Sky Water, Immortality, Plus 1,000 Years and 120 Years

There was a woman in the Bible who met Jesus at Jacob''s well.  Jesus asked her for a drink.  John 4:7-14:

7 There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water: Jesus saith unto her, Give me to drink.

8 (For his disciples were gone away unto the city to buy meat.)

9 Then saith the woman of Samaria unto him, How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.

10 Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water.

11 The woman saith unto him, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep: from whence then hast thou that living water?

12 Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle?

13 Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again:

14 But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.

This living water dwells in the invisible, all-powerful, and eternal Kingdom of God and this kingdom dwells within the born-again.  John 7:38-39:

38 He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.

39 (But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.)

Living water.  Isaiah 12:3-4:

3 Therefore with joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation.

4 And in that day shall ye say, Praise the LORD, call upon his name, declare his doings among the people, make mention that his name is exalted.

There are wells of salvation within the redeemed from which we draw water.  Ezekiel 47 tells of this living river and says it cannot be passed over—it is a river to swim in. 

Are you born again?  Are you thirsty for the living water that springs up unto eternal life?  Today is the day of salvation.  Today is your opportunity to begin all over again—free from your sins and bondages.  Why not allow the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ to work for you? Click onto “Further With Jesus” for childlike instructions and immediate entry into the Kingdom of God.  NOW FOR TODAY’S SUBJECT.

GOD SAID, Romans 8:1-2:

1 There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.

2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.

GOD SAID, Genesis 5:5:

And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died.

GOD SAID, Genesis 5:27:

And all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty and nine years: and he died.

GOD SAID, Genesis 6:3:

And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.

MAN SAID: Farcical!—that’s the word!  The wild claims of the Bible are plainly farcical!

Now THE RECORD: God’s Word is the beautiful book.  It is the standard of all that is good and lovely.  It is the source of all hope and salvation.  It is the fountain of all healing and deliverance.  How absolutely marvelous that God has preserved for us His inerrant Word all these thousands of years in written form.  I can know the mind of God.  I can know His plan of salvation. I can embrace the fullness of His Word.  All the books that have ever been written must genuflect to God’s Holy Word—every single one.  Today’s feature will once again make it abundantly clear. 

If knowledge is power and if all knowledge is all power, then at this point of all knowledge, we meet the all-powerful God.  If He is the God of all knowledge—and He is—then all things are possible with Him.  Welcome to GodSaidManSaid where God is and He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. 

GodSaidManSaid has explored all of the subjects within this feature before.  Today, they are back in the news.  We will lay out several Biblical positions in a row and then showcase the latest news. 

• Does it seem feasible to you that the earth was first totally covered with water until God separated it from dry land and that in the days of the Noahitic global flood, the water fell down on the earth from the sky?  Science now has its own version of this account that once again finds itself knocking on heaven’s door. 
• Does it seem feasible to you that the God of all knowledge would be able to create a man and woman who were immortal—created to live forever?  Such an idea drew the ridicule of the academics, but today’s science is beginning to give it serious consideration.  Even the word immortality has entered the lexicon of medical parlance. 
• Does it seem feasible to you that the life-span of man between the fall of our great-grandparents and Noah was 911 average years?  The famed historian Josephus—and nearly a dozen other ancient historians—says it was so.  Life extension theorists now say 1,000 years is in sight. 
• Does it seem feasible to you that the life expectancy of man after the flood would drastically drop and be pegged by God’s Word at 120 years?  Science knows this idea as the Hayflick Effect.

Science comes calling and finds that the children of faith are already there.

The headline in the March 2015 issue of Scientific American reads, “Oceans from the Skies.”  The lead paragraph reads:

Standing on the seashore, watching the waves roll in from over the horizon—it is easy to see the ocean as something timeless.  Our ancient ancestors certainly did.  In numerous creation myths, a watery abyss was present before the emergence of land and even light.  Today we realize that Earth’s global ocean has not been around forever.  Its water—as well as every drop of rain, every gust of humid air, and every sip from your cup—is a memory from eons ago, when the seas literally fell from the sky.  [End of quote]

The headline in the March/April 2015 issue of Psychology Today reads, “Tinkering with Mortality.”  The subhead reads, “The quest for eternal life has been with us eternally.  But the latest interventions raise questions we’ve never before encountered.”  A few paragraphs follow:

The prospect of such treatments has energized a more radical group of thinkers, including Aubrey deGray, controversial chief science officer of SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence), who has suggested that, as we engineer aging out of our very cells, some people born today may live 1,000 years.  Such claims have drawn intense interest from certain Silicon Valley magnates who have made the war on aging a near obsession.

In 2013, Google invested in Calico, the California Life Company, hoping that its application of “moonshot thinking” to biotechnology could cure aging once and for all.  (Google and pharmaceutical giant AbbVie have since pledged up to $1.5 billion to Calico.)

Ray Kurzweil, Google’s director of engineering, is counting on artificial intelligence advances that will enable the brain to be downloaded to a computer, bringing about effective immortality, especially if and when that consciousness is uploaded into a fresh bio-robotic husk.  “The whole idea of a ‘species’ is a biological concept,” he says.  “What we are doing is transcending biology.” 

This idea is more fully explored in Virtually Human: The Promise—and the Peril—of Digital Immortality, by Martine Rothblatt, Ph.D., a technologist and medical ethicist who, as CEO of biotech firm United Therapeutics, is perhaps the nation’s most prominent transgender executive.  Her heady book explores how virtual humanity will extend human life, or at least consciousness, indefinitely.

She proposes nothing less than “liberty from death” via “technoimmortality,” and aims to guide readers through the inevitable transition from “a society of flesh only to a mind-centric society.” [End of quote]

In the May 2015 issue of Discover magazine, the headline reads, “20 Things You Didn’t Know About Immortality.”  A few sentences follow:

Two things are certain in this world: We are born, and we die.  But must we?  Billionaire Dmitry Itskov and his group, the 2045 Initiative, want to cheat death by creating artificial bodies to house human intelligence.  Itskov and friends think they can develop a hologram “avatar,” housing an individual’s personality in an artificial brain, within three decades.  Terasem’s LifeNaut project claims to offer longevity today.  All you need to do is create a LifeNaut account and upload as much information about yourself as possible.  Apparently, the “mindfile” may be used to reconstruct you in the future.  Immortality isn’t merely a 21^st-Century quest.  In the third century B.C., Chinese Emporer Qin Shi Huang ingested mercury to gain eternal life.  It didn’t work. [End of quote]

The headline in the May 8, 2015 issue of The Week reads, “Tech’s Quest for Immortality.”  The subhead, “Silicon Valley’s billionaires have a new project, said Ariana Eunjung Cha.  They want to defy death.” 

Among the guests was Cynthia Kenyon, a molecular biologist and biogerontologist who had garnered attention for doubling the life-span of a roundworm by disabling a single gene.  Aubrey deGray, a British computer scientist turned theoretician who prophesied that medical advances would stop aging.  And Larry Page, co-founder of an internet-search darling called Google that had big ideas to improve health through the terabytes of data it was collecting. 

The chatter at the dinner party meandered from the value of chocolate in one’s diet to the merits of uploading people’s memories to a computer versus cryofreezing their bodies.  Yet the focus kept returning to one subject: Was death an inevitability—or a solvable problem?

A number of guests were skeptical about achieving immortality. But could science and technology help us live longer—to, say, 150 years?  Now that, they agreed, was a worthy goal.  Within a few months, Thiel had written checks to Kenyon and deGray to accelerate their work.  Since then he has doled out millions to other researchers with what he calls “breakout” ideas that defy conventional wisdom.

It was Arrison who introduced Thiel to the scientists at the dinner-salon a decade ago.  Since then, Thiel has funded such projects as the high-speed cooling technology for human organs, so they could be preserved indefinitely, and a way to grow bones using stem cells, to replace broken ones.

“I’ve always had this really strong sense that death was a terrible, terrible thing,” he said.  “I think that’s somewhat unusual. Most people end up compartmentalizing, and they are in some weird mode of denial and acceptance about death, but they both have the result of making you very passive.  I prefer to fight it.” [End of quotes]

Immortality was lost because of unbelief and disobedience and is only regained by faith in the blood of Christ and obedience to God’s Word—but, as usual, man attempts to find another way.  Jesus said in John 10:1:

Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber.

The headline in Science News, May 2, 2015, reads, “Species Longevity Linked to ‘Siglecs.’”  A paragraph follows:

Varki, Gagneux, and colleagues compared the number of Siglec genes in 17 species of mammals.  Longer-lived species had more of the genes.  Mice, which live up to four years, have five of the genes.  Humans have 10 and have a maximum life span of 120 years.  [End of quote]

Does it seem feasible to you that the God of all knowledge would leave for us a record of things that are important to know, and that that record is true and righteous altogether?  God’s Word—a place to build a life that will last forever.

GOD SAID, Romans 8:1-2:

1 There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.

2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.

GOD SAID, Genesis 5:5:

And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died.

GOD SAID, Genesis 5:27:

And all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty and nine years: and he died.

GOD SAID, Genesis 6:3:

And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.

MAN SAID: Farcical!—that’s the word!  The wild claims of the Bible are plainly farcical!

Now you have THE RECORD.

 

 

 

References:

Authorized King James Version

Hesman-Saey, T., “Species Longevity Linked to ‘Siglecs,’” Science News, May 2, 2015

Halden, G., “20 Things You Didn’t Know about Immortality,” Discover, May 2015

Drevitch, G., “Tinkering with Mortality,” Psychology Today, March/April 2015

Jewitt, D., & Young, E., “Oceans from the Skies,” Scientific American, March 2015

“Tech’s Quest for Immortality,” The Week, May 8, 2015

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