The New Testament often moves from “come and see” to “go and tell.” The inner witness precedes the outward witness.
John’s Gospel explicitly uses the phrase “come and see” at multiple key turning points. Jesus invites the first disciples, “Come and you will see,” They “came and saw where he was staying,” experiencing him personally before they ever speak to others about him.
Philip echoes this pattern with Nathanael. When Nathanael doubts, Philip does not argue; he simply says, “Come and see,” trusting that encounter will answer objections. It does.
The Samaritan woman at the well does the same. After Yeshua proves he knows her, she runs back to her village and implores people to “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did.” After meeting Yeshua, her neighbors believe for themselves.
The bible is filled with signs that are meant to be “seen.” John’s Gospel is written “so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah.”
Some people are more stubborn and difficult to convince than others. Despite hearing the testimony of witnesses and other believers, they require their own hard physical evidence. Such is the disciple Thomas. He is like a lot of people, who will “never believe unless” they see it for themselves.
For Thomas, “hearing” other people’s testimony wasn’t sufficient. He needed to hear, see and touch for himself.
Yeshua meets Thomas where he is and states Thomas’s demands back to him. He knows Thomas just like he knows the Samaritan woman and Nathaniel. Yeshua tells Thomas, “Reach your finger here, and look at My hands; and reach your hand here, and put it into My side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing.” (20:27)
Seeing is ultimately believing for Thomas. He answered Yeshua with the few simple words, “My Lord and my God!” These words sound very similar to “The Lord is our God” in the beginning of the Shema from Deuteronomy 6.4, right after “Here, O Israel.”
Thomas’s words mark the moment Israel’s communal confession becomes personal: the God of the Shema, confessed as “the Lord our God,” is now confessed by Thomas as “my Lord and my God,” shifting faith from shared creed to direct relationship.
A personal relationship is exactly what you would expect from a God who already knows you. In Scripture, God is not discovering us; he is revealing that he has seen, searched, and known us from the beginning—think of Nathanael under the fig tree or Thomas confronted in his doubt. A confession like “my Lord and my God” is simply the human side of that reality: the moment when someone realizes, “The One who has always known me is now claiming me, and I must respond personally.”
“Come and see” functions as an invitation to personal encounter, so that people become witnesses of what they themselves have experienced rather than second‑hand reporters. Sèeing activates our innerwitness.
In John chapter 20 is when the disciples see Yeshua after he has risen. It is at this point in the story, after witnessing the “good news” for themselves, that Yeshua “breathed on them, and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” This is the moment the disciples received the “inner dwelling” of the Spirit that Yeshua promised to leave them.
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| 3D Image on the Shroud of Turin |
In chapter 20, Yeshua left something else significant for John and Peter, and the world, to see. Yeshua left his burial clothes lying in the tomb. The linen cloths are Yeshua’s own testimony, written by him with his own blood. The burial clothes testify of a man who was brutally beaten, crucified on a wooden tree in Jerusalem, put in the earth for three days and rose from the dead. They are the equivalent of the “sign of Jonah.” The scientific evidence on the shroud of Turin is irrefutable. Don’t believe me? Come and see it for yourself. I did.
For our 40th wedding anniversary, Mary and I visited the Shroud in Turin. It happened to be on Yom Kippur, the very same day Jews read the Book of Jonah. So my day began at the temple in Turin and then we went to see the Shroud.
Yeshua said something deeply meaningful to Thomas near the end of John chapter 20. He said to him, “Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
By the same token, Yeshua clearly knew that there would be stubborn people who would hold out to the end of time. Perhaps that is who the Shroud of Turin was left for. Maybe it was meant for this generation that is looking for a sign. It is most certainly this generation that is discovering the secrets on the shroud of Turin that have been hidden for 2000 years.
“Here, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.” Deuteronomy 6.4.
The image above is the first sentence of Deuteronomy 6.4, the “Shema” in an actual Torah. The Hebrew word “Shema” is the first three Hebrew letters on the right. The Hebrew word Shema means both “hear” and “obey.” You should be able to notice that the last letter in the word “shema” is larger than the two preceding letters. That is the letter “Ayin.” The letter “Ayin” means “eye.” So in the word for “hear,” we have eyes to see.
John 9.25—He answered and said, “Whether He is a sinner or not I do not know. One thing I know: that though I was blind, now I see.”
The shroud of Turin isn’t only real; It is also that the truth of the burial clothes in finally being revealed now. It is a sign for a time such as this. THIS IS A REVELATION in the making.
What scientists found about Jesus on the Shroud shocked everyone.
Epilogue:
Making an observation…
In John’s Gospel and in Mark, I observe a striking interplay between the titles “Son of Man” and “Son of God,” especially around the passion and the stated purpose of each narrative. In Mark’s passion predictions, Jesus consistently speaks of himself as the Son of Man when announcing his suffering, death, and resurrection; the Son of Man must suffer many things, be rejected, be killed, and after three days rise again. In other words, the Markan emphasis ties “Son of Man” directly to the path of humiliation and vindication, the necessary road of the cross.
“Son of God,” however, tends to appear in Mark at climactic moments of recognition rather than in Jesus’ own passion sayings. Most notably, at the crucifixion, it is the Roman centurion who finally confesses, “Truly this man was the Son of God.” There, at the very point of Jesus’ apparent defeat, Mark places a Gentile confession of his true identity as Son of God, showing that the way of the suffering Son of Man leads precisely to the revelation of the Son of God.
John arranges the same Christological reality with a different rhetorical focus. By the time we reach John 20:31, the evangelist states his purpose: these signs are written “that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you might have life in his name.” Earlier in the Gospel, Jesus has used “Son of Man” as a self-designation, often in connection with being lifted up and glorified through suffering, but at the conclusion John does not summarize with “Son of Man.” Instead, he draws the reader’s faith toward Jesus as “the Christ, the Son of God,” making “Son of God” the climactic confessional title that secures life.
So, putting this together, I see a pattern: in both Mark and John, “Son of Man” tends to be the title Jesus uses to describe his path of suffering, death, and exaltation, while “Son of God” emerges especially at climactic points of recognition and confession. Mark dramatizes this in narrative form at the cross, with the centurion’s confession. John crystallizes it programmatically in his purpose statement at 20:31. The result is not a replacement of “Son of Man” by “Son of God,” but a theological movement: the suffering Son of Man is precisely the one who is confessed as the Son of God, and faith in him under that title is the means of life.
Luke front-loads “Son of God” in the infancy and early ministry material: announced by Gabriel (1:32, 35), echoed at the baptism and genealogy (3:22, 3:38), and recognized by demons (“Son of the Most High God,” 8:28). At Jesus’ trial, the council links his “Son of Man” claim (enthronement at God’s right hand) directly to the question, “Are you then the Son of God?”—they see these as belonging together, even if the wording shifts.
In Matthew the same basic pattern holds—“Son of Man” is the passion title, and “Son of God” emerges at climactic recognition points.
In Matthew, “Son of Man” is the main passion title: in the key predictions (16:21; 17:22–23; 20:18–19; 26:2, 24, 45) it is the Son of Man who suffers, is killed, and is raised. At the same time, “Son of God” is woven through the Gospel—from baptism and temptation to the disciples’ and Peter’s confessions—so that when a Gentile centurion at the cross finally says, “Truly this was the Son of God,” he, of all people, names the true identity of the suffering Son of Man.
“Seeing and believing” is the shroud’s role for this “evil generation.”
John 20:29 kjv—Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.