The rock group Queen asked "who wants to live forever?" Well, since Gen 3:22 probably most people. Who wouldn't want to sneak past the flaming sword wielding Cherubim back into the garden of Eden and eat form the tree of life? Rejuvenating skin creams and head freezing cryogenics aside, for those who want to cheat death for as long as possible some real progress is being made by scientists. Last month a research group at Newcastle University discovered and described the process by which a cell recognises that is DNA is damaged and stops dividing. If it didn't do this the cell would start replicating with dodgy DNA leading to things like cancer. Unfortunately with less cells able to divide and help repair damaged tissue we get wrinkles and aging. The hope is that if we know how the ageing process works we can intercept it in some way and prolong life.
One of the more colourful and controversial figures in the field is a boffin with a very long beard called Aubrey de Grey. "One hundred and fifty thousand people die every day, and two-thirds of those die of aging in one way or the other," he says, "If I speed up the cure for aging by one day, then I've saved 100,000 people. Actually, I probably do that every week." One of his visionary concepts is the idea of an age "escape velocity". Say a person alive today is 30 and expects to live another 50 years. Well in those 50 years researches may have extended life expectancy by say 20 years allowing that person to live to 100. If in those extra 20 years scientists increase life expectancy by another 20 years and advances keep happening at this rate then some people alive today with access to the technology could potentially live forever! Except for the fact that project time lines never go as smoothly as that do they! (have you ever tried estimating the time it takes to renovate a house or write a computer program). He has put his money where his mouth is though, helping to fund the Methuselah Mouse Prize (Methuselah has the oldest recorded age in the bible of 969). There are Prizes for longevity (the oldest mouse) and rejuvenation (an old mouse who gets younger).
Another promising area of research into aging has seen small genetic modifications and a low calorie diets extend the life span of organisms by as much as 10 times. Could that lead to humans living to be 1000? Well so far its only worked on yeast mould and roundworms so don't throw your will away quite yet.
But there is a way, for everyone alive today to get back to the tree of life and live forever. I read something today about the tabernacle that intrigued me. The entrance back into the garden is from the east and its guarded by a cherubim wielding flaming sword. (Gen 3:24). Now tabernacle and the temples have a door in the east side (Ex 27:13-14, , Ezekiel 8:16, Ezekiel 43:1-5, Ez 44:1-3, Mark 13:3, Acts 3:1-10* ). The curtains of the Holy of Holys is covered in cherubim (Ex 26:1, Ex 36:35). The temple is covered in garden designs and cherubim (1 Kings 6:29) and two big gold covered cherubim overshadow the ark in the Holy of Holy's, the place of God's powerful presence (Ex 37:9). Do you think God was trying to say something!
God always had a way back planned for us. When Jesus came he said "I am the gate". "I am the way the truth and the life!" He was saying, in effect, "I am the way back into the garden of Eden and eternal life!". One day, in the home stretch of this blog I will get to the last chapter in the bible, Rev 22.
Rev 22:1-2 Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. (ESV)
There is the tree once again. I don't really understand all the rich apocalyptic symbolism here but I know a tree of life when I see one!
* ok, I couldn't actually find any biblical references to a main eastern gate for Solomon's temple or Zerubbable 's rebuild but most people seem sure it did face east (or 6 degrees off that so that it lined up with the sun coming up over the mount of olives. Again historians say Herod's temple was along the east/west with the entrance to the holy of holy's facing east.
Addition on 23rd April 2010:
16 factors have been identified that exerts a big influence on mankind's maximum lifespan:
1. War and murder
2. Accidents
3. Disease
4. Famine or inadequate nutrition
5. High metabolic rates
6. Internal oxidative stress
7. Environmental stress
8. Inadequate exercise
9. Chemical carcinogens
10. Every element accumulation in tissues
11. High caloric intake
12. Ultraviolet radiation
13. Solar x-ray radiation
14. Radio isotope decay rates in
15. Cosmic radiation
16. telomerase activity (forestalling natural chromosome shortening by adding nucleotide base pairs to the ends of DNA).
The Genesis Question, Hugh Ross, Page 120
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