After the tabernacle was erected, Moses ordained his brother Aaron and Aaron’s sons to the priest- hood. Aaron became the High Priest. The priests began officiating the people’s sacrifices to be offered to God on the brazen altar, just inside the tabernacle gate.

When the last of the altar sacrifices (peace offering, trespass offering, guilt offering, etc.) were laid onto the altar, the people of Israel beheld a spectacular event. Fire came down from heaven and completely
consumed the sacrificial offerings. God had accepted their offerings. The people fell to their faces and worshipped Him.
 

Years later, we read that God demonstrated this same spectacular power for Elijah the prophet (I Kings 18:38) when He sent fire from heaven and consumed the offering of Elijah. The prophet had purpose- fully drenched the altar with water to prove to the pagan worshippers of Baal that Elijah’s God was the one true God.

New Testament writers of the bible describe this action as an acceptance of the propitiation (an appropriate substitute sufficient to appease a wrathful God over man’s sinfulness).

Accepted in the Beloved?

In more than one scriptural reference, we see that God demonstrated His approval of a fitting sacrifice with a fiery onslaught emanating from heaven. Did this occur in the tomb where Jesus was laid?

 

Wisdom would dictate that it did. But a language consisting of a paltry 8,200 words would have not been equipped to sufficiently describe an electromagnetic current or frequency that pierced through a carved out stone sepulcher, leaving no damage, igniting a 3-day old corpse so strongly that the body awakened from the dead, and was so finitely accurate that there was no reported disturbance to the bench whereupon the corpse was laid or any other thing, except one: A delicate piece of cloth.

But on what we in the west celebrate mainly as Easter or Resurrection Sunday, we revel in the knowledge that our savior was resurrected to life. The greatest proof is the empty tomb. We can infer from this that Jesus was the acceptable sacrifice for our sinfulness. But did God send "fire" down from heaven? Did He leave us evidence? This writer asserts that He did.

We see in the Shroud of Turin, evidence that an active, ignited current had invaded the cloth. It was powerful enough that the dried blood still congealed on the body of the corpse was imprinted front and back onto a white burial sheet, 14.5 feet long, folded over a naked body from the top, and completely draping the body, front and back, with imprinted markings similar to that which a beaten, crucified man would display, including evidence of nail-scared wrists and feet.

Skeptical Shroud investigators have themselves proven that the imprints were not woven or embroid- ered, not a camera negative, not artfully painted onto the shroud material (finely woven from flax), but was most likely infused by an electro-magnetic current which we cannot identify.

All prior practices of consuming sacrifices by ‘fire’ were rehearsals (moedim) for that great coming day when Jesus would rise from the dead and take His place at the right hand of the Father, as our Savior.

Back in the desert, with the newly freed Israelites, God commanded that they bring sacrifices to atone for their sins. He also allowed them to use the ritual as a form of worship and thanksgiving. But the majority of sacrifices were as propitiation for the sins which so easily deserved eternal damnation. The sacrifices were accepted by God via a spectacular event which resembled a consuming fire shooting down from heaven. This ritual was for the people of Israel only.

But one day, hundreds of years later, a sacrifice was made, once and for all, and Jesus the Anointed One became the ultimate propitiation for an entire sinful world, by faith.
 

Infallible Proof
 

Did God accept the sacrifice? Most believers would answer yes, not requiring proof! And yet, we might not realize that we actually have proof that this did occur. God did send a fire-like power down from Heaven, but the power from heaven did not consume the body; it consumed the second death—the eternal, irretrievable, merciless, final death due to us all. God gave us life in Jesus. He took away sin and the second death!

The Shroud of Turin has given the world somewhat solid evidence that it came from the tomb of a crucified person. We can further postulate that a powerfully charged atomic disturbance permeated the place where this shroud was used. Even those who wish to debunk the authenticity of the shroud can present no plausible scientific explanation for how it could have been forged or created by natural processes.

Based on what we can derive in scripture about God’s method of acceptance of sacrifices, we can deduce that God surely left a "footprint" somewhere on this planet. Clearly by the evidence burned into the Shroud of Turin, we are assured that the sacrifice itself was considered acceptable by God and consumed by a charged power, just as every other well-pleasing sacrifice had been.

The sin that was upon mankind demanded eternal separation from God, which is the second death or Hell. Jesus died for our sins as well as for the consequences due to us, and He has appeased the wrath of God by becoming our sacrificial substitute. He is risen!

 

We who believe are saved from the second, eternal death by God’s mercy and grace, and by the
completed work of the cross and the grave. Meanwhile, Jesus lives eternally, protecting his legacy upon the church, with sacrificial intercession for all who will believe!

​

Victoria Grimmett Rabb writes and lives in Los Angeles.