Over the past several weeks in our series Foundation of Faith we have been looking at the Bible. Last time we looked at the scientific evidence that is found in the Bible. And we saw that the Bible is not a science handbook but what and when it speaks of science it is 100% accurate. That may not seem too impressive today but understand these statements regarding science were written thousands of years ago, before they were discovered by man!
This morning we are going to look at the advanced medical knowledge that we find in the Bible. And keep in mind that many of these things that the Bible has given to us were not understood or discovered until recently! Now you may be wondering why we are spending so much time looking at the scientific evidence for the Bible and now the advanced medical knowledge of the Bible. Why are we spending so much time on this? Because we need to know what the Scriptures have to say so we can defend our faith, so we can give people a reason for the hope that is in us. And the reality is this, faith comes by hearing and not hearing just anything, but hearing the Word of God. That is why there is such an attack against the Word of God today. Satan does not want us to believe that it is the Word of God or he wants us to believe that it just contains the Word of God. He does not want us to believe that what we have in our hands are words that have been breathed from the mouth of God, from Genesis through Revelation, all of them!
Make no mistake about it; we are in a battle, a battle for the truth! The Word of God has been assaulted for years and now we are seeing the results of that assault. Back in May of 1982, some 30 years ago, Jeffrey Hadden, a sociologist completed a survey of the beliefs of ten thousand Protestant ministers. Listen to the question and then how they responded to the question and I think you will see why the Church is in trouble today.
1. Was Jesus born of a virgin?
Over 50 percent of the ministers said “NO”
2. Was Jesus the Son of God?
Over 80 percent of the ministers said “NO”
3. Is the Bible the Inspired Word of God?
Over 80 percent of the ministers said “NO”
4. Do you believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus?
Over 36 percent of the ministers said “NO”
Now you may not see this as a big deal, but think about it. If leaders in the church don’t believe that Jesus was virgin born, if they do not believe that He is the Son of God, if they do not believe that the Bible is the Inspired Word of God, if they do not believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus, then that is what they will be teaching the people that God has entrusted to them. And think about this, this was back in 1982 and imagine where we are at today!
Let me share with you what Grant Jeffrey had to say regarding this issue. He wrote,
Is there any doubt as to why many church leaders and denominations are spiritually weak and without conviction? When pastors and teachers lose their faith in the Word of God, they would be more honest if they openly left the ministry rather than lead a whole generation of laymen in their congregations to an eternity without Christ and without hope of salvation based on the Word of God.
The widespread agnosticism and atheism in our modern government, media, universities, and seminaries has resulted in the moral collapse of our society. The philosopher Thomas Hobbes wisely described the inevitable effects on our society of the growing agnosticism and the gradual abandonment of the authority of the Scriptures in the life of our nations. Hobbes described the terrible results that would follow the loss of a national religious faith in Christ in these insightful words. “No arts, no letters, no society, and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” Tragically, the results of our national apostasy were accurately predicted in his writings.
In
1830 the government of
“I sought for the greatness of the
A century and a half latter,
- Grant R. Jeffrey, The Signature of God, pp. 25-26
How true that is. That is why we are getting back to the basics of the Scriptures, looking at the foundational truths that God has given to us. You see, our nation will never be great again until we start doing good and we will never do enough good apart from Christ. It all begins and ends with Him and once He has a persons heart, what God is doing on the inside will overflow to the outside. But once you negate the Word of God, our guidebook, our standard to live by, then everyone does what is right in their own eyes and we have seen where that leads us, to immorality and really anarchy!
Now let me share with you how the most advanced society on the earth in the days of Moses treated medical issues. The Egyptians were very advanced in astronomical and engineering knowledge but their medical knowledge was very primitive. Let me show you what I mean. Grant Jeffery tells us,
As an example of the medical ignorance and primitive state of their medical knowledge, consider the Egyptian doctor’s suggestion for healing an infected splinter wound. The prescription involves the application of an ointment mixture composed of the blood of worms mixed with the dung of a donkey. The various germs, including tetanus, contained in donkey’s dung must have assured that the patient would rapidly forget the pain of his splinter as he died from an assortment of other diseases produced by his doctor’s contaminated medicine. . . . The Egyptian doctors had an equally wondrous cure for a poisonous snake bite. They poured “magical water” over a pagan idol and then gave it to the victim for what probably turned out to be his last drink on earth.
. . . A careful examination of the medical treatises from the Egyptians and the comprehensive Babylonian Code of Hammurabi reveals absolutely nothing about preventative medicine to enable people to avoid these deadly diseases that devastated ancient societies. However, the presence of incredibly advanced and accurate knowledge of diseases, sanitation and preventative medicine in the ancient Scriptures is one more incontrovertible proof that the Bible is truly the inspired Word of God. It is fascinating to note that a total of two hundred and thirteen out of the six hundred and thirteen biblical commandments found in the Torah were detailed medical regulations that insured the good health of the children of Israel if they would obediently follow the laws of God.
- Grant R. Jeffrey, The Signature of God, pp. 141, 143
And so, with the rest of our time this morning we are going to be looking at the advanced medical knowledge that is found in the Bible and I think you may be surprised by what God has to say to us. Yes, this is not a medical book but when it speaks of medical issues, it is 100% accurate!
1.
LIFE IS IN THE BLOOD
We are going to begin by looking at a fact that we know
very well today, that the life is in the blood. But way back to
the time of Moses we are told in
Moses, some 3500 years ago tells us that the life is in
the blood and yet, we did not discover this until 1616. A man
by the name of William Harvey discovered that the blood circulation
is the key factor for physical life! Although we take this knowledge
for granted, until
You see, red blood cells can carry 270 million molecules of hemoglobin each. That is what is needed for life and if there were any less there would not be enough residual oxygen available to sustain life. The blood is needed to feed and carry away waste products from the sixty trillion complex cells that make up the human body! Not only that, but the blood travels on this superhighway you might say of blood vessels that are all connected and these blood vessels, if stretched out we be about seventy-five thousand miles long, enough to circle the earth three times! And there is much more to this than what I am sharing with you this morning, but you get the idea, THE LIFE IS IN THE BLOOD and Moses told us this over 3500 years ago! How did he know this? Because our Creator, our God knew it and shared it with him!
2.
CIRCUMCISION ON THE EIGHTH DAY
You might not think this next one is that important but
I think it is incredible! In
That is a great question and it was not known until 1935 when Professor H. Dam proposed the name “Vitamin K” for the factor in foods that helped prevent hemorrhaging in baby chicks. We also know that Vitamin K is responsible for the production of prothrombin by the liver. Thus, if there is a deficiency of Vitamin K, there will be a prothrombin deficiency and hemorrhaging may occur since both Vitamin K and prothrombin are necessary for proper blood clotting!
Oddly enough, it is only on the fifth through the seventh days of the newborn male’s life that vitamin K (produced by bacteria in the intestinal tract) is present in adequate quantities. As I have said, Vitamin K, coupled with prothrombin, causes blood coagulation, which is important in any surgical procedure. Holt and McIntosh, in their classic work, Holt Pediatrics, observed that a newborn infant has “peculiar susceptibility to bleeding between the second and fifth days of life. . . . Hemorrhages at this time, though often inconsequential, are sometimes extensive; they may produce serious damage to internal organs, especially to the brain, and cause death from shock and exsanguination.” (1953, pp. 125-126).
Obviously, then, if vitamin K is not produced in sufficient quantities until days five through seven, it would be wise to postpone any surgery until some time after that. But why did God specify day eight?
On the eighth day, the amount of prothrombin present actually is elevated above one-hundred percent of normal (it peaks at 110 percent of normal) - and is the only day in the male’s life in which this will be the case under normal conditions. If surgery is to be performed, day eight is the perfect day to do it. Vitamin K and prothrombin levels are at their peak on this day.
S. I. McMillen, M.D., in his book, None of These Diseases, observed,
“We should commend the many hundreds of workers who labored at great expense over a number of years to discover that the safest day to perform circumcision is the eighth. Yet, as we congratulate medical science for this recent finding, we can almost hear the leaves of the Bible rustling. They would like to remind us that four thousand years ago, when God initiated circumcision with Abraham. . . .
Abraham
did not pick the eighth day after many centuries of trial-and-error
experiments. Neither he nor any of his company from the ancient
city of
Moses’
information, as recorded in
3.
REPRODUCE AFTER THEIR OWN KIND
The next issue we will look at is the fact that animals, plants, birds and-so-on reproduce after their own kind! What that means is that a dog will have puppies and not kittens. A bird will have a baby bird and not a reptile. An apple tree will produce another apple tree and not an orange tree. Humans will have a human child and not some monster, that transformation only happens when they are teenagers! Sorry. But the key is that they reproduce after their own kind!
We know this as the “Law of Biogenesis” which
means that life only comes from preceding life and perpetuates
itself by reproducing only after its own kind or type! It is what
Genesis chapter 1 tells us, “Then God said, ‘Let
the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the
fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind, whose
seed is in itself, on the earth’; and it was so. And the
earth brought forth grass, the herb that yields seed according
to its kind, and the tree that yields fruit, whose seed is in
itself according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
. . . So God created great sea creatures and every living thing
that moves, with which the waters abounded, according to their
kind, and every winged bird according to its kind.
And God saw that it was good. . . . Then God said, ‘Let the
earth bring forth the living creature according to its kind:
cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth, each according
to its kind’; and it was so. And God made the beast of
the earth according to its kind, cattle according to
its kind, and everything that creeps on the earth according
to its kind. And God saw that it was good.”
Moses, some 3500 years ago, tells us that in the very beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth and all life within it, created them with the ability to reproduce after their own kind. Yes, there are a variety of dogs out there, but they are all dogs! That is the key and as you look at the fossil record, that is what you find. Living things reproduce after their own kind just as God said and He should know because He created them!
And this is one of the greatest problems for evolutionists.
They know this to be true as this book tells us. This
is a quote from a current Biology text book. It says,
Life cannot arise by spontaneous
generation from inanimate material today, so far as we know, but
conditions were very different when the earth was only a few billion
years old. In that ancient environment,
the origin of life was evidently possible and it is likely that
at least the early stages of biological inception were inevitable.”
- Nell Campbell, Biology, 1987,
page 504
Do you see what this author did? He admitted spontaneous
generation is impossible today, but he puts his faith in the belief
that the early earth had some unknown different conditions in
order for life to originate from inanimate material. David Kirk
correctly stated, “By the end of the nineteenth century there
was a general agreement that life cannot arise from the non-living
under conditions that now exist upon our planet. The dictum ‘All
life from preexisting life’ became the dogma of modern biology,
from which no reasonable man could be expected to dissent.”
And it was men like Francesco Redi
(1688), Lazarro Spallanzani (1799), Louis Pasteur (1860) and Rudolph
Virchow (1858) that carried out these experiments that formed
the ultimate basis of this law, the Law of Biogenesis. And there
are no exceptions and yet, as we read in the school book, you
have to make an exception if you want to BELIEVE in
the theory of evolution and yet, as we have seen with this law,
it can’t happen!
In fact, listen to what Dr. Wald, the foremost biologist in this country, has to say and his words speak volumes. He said, “Spontaneous generation was totally disproved 100 years ago by Louis Pasture. . . .That leads us only one possible conclusion. That life arose as a super natural creative work of God. I can not accept that philosophically, because I don't want to believe in God. I choose to believe that which I know is scientifically impossible, spontaneous generation arising to evolution.”
Why does he want to believe in evolution, something that has not been proved and must be believed by faith? Why must he alter the Law of Biogenesis? Because he does not want to believe in God! Folks that is not science but he is suppressing the truth that he knows and is promoting a lie, and in fact, it has become a religion to him.
Folk’s, we did not understand this until the 1900’s and yet, Moses told us this some 3500 years ago, he believed it. In fact, even Paul picks up on this in I Corinthians 15:39 as he tells us, “All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of animals, another of fish, and another of birds.” Paul is saying that these fleshes, these creatures are different in their makeup and today every evolutionist knows this truth and yet, Paul knew it almost 2,000 years ago!
Not
only that, but listen to what Paul said in
And yes, there are many people who
think life was once created in a test tube from chemicals and
energy in the 1950’s. This is known as the Miner-Urey experiment.
Here is what actually occurred. They sparked ammonia, methane,
hydrogen and water, condensed it and ran it through a trap (do
you think the early earth had traps and condensers? The samples
had to be isolated from the spark because a second spark would
have destroyed any molecules that were formed. They also left
out oxygen because that would have stopped the experiment but
once the amino acid was created, oxygen was needed. Good luck
with that happening by random chance billions upon billions upon
billions of times over.).
The results of these experiments were mostly tar and carboxylic acid, but a few amino acids were formed. Amino acids may be called the building blocks of life. But it is either gross ignorance or a lie to say they created true life in this experiment. Life requires many things. Long amino acid chains make proteins, chains in the proper order and shape. Millers experiment did NOT produce any chains. Life also requires DNA, RNA and never has any experiment produced DNA or RNA from base materials. Never have chains of DNA or RNA been produced, and never has a cell membrane been produced.
Think about this for a minute. Let’s put this into perspective. The faith that even one protein arose by chance is tremendous. Proteins are made up of chains of amino acids, just like a train is made up of box cars. A chain of box cars makes up a train. A chain of amino acids makes up a protein. Humans have 20 different types of amino acids that make up our proteins, and the average human protein is 400 amino acids long. Remember, the exact arrangement of these amino acids is crucial to the function of the protein. If it is the proper arrangement it does its job, if the order is mixed up, it is worthless chemical junk.
Imagine many box cars at a train station, and these box
cars are made up of twenty different colors. The owner of the
station tells you he wants a train to be 400 box cars long, and
you are to pick the combination of colored box cars, but if it
is not the order he has in mind (and he didn’t tell you his
desire) he will fire you.
What are the odds that you will arrange the box cars in
the right order? They
are the same odds that the amino acids will align themselves by
chance to make one functional protein in you (the human body).
The odds are 20 to the 400th power.
This is the same as 10 to the 520th power, (that is a 1
followed by 520 zeros)! You have better odds of winning the California
Super Lotto every week for 11 years, than the odds of one protein
in your body having the amino acids being properly aligned by
chance.
The odds are really much worse because the amino acids must be left handed, they must form a chain “in series,” no parallel branching, their shape (proteins are wound up like a ball of yarn) is crucial; you need an oxygen free environment, etc. And remember, this is for just one protein. Your body has countless trillions of proteins. As you look at this model it reflects a brilliant designer (God) making meaningful and useful proteins and it requires much less faith than to trust random chance and natural processes.
So I think it is very clear, creation reproduces after its own kind and it is God who has created life, all life and it did not arise out of spontaneous generation or life from non life! Thus, life REPRODUCES AFTER THEIR OWN KIND just as God has said!
4.
MAN IS CREATED FROM THE DUST OF THE EARTH
Here is one that we can clearly see today and it is what
God has said in
Not only that but the exact proportion of the minerals and materials, if maintained, make up a healthy human body. Excesses in these materials will cause disorders and diseases. Excess of aluminum, for example, and iron, will be toxic for the human body. The proportions of the abundance of the 59 elements on the earths crust, is amazingly represented in its presence in the human body. Thus, MAN IS CREATED FROM THE DUST OF THE EARTH just as God has said!
5.
SANITARY PRACTICES FROM THE BIBLE
When we talk about sanitary practices we take them for granted today. We are bombarded with so many commercials, so much information telling us to wash our hands every time we touch something and I think we have moved to the other end of the spectrum regarding this issue. But understand it was only a little over 100 years ago that we discovered this idea of germs. Louis Pasture demonstrated this in the late 19th century in his Germ Theory of Disease as he showed that most infectious diseases were caused by microorganisms originating from outside the body.
Let me show you what I mean about what we thought regarding the transfer of diseases not that long ago, in our recent past. In 1818, Ignaz Phillip Semmelweis was born into a world of dying women. The finest hospitals lost one out of six young mothers to the scourge of “childbed fever.” A doctor’s daily routine began in the dissecting room where he performed autopsies. From there he made his way to the hospital to examine expectant mothers without ever pausing to wash his hands.
Dr. Semmelweis was the first man in history to associate such examinations with the resultant infection and death. His own practice was to wash with a chlorine solution, and after eleven years and the delivery of 8,537 babies, he lost only 184 mothers – about one in fifty.
Nevertheless, Semmelweis encountered strong opposition from hospital officials as some doctors were offended at the suggestion that they should wash their hands; they felt that their social status as gentlemen was inconsistent with the idea that their hands could be unclean.
He spent the vigor of his life lecturing and debating with his colleagues. Once he argued, “Puerperal fever is caused by decomposed material, conveyed to a wound. . . I have shown how it can be prevented. I have proved all that I have said. But while we talk, talk, talk, gentlemen, women are dying. I am not asking anything world shaking. I am asking you only to wash. . . For God’s sake, wash your hands.”
But virtually no one believed him. Doctors and midwives had been delivering babies for thousands of years without washing, and no outspoken Hungarian was going to change them now! And because of all this pressure, this ridicule, after decades of this abuse by his colleagues, Semmelwis had a nervous breakdown and he was placed in a mental institution. Believe it or not, he died due to an infection that he received through a cut in his hand that he received during an operation in 1865 that became infected. The same diseases he had spent his life trying to alleviate, killed him! And what was he asking them to do? He just wanted them to wash their hands and they mocked him for it and yet today, hand washing is a common practice because it decreases the chances for the spread of infection.
Can you imagine that, mocking him because he was promoting
hand washing! And yet, over 3500 years ago God instructed Moses
on sanitary practices that we use today! Not only that but we
see that God told the Israelites to wash themselves and their
clothes in running water if they had a bodily discharge, if they
came in contact with another person’s discharge, or if they
had touched a dead human or animal carcass. Also, besides that,
they were also instructed to wash any uncovered vessels that were
in the vicinity of a dead body. Not only that but if a dead carcass
touched a vessel, it was to be destroyed! They were also told
to bury their human waste outside their camp and to burn the waste
of their animals! (See
There
are the laws of quarantine where you isolate a person or a group
of people who have an infectious disease so it will not spread
to others! During the l4th century bubonic plague struck Asia
and spread to
Relentlessly, the plague invaded every city, small town or village. Millions lost their lives to the “grim reaper.” Panic and confusion were rampant. Death was everywhere. The toll was so great that bodies were thrown into huge pits, mass graves, as I have said.
What
led to the incredible spread of the “black death”? Modern
science now knows that unclean streets, poor sanitation, and filth
were great contributors. In the l4th century, cities in
The Jewish physician Balavignus lived in those times and saw that miserable sanitation was a major factor in the spread of the disease. He instituted a cleanup movement among the Jews. The rats, consequently, left the Jewish ghettos and moved into the “Gentile” sectors of the city. As a result, the Jews’ mortality rate from the plague was only five percent of what it was among their non-Jewish neighbors!
The general population soon saw the difference, but instead of emulating the Jewish hygienic measures, the people began to suspect the Jews of causing the plague and poisoning wells - and a general massacre was launched. Balavignus himself, persecuted and tortured, was finally compelled to “confess” that he and others were responsible for the disease.
How
was this Black Death finally conquered? David Riesman, professor
of the History of Medicine at the
Also,
the church fathers in
Think about something as simple as drinking water, which
we take for granted today. And listen to what the Lord had to
say regarding this issue. In
And here is one that if practiced today, sexually transmitted
diseases like venereal diseases and AIDS would be eliminated!
What God has said is very simple, the Israelites were forbidden
to have any sexual relations outside of marriage and so are we.
(See
Let’s look at one more to show you that the Bible is correct in what it teaches on medical issues. One of the most well-known Old Testament food regulations is the prohibition of pork consumption (Leviticus 11:7). Under close scrutiny, this prohibition exemplifies the value of the biblical laws regarding clean and unclean animals. During the days of Moses, proper food preparation and cooking conditions did not always exist. In fact, the general knowledge of the need to separate certain uncooked foods, especially meats, during preparation from other foods was virtually non-existent. Certain meats, if contacted raw or under-cooked, have greater potential to carry parasites and other harmful bacteria that can infect the end consumer (in this case, humans). I think you understand where this is going.
Pigs are scavengers, and will eat practically anything. Thus, they often consume parasites and bacteria when they eat the carcasses of other dead animals. These parasites and bacteria can, and often do, take up residence in the pigs’ muscle tissue. Fully cooking the meat can kill these harmful organisms, but failure to cook the meat completely can cause numerous detrimental effects.
R. K. Harrison listed several diseases or other health maladies that can occur due to the ingestion of improperly cooked pork. He noted that pigs often are the host of the tapeworm Taenia solium. Infection by this parasite can cause small tumors to arise throughout the body, including on the skin, eyes, and muscles. Furthermore, these tumors can affect the brain and cause epileptic convulsions. Additionally, humans can develop trichaniasis (trichinosis) infestation from eating undercooked, as well as tape worm known as Echiococcus granulosus from water polluted by pigs. Further, pigs can pass on the microorganisms that cause toxoplamosis, a disease affecting the nervous system (Harrison, 1982, p. 644).
Yes, today we are aware of the dangers of eating uncooked or undercooked pork because we have a more exhaustive body of knowledge concerning parasites and pathogens. In fact, most pork bought in grocery stores contains nitrates and nitrites that have been injected into the meat to hinder the growth of harmful microorganisms. But Moses and the Israelites did not have access to such modern knowledge. How is it that the food regulations recorded by Moses over 3500 years ago contain such an accurate understanding of disease control? Albright noted along these lines, “thanks to the dietary and hygienic regulations of Mosaic law . . . subsequent history has been marked by a tremendous advantage in this respect held by Jews over all other comparable ethnic and religious groups” (1968, p. 181). God knew it and to protect His people, warned them not to eat pork!
Thus, because of the SANITARY PRACTICES FROM THE BIBLE many lives have been saved and many infectious diseases have died out!
Is the Bible just another book written by ignorant men or is it the Word of God? You can make that decision yourself, but when you look at the evidence, you can clearly see the hand of God. And if you think about it, entire books could be written on the Old Testament’s amazing medical accuracy. Medical doctors McMillen and Stern have done just that in their extremely interesting volume None of These Diseases. Many physicians who have compared Moses’ medical instructions to effective modern methods have come to realize the astonishing value and insight of the Old Testament text.
As Dr. Macht once wrote: “Every word in the Hebrew Scriptures is well chosen and carries valuable knowledge and deep significance” (Macht, 1953, p. 450). Such is certainly the case in regard to the medical practices listed in its pages. Indeed, the accurate medical practices prescribed thousands of years before their significance was completely understood provide excellent evidence for the divine inspiration of the Bible.
And keep in mind that man’s medical knowledge was virtually abysmal until the beginning of the twentieth century. Even the existence of germs was unknown until around A. D. 1890. Yet, the first five books of the Bible, known as the Torah, or the Law, recorded by Moses approximately 1491-1451 B. C., reveal surprising advanced scientific principles. In addition, the Bible contains advanced medical and scientific knowledge about hygiene and sanitation.
The
Scriptures contain God’s medical instructions for