Bloomington’s Pantagraph newspaper will absolutely has carried a recent AP story about the 1 million people would already made reservations to see the shroud of Turin in April and May of this year. One of the newspaper’s readers wrote a letter to the editor as follows:
While perusing your newspaper of Feb. 20, I noticed that you had included an article about the Shroud of Turin — always a subject of controversy, since it has not been absolutely proven that it is indeed the burial cloth of Jesus.
The idea that the church still promotes it, doesn’t make it fact. After checking with various Bible readings about the Messiah, Isaiah 50:6 states that his beard would be plucked out. Thus, that would make the shroud questionable since it shows a bearded Christ.
Carl D. Mathis, Clinton
Of course, there is always the possibility that the shroud is real and Mr. Mathis’ interpretation of a bit of prophecy from Isaiah is wrong, if not just a little bit too literal. That’s my bet.