God of Creation: Are You Really You?

If every cell in your body is slowly being replaced, why do you still wake up certain that you are the same “you” who lived ten, twenty, even forty years ago? We start with that uncomfortable question and follow it where it leads: into metabolism, consciousness, and the mystery of memory that keeps your life stitched together even as your physical matter constantly changes.

We weigh what biology can describe against what it cannot explain. Science can track tissues rebuilding and energy transforming, but it struggles to account for the persistent unity of personality, the continuity of identity, and the moral reality of responsibility. We talk about why memory is more than brain activity, how it unifies past and present, and why many thinkers admit that the phenomena of the mind do not fit neatly inside a purely physical story.

Then we zoom out to the natural world and the persistence of life itself. From seeds wrapped in protection to propagation methods that preserve kinds and prevent chaos, we explore creation as a witness to purpose rather than accident. Along the way we ground the conversation in Scripture, including Psalm 139 and the Bible’s teaching that God made us body, soul, and spirit.

If you’ve been searching for meaning beyond materialism, this message points to the heart of the Christian gospel: you are wonderfully made, but also in need of a second birth. 

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Transcript

Are You Sure You Are You

Metabolism And The Changing Body

The Colorado Memory Problem

Memory As Proof Of Identity

Why Science Cannot Find The Soul

Life’s Persistence Against The Odds

Seeds Protected To Preserve Species

Prolific Reproduction And God’s Checks

Fearfully Made And Called To New Birth

SPEAKER_01 0:53

And welcome one and all. I greet you in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. I welcome you to another broadcast, the Preaching of the Cross Radio Broadcast. We are in the midst of a series of studies presenting to you the God of creation, and we've been showing from the various realms of the world round about us, just plain and simply, that there must be a God. There must be an all-knowing, an almighty God who cares very much about the things that He has formed and made and rules over them quite wisely. We've talked about um plant life and uh talked a little bit about water, talked about the uh the bees and the pollination of flowers and so forth, and we even began to discuss human beings. On our last broadcast, we talked about every man a miracle, and talked about the marvelous uh creation uh that you are. You know the Bible says that uh we didn't make ourselves, that uh the Lord made us. We are his people and the sheep of his pasture. The Bible says in Psalm number one hundred and thirty-nine, I was fearfully and wonderfully made, curiously wrought in the lower parts of the earth, that God formed and fashioned each and every one of us. And the Bible says in John chapter one and Colossians chapter one, that the Lord Jesus Christ is indeed the creator of all things, and the book of Hebrews will tell you, as you read it carefully, that Jesus Christ is not only the creator of all things, but also the sustainer of all things, so that were it not for the word of his power, uh nothing would exist as we know it today. Now, this might sound like a kind of a silly question or kind of a funny question to ask at the outset of the program today, but are you sure that you are you? Are you sure that you are you? Now, just who are you? Is your identity established? Can you prove that you are you? Are you assuming too much in the claim to a continuous existence? How do you know that you're the same personality that you were ten years ago? Now, there's a there's a method to my madness. These are not impertinent or idle questions. They imply fundamental premises, and the answer is the basis of the philosophy of life that involves the necessity of a Bible believing religion. In other words, the admission of personality and the unity of being is evidence that the individual is more than material. I'll tell you why. Listen carefully. If man is a mere, as the scientists would say, chemical episode, we should look for nothing but evidence of chemical energy. Of course, we understand that the transformation of energy involves something beyond our knowledge. There is the transformation of chemical energy into electrical energy. In part, chemical energy is transformed into biotic or life energy, and this into uh physic or soul energy. But it remains a question as to whether chemistry is solely responsible. That is not yet proven. And the assumptions are guesses, for it is certainly assuming something when one denies any other element than the material is moving and operating in the human body. It is at this juncture that many doubts and difficulties arise because the point where assumption begins, the scientific attitude ceases. In philosophy we may assume within bounds, but science will not allow for assumption. As long as the scientist confines himself to facts and theories of facts, he is inside his realm, but when he goes beyond that he is getting away from home. Now, there are some interesting facts about the changes that are always going on in tissues and cells, and this process of change is known as metabolism, or the tearing down and building up of the material of which the cell is made. Every microscopic particle of protoplasm in your body is giving off waste and taking on new material to take its place, and this process is continual, it's going on right now as you listen to my voice. If for a few minutes the cell could not throw off dead matter, it would be poisoned. If nothing fresh were added, it would die for lack of nourishment. This is true of plants and animals, yet who is conscious of the multitudinous protoplasmic units in the back of his arm or the top of his head being remade as he wakes and sleeps, eating, breathing, bathing. These are all practices by which man assists the metabolism of nature. Lungs, the alimentary tract, skin, and kidneys are busy with the process of waste and repair, and it doesn't take as long as you might think to substitute the new for the old. Doctor Slowsen, SLO SSEN, says quote, one gets a new skin oftener than he gets a new suit of clothes about once a month. Now, soft parts are renewed more often than the more solid ones. Your lips are entirely made over in six weeks. You that are married, have a husband or a wife? Uh do you realize that the lips that you kissed six weeks ago you will never enjoy them again? That's true. How rapidly the harder tissues change may be judged from the frequency which your nails have to be cut or clipped. Even the bones are subject to the same law, and the only thing that does not change is the enamel of the teeth. We see with new eyes, we hear with new ears, we bite with the same old teeth or until we buy new ones we will. Now speaking biologically, we become a new person every year, or at most every two or three years. Now here is the where the inconsistency of biology, science, falsely so called, and life comes in. In common parlance, we know the whole life is a unit. While from the material point of view, it is not a unit, but a flowing stream of chemical reactions, the materials of which are constantly injected and ejected. Now, how is one to know himself? You say, Well, I'm the same, and yet you're not the same. In consciousness, you are aware of yourself as the identical individual that you were, and yet in matter you are not that at all. Evidently there's a contradiction here. Science tells us of physical drift, while every mind knows itself to be a stable identity, and all the science in the world cannot prove to a man that he is not himself. You know you're you Now I say uh I traveled some uh well what's it been now? I traveled some fifteen years ago to Colorado. But not a particle of my bone and flesh that now is, was ever in Colorado. Except my teeth, of course. I was an entirely different collection of matter from what I was then. My tastes and choices, my loves and ambitions, my temperament and weaknesses may be identical with what I was then, and yet I learned that I physically, my physical body that I'm in right now was was never in Colorado. I can recall the vehicle that I travelled in, I can recall the uh place that I stayed, I can recall the customs of the people, I can recall some of the things I said and heard and things I did, and it seems to me as if I was part of all this, and yet I find scientifically that I was never there. Is this consistent? Now a man may say I was married thirty years ago and I'm still living with the same woman, but you're not. You've had fifteen or twenty wives. There has not been a funeral and there's not been a divorce, and yet you've had a flock of women, so biology tells you, but there is no civil or moral law on the face of the earth that would prosecute you for bigamy. Strictly speaking, any criminal not captured within a couple of years after the alleged crime can prove an alibi. He can say why it was not me who committed that crime. That man has gone to pieces, and the one who took his place may have been guilty of no such crime. So the facts of science and the facts of consciousness are at war. You see, we're in a terrible mess if all we have to go by are scientific theories. Something's wrong. Biology says one thing, common knowledge says something else. There are no words in any language to express the truth of the two opposing states, for the linguistic laws of all lands ignore metabolism and recreation and assume that personality is unchanged, that a man is what he thinks he is, a continuous personality. Everyone is sure that he is he. You're sure that you are you. Though your material substance may be changed again and again, every sane person knows that he is himself, that he is what he has always been. His identity is not changed. How then I listen? How then can a man be nothing but a chemical product, the chance reaction of elements and chemicals and gases and strictly a material marvel, how can he simply be that and nothing more? Taking this further and more definitely, let us consider the nature of memory, one of the most remarkable functions of the mind. Bryant was able to repeat from memory every one of his own poems, covering in print about three hundred pages. Scalinger, a famous scholar, is said to have committed the Iliad in three weeks and the whole body of Greek poets in three years to memory. Macaulay is said to have learned two poems while waiting to be served in a coffee house, and twenty years later he recalled the incident and repeated the verses. Now there can be no knowledge if there were no ability to recall. If an image is not retained in memory, there is no way by which to identify it when the substance is presented again. All related intelligence depends upon the functioning of this ability. But how is the image retained? It is received by a certain number of cells, which would be remarkable enough, but these cells pass away, and the ones that take their places hold the same thing their predecessors did. When these in turn are replaced, the new ones retain what the cells of two generations back received, and so on and on and on it goes. Now, here's a man who remembers something that occurred forty years ago. That might be your case. Presumably the material of these cells receiving the impression is remade, let's say twice a year, so that what now functions is eighty generations removed from the cells that received the original impression. The theory has been advanced that in some mysterious way this is a hereditary endowment, which if true is a phenomenon without parallel in the nervous mechanism. Nowhere else do nerves transfer to their successors any given sensation. In case of mathematical or poetic ability, let's say nerves carry successively the same capacity but not the same experience. Or a given nerve may experience pain and its successor is capable of pain, but not the same pain. That is, every other nerve experience is successive. But memory is persistent and identical. In a most unique way, it unifies past and present, signifies the oneness of the individual through the vicissitudes of change of every kind. As it stands, memory is the tie that binds life together. Physical particles are under process of metamorphosis and change all the while, so that one may say the body I have is not that which I had or shall have, but of his mental processes, of his temperament, of his experiences, a man must admit an identity and say, I am I, the same that I have been and shall be. It's impossible to understand how this can be of chemical origin and not some spiritual power and force working in and behind it. Now as you listen to my voice, I believe we're of the same make. We're human beings. I don't believe there are any cows or horses or chickens listening to the program today. If they are, I don't suppose they're getting too much out of it, but you and I, we we're on the same intimate and sympathetic terms, and we have to have some pretty strong arguments to convince us that material produces immaterial, that change produces permanence, that substances that are different give identity of being and sameness, and that the mind is only the body in its entirety reacting to environment. This is the educated talk of our day. In this we'll find ourselves in company with some of the leading scientists of the time, who are as much at sea as ourselves about this thing. They don't believe that the phenomena of the mind can be explained on a purely physical basis. To them there is so great a difference between the phenomena they are familiar with in the material world as against consciousness and personality that they cannot conceive them to be the same series. They believe that some other element has been introduced to make possible the manifestations of continued memory and recall and so forth. Now, by nature the human race believes that man is a living soul. By nature, man believes that man is a spiritual force. We do not necessarily adhere to the scientific ideas of our day because well, they just don't provide the answer. They can examine the physical and material, they can write about their conclusions drawn over years of expert study, and yet when it comes to the realm of that which is non spiritual, or non physical, I'm sorry, and into the realm of that which is spiritual, science has no answer. Because while they can observe the results of a living soul, while they can observe the results of a God given spirit, they cannot observe the soul and spirit itself, and therefore they are led to say, well, either there's no answer, or there's something there that we don't know what it is, or there's nothing there, you just think there's something there. Now you know something, this is why you're always better off with the Holy Bible, the Word of God, than you are with science. Because Almighty God, God is a spirit, John chapter 4, verse number 24. God created man in his own image, Genesis chapter number one, and God created that man a body, soul, and spirit, first Thessalonians chapter number five, and the God that formed and fashioned, body, soul, and spirit, the invisible God, first Timothy chapter one, surely is in a much better position to tell you and discuss with you the truths concerning a spirit and soul than would be any scientist in this world who observes purely physical phenomena. Now, much has been made of Charlie Darwin's natural selection and struggle for existence and survival of the fittest and all this kind of nonsense, and it seems the main emphasis has been placed on the process. But Christians are concerned with the life itself. It is not more the survival of the fittest that concerns us than the fact of survival at all. Nature fairly shrieks with a proclamation of perpetuity. In spite of all hindrances of climate, impoverished soil, scarcity of chemical food, absence of sunlight, species that prey on other species, and everything else that might be catalogued as belonging to the enemies of life, all living things show a remarkable power of living, remarkable power of using their organs and habits to their own advantage. Adaptation, this seems to be the magic word that you can't get through one science program or one read one article in a scientific journal without reading about this word adaptation, but some of us are not satisfied to be left dangling with some such term as this, and we're not dismayed by the arguments of a superiority complex that these scientific writers seem to be suffering from. Now we'll agree that there are changes taking place all the time in the natural world round about us. Being descended from Mother Eve and just simple and simple minded enough to be curious, we look into some of these things. It may be childish to confess it, but we want to know what uh what is it that's going on out there in the world round about us? Now the outstanding marvel is the insistence with which life perpetuates itself. Its mighty sweep onward is as miraculous as its origin. Nature, having achieved the wonder, marshals its forces to guard life more carefully than the ancient dragon guarded the precious fountains in the fairy tales. By a multiplicity of methods, the precious fluid of life is preserved against all odds in a world where death battles with life for supremacy but is forced to retire step by step before the victorious conqueror. The forces of life are many. We have been thoroughly fed up with this talk about selection and adaptation and survival of the fittest. Let's talk about how God works to preserve life. Behold a seed. It is the medium of propagation of its kind, a helpless thing, a baby that must be cared for as a mother cares for its child. To protect it, God wraps it in a covering, whether it be a mustard seed or a peach seed or a grain of corn. It's not always careful for fruit, for a plant exists only incidentally for fruit bearing, primarily for propagation of the species, and a seed without a covering would fail of its mission. Even before the seed is ready, the process of caring for it, preserving it has been going on. The fruit is protected for the sake of the seed. Unripe fruit uh unripe fruit is both hard and sour. Usually speaking, it offers little more or little inducement to the beast or the insect. All these different ways that God works. We have the uh the hybrid seeds to prevent crossing of the species and to assure the permanence of the characteristics of each, God has fixed an automatic device. The law of fertilization, says Fabre, is that the pollen of one vegetable species has no effect on the flower of another species. In case progeny should occur, as occasionally it does, the result is a hybrid, and the hybrid is usually sterile. If it were not, the characteristic of both plants survive, the result would be no end of mixtures. Edible plants would become poisonous, and the result would be chaos and the end of life, but the sterility of the hybrid is God's barrier to irregular impregnation. Very rarely a hybrid is not sterile, and then God takes care of the emergency by seeing to it that the progeny constantly divides into two lines, the one more and more like the original male, the other more and more like the original female until they eventually return to the patterns of the two distant ancestors. Chance No way. In the foregoing thoughts we've seen that God resorts to intelligent processes to secure fertilization. We talked about this in an earlier broadcast concerning plant life. Now, after this, the protective devices take care of the embryo seed, which might be rendered lifeless and useless without such nurture. During this time, a protective covering develops, rendering the life bearer practically invulnerable. And finally, by giving wings to such seeds as those of the dandelion and burrs to others like the thistle and pincers to those like the stickite by shooting others out in open spaces, God has shown a supreme effort toward making sure that the species will be perpetrated and the flow of living things will go on without break or interruption. From all of which we really have to conclude, there's something here more than a simple cause and effect. There's a purpose of element that must be accounted for and accounted with. The final cause, which is the cause of causes, determines the behavior of living things. Life must be viewed in in some other way than just a series of chance, happenings, and events. Now, let's look at another method by which God guarantees that life will not fail. Nature wastes nothing. We know that. Nothing is thrown away, nothing is uh discarded without purpose. Sometimes it's almost stingy with its supplies, nature is, but in the matter of propagation it is often madly prodigal. It supplies a thousandfold more than the bare necessities, as if to make sure against loss, both plants and animals give out a profusion of seeds or sperms. The means of uh this reproduction is prolific. A single pot of South American orchid produces a million and three quarters seed. Every dandelion thistle has uh far more seeds than you might wish to fall on your lawn. One scientist calculated a single pair of elephant elephants would in three quarters of a millennium, seven hundred and fifty years, produce a herd of twenty million if there were no interference. Elephants are slow breeders, why fish do better? A cod lays six million eggs. Not all of them are marketed. Oysters do ten times better than that. Law computed if all the oyster eggs were success, there would be sixty-six billion billion billion oysters by the fourth generation. Their shells would make a pile eight times the size of the earth. Glad God puts a check on that. In the case of a humble metazoan, known as a paramecium, a single specimen, barely visible to the naked eye, would with his descendants for the nine hundredth generation occupy not only all the solar system, but the space of the entire universe. Now how does all this take place? Who's behind all this? Who is the mastermind of this not only this life, but the propagation of this life, the continuance of this life, the protection of this life? Surely it is Almighty God. You were not born by mere chance, you were not born by mere circumstance, but you were born by a wonderful, marvelous working and operation of an almighty and a living God. The Bible says, and I'm reading to you now from Psalm number one hundred and thirty nine, I will praise thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are thy works, and that my soul knoweth right well. My substance was not hidden from thee when I was made in secret, curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect, and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them. How precious also were thy thoughts unto me, O God, how great is the sum of them. Now, who made me, who formed me, who fashioned me? The Bible says God Almighty did it himself. Again, from Psalm number one hundred and verse number three, know ye that the Lord He is God, it is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves, we are His people and the sheep of His pasture. Now, while it is true that God made, formed, fashioned each and every one of us, every person listening to this broadcast today, you are a marvelous creation of Almighty God. But you know something? You are also a sinner. The Bible says, All have sinned, come short of the glory of God, and the wages of sin is death. And you know as well as I do that those marvelous physical bodies, those tremendous creations of God, they are always dying. The soul and the spirit are continually departing and leaving from the body. And so we need well, we need a second birth. And the Bible says that as many as received him, speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name, which were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. We need a second birth, a birth granted us and given to us by God in the spiritual realm, just as we were once born in the physical realm. For example, in John chapter three and verse one, there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. The same came to Jesus by night and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God, for no man can do these miracles that thou doest except God be with him. Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother's womb and be born? That's a very good question, a very honest question. Jesus answered, Verily, verily I say unto thee, except a man be born of water, and you see, you need a second birth of the Spirit. He cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh. Now everyone listening to my voice has had that birth of flesh. A fleshy man, a fleshy woman came together and produced a fleshy offspring. You're living in a body of flesh just now. And that which is born of the Spirit, capital S, God's Holy Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, ye must be born again. Now, there's no question that you've been born physically. You've had a fleshy birth because you're alive today listening to this radio broadcast. But have you been born again? Have you had a spiritual birth? Have you been born again so that you might enter into the kingdom of God? You say, Brother James, how can I possibly do that? Well, Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, died for your sins according to the Scriptures. He was buried, and three days and three nights later he rose from the dead according to the scriptures. And the Bible said we read it just a moment ago in John chapter number one, as many as received him, to them gave he the power to become the sons of God. If you bow your head humbly and sincerely from your heart, believing that Jesus died, was buried, and rose again to pay for your sin. If you will call upon his name and receive him as your personal Lord and Savior, God by His power will born you again, a second birth, a spiritual birth. You'll not only be a marvelous and wonderful physical creation, but for all of eternity a marvelous and wonderful spiritual creation as well.

SPEAKER_00 28:27

Thanks for tuning in today. Join us every weekday for another episode of the Preaching of the Cross Radio Podcast. For hundreds of hours of in-depth expository Bible teaching, our YouTube channel, namest comment, our terminal audio page, Bible Baptistland, or our website, BibleBaptistoland.com. Until next time, and throughout eternity, maintain us at Christ Grace.