A 51-year-old man has been urged to close his shop and turn it into a pilgrimage after he discovered the face of Jesus looking back at him while he was working on a kitchen cupboard.

Mat Askham, a furniture maker, was applying an oil-based finish on the inside of a cupboard when he discovered the ‘face of Jesus’ peering back at him.

The image shows clearly-defined eyes, flowing hair, a nose, a mustache, and a beard.

The father-of-two quickly took a photo of the image and sent it to his friends and family, who were also shocked by the discovery.

“I’ve had the piece of ash sat looking at me in my workshop for quite some time,” Mat said.

“I’m making a kitchen for someone and it was only when I applied an oil finish on it, to lift the detail in the grain up, that it mysteriously appeared in front of me.

“I thought, ‘oh my god look at that, there’s a face staring at me.’”

Mat continued: “It looked at me, I looked at it and I had to take a photograph of it straight away because it was just so funny. It’s really quite bonkers.

“You can see two eyes, a nose, a bit of a moustache and a goatee.

“The ears are hidden by the hair down the side.”

He said that his friend urged him to close his shop and set it up as a shrine and charge people who come in.

After sharing the image online, his post received thousands of comments from people agreeing on the likeness.

However, others suggested that the face also looks like William Shakespeare, Bigfoot, and Chewbacca.

“The face is now in a double-door shaker cupboard. Every time the customer opens this door this face is going to be staring at them. They don’t know anything about it yet,” Mat said.

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