The Heart & Red Faces (You Need to Hear This)

Today, many of you are in the valley of decision.  Several decades ago, when cassette tapes were still a new mode of communication, a young salesman was in my office.  In conversation, I said something as benign as “God willing,” which triggered a visceral response in the man.  This salesman was a self-described agnostic, and claimed to want proof that God is!  I explained to him that he was fortunate to have come to one of the few places on earth where such a demand would be easily satisfied.  On top of a VCR monitor in my office sat the original GodSaidManSaid proof series on cassette tapes.  I handed Scott, the salesman, the series and told him to play the tapes in his car’s cassette player between his sales stops.  A couple of days later, I received a phone call from Scott.  The conversation began with Scott saying, “I have a bone to pick with you.”  At that moment, one of the nine gifts of the Spirit described in I Corinthians 12, the gift of knowledge, opened within me.  The Spirit of God within me responded: “That’s not true.  All of the loopholes have been closed and you are not willing to pay the price.”  Scott’s answer?  “That’s true.”  Scott gave his heart to Jesus Christ. 

Most challengers clamoring for proof of the God of the Bible aren’t really interested in finding proof.  Their challenge is the covering for their sin.  Proof is so abundant, it defies straight-faced resistance.  Jesus identifies the problem in John 3:19-21:

19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.

20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.

21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.

If you have yet to be BORN-AGAIN, then you are in the valley of decision.  Consider these points:

🕀 On the entire earth, and in all there is, there is no God like the God of the Bible. 

🕀 On the entire earth, there is no Messiah like Jesus Christ, the Saviour of all those that call upon His name.  He is the champion of Golgotha, vanquishing Satan’s stranglehold on the lost sons of Adam. This was accomplished on His cross.

🕀 On the entire earth, there is no Spirit like God’s Holy Spirit that convicts and draws unto salvation, and quickens us by His Spirit, then leads and guides in all truth, comforting God’s children during the trial of their faith. 

🕀 On the entire earth, there is no greater experience than BORN-AGAIN.  It’s a greater miracle than the creation of the universe itself. 

🕀 On the entire earth, there is no greater purpose than the evangelizing of the lost and bound sons and daughters of Adam. 

🕀 On the entire earth, there is no book like the majority-text Holy Book.  Every book and every knee will bow before it. 

Life and death are being placed before you, and in just a moment, you will make a decision for, or against, Jesus Christ, the King of Glory.  Follow me in the simple prompt I will shortly offer, and all your sin and its shame will be forgiven and forgotten.  Follow me in this simple prompt, and all of Satan’s bondages will be broken, no matter how formidable.  Today, everything becomes brand-new.  Here’s the prompt.  Are you ready? Click onto “Further with Jesus”  for childlike instructions and immediate entry into the Kingdom of God.  NOW FOR TODAY’S SUBJECT.

GOD SAID, Genesis 6:5:

And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

GOD SAID, Genesis 8:21:

And the LORD smelled a sweet savour; and the LORD said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man''s sake; for the imagination of man''s heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done.

GOD SAID, Proverbs 3:3:

Let not mercy and truth forsake thee: bind them about thy neck; write them upon the table of thine heart:

MAN SAID: “Daddy Darwin” was right!  Who would want the Christian God of the Bible to be true?  If He is real, our choices are: Hell to pay, or repent of our sins and follow boring Jesus.  Forget about it! Isn’t this more appealing? I came from nothing, my purpose is nothing, and after death, I’m going nowhere.  Comforting, isn’t it?

Now THE RECORD: Welcome to GodSaidManSaid feature 1016 that will once again certify the perfect and supernatural inerrancy of the Word of God.  All of these features are archived here in text and streaming audio for your edification and as a soul-winning tool for the saints harnessed to the plow.  Every Thursday eve, God willing, they grow by one.

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Thank you for coming today.  Philippians 1:2:

Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

We are commanded to prove all things.  I Thessalonians 5:21:

Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.

We need to know it’s true—every jot and every tittle.  Everything totally depends upon it.  The GodSaidManSaid ministry certifies the glorious inerrancy of God’s Holy Bible week after week.  It’s true and righteous altogether.  We contend for the faith, as commanded, in the face of a withering, dark, and incessant onslaught from the carnal “intellectuals” and a cacophony of howls and mockery from Satan’s varied skeptics, but be of good cheer, children!  After billions of attempts to dethrone the Christ of Glory, their success rate is zero.  They will never succeed because they cannot. Their bold, dark saber-rattling is vanquished by the true Light.

The academics mocked the Biblical precept that consciousness lives on, even forever, after a person is pronounced brain-dead , but not anymore.  Hundreds of millions of near-death experiences (NDEs) testify to this fact, and now science has theorized that consciousness does indeed continue on after death, dubbing it “quantum consciousness.”  These “new” discoveries have forced the ungodly to come alongside.  Michael Shermer, one of academia’s focal and vocal leaders, once railed on the record against such an idea.  He now writes: “…the death of your physical body is not the end of your conscious existence.”  Welcome aboard, Mike.

The following excerpt is from the September/October 2020 issue of Discover magazine, from the feature “The Mourning Mind:”

What I hadn’t fully grasped in the early days of my grieving is that the brain and the mind, while inextricably linked, are completely separate entities.  Like the parts of a car engine, the two feed off of each other.

Did academia’s mockers and scoffers release a public statement saying, “Well, what do you know?! The Bible was right after all!”  Did you see any red faces? 

God’s detractors were certain He was wrong when He states in the Bible that the stomach and even the bowels have their own brain, but not anymore.    

Did academia’s mockers and scoffers release a public statement saying, “Well, what do you know?! The Bible was right after all!”  Did you see any red faces? 

The story of life begins in God’s book of Genesis.  He said Adam and Eve were the father and mother of all mankind.  They lost their immortality because of sin.  The world’s wise men mocked and scoffed, labeling these accounts “fairy tales,” but not anymore.  Science now knows all mankind on the earth today have one common mother and father, whom they have named mtDNA Eve and Y-Chromosome Adam.  Even the word immortality has entered modern science’s lexicon and it’s being pursued at warp speed.     

Did academia’s mockers and scoffers release a public statement saying, “Well, what do you know?! The Bible was right after all!”  Did you see any red faces? 

Jeremiah 6:15:

Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush: therefore they shall fall among them that fall: at the time that I visit them they shall be cast down, saith the LORD.

Could it be? The academics mocked the Biblical precept that the heart actually has its own brain, but not anymore.  In etymology, the study of language, there exists a foundational rule known as the law or rule of first occurrence.  This rule states that a word’s definition is established with its first use.  The first three uses of the word HEART in the Bible are as follows:

💚 Genesis 6:5: And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

💚 Genesis 6:6: And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.

💚 Genesis 8:21: And the LORD smelled a sweet savour; and the LORD said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man''s sake; for the imagination of man''s heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done.

Matters of the heart and its independent consciousness are found in a host of verses in God’s Word.  Consider this sampling:

💛 Proverbs 4:23: Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.

💛 Psalm 4:4: Stand in awe, and sin not: commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still. Selah.

💛 I Chronicles 15:29: And it came to pass, as the ark of the covenant of the LORD came to the city of David, that Michal the daughter of Saul looking out at a window saw king David dancing and playing: and she despised him in her heart.

💛 Matthew 18:35: So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses.

Note: GodSaidManSaid first published articles on the heart issue decades ago, but today it is back in the news.  The following paragraphs are from the GodSaidManSaid feature “The Heart Series, Part One:”

A heart can be happy! The thoughts of our hearts will define us and our future.

God speaks of a merry heart doing good like a medicine, and that a broken spirit dries up the bones.  Remember, this passage was authored thousands of years before science began to certify its truth.

The bones in our bodies are key to excellent living and their role is much more than simply structure to hang organs and flesh upon.  Inside our bones is found a spongy, moist tissue called bone marrow where all of our body’s blood cells are produced.  The blood cells begin life in the moist marrow as stem cells.  These stem cells divide and form the various cells that make up our blood and immune system.  Out of this moist bone marrow come red blood cells which carry oxygen and nutrients to the body, and also the white blood cells that fight infection.  Without bone marrow there could be no human life.

The amazing bone is strong as steel but light as aluminum, and inside the cancellous bones of the ribs, vertebrae, sternum, and pelvis is bone marrow, a moist hive of activity.  Imagine, two million red blood cells are being replaced every second and they’re being generated in the body’s bone marrow.  The red blood cells carry oxygen and nutrients to the body and the white blood cells defend against disease.  Both find their beginnings in moist bone marrow.

New fields of study have arisen concerning white blood cells and immune system malfunction called “psychoneuroimmunology.”  It is now known that stress, depression, sorrow, grief, negative thoughts, anger, etc., have a direct, negative effect on white blood cells.  Conversely, happy, joyful, restful, positive thoughts have a direct, positive effect on white and red blood cell production and activity.  Remember, red blood cells bring oxygen and nutrients to the body, and white blood cells defend against disease and sickness.

Dr. Lee Berk, a researcher at Loma Linda University School of Medicine’s Department of Clinical Immunology, has shown that laughter lowers serum cortisol levels.  Cortisol is part of the body’s fight-or-flight response, but much of it can dampen immune response and shut down the very process that attacks life-threatening microbes or the process that keeps malignant cells from proliferating into an invasive tumor.  Laughter also increases the amount of activated T lymphocytes, increases the number and activity of natural killer cells, and increases the number of T cells that carry helper and suppressor receptors.  Simply put, the immune system is positively benefited by laughter. Proverbs 17:22:

A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones.

Does the heart really think?  Could the scriptures that refer to the attributes of the heart 884 times be accurate in the most literal form?  Of course the answer is yes!

The following excerpts are from Deadly Emotions, by Dr. Don Colbert, published in 2003:

How can this be?  In recent years neuroscientists have discovered that the heart has its own independent nervous system.  At least forty thousand nerve cells (neurons) exist in a human heart.  That’s the same amount found in various subcortical (beneath the cerebral cortex) centers of the brain.  In other words, the heart is more than a mere biological pump.  These abundant nerve cells give it a thinking, feeling capability.

The heart’s “brain” and the nervous system relay messages back and forth to the brain in the skull, creating a two-way communication between these two organs.  In the 1970s, physiologists John and Beatrice Lacey of the Fels Research Institute found a flaw in current popular thinking about the brain.  The popular approach was to assume that the brain made all of the body’s decisions.  The Lacey’s research indicated otherwise.

Specifically, these researchers found that while the brain may send instructions to the heart through the nervous system, the heart doesn’t automatically obey.  Instead, the heart seems to respond at times as if it is “considering” the information that it has received.  Sometimes when the brain sends an arousal signal to the body in response to external stimuli, the heart speeds up, as might be expected.  On other occasions, however, the heart slows down while all other organs are aroused as expected.

The selectivity of the heart’s response suggested to the Lacey’s that the heart does not mechanically respond to the brain’s signals.  Rather, the heart seems to have an opinion of its own, which it communicates back to the brain.

What was even more interesting in the Lacey’s research was the fact that the messages that the heart sent to the brain seemed to be ones that the brain not only understood but obeyed.  In effect, heart and brain hold an intelligent dialogue.  At times the heart submits to the brain, and on other occasions the brain seems to submit to the heart.  The messages from the heart appear to be capable of affecting an individual’s behavior. [End of quotes]

The following information is from HeartMath.org:

Traditionally, the study of communication pathways between the head and heart has been approached from a rather one-sided perspective, with scientists focusing primarily on the heart’s responses to the brain’s commands.  We have learned, however, that communication between the heart and brain actually is a dynamic, ongoing, two-way dialogue, with each organ continuously influencing the other’s function.  Research has shown that the heart communicates to the brain in four major ways: neurologically (through the transmission of nerve impulses), biochemically (via hormones and neurotransmitters), biophysically (through pressure waves), and energetically (through electromagnetic field interactions).  Communication along all these conduits significantly affects the brain’s activity.  Moreover, our research shows that messages the heart sends to the brain can also affect performance.

Some of the first researchers in the field of psychophysiology to examine the interactions between the heart and brain were John and Beatrice Lacey.  During 20 years of research throughout the 1960s and ‘70s, they observed that the heart communicates with the brain in ways that significantly affect how we perceive and react to the world.

The Laceys noticed that the model proposed by Cannon [the autonomic nervous system moving in concert with related physiological responses] only partially matched actual physiological behavior.  As their research evolved, they found that the heart in particular seemed to have its own logic that frequently diverged from the direction of autonomic nervous system activity.  The heart was behaving as though it had a mind of its own.  Furthermore, the heart appeared to be sending meaningful messages to the brain that the brain not only understood, but also obeyed.  Even more intriguing was that it looked as though these messages could affect a person’s perceptions, behavior, and performance.  The Laceys identified a neural pathway and mechanism whereby input from the heart to the brain could inhibit or facilitate the brain’s electrical activity. 

One of their early findings is that the heart has a complex neural network that is sufficiently extensive to be characterized as a brain on the heart.  The heart-brain, as it is commonly called, or intrinsic cardiac nervous system, is an intricate network of complex ganglia, neurotransmitters, proteins, and support cells, the same as those of the brain in the head.  The heart-brain’s neural circuitry enables it to act independently of the cranial brain to learn, remember, make decisions, and even feel and sense.

In terms of heart-brain communication, it is generally well-known that the efferent (descending) pathways in the autonomic nervous system are involved in the regulation of the heart.  However, it is less appreciated that the majority of fibers in the vagus nerves are afferent (ascending) in nature.  Furthermore, more of these ascending neural pathways are related to the heart (and cardiovascular system) than to any other organ.  This means the heart sends more information to the brain than the brain sends to the heart.

It was later discovered the heart contains cells that synthesize and release catecholamines (norepinephrine, epinephrine, and dopamine), which are neurotransmitters once thought to be produced only by neurons in the brain and ganglia.  More recently, it was discovered the heart also manufactures and secretes oxytocin, which can act as a neurotransmitter and commonly is referred to as “the love” or social bonding hormone.  Remarkably, concentrations of oxytocin produced in the heart are in the same range as those produced in the brain. [End of quotes]

The article “See the ‘Little Brain’ of the Heart” was published in the August 1, 2020 issue of Science News.  Excerpts follow:

The heart has its own “brain,” a group of nerve cells known as the intracardiac nervous system.  Now, scientists have drawn a detailed 3-D map of this nervous system in rat hearts. 

The heart’s big boss is still the brain, but nerve cells in the heart have a say, too.  These neurons are thought to play a crucial role in heart health, helping to fine-tune heart rhythms and perhaps protecting people against certain kinds of heart disease.  But this local control system hadn’t been described in great detail, until now. 

Systems biologist James Schwaber of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia and colleagues used knife-edge scanning microscopy and genetic analyses to map the nerve cells in 3-D.  In a reconstructed rat heart, nerve cells that make up a heart’s “brain” cluster around the top of the heart, near where blood vessels enter and exit. [End of quote]

The brain of the heart, pictured in the article, sits directly on top of the heart, or upon its table. 

💜 Proverbs 3:3: Let not mercy and truth forsake thee: bind them about thy neck; write them upon the table of thine heart:

💜 Proverbs 7:3: Bind them upon thy fingers, write them upon the table of thine heart.

💜 Jeremiah 17:1: The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron, and with the point of a diamond: it is graven upon the table of their heart, and upon the horns of your altars;

💜 II Corinthians 3:3: Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshly tables of the heart.

You have read of the heart and the heart’s brain upon its table—wisdom and insights that only the Maker could know.  The world’s academics scorned, but not anymore.

Did academia’s mockers and scoffers release a public statement saying, “Well, what do you know?! The Bible was right after all!”  Did you see any red faces? 

They just can’t blush.  Their ignorance of God and His Word is really breathtaking. 

Children, be at peace.  God’s Word is true and righteous altogether, a place to build a life that will last forever.  Your childlike faith will not be disappointed. 

GOD SAID, Genesis 6:5:

And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

GOD SAID, Genesis 8:21:

And the LORD smelled a sweet savour; and the LORD said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man''s sake; for the imagination of man''s heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done.

GOD SAID, Proverbs 3:3:

Let not mercy and truth forsake thee: bind them about thy neck; write them upon the table of thine heart:

MAN SAID: “Daddy Darwin” was right!  Who would want the Christian God of the Bible to be true?  If He is real, our choices are: Hell to pay, or repent of our sins and follow boring Jesus.  Forget about it! Isn’t this more appealing? I came from nothing, my purpose is nothing, and after death, I’m going nowhere.  Comforting, isn’t it?

Now you have THE RECORD.

 

 

References:

Authorized King James Version

“Science of the Heart,” Heart-Math.org

GodSaidManSaid, “The Heart Series, Part One”

Paturel, A., “The Mourning Mind,” September/October 2020, Discover

Sanders, L., “See the ‘Little Brain’ of the Heart,” August 1, 2020, Science News

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