Immortality Keeps on Knocking - Part 1

God is not in the magic business.  God is the source of all wisdom and knowledge.  A reoccurring message on GodSaidManSaid is the principle of the inheritance found inside God’s commandments.  God is not sitting in the heavens with a bag of spells with which to harness the disobedient, but rather, every commandment has inherent within it a blessing or a curse.  Because God’s Word is perfect, inerrant truth, one who obeys inherits the blessing—the result of doing the right thing, and one who disobeys inherits the curse—the result of doing the wrong thing.  It is just that simple.  Consider Proverbs 26:2:

As the bird by wandering, as the swallow by flying, so the curse causeless shall not come.

The Holy Bible was given to man by God to answer the questions the unredeemed continually ask—Where did I come from?  Who am I?  What is my purpose?  Where am I going?—and to show us the way of escape from an impending doom. 

It is an incontrovertible truth that inherent within each commandment of God is a blessing or a curse.  Our response to the revelation laid out by Jesus Christ in John 3:3 will be one final commandment of God whose inheritance will play out for all eternity.  It reads:

Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Are you born again—born a second time, this time of the Spirit of God?  Would you like a miraculous new beginning, free of guilt and shame, and with the supernatural power to trounce the bondages of sin?  Jesus Christ is the way, and your day of salvation is today.  Your name has been called.  Click onto “Further With Jesus” for childlike instructions and immediate entry into the Kingdom of God.  Today will surely be the best day of your life.  Now for today’s subject. 

GOD SAID, Genesis 2:16-17:

16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:

17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

GOD SAID, Genesis 3:22-24:

22 And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:

23 Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.

24 So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

GOD SAID, Romans 5:12:

Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:

GOD SAID, Romans 5:21:

That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.

MAN SAID:  Adam’s 930 years, Methuselah’s 969 years, and Noah’s 950 years, plus the idea of Adam and Eve’s original immortality is farcical. 

Now THE RECORD.  The magnificent beauty of the inerrant truth discovered in God’s Word defies a comprehensive definition.  It is beyond verbalizing.  When one considers that Revelation 19:13 states that Jesus Christ’s name is “The Word of God,” by whom God created the entire universe and all its baffling secrets, and that this feat was accomplished in six, 24-hour days just over 6,000 years ago, and that this was only the beginning, the staggering reality of the verbalizing problem just begins to be understood.  Welcome to GodSaidManSaid.  This is feature article 622 that once again confirms the perfect veracity of Holy Writ.  All of these features are archived on this site in text and streaming audio for the edification of the Saints and as ammunition in the battle for the souls of men.  Thank you for coming.  May the face of Lord God shine upon you with Light and Truth. 

The Biblical account of an original immortality enjoyed by Adam and Eve and lost as a result of sin is laughable to the unredeemed, and equally laughable to them is the Scriputral record of the average age of man being 911 years during the first 1,656 years of the world’s history.  It is no surprise to the born-again that when God says yes, carnaldom emphatically says no.  The carnal spirit is constantly trying to find a Godless way. 

GodSaidManSaid has published multiple features concerning immortality and the historic record of 900-plus-year life-spans.  This feature is an update of science’s latest entry in its quest to extend life and immortality itself.  Several excerpts from past features will be interspersed throughout this feature to refresh your memory. 

Is it actually possible that man’s life-span after the fall (and up until the flood during the time of Noah) was 911 average years?  The famous historian Josephus, who wrote directly after the time of Christ’s earthly ministry, wrote this:

Now, when Noah had lived three hundred and fifty years after the Flood, and that all that time happily, he died, having the number of nine hundred and fifty years: but let no one, upon comparing the lives of the ancients with our lives, and with the few years which now live, think that what we have said of them is false; or make the shortness of our lives at present an argument that neither did they attain to so long a duration of life; for those ancients were beloved of God, and [lately] made by God himself; and because their food was then fitter for the prolongation of life, might well live so great a number of years; and besides, God afforded them a longer time of life on account of their virtue, and the good use they made of it in astronomical and geometrical discoveries, which would not have afforded the time of foretelling [the periods of the stars] unless they had lived six hundred years; for the Great Year is completed in that interval.  Now, I have witnesses to what I have said all those that have written Antiquities, both among the Greeks and barbarians; for even Manetho, who wrote the Egyptian History, and Berosus, who collected the Chaldean Monuments, and Mochus, and Hestiaeus, and besides these, Hieronymus the Egyptian, and those who composed the Phoenician History, agree to what I here say:  Hesiod also, and Hecataeus, Hellanicus, and Acusilaus; and besides, Ephorus and Nicolaus relate that the ancients lived a thousand years: but as to these matters, let every one look upon them as he thinks fit.  [End of quote]

Nine hundred eleven average years?  YES!  It is supremely important for the saints to know that God’s Word is true and righteous altogether.  We are required to build and even to stake our lives upon it. 

Could something as fantastic as immortality be any more than a fairy tale?  Is there some historic trail or scientific knowledge that establishes or points to such a concept?  The answer to both questions is yes.  As usual, the credibility of the Word of God continues to be verified. 

Theorists in the scientific field of gerontology predict we will reach theoretic immortality one day.  They base their prediction on two simple ideas:

1. 1. Life expectancy for the American male was approximately 50 years in the year 1900.  One hundred years later, it rose to 74—a 48% increase. 
   2. Knowledge is increasing.  The following paragraph is the “Dean’s Message” from the University of North Carolina Greensboro’s website:

We’re all striving to keep up with the quantum leaps being made in all areas of knowledge.  It’s estimated that medical knowledge, for example, doubles every seven years, and scientific knowledge in the world is said to have doubled between 1450 and 1750, and then to have doubled again between 1750 and 1900.  Between 1900 and 1950, human knowledge doubled once more, and then again from 1950 to 1975.  Now, it is believed to double every 900 days.  By the year 2020, global knowledge is predicted to double every 72 days.  [End of quote]

The theory suggests that if you can live for the next 20 years, technology and understanding will have increased to such an extent that cures will be found for the physical problems you’ll be experiencing at that time, extending your life by another 20 years.  When you’ve lived your 20-year extension, technology and understanding theoretically will have again increased to cure the physical problems you’ll be experiencing, extending your life even another 20 years, and so on.   Now, that’s providing you’re not murdered, or killed in an auto accident, or killed by terrorists, etc.  Of course, students of the Scriptures know that Hebrews 9:27 reads:

And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:

That settles it.  However, the purpose of this article is to demonstrate that Adam and Eve’s immortality was a very practical concept. 

New research now being conducted by Michael Rose, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, is focused on extending life.  He is experimenting with fruit flies. Fruit flies are likely candidates because they reproduce rapidly and make it possible to see the generational effects of their experiments very quickly.  In his laboratory, he has managed to double the life-spans of fruit flies—raising a lot of eyebrows.  When he was asked how far this life extension could go on, he answered, “The flies in my lab can potentially live forever.  But, of course, they don’t, because they have a high likelihood of dying by accident.”  When the question shifted to the human life span and where "there are there discernible limits,” Rose said, “Not at all.  I believe the limit of the human life span is the limit of human technology.” 

The following excerpt is from the article in U.S. News and World Report titled “The Cells of Immortality.”  It reads:

Over the past century, vaccines, antibiotics, and good sanitation have upped the average American’s life expectancy by decades, to today’s 74 years for men and 79 for women.  Now, new understanding of the genes and chemicals involved in aging may not only help humans live far past that age, but, more importantly, may also help people retain health and strength in those latter years.  The discovery of biological clocks ticking away in each of our cells, and a knowledge of how to reset those clocks, open the possibility that a human would never die—at least not from old age. [End of quote]

Again, reiterating information we explained earlier about DNA, the article continued:

But even if everyone were to receive special longevity genes, each cell in the body nonetheless carries plans for its eventual death right in its DNA.  At the end of each chromosome is a long strand of “nonsense” DNA called a telomere.  Each time a cell divides, the strand gets a bit shorter, like a burning candlewick.  When it runs out, the cell can no longer divide and is left to age and die.  But, scientists have found that the enzyme telomerase can rebuild the strand over and over again.  With the help of this substance, human cells have been enjoying immortality in a petri dish at Geron Corp. for more than 200 normal lifetimes.  [End of quote]

World-renowned doctor Sanjay Gupta wrote the following in his book, Chasing Life:

All over the world and right in your backyard, there are people who are steadily pushing back the frontier of aging.  They are not content to simply wither away, becoming frail and feeling worthless.  Instead, they are achieving a sort of practical immortality—living as long as they want to live and dying only when they are through living.  … Immortality is on the horizon and it is within our reach for the first time. [End of quote]

Popular Science, in the August 2011 issue, published a feature titled “The Man Who Would Stop Time.”  The article deals with the quest for immortality.  A few excerpts follow:

And last year, Harvard University researcher Ron DePinho published two studies in the journal Nature that have reframed the debate about telomerase activation.  DePinho created an ingenious model whereby he could turn off telomerase  in a mouse and then restore it, simply by administering, or withholding, a synthetic estrogen drug.  In the first study, the mice with turned-off telomerase exhibited signs and symptoms of decrepitude akin to what we might endure at the age of 80 or 90: wrinkled skin, sluggish intestines, shrunken brain.  When telomerase production was turned back on, the tissues rejuvenated within a month. 

“We treated these animals that were the equivalent of your grandmother,” DePinho says, “and they became like young adults.”  He says he had expected to be able to stop or slow down the rate of aging.  What he found was the proof-of-concept that living tissue could actually go back in time.  [End of quote] [End of quote]

No theological dancing here.  God’s Word, discovered in the majority text Authorized King James Version of the Holy Bible, is the inerrant truth. 

God said that Adam and Eve were to live forever but after the fall of Adam and Eve, God said that the average life span was to be 911 years -- and science and history say YES!

The following paragraphs are from the February 2013 feature of the magazine Life Extension.  The headline on its front page reads: “How Engineered Stem Cells May Enable Youthful Immortality.”  Several paragraphs from the feature’s nine-page presentation follow:

What you are about to read is a blueprint by which newly developing technologies may be used to induce biological immortality in human beings. 

This research goes far beyond what is normally published in Life Extension Magazine. 

When perfected, the discoveries you are about to learn may enable doctors to inject progenitor cells that will regenerate every tissue in your body, thus restoring you to youthful health and vigor.

Let’s begin with the facts of life and remember how an individual human being comes to exist in the first place.  The union of a sperm and egg cell leads to a unified cell commonly called a zygote, which then divides into two cells, then four, and so on, until a small cluster of cells form, each of which has the power to become any of the cell types in the human body. 

Cells that have this power are said to be pluripotent, meaning they have power (-potent) to become  a variety (plurality or pluri-) of cell types.  These cells commit to the cell type they will eventually become, that is, each cell will commit to becoming a reproductive (sperm or egg cell), or one of the body’s many life-functioning cell types such as muscle, blood, or brain cells.  This process of cellular commitment is called differentiation.  

If pluripotent cells differentiate into sperm or egg cells, scientists say they are remaining in the germ-line.  The germ-line is that lineage of cells that connects the generations and is the biological basis of the immortality of the species. 

When pluripotent germ-line cells commit to become one of the cell types of the body, we say they have differentiated into somatic cells.  This differentiation seals their fate.  These somatic cells are now mortal, even though, up to this point, they have been proliferating continuously for billions of years as germ-line cells.  They will now become part of the body that is programmed to die usually within 100 years.  Those cells that went the germ-line route have the potential (though not certainty) that they may continue in future generations indefinitely.  Because they are not committed to a mortal fate, scientists say the cells are immortal.

Most somatic cells lack sufficient telomerase, and so every time somatic cells proliferate, they progressively shorten their telomeres.   This functions as a clock mechanism not unlike the burning of a fuse and we refer to it in this article as the “telomere clock of cellular aging.”  However, in contrast to somatic cells, germ-line cells retain telomere length appropriate for the beginning of life, due to an abundance of telomerase activity. 

In other words, we can take human somatic cells back to the embryonic germ-line state of immortal pluripotency without cloning or ever making an embryo.  Since such cells are not isolated from embryos, they are called induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, in order to distinguish them from embryonic  stem cells. 

Most significantly, as previously reported in Life Extension Magazine, we demonstrated that it is possible to utilize these advances to not only revert a cell in the body back to the all-powerful pluripotent stem cell state, but also to activate telomerase and reset the clock of cell aging all the way back to the very beginning of life.

As a result, the stage is now set to lift some cell from the body—perhaps from a sliver of skin, from blood cells, or from a hair pulled from the head—and then genetically manipulate that cell, returning (converting) it to a continuously proliferating youthful line of stem cells.  These rejuvenated cells we believe will be identical to the individual cell they had developed from decades earlier.  Since these iPS cells are now reverted back to the germ-line state, they can spin off new somatic cells of all types for an indefinite period of time. 

The summary reads:

Very early in the course of human development, a small cluster of cells form, each of which has the power to become any of the cell types in the human body.  Cells that have this power are said to be pluripotent, meaning they have the power (-potent) to become a variety (plurality or pluri-) of cell types.  These cells commit to the cell type they will eventually become, that is, each cell will commit to becoming a reproductive (sperm or egg) cell, or one of the body’s many somatic or life-functioning cell types such as muscle, blood, or brain cells.  If pluripotent cells differentiate into sperm or egg cells, they are remaining in the germ-line, that lineage of cells that connects the generations and is the biological basis of the immortality of the species.  When cells make the decision to become somatic, they turn off telomerase, an enzyme that synthesizes a repeated sequence of DNA over and over again at the end of DNA strands needed to maintain cellular viability.  A recent discovery showed that the use of just a handful of molecules can effectively restore aged somatic cells back to pluripotency.  It is possible to utilize these advances to not only revert a cell in the body back to the all-powerful pluripotent stem cell state, but also to activate telomerase and reset the clock of cell aging all the way back to the very beginning of life.  [End of quote]

Adam and Eve were to live forever.  After the fall in the Garden of Eden and up to the global flood in the days of Noah, man’s average life span was 911 years.  Science and history confirm the possibilities.  Next week, Part 2, “Something Happened on the Inside.”

GOD SAID, Genesis 2:16-17:

16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:

17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

GOD SAID, Genesis 3:22-24:

22 And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:

23 Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.

24 So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

GOD SAID, Romans 5:12:

Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:

GOD SAID, Romans 5:21:

That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.

MAN SAID:  Adam’s 930 years, Methuselah’s 969 years, and Noah’s 950 years, plus the idea of Adam and Eve’s original immortality is farcical. 

Now, you have THE RECORD. 

  

 

References

Authorized King James Version

Fischer, J.S., "The Cells of Immortality," U.S. News & World Report, March 20, 2002, pp58- 59

GodSaidManSaid, 911 Years and Immortality Is Back

Hooper, J., "The Man Who Would Stop Time," Popular Science, August 2011, vol. 279, #2, pp52,54-55,79-80

"Josephus Complete Works," Kregel Publications, Grand Rapids, MI, pp28-30

Smith, P., "Dr. Sanjay Gupta's Search for Biological Immortality," Life Extension, August 2007, pp42-43

West, M., “Targeting the Clockwork of Cell Immortality: A Progress Report,” Life Extension, February 2013

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