The Shroud. Dale Fowler

Dr. Royce Benders in the mid-eighties seems to have it all. A Nobel Prize winner on the cutting edge of the rapidly developing DNA field for criminology and human embryogenesis. But Benders' dream has nothing to do with fame or fortune. He is a devout Christian obsessed with the Second Coming and impatient to see it in his lifetime. The Catholic Church invites Dr. Benders to work on the Shroud of Turin to help devise a plan to save the rapidly deteriorating linen cloth that wrapped Jesus in the tomb after his crucifixion. Taking blood from the holiest of Christian artifacts, he returns to L.A. and inseminates several women in his in vitro clinic to hasten the Second Coming. Now these descendants of the Shroud are in their late twenties. What Dr. Benders successfully created brings the best of Heaven and the worst of Hell face-to-face.