for 16 weeks on his shroud studies, um, not only at Brooks Institute of Photography, but also at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs with John Jackson, who was a captain there at the time, who headed up the STERP project. So I rubbed shoulders with some really important people who who gave a lot of some of them the rest of their lives to studying the shroud.

SPEAKER_01 15:39

Yeah. Now I I I mentioned that before we get into what actually happened to the person in that shroud, if it is the Christ. Um but what you've done with that over the years is is is actually research the mechanism of the trauma itself, the mechanism of injury, looking at that the pathophysiology of the actual trauma of what that person went through to experiencing that. Is that a good assessment of it?

SPEAKER_02 16:08

Well, absolutely. Uh if you look at the shroud, you you can see what crucifixion looked like, what it did to a person. Well, let's walk through this thing.

SPEAKER_01 16:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:16

If you look at the shroud, you see evidence of all the things I talked about a minute ago, and it lines up perfectly with what you see in the scriptural account of Jesus' passion. After the Garden of Gethsemane, where he was sweating blood, he was arrested by Roman guards and he was taken to the governor of the time. His name was Pontius Pilate, and he was sentenced there to crucifixion. And before they crucified him, they they they whipped him. Now, they didn't just whip him with a modern bull whip, they whipped him with something called a catanine tails. And the evidence on the shroud itself indicates that he was whipped from two sides, one on each side of his of his back. He was probably uh tied over a post of some type, and he was whipped. Uh, and these, believe me, these catanine tails had little uh metal dumbbells, lead probably lead dumbbells attached to leather straps. So just tear the skin apart. When brought down hard on the body, they wouldn't just tear the skin apart, Lee, they would actually bruise the underlying tissues and damage the underlying organs. So it it did unbelievable damage to the body. So there was there's a probability that person would have died before the precessive. Well, see, you and I have been paramedics for a long time. We saw a lot of trauma, and this has been the way I look at it. If I had seen this guy who had been scourged to this point mercilessly to the point of death, and the and and picked him up on the street and taken him to Duke, where we worked as paramedics, his chance of survival, even with modern medical care, would have been very low. He would have died. He had no medical care. In fact, immediately after that, he was forced to pick up his own cross and walk up Golgotha to his crucifixion. All while bleeding the whole time, I'm sure. Yes. So hip hemorrhagic shock was an absolute here. Hemorrhagic shock is a form of hypovolemic shock, meaning that your body fluids are are being wasted and they're shifting around and your blood pressure is dramatically dropping. We know for a fact that when Jesus picked up that that timber, uh, and we could talk about what the cross actually looked like, but when he picked up his own cross, it weighed about 90 pounds across his shoulders, he couldn't carry it. Yeah. He fell. He collapsed, and they picked up a man named Joseph of, I mean uh Simon of Cyrene, an African, a Libyan, and said, You carry it. Simon had the honor of picking up Jesus' cross and carrying it for him to his crucifixion. When when he couldn't no longer do it. He couldn't do it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:57

Now, the shroud's showing a lot of this. What kind of reliability do we have that the shroud is real and does it matter?

SPEAKER_02 19:04

Okay, first of all, let me say it doesn't matter to my faith. And I've given lots of trauma lectures on the shroud of Torah, and I always want to make sure everybody understands this is not meant to convince anybody anything about Jesus' crucifixion. It's meant to but but I hope it does.

SPEAKER_00 19:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:25

It's meant to show you what Jesus went through or what the man in the shroud of Torah went through. And if this is Jesus' shroud, which I believe it is, that's what Jesus went through for me. Unimaginable suffering.

SPEAKER_01 19:38

Now we spend a lot of time in the classroom teaching about trauma. Um we've done scenarios on trauma. Matter of fact, one of the most interesting um lessons that we've had for our students is uh spilling blood out in the parking lot. And what we would do is we would um we would have simulated blood and we would calculate it out to be about this um amount of blood for us, right, individually. I think at the time it was 5.6 liters of blood would be my total volume. Are you able to estimate what the blood loss might have been from the from the person in the shroud? Um is i i did they progress to that point of irreversible shock? Is that what the cause of death, or could you determine what was the actual cause of death?

SPEAKER_02 20:18

Well, yeah, we'll talk about the actual cause of death from the shroud in just a moment. As far as calculating how much blood he lost, that's hard to do because he he would have had so many other injuries going along with that. He first of all, he was suffering from high blood pressure when he went into this. And so when they started tearing him apart with the shroud with the uh the the scourge, he would have squirted blood. He would have been, yeah, profusely bleeding. But the very fact that he was was uh unable to walk and carry that weight indicates that he was well into the hypovolemic shock stage, which means he, you know, could have lost a liter or two of blood by that point already. As I'm sitting here, my body contains, let's say, six liters of blood. It would take two liters of blood, after two liters of blood, I'm starting to become uh getting to the point where I'm no longer I have an all now an altered mental status, but Jesus was still fully alert at that point.

SPEAKER_01 21:14

Not only is fully alert, he was ministering to the people on the crosses beside him.

SPEAKER_02 21:20

Well, we're not there yet. As he's walking up. As he's walking up the hill. So you asked me how eventually it would be, yeah. He's lost, you know, he's lost a lot of blood already.

SPEAKER_01 21:28

So he's certainly in a decompensated shock going into irreversible at some point.

SPEAKER_02 21:33

Well, he's right now he's probably still compensating, but his blood pressure is dropping. One of the ways that you and I check a patient's blood pressure immediately, and any medic out there knows this, is we check their radial pulse. We check the pulse on their wrist just above their thumb. And if we can't feel that, we know their blood pressure is below 80. Their skin is starting to turn pale, they're getting short of breath, they're getting lightheaded, and I think this is where Jesus probably would have been at this particular point after the discussion. Scourging. But now he's got to carry this, he's got to walk to Golgotha. Now there's some there's mixed reports on Golgotha. Nobody knows for sure whether it was on top of the hill outside the gate of Jerusalem or if it was actually on the road leading into Jerusalem at the gate, the sheep's gate, where they they brought in the sacrificial lambs. Some people think that it was actually on the road out there, so everybody passing by in and out of the city would see him. But there's other reports that it was actually on top of a hill called Golgotha that has the actually the face of a skull almost. And Golgotha means the place of the skull. So it's an evil, it's an evil connotation. Yeah. But Jesus was was crucified. First of all, he had to walk to the top of the hill or outside the city, maybe a half a mile, and then he would have been thrown down onto the ground on top of a wooden post called the petibulum. The petibulum is like a railroad beam, a railroad tie, if you would. It weighed about 90 to 100 pounds. Probably not creosote because they wouldn't have had that technique then, but a piece of square-like timber like that. And they would have nailed one hand to one side of that post and then stretched out the other one and nailed it down. They would have nailed it into it, that a special place in the wrist called the space of destate. The space of destate is designed to go between the bones without breaking any of them. And it comes into contact with a nerve called the great median nerve. And when that great median nerve is contacted, it sends severe uh waves of pain up the arm into the spine. It's extremely painful. This whole process is maximizing pain. Sadistic. And the Romans were very, very good at it. Now it's very important that point about not breaking any bones because the Bible prophecies indicate that not a bone of his would be broken. Huh. And it there have been there have been tests run on actual cadavers where they tried to put the the nail into the bones between the hands, you know, the hand bones. Um and and it's been proven that they that will rip out. That will not support the weight of a human body. But if you put it down there at the space of dust dut and the eight bones of the wrist, uh then you can't, it will hold that weight. But it also contacts that median nerve. Now one thing uh everybody needs to understand is the word excruciating. If you were to look at the Latin word for excruciating, the the Latin root word for that is cruci, C-R-U-C. So it's E X cruce, C-R-U-C, and then you can add the suffix to it. Excruciating, and the root word cruce means cross. So the word excruciating comes from the cross. I didn't realize that. And you ask anybody what would be how would you describe the most painful uh pain you could ever experience? A ten out of ten, they would say excruciating. Jesus experienced excruciating pain from the nails put into both of his wrists, and then not only uh after they this is a common misconception that the sh that the cross was most likely shaped like a um well like the modern cross that we see, it was more likely shaped uh in in the shape of a what we call a tau or a T. Meaning his cross member that he's nailed to would now be lifted by Roman soldiers, taken up to the top of a post called a stipes, and dropped into a notch on top of it. So it would form the shape of a wooden T. So now Jesus is nailed to this beam, he's lifted up, he's dropped on, and the notch of the two pieces of wood come together. You know, have a wooden T that he's hanging from by his arms. Then they take his legs and they bend them to maybe a 90-degree angle, and they nail them one atop the other to the stipes. Now he's crucified.

unknown 26:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:09

So now Jesus is hanging from his arms in tremendous, excruciating pain, and by the way, he can't breathe because of all that pressure on his ribcage right now.

SPEAKER_01 26:18

How long does it take for someone to die being? Well, crucified.

SPEAKER_02 26:22

We'll get to that in a second. In Jesus' case, it took about six hours. But Jesus is hanging by his arms, he's in excruciating pain, his hands, he can't take it any longer, so what's his only option? It's to try to stand up on those nailed feet. Take some of the pressure off, yeah. Yeah. But when he does, Lee, it it sends pressure up the nerves in his legs to the bottom of his spine and shoots up into his brain. More excruciating pain. And not only that, but if you've ever tried to stand against a wall with your knees bent to a 90-degree angle, how long can people do that? Not very long. Not very long. Your quadricepts and your legs burn and burn and burn and finally you collapse. Now he's back on his hands again. So he did this for six hours, already weakened by the initial insult of high blood pressure, then weakened by the scourging, which would have killed him. So he's in hypovolemic shock, hanging on this cross. And that's not it though, either. He can't breathe, Lee. Yeah. Because in origin at some point his legs give out, he's hanging only from his lump from his arms, and the pressure is building up inside his chest cavity. He can't breathe. Uh, he his heart muscles working, it is actually rupturing at some point to the to the point where he has uh a condition you and I know as cardiac tampanut, which means that there is he's actually bleeding inside the sac around his heart, so his heart muscle can no longer pump adequately. His blood output, his cardiac output is dropping.

SPEAKER_01 27:48

You got that narrowing pulse pressure, you got a backup of blood flow causing JVD, all kinds of stuff going on, don't you?

SPEAKER_02 27:56

Not only is he experiencing hypovolemic shock, he's now experiencing what you and I know as mechanical shock. Yeah. His heart can't beat. He's still fully lucid. Now I know we're going from the shroud to a talk about Jesus, but this is it. He he's still fully alert. And he makes seven statements in the in the Bible, and one of them is, Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're doing. What he's saying is, I'm the Son of God. They just don't know this. Forgive them. And then he has a conversation with one of the criminals. He's got a criminal crucified on each side of him on their own crosses, and one of them is mocking him. And the other one says, Dude, what's wrong with you? Don't you know who this man is? And he says to Jesus, he says, uh, please remember me today. Uh and Jesus said, Today you'll be with me in paradise. He confessed with his mouth that Jesus is is Lord, and he believed in his heart that God would raise him from the dead, and and I think he was saved. So this is the this is the power of the crap. This is the power of the cross. Jesus said to him, Yeah, you're you're basically he said you're saved. So all this trauma, you and I have seen trauma, but we've never seen one quite this brutal and and just sadistic. But Jesus died after six hours. And uh when he did, uh well, people can read the gospels themselves, but um, it was an earthquake, and and uh it it it was a phenomenal moment in history. If I could go back to any time in history, it'd be that moment. Watch this, watch the earth turn dark, and I don't believe that means just a nice sunset, I believe it means darkness, covered the uh the country. Darkness, maybe maybe just complete blackness, indicating that the light is going out of the world. The uh Roman soldiers came over to him later and they stabbed him in his side because it was very important that they got these three bodies off the crosses before Passover began. And Passover began that afternoon. And so they said, We've got to hurry up, we've got to speed up their deaths. So they would come along and break the legs of the men on the crosses so that their legs would collapse and they would be hanging from their arms and they'd die more quickly. They'd suffocate.

unknown 30:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:20

When they came to they broke the legs of the first two criminals, and when they came to Jesus, they realized he was already dead, so they stabbed him in his side with a spear, and what they got was a flow of water and blood, indicating just what I said before, that there was watery substance around the sack in his heart, and everything now poured out the side. So what we believe Jesus died from was a combination of hem hemorrhagic shock, complete blood loss, um, plus asphyxiation, which means basically, without getting too deep into it, he couldn't breathe. Yeah. He suffocated.

SPEAKER_01 30:56

Now, how much does the shroud reflect those what the Bible talks about, the trauma that was inflicted? How accurate does the shroud reflect what the Bible says?

SPEAKER_02 31:07

Well, basically, like I said, everything. Okay, first of all, you see no evidence of broken bones on the body on the shroud. You do see scourge marks that match up with archaeological findings of scourges from Rome in that time period. Little dumbbell shapes that are about an inch and a half in length. Um you see torn up uh marks all over the body, front and back, legs and buttocks, chest, arms. Um you don't see any scourge marks on the head, but you do see bleeding from the scalp where they had placed the crown of thorns and hit it with clubs, gouging it into his scalp and into his eye, possibly. Um you see the long drawn pained expression of a man.

unknown 31:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:50

Someone who underwent a terrible ordeal.

unknown 31:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:54

So you see all this on the shroud.

SPEAKER_01 31:56

So it's reflecting, and you're able to look at it from as a medical professional and evaluate it from the physiological side of stuff.

SPEAKER_02 32:05

Absolutely. So I've got a I got a lecture that I entitled because I didn't want it to get wrapped up too much with my my faith, but I always share scriptures in this to match what I'm saying with what we see in the Bible. But the title of it is What Killed the Man in the Shroud of Torin, not What Killed Jesus. Yeah. Yeah. People can come up with their own conclusions.

SPEAKER_01 32:26

Sure. Well, you've taken this in in a couple different um venues. I mean you've spoken at um EMS conferences on this topic. I have. Um in other locations too. How how does the EMS community receive that?

SPEAKER_02 32:38

Well, it's interesting, Lee. I've always been the kind of guy that people I uh you know, I don't want to get this too much too deep, but i I'm either on or off. People like me or they don't like me. Um I think I've got a lot of enemies, but I got a lot of really good friends. Yeah. But the then the surveys that you get after these these conferences are the same. Every uh I did one at a at a I won't say which one, but at a um a life light conference at one of the hospitals. And um everything, every every survey car was either a five or a one. Meaning they either loved it or they hated it. Yeah. We gave one at one of the medical conferences and we got a standing ovation. I say we, uh I didn't get standing ovation. The topic, you know, the shroud got the standing ovation. But there were other people who were frowning. And to share another story, I took a patient into the hospital once into triage. She had um she had tried to kill herself. She'd been it was a cry for help, really. She'd slashed her wrist, and all you medics out there have seen this. But it was more cries for help. She was as white as a sheet when I got there. I told her about Jesus. We prayed together in the back of the ambulance, and when we got to the hospital, she was as pink as a baby and she was joyful. And my partner opened the back doors and his eyes got real big. He said, What happened? I told her about Jesus. We went inside the ER, we're waiting in line and we're talking, and uh my radio went off in my back pocket announcing that there were somebody was bringing in uh a major trauma, a 14-year-old boy who had been in a car crash. And I said, Uh, I I call her Noelle, that wasn't her name, but Noelle, if you're getting ready to bring in a really bad case, be you know, just be prepared. And a minute later the doors opened. A minute later the doors opened, and they brought in a kid on a stretcher who was intubated, bleeding, unconscious, and she went, Oh no, that's terrible. I said, Well, you can start your your minute, your your ministry right now. You can pray for him. She says, Right here? I said, Sure. I thought she was going to bow her head and pray silently. She prayed out loud. And then at the end of it, I said, Well, in whose name? And she shouted, she shouted, in Jesus' name. And everybody in triage, there were a whole bunch of stretchers in front of us. Everybody turned around and looked at us. The reactions were either smiles or frowns. There was nothing in between.

SPEAKER_01 35:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:06

And that's just the kind of response to.

SPEAKER_01 35:08

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: That's what we should expect, I think, probably. Trevor Burrus, Jr.: But anyway, that's what this book is about. Well, bring it back around, right? So we we originally started talking about that the the Shroud is kind of a central figure within eyewitness in in the this fictional, historical, genre type book. It's it has biblical facts, but it's based on a fictional character. Totally fictional. Right. Um I found it if one, I I thought it was it this would be a great movie, but um but that's a part, the Shroud is an essential part of that. It's it's kind of leading people to to the ultimate story, I think.

SPEAKER_02 35:44

A lot of people look at Shroud and question it. Yeah. You know, the reality of Jesus. There have been a lot of good discussions that have come out of it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:50

So for you, it's not it's not one of those deal breakers. It's it's it's definitely one of those um um potential things that are of interest, but may lead somebody to that, to the truth, but not necessarily could you ever prove it? Could you?

SPEAKER_02 36:06

It will never be I it look, I've been studying this for 40 years, and I worked with I worked with, not I wasn't, but I worked with some of the greatest minds in uh in this this topic. And everybody agrees uh this is just unbelievable. Uh we can't explain it, and I don't think we ever will.

SPEAKER_01 36:25

So um what's the next steps for eyewitness the book? I know uh I think it's really important to talk about who's it trying to reach, where is the book going?

SPEAKER_02 36:34

Okay, well, right now, um and I know we're short on time, so I don't want to get too deep into this, but I my when I was writing this, my ultimate goal was to get into the hands of inmates because I I've I I'm involved with a prison fellowship here in my state, and I'm getting ready to get into the death row inmates, and I want these guys to see the hope in Jesus, the hope that He's brought me. I can't went through that dark time after EMS where I was trying to get my own identity back and figure out who I am, and and but Jesus saved me. And when I go on the street to share the gospel with people, I'm an evangelist, I tell them, look, man, you're looking at a guy who's been saved. I'm not feeding you a line. This isn't some kind of a thing that you you check off bullet points. This is real, and it's the most important decision you'll ever make. You're looking at a man who's been saved. Um, in more ways than I can talk about on here. Um so these inmates were the people I had in mind when I was writing this book because I want them to know there's hope. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:38

Well, I'm so excited for you on this book, and and I know it's not of you. It's it is to glorify our Lord. It is and um, but what an excitement opportunity to be able to reach people who may not be able to, who may not be open to that understanding yet. And um thank you for for sharing that with us today.

SPEAKER_02 37:56

Well, thanks for letting me. Um I'm just gonna say this all glory to the Lord. Thank you for what he did for us on that cross.

SPEAKER_01 38:02

What a story of hope. You know, um whether or not the shroud is real, it certainly can point us to the right direction. Amen. Amen, brother. You have a good day.

SPEAKER_00 38:13

Thank you for listening to Answering the Call Podcast, Finding Faith in the Chaos. Please join Pat and Lee for future episodes and engage with him and other listeners on Facebook and other platforms. Be sure to like and subscribe so you don't miss what's next. This episode may elicit strong emotions such as post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, and suicidal ideation. We are not mental health professionals, and the stories or advice shared here should not replace professional medical help. If you or someone you know is struggling, please reach out for help. You can call or text the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988 in the US and Canada, or contact your local emergency services.