GLEANINGS FROM THE SCRIPTURESLIFE IS IN THE BLOODBy Keith L. EstesRichard Elmhurst, a retired engineer, has presented the following material for publication. It is an excerpt from the book, The Signature of God, by Grant Jeffrey. “Moses makes a fascinating statement in the Book of Leviticus about the importance of blood. ‘For the life of the flesh is in the blood.’ (Leviticus 17: 11) Incredibly, Moses reveals that our blood is the essence of life. Our blood is one of the most amazing features in our wonderful body. We have over seventy-five thousand miles of blood vessels in our body, enough to circle the world three times! These incredibly tiny veins, arteries, and capillary vessels carry blood cells with nutrients to feed every one of the sixty trillion cells in our bodies. The sixty trillion amazingly complex cells that make up a human body are produced from a single microscopic cell formed when a father’s sperm is joined to a mother’s egg. This complex system of interconnected blood vessels must bring the needed nutrients to the particular cells that require these chemicals. This is equivalent of a courier company delivering trillions of packages daily to sixty trillion business customers over a route covering seventy-five thousand miles of territory. Each of our cells requires a number of different nutrients and chemicals. Special chemical sensors detect the nutrient needed as the blood passes through the blood stream and allow that cell to connect with the necessary substance. In addition, we have over a million special types of white cells, antibodies specially designed to fight one particular disease. As soon as the body detects that it has been invaded by a particular germ or virus the whole blood system goes on special alert to produce an explosive increase in whatever antibody is required to fight the disease. “The Hebrew word for the heart is lev. This word and variations of it appear at least eight hundred and twenty-five times in the Old Testament and another one hundred and sixty times in the New Testament. Our enormously complex blood system that allows life to exist is pumped by our heart, the most powerful muscle in our body. Though it is only the size of your clenched fist it is far stronger than our legs or arms. However while the heart works non-stop for eighty years or more, the muscles of our legs or arms are exhausted after only a short time of exertion. Weighing less than a pound, this fantastically reliable organ pumps over one and a half million gallons of blood every year of our life. In the course of a normal lifespan the average human heart will pump forty million times pushing almost one million pounds of blood through the seventy-five thousand miles of blood vessels that make up our body. How could Moses have understood thirty-five centuries ago, that ‘the life of the flesh is in the blood’ unless God revealed it to him by inspiration?” John, the beloved disciple of Jesus, reminds us in his letter: “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.” (1 John 1: 7) The writer of the book of Hebrews writes: “For without shedding of blood there is no remission for sin.” (Hebrews 9: 22) This certifies the fact of Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection for the salvation of all who place their trust in Him. Reference: The Signature of God, Astonishing Biblical Discoveries by Grant Jeffrey, Frontier Research Publications, Inc. P.O. Box 129, Station “U”, Toronto, Ontario M8Z5M4. Used by permission. |