Playing God?

Jesus has defeated the power of death and enables the believer in Him to live forever.  Hebrews 2 reminds us:
14 Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil,
15 and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.

There is hope on the other side, when we leave this world.  Anxieties about the afterlife have been alleviated, and we can view our leaving of this world as an entry into our eternal life with God - Paul writes to be absent with the body is to be present with the Lord.  The promise of eternal life can shape our perspective and remind us that this world is not all there is.  Man's effort and scientific research may try to manufacture immortality, but Christ can grant it through a relationship with Him.

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God is the One who determines the length of our days, and He is the One who grants us the capability to live forever - in Christ. Acts 17 says:
26 And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings,
27 so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us;
28 for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, 'For we are also His offspring.'

A biotech company based in Philadelphia asks the question on its website, “What if your body came with a restart button?," according to a story on the World Net Daily website, that reports that the company, Bioquark, Inc., plans to inject a cocktail of stem cells and peptides into the brains of 20 brain-dead patients over a six-week period to see if their central nervous systems can be regenerated – literally raising them from the dead.

The publication reported on the growing promise of anti-aging or “gene therapy” science, a technology known as CRISPR/Cas9, which seeks to deliver immortality to human beings. Some of the world’s richest men are investing billions in this research including Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, Ray Kurzwell of Google, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, venture capitalist Paul Glenn and Russian multi-millionaire Omitry Itskov.

And, the WND story says that Assistant Secretary of Defense Stephen Welby testified before the Senate recently saying the U.S. “is at a pivotal moment in history” with regard to military research, and the DoD’s DARPA unit now has 39,000 scientists and engineers working in military labs across 22 states trying to harness the latest technological advances for military application.

The Jasons, described by the New York Times as one of the most elite boards of scientists in the world that offers advisory services to the Pentagon, has named “super soldier” technology as the next big arms race.

“The truth is, the defense departments of all countries would love to have the best soldier on the planet,” says Sharon Gilbert, the science adviser for SkyWatch TV. “And if rumors start going around that, hey, China’s got an artificial intelligence that they’re blending with humans and they’re starting to put chips in their soldiers and they’re giving them wolf DNA or Hawk DNA so they can run really fast and see really well and be really vicious and never have to sleep – well, we better do that, too.” Gilbert says that it's the same for the CRISPR technology.

Christian author and filmmaker Tom Horn is quoted as saying, "...in the Bible only mankind is described as having God’s breath breathed into them at the moment of their creation,” adding, “For conservative Christians, this should be a major point of debate regarding the ‘ethics’ of bringing people back from the dead.” The WND article poses the question, "Could a person be returned alive, yet without that God-part that makes them in the 'image' of their creator?" Horn asks, "What would they then be?” Or, “Are they a living construct no longer suitable as a fit-extension of the Holy Spirit? Or would they be fine and the miraculous science that brought them back to life celebrated by all believers? These were the type difficult questions we sought to answer in the documentary ‘Inhuman.'”

Pastor Carl Gallups is also quoted in the article: “What entity or governmental power will make the decisions concerning who gets their death ‘reversed’ and who must die?,” Gallups asks.  

The article points out that the scientists and journalists reporting on this emerging technology are giddy with the possibilities.

Gallups notes that they not only speak of “living forever,” but also of “erasing history,” “reversing death” and “restarting life."

But the pastor notes that, “The entire Gospel is founded on the understanding that Jesus Himself ‘reversed death’ and ‘arose from the grave.'" He says that, “We are told in Revelation 21:5 and in Isaiah 65:17 that the mind of the child of God will eventually be made entirely ‘new’ and that the ‘old things will not come to mind anymore." He said that most of the scientists and technology gurus aren’t interested in an eternity spent in heaven.

Horn is quoted from a television interview as saying, regarding gene-editing technology, “There is a danger in playing God because you’re not God and you don’t know.”

Scientific research is chasing immortality, but no matter how advanced man's developments might seem, those efforts pale in comparison to true immortality - life after death.   The Christian dies physically, but is ushered into an afterlife in which he or she will never die spiritually.  A non-believer will die not only physically, but spiritually as well, spending eternity in a state of separation from God.

Jesus is capable of reviving the soul of every person who does not know Him, of every man and woman, boy and girl, who were born into spiritual death.  And, as we die to self and live to God, we can experience true regeneration in the Spirit and become new creations in Christ Jesus.

Finally, we recognize that the Lord Himself is Master over death.  Even those who have tasted on physical death and have been "sent back," if you will, do so under the authority of the One who holds our lives in His hands, Who determines the length of our days.  He alone has the power over death, and He alone can offer us immortality.