Can Science Conquer Death? by David K. Bernard Podcast recording (no venue stated in the delivered transcript) Kind: teaching Scripture: Ecclesiastes 3:11, Romans 3:23, Romans 6:23, Hebrews 9:27, Genesis 6:3 Source: https://acts238.life/repository/sermons/david-k-bernard--can-science-conquer-death Published by Acts 2:38 Life from the sermon transcript on that page. Free to copy and share with attribution. ------------------------------------------------------------ This is one of those questions where there are two sides. Okay. So on the positive side, uh death really is a foreign element for us. When God created Adam and Eve, I I think they were created with uh life that was not glorified yet. But had they served God, it appears that they would have entered straight into glorification without having to ever undergo death. They were in uh the Garden of Eden with the tree of life. So in other words, God did not design for people to die. Um sin caused death. Death came in the world because of sin far at least as far as human beings are concerned. And in fact, Ephesians, excuse me, Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, "God has put eternity in our hearts." So, there's something within us that sees death as an enemy. Death is foreign. So, even just thinking about a human being who dies, someone we love or someone we know, it's hard to get our minds around we'll never see this person again. Their unique personality, their unique contributions will never be experienced again. if if he didn't have the hope of the resurrection. Of course, on the other hand, if you know, we kill a cow and eat it or we kill a deer or even a beloved pet dies, although that can be sad for most of us, it's not something that, oh, this should never happen. So, in as far as the plant world and the animal world, it seems like death is more or less expected, natural. it it it's should be accepted but for humans no in fact there's a famous poem by Dylan Thomas's do not go gentle into that good night so fight against that raged rage against the dying of the light so there's something with us that fights against death because it's unnatural it's foreign it's because of sin so I get that and I do believe that we should prolong life if we can have a quality of life I'm not necessarily a fan of just a miserable exist resistance. Obviously, I don't believe in euthanasia, but what I'm saying is if we can extend life, healthy life through medical means, I think we should do our best to do that. Now, the other side, the fact is we do live in a sinful world and all of us have sinned. So, Romans 3:23 says everyone has sinned. Romans 6:23 says the way wages of sin is death. And then Hebrews 9:27, it's appointed unto man once to die and after this the judgment. So for someone to try to fight for immortality or fight for extraordinary longevity, it's almost like they're trying to say, "I want to evade the consequences of sin. Not by being saved, but by my own path." Of course, most of these people probably don't believe in God, or if they do, theoretically, they don't care about God's will. So it almost seems like the Tower of Babel, you know, God sent the flood to judge mankind and then uh they all regrouped and said, "We're going to make a name for ourselves." And God said, "I want you to scatter and, you know, fill the earth and and reproduce." And they said, "No, we're going to make a name for ourselves. We're going to build a tower to heaven." Some commentators even thought maybe they're trying to say we're going to build a tower so high that the next flood can't get us. Um but whatever the case may be, God did not look at that as a good thing. He looked at as a bad thing and he sent judgment to scatter the people. So I do believe it's hubris. It's a pride or arrogance saying I don't need God. I don't want God. Um I'm not going to repent of my sins and seek salvation and seek eternal life through the will of God. I want to seek eternal life through my own selfish means. I want to do it my way. I want to uh beat the odds. I want to I want to prove God is if there is a God that he doesn't have a right to uh say the wages of sin is death. I want to sin and keep living. And so from that perspective, it's a very arrogant and questionable thing. I think it's also doomed to failure for the reasons I've just mentioned. But there's also a very specific statement in Genesis. We do see extraordinary long life. So we don't know all there is to know about that. But it seems that when Adam and Eve fell, of course, sin entered the world and their bodies started suffering the consequences. But it seems like it took generations for it to finally uh boil down to what what is considered a normal lifespan. But you do find this statement in Genesis uh 6:3 which says that I give u humans 120 years God's saying and most commentators and even translations seem to indicate that the maybe not typical but the more or less upper end of human life after the fall after the curse of sin and after enough generations had passed uh to to get us to our typical ical human existence, the maximum human lifespan is going to be about 120. And that's actually true even today with all the advances of modern science. You know, every once in a while you read articles of the long the the longest alived person in the world and it's going to be about 120 is about the maximum. I think I've read someone allegedly 122, but they don't know for sure when their birthday was. So really the people that you read about that have lived the longest you're not going to read someone living much past 100 but if they do 110 but 120 is pretty much the upper limit. So I really feel like that's true uh even today and I believe that's a fulfillment of God's word. So on the one hand should we aspire for medical advances and quality? So a lot of the lifespan is not is through better understanding of how our body works, better nutrition, uh taking care of ourselves, proper exercise, proper rest, proper diet, um and then of course elimination of infectious diseases through hygiene and vaccines and so on. uh and eliminating various diseases. We're now seeing um things like cancer and heart trouble. It's not just inevitably happening to everybody. There can be some environmental or genetic causes that could be uh cured or arrested or reversed. So, I think we should work for all of that. But the idea that we would uh store our brain and come back in a century or two or that we could replace all of our body parts and live for 200 years. I think that's arrogance on our part. And I think we should focus on our relationship with God and then whatever happens uh we are going to have eternal life. Not because we made it happen, not because we spent a billion dollars, and not because we're trusting that scientists 100 years from now will revive our corpse or put our brain in a new artificial body. Uh but because we trust in God and and ultimately he's the one Jesus Christ conquered death and if we believe on him and obey his gospel, we too will conquer death. That's our true hope.