THE SECOND MESSIAH: Tempars, The Turin Shroud And The Great Secret Of Freemasonry

green hardcover 8vo. (octavo). dustwrapper in protective plastic book jacket cover. fine cond. binding square & tight. covers clean. top corners bumped. edges clean. faint erasure spot inside front cover, otherwise contents free of markings. dustwrapper in fine cond. not worn or torn or price clipped. nice clean copy. no library markings, store stamps, stickers, bookplates, no names, inking, underlining, remainder markings etc~. second printing. xi+259p. glossy b&w photo illustrations. 3 appendices. bibliography. index. medieval history. religion. secret societies. conspiracy theory. history of christianity. ~ 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 artefact. 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 Europe to await 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 priests of the Temple~the Knights Templar. There they recovered the lost teachings hidden below the tumbled ruins and devised elaborate Tarot cards with cryptic meanings to protect their secret cult. But their secret could not be contained forever 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 saviour, prophesied since ancient times, gripped the minds of people. And now they had the image of their new saviour, the Second Messiah. In solving the riddle of the shroud this book unravels a far deeper mystery: how this medieval artefact links directly to Jesus. The guardians of this great secret tried to hide it from the world and even their own members. But they failed to destroy the evidence . hidden in the abandoned rituals of Freemasonry.…