When the early morning visitors arrived at Jesus’s tomb they found it empty. Where did the body go? Two thousand years later researchers who were examining His burial cloth, the Shroud of Turin, noted that His body was in rigor mortis at the time in was placed in the tomb. He in fact died on the cross.

Later that first Sunday and in the days to follow, various people claimed they saw Him, alive and well. Forty to sixty years later the Gospel writers, none of whom were eye-witnesses to the crucifixion, wrote that He had been raised from the dead. That is, the body which appeared outside the tomb on Easter Sunday was the same body that was laid to rest on the previous Friday. A dead man came back to life! A true miracle took place. Or did it? Forty to sixty years is a long time to wait to document an event, particularly when the content is transmitted by word of mouth. For all of His good traits, Jesus left nothing behind in writing.

After over a century of study, Shroud research reveals a very different story. The research denies that a bodily resurrection took place. His enshrouded body vanished with a radiation release that was strong enough to straighten out the cloth that was contoured to His body, push the sticky/crusty blood scabs from His body wounds into it and alter its chemical composition. The transfer from body to cloth was so exact that the resulting stains on the cloth reveal the shape of the instrument that created them (a Roman flagrum). They also reveal a serum contraction ring. There was an energy release in the tomb. Something of an atomic nature broke the normal atomic bonds of the linen substrate. Attempts to radiocarbon date the cloth failed. A linen cloth that has been exposed to radiation cannot be accurately carbon dated. The radiation effect was so strong that Jesus’s teeth and the bones in His hands and wrists can be seen under high resolution photography. Claims that the Shroud is a forgery fail to answer how the cunning artist could create artistic effects that can only be seen through photography that had not yet been invented. It is as if His body was a human X-Ray machine. Some researchers see a 29 AD Roman coin over His right eye.

Western science denies that a human body can radiate away, even though Tibetan Buddhists have been doing it since before Jesus was born and, moreover, operate a school to teach how. Imagine. Dying a corpse-less death is a learnable skill. The phenomenon is called rainbow body.

The nature of the body that appeared outside the tomb is called into question. Was it a real body; one that reflected light and registered when placed on a weight scale? The Gospels tell us it could consume food. Did it also defecate and urinate? Or, was it an hallucination that was imposed on the minds of the observers? Human figure forms appearing from the spirit realm are rare, but not unheard of. The Gospels tell us that Moses and Elijah appeared along-side Jesus in the Transfiguration, conversed with Him, then suddenly vanished from sight. Jesus’s mother Mary has appeared in the material world over 2,000 times in situations where some, but not all, of those present could see her. These are just two examples taken from many of how the spirit world can influence human perception.

Mary’s 1917 appearances at Fatima, Portugal are a case in point. Here she appeared to three children for six straight months. On her last visit on October 13 she produced the so-called miracle she had first promised. It is known as the miracle of the sun. At noon, in front of an estimated crowd of 70,000 people, the sun reportedly spun in the sky and then made a terrifying dive toward earth. The event received wide newspaper coverage. But wait. I can tell you with 100% certainty that the sun did not spin and fall from the sky at noon on October 13, 1917. At that particular time of day it would have still been daylight in a swath of territory between Houston, Texas and Delhi, India and not one person out of the millions that occupied that area reported seeing the sun put on a dance. Atmospheric disruptions were not noted either. It didn’t happen! It was an hallucination impressed on the brain-minds of certain people.

Connecting the dots leads to the inevitable conclusion that the Gospel writers got it wrong. There was no bodily resurrection. The body that appeared outside the tomb was an apparition. Furthermore, that which is called resurrection is the natural way the human body is designed to gracefully exit the planet (i.e., it is a rainbow body event). The error is catastrophic, made worse by its continued perpetuation. The Gospel accounts point to a Jesus who was God incarnate, even taking it to the point of claiming that His mother was divinely impregnated. As a result, modern day followers adore Him as opposed to emulating Him. And a gullible population, hypnotized by a highly educated priest corps who knows better and mesmerized by a Bible that is falsely claimed to be divinely inspired and inerrant, pass through life without ever knowing who they really are, the capacity they have for spiritual attainment and the illusionary nature of reality.

Einstein is reported to have said that “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” And, he was right.