120: They Just Can’t Help Themselves

Whatever God’s Word decides to put forth on a subject, it is always the inerrant, indefatigable truth—ALWAYS.  Looking for a foundation—a sure, eternal foundation—on which to build your life?  Looking for proof?  To those who can handle the truth, the Word of God (Revelation 19:13) is the totality of it.  Are you building your life upon this sure foundation?  Have you allowed God to satisfy the questions of your mind?  Have you been born again, this time of the Spirit of God, as Jesus directs in John Chapter 3?  Will today be the day you join the ranks of the redeemed?  Today is your day of salvation.  Click onto “Further With Jesus” for childlike instructions and immediate entry into the Kingdom of God. NOW FOR TODAY’S SUBJECT. 

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: This is the digital world of enlightenment!  Forget about that Stone Age book the “flat-earth” Christians call their Bible! 

Now THE RECORD: How glorious and marvelous is the magnificent God-authored text housed in the Holy Bible.  Its beauty and eternal relevance is steadfast and sure—surely the rock of our salvation.  Welcome to GodSaidManSaid feature article 782 that will once again certify the full inerrancy of God’s Holy Word.  All of these features are archived here in text and streaming audio for the purpose of building up the faith and as powerful ammunition with which to convince the gainsayers.  Every Thursday eve, God willing, they grow by one.  Thank you for coming today.  May God’s face shine upon you and upon all with which you have to do. 

All the amazing claims in the Scriptures—could they be true?  God speaking us and the universe into existence in six literal 24-hour days just over 6,000 years ago and His placing of one man, Adam, and one woman, Eve, who was made of Man’s rib, in a place called Paradise—could such accounts be true?  Could it be true that God destroyed the entire earth and all terrestrial creatures by a global flood, saving only Noah alive and all that was upon the ark?  Were the world’s creatures once vegetarian?  Did God strike Egypt with horrendous plagues and did Moses lead the Israelites out of Egypt via the Red Sea?  Did Joshua fit the battle of Jericho and did the walls come tumbling down?  Did David slay Goliath, and was there a Jonah and the whale?  Were there fire-breathing dragons, fiery flying serpents, and did giants once walk the earth?  What about the Tower of Babel, Sodom and Gomorrah, and Joseph and his coat of many colors?  Was there a virgin-born Saviour, Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God who broke Satan’s chains off all the souls who called upon His name?  Did this Christ die a criminal’s death on Calvary’s Cross and did His Father raise Him from the dead on the third day?  Can such accounts be proven?  Are these accounts simply incredible fairy tales, or does empirical data soundly support the Bible’s account?  The single answer to all the questions posed is a resounding YES!

The following foundational paragraphs are from the GodSaidManSaid feature “Sky Water, Immortality, Plus 1,000 Years and 120 Years:”

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 Emperor 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 quote]

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 quotes]

The following paragraph is from the GodSaidManSaid feature “One Hundred Twenty Years:”

After the flood and the destruction of the water canopy, man’s life span dropped to 120 years, and then as the harmful effects of ultraviolet bombardment accumulate, the life span dropped to 70 years, similar to what the more medically advanced nations know today.

In Dr. Reginald Cherry’s book The Bible Cure, the following paragraph is found:

Scientists have been trying to unravel the mysteries of aging for decades. In the early fifties, Leonard Hayflick, a scientist at the University of California, San Francisco, discovered a very interesting thing: All human cells are able to reproduce themselves only a certain number of times. This is estimated to be about fifty cell divisions, which Dr. Hayflick estimated would place the human life at between one hundred fifteen and one hundred twenty years. Researchers still don’t know what drives this cellular timetable, but the life span of humans seems to be set at approximately one hundred twenty years. Researchers can study a culture of human cells as they divide repeatedly until a maximum of fifty to sixty divisions, which equates to one hundred twenty years. [End of quotes]

GodSaidManSaid reports the following in “Historians and 911 Years:”

Fitting into the category of “incredible but true” is man’s average life span of 911 years before the flood.  Immediately after the great flood, life span begins to drop precipitously, first down to 120 years, then finally to the Psalmist’s “threescore years and ten,” or an average of 70 years. 

As an aside, Genesis 6:3, which refers to man’s life span of 120 years, is interpreted by some to mean that Noah was building the ark for 120 years, although there is no suggestion in that verse of such an idea.  The famed Jewish historian Josephus, who wrote directly after the years of Christ, weighed in on this subject in the following passage:

Now God loved this man for his righteousness; yet he not only condemned those other men for their wickedness, but determined to destroy the whole race of mankind, and to make another race that should be pure from wickedness; and cutting short their lives, and making their years not so many as they formerly lived, but one hundred and twenty only, he turned the dry land into sea; and thus were all these men destroyed:  [End of quotes]

Thousands of years before man begins to discover deep truths, he inevitably, and in most cases unintentionally, finds God.  Well, here they are again: knock, knock, knocking on heaven’s door.  The March 2016 issue of Life Extension magazine republished a feature from one of England’s largest newspapers, The Telegraph.  The title of the article reads, “World’s First Anti-Ageing Drug Could See Humans Live to 120.”  Excerpts follow:

The world’s first anti-ageing drug will be tested on humans next year in trials which could see diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s consigned to distant memory. 

Scientists now believe that it is possible to actually stop people growing old as quickly and help them to live in good health well into their 110s and 120s. 

Although it might seem like science fiction, researchers have already proven that the diabetes drug metformin extends the life of animals, and the Food and Drug Administration in the US has now given the go ahead for a trial to see if the same effects can be replicated in humans. 

If successful, it will mean that a person in their 70s would be as biologically healthy as a 50-year-old.  It could usher in a new era of ‘geroscience’ where doctors would no longer fight individual conditions like cancer, diabetes, and dementia, but instead treat the underlying mechanism—ageing. 

Scottish ageing expert Professor Gordon Lithgow, of the Buck Institute for Research on Ageing in California, is one of the study advisors. 

“If you target an ageing process and you slow down ageing then you slow down all the diseases and pathology of ageing as well,” he said.  “That’s revolutionary.  That’s never happened before.

“I have been doing research into ageing for 25 years and the idea that we would be talking about a clinical trial in humans for an anti-ageing drug would have been thought inconceivable.”

Scientists think the best candidate for an anti-ageing drug is metformin, the world’s most widely-used diabetes drug, which costs just 10 pence [approximately 14 cents] a day.  Metformin increases the number of oxygen molecules released into a cell, which appears to boost robustness and longevity. 

When Belgian researchers tested metformin on the tiny roundworm C. elegans, the worms not only aged slower, but they also stayed healthier longer.  They did not slow down or develop wrinkles.  Mice treated with metformin increased their lifespan by nearly 40 percent and their bones were also stronger.  Last year, Cardiff University found that when patients with diabetes were given the drug metformin, they, in fact, lived longer than others without the condition, even though they should have died eight years earlier on average. 

The new clinical trial called Targeting Ageing with Metformin, or TAME, is scheduled to begin in the US next winter. Scientists from a range of institutions are currently raising funds and recruiting 3,000 70- to 80-year-olds who have, or are at risk of, cancer, heart disease, and dementia.  They are hoping to show that the drug slows the ageing process and stops disease. 

Outlining the new study on the National Geographic documentary Breakthrough: The Age of Ageing, Dr. Jay Olshansky, of the University of Illinois Chicago, said: “If we can slow ageing in humans, even just by a little bit, it would be monumental.  People could be older, and feel young.” 

“Enough advancements in ageing science have been made to lead us to believe it’s plausible, it’s possible, it’s been done for other species, and there is every reason to believe it could be done in us.

“This would be the most important medical intervention in the modern era: an ability to slow ageing.” 

A baby girl born today is now expected to live to an average of 82.8 years and a boy to 78.8 years, according to the Office for National Statistics.  But if the results seen in animals are reproduced in humans, lifespan could increase by nearly 50 percent.

Stephanie Lederman, executive director of the American Federation for Aging Research in New York, who is also involved in the trial added: “The perception is that we are all looking for a fountain of youth.

“We want to avoid that; what we’re trying to do is increase health-span, not look for eternal life.”

However, if their trial performs as promised, experts say slowing ageing would be a ‘public health revolution.’

Dr. Simon Melov of the Buck Institute for Ageing added: “You’re talking about developing a therapy for a biological phenomenon which is universal and gives rise to all of these diseases.  And if you’ve got a therapy for this thing, these diseases just go away.”  [End of quotes]

Nearly 4,400 years ago, the Bible said 120 years.  Truth never changes and God’s Word is truth.  John 17:17:

Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.

Build your life upon the solid Rock. 

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: This is the digital world of enlightenment!  Forget about that Stone Age book the “flat-earth” Christians call their Bible!

Now you have THE RECORD.

 

 

 

References:

Authorized King James Version

GodSaidManSaid, “Historians and 911 Years”

GodSaidManSaid, “One Hundred Twenty Years”

GodSaidManSaid, “Sky Water, Immortality, Plus 1,00 Years and 120 Years”

Knapton, S., “World’s First Anti-Ageing Drug Could See Humans Live to 120,” Life Extension, March 2016

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