The Second Messiah

Is the Shroud of Turin genuine?

For almost seven and a half centuries a piece of cloth was venerated because it bore the image of the crucified Christ, but in 1988 results of carbon dating showed that the fabric could not pre-date 1260. Now new evidence conclusively proves that it is not a fake yet neither is it the image of Jesus Christ.

Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas have been able to identify precisely where and when the shroud came into existence and to name the people involved. Using the latest scientific techniques, they explain the strange molecular chemistry that created this unique artifact.

The epic story behind the shroud begins with the crucifixion of Jesus when, as the authors show, his hidden teachings were driven underground. Following the destruction of the Jerusalem Church and the slaughter of the Jewish nation in AD 70, a few surviving priests from the smouldering city of Jerusalem headed to Euope to awit the moment of return prophesied in the Gospel of St. John. Precisely one thousand years later their bloodline descendants re-entered the holy city to claim their ancient heritage and form a new order of the priests of the Temple - the Knights Templar. There they recovered the lost teachings hidden blow the tumbled ruins and devised elaborate Tarot cards with cryptic meanings to protect their secret cult.

But their secret could not be contained for ever and in 1307 they were arrested. Their last leader was crucified in a bizarre parody of the crucifixion of Jesus, and the image of his suffering slowly materialized on the cloth that had once swathed him. As the Black Death devastated Europe the Church reached the lowest point of its existence, and the desire for a new savior, prophesied since ancient times, gripped the minds of people.

And now they had the image of their new savior, the Second Messiah.

In solving the riddle of the shroud, this book unravels a far deeper mystery: how this medieval artifact links directly to Jesus.

The guardians of this great secret tried hard to hide it from the world and even their own members. But they failed to destroy the evidence... hidden in abandoned rituals of Freemasonry.