Special Report: Immortality!

There is a day of reckoning for all of us.  Because one is not, in many cases, certain of that day, and because it does not appear imminent, the thought goes neglected—but that day is a certainty.  The Scriptures advertise this stark reality in Hebrews 9:27:

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

Judgment day is on the calendar, where a search will be made of God’s book of birth certificates for your name.  This search is not for the name you were given as a son of man, but rather to see if you were born—literally born a second time—into the house of God, a place Jesus calls born-again.  This colossal day of reckoning is depicted in Revelation 20:12-15:

12 And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.

13 And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.

14 And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.

15 And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.

Have you been born again?  Will today be the day your new name is written down in glory?  Will today be the day all of your sin and shame is washed away?  Will today be your day to participate in the greatest miracle—one that will last forever—of all time?  Do it right now while you still have time.  Click onto “Further with Jesus” for childlike instructions and immediate entry into the Kingdom of God.  NOW FOR TODAY’S SUBJECT.  

GOD SAID, Genesis 3:1-5:

1 Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

2 And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:

3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.

4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:

5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

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, 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.

MAN SAID: I can get there another way. 

Now THE RECORD:  It started in the Garden.  Satan suggested to grandmother Eve another way to live forever—void of faith in God and obedience to His Word.  This spiritual delusion rules in the hearts and minds of the unredeemed. 

Man is looking for another way—whatever way—void of faith in God and obedience to His Word.  A veritable multitude of features are archived here on GodSaidManSaid demonstrating man’s quest and history of his pursuit of another way.  The results are very deadly and eternally damning. 

God’s Word cannot be rejected without suffering the curse.  It is not possible.  Galatians 6:7:

Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

Remember the principle: The Word of God is true and righteous altogether.  Because it is the inerrant truth, obeying its principles yields the benefits of doing the right thing—the blessing.  Because it is the inerrant truth, disobeying its principles yields the results of doing the wrong thing—the curse.  Inherent within every commandment of God is a blessing or a curse.  It really is just that simple. 

Man’s record of trying to find another way is readily on display in all aspects of life, but none greater than his quest for immortality—an immortality void of faith in God and obedience to His Word.  Immortality is the purview of God and the means to attain immortality are clearly outlined in God’s Word.  John 11:25-26:

25 Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:

26 And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?

Man’s lifespan has followed a curious trajectory: Today’s industrialized countries demonstrate average lifespans that rest in the 70s.  The last average age placed on man’s pre-millennial lifespan in the Bible is found in Psalm 90:10:

The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.

But, that is just 58% of the average 120 years promised to man at the time of Noah’s flood in 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.

And, that promised 120 years is just 13% of the average pre-flood lifespan of 911 years.  Genesis 5:5:

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

The next step, of course, is immortality; 911 years is not even a blip on the radar screen. 

Immortality was lost because of unbelief and disobedience; it can only be reclaimed through faith and obedience, but man must seek another way. 

Before we review some of man’s latest efforts and musings concerning his dream of immortality, excerpts from several GodSaidManSaid features follow:

▶ GodSaidManSaid, “Sky Water, Immortality, Plus 1,000 Years and 120 Years:”

•  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.    

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]

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.” 

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]

▶ GodSaidManSaid, “Immortality Keeps on Knocking—Part 1:”

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 Scriptural 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. 

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.  [End of quotes]

▶ GodSaidManSaid, “Adam was to Live Forever:”

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 span 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 ''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 important, 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.

Then again reiterating information about DNA that we recorded earlier, the article continued:

But even if everyone were to receive special longevity genes, each cell in the body nonetheless carries the 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]

The following is a lead paragraph in an article in Discover magazine titled "Immortal Cells:"

The clusters of human skin cells basking in a sterile incubator, with alarms poised to go off if the level of carbon dioxide drops or the temperature wavers from 98.6 degrees, appear to be blessed with eternal youth. Under normal circumstances, skin cells divide about 50 to 70 times and then quickly wither and stop dividing. But after nearly two years in a laboratory at Geron, a Menlo Park, California, biotech company, these genetically altered cells are approaching 400 divisions and still show no signs of aging. They just keep multiplying.

From the same article, biochemist Cal Harley had this to report:

"Telomeres are now known to be the clock of cell aging. Telomerase is the enzyme that can rewind the clock. It gives us a way to restore an increased life span, a youthful life span, to aging cells." [End of quotes]

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]  

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.

In summary of this long feature, published in the GodSaidManSaid feature “Immortality Keeps on Knocking—Part 1,” you’ll find this:

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 quotes]

The March 2017 headline on the cover of the research update by Life Extension Foundation reads, “Human Age Reversed.  Are We There Already?”  Headlines of various publications were sited in this feature:

• October 27, 2016, www.GeekWire.com:

“Is Jeff Bezos Looking for the Fountain of Youth?”
Jeff Bezos, billionaire founder of Amazon, and Mayo Clinic are investors in a startup that’s received $116 million to develop anti-aging therapies. 

• December 2, 2010, The Washington Post:

“A Harvard professor says he can cure aging, but is that a good idea?”

• November 29, 2016, The Telegraph:

“World’s first anti-ageing drug could see humans live to 120”

• April 24, 2016, The Wall Street Journal:

“Fountain of Youth? Drug Trial Has Seniors Scrambling to Prove They’re Worthy.” 

• June 26, 2016, New York Post:

“What if you could live forever?”

• September 2016, Scientific American:

“Will We Defeat Aging?”  

Life Extension went on to discuss various lines of research focused on age reversal.  One of them was Young Stem Cell-Mobilized Plasma Transfer.  One of the presentation slides reads, “When young blood is circulated into old animals, there is a systematic rejuvenation effect.”   Experiments have been proceeding with lab mice. 

The February 2017 issue of Time magazine published a multi-page feature titled “Longevity Special Report.”  One of the features in the section is titled “Young-Blood Transfusions.”  A few excerpts follow:

It may sound vampiresque, but 50 people in the US have paid $8,000 for a transfusion of plasma from someone between the ages of 16 to 25.  The study is run by Ambrosia, a company based in Monterey, California. 

The concept stems from mouse research by Irina Conboy [associate professor of bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley] and others.  In 2005, she and her research partner and husband Michael Conboy showed that when older mice were surgically sutured to younger mice, their tissues got healthier.  The takeaway was not that young blood is a cure-all, but some entrepreneurs ran with the idea.  “The story has switched into a highly-exaggerated search of young blood as a silver bullet to combat aging,” Irina says. 

In a recent follow-up study, the Conboys developed a way to exchange the blood of young and old mice without surgically joining them.  They found that old mice had some improvements but that young mice experienced rapid declines. 

“The big result is that a single exchange hurts the young partner more than it helps the old partner,” says Michael. [End of quotes]

A partial history of man’s quest for immortality was also in Time magazine.  A few paragraphs follow:

1^st Century: Pliny the Elder reports of Romans with epilepsy rushing to drink blood from gladiators to cure their ailment and gain strength and vigor.  (Pliny did not think this was a good idea.)

1489: Philosopher Marsilio Ficino suggests the elderly drink the blood of young men to rejuvenate themselves.  A few years later, Pope Innocent VIII supposedly tried it; he died shortly after. 

1930: British newspapers report that a man named Giocondo Protti successfully rejuvenated the elderly by performing blood transfusions from young donors. [End of quotes]

Man is looking for another way void of faith in God and obedience to His Word.  Immortality is God’s purview and there is a way.

Adam and Eve and their original immortality have been roundly ridiculed by the academics, but not so fast say the saints. 

Immortality is a glorious part of the born-again promise and the blood that Jesus Christ shed on Calvary’s tree makes this marvelous salvation and immortality—the blessed hope—possible.  If you are not yet born again, click onto “Further with Jesus.”  You can participate in the greatest miracle of all time this very day and ultimately live forever.  

GOD SAID, Genesis 3:1-5:

1 Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

2 And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:

3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.

4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:

5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

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, 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.

MAN SAID: I can get there another way.

Now you have THE RECORD.

 

 

References:

Authorized King James Version

Faloon, W., “Human Age Reversal: Are We There Already?,” Life Extension, March 2017

GodSaidManSaid, “Immortality Keeps on Knocking—Part 1”

GodSaidManSaid, “Adam was to Live Forever”

GodSaidManSaid, “Sky Water, Immortality, Plus 1,000 Years and 120 Years”

Sifferlin, A., “Death, Disrupted,” Time, February 27-March 6, 2017

Fabry, M., “A Cure for the Ages,” Time, February 27-March 6, 2017

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