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BIBLE SCIENCE (Scripture reading: Malachi 3:1) The history of the children of Israel serves as a cautionary advice about the sure danger that threatens the soul that lust after the evils that the Israelites lusted after: gluttony, idolatry, presumption and gaiety, not to mention indiscriminate sexual relations in and out of wedlock, murmuring, and unbelief. Upon leaving Egypt, the children of Israel were guided by Jesus under the pillow of cloud. Yes, it was Christ who led them through the Red sea; and fed them all with the same spiritual food and drink by the hand of His servant Moses. The manna they received for forty years in the wilderness was an emblem of Christ the true bread of life, and the water they drank and the rock from which it came both represented Christ, the Living water and the Rock of our Salvation. (Read 1 Corinthians 10.) And although Christ was with them always caring for their needs, feeding them in the wilderness with manna, which their fathers knew not, that He might humble them, and prove them to know what was in their heart, whether they would keep His commandments, that He might do them good at the later end; they were quick to forget His loving kindness and tender heartedness, and so, He was not well pleased with many of them. For the people spoke against Him, and against His servant Moses, saying, why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? We have no bread except this manna, which our soul loath. Why have you provided this manna for us, seeing it is contrary to the way we are accustomed to eating in Egypt? (For a better understanding, in your own time read Numbers 21: 4-6 and Deuteronomy 8.)
BIBLE SCIENCE Question: Why did God feed the Israelites with manna, food they had no desire to eat? There are three simple yet profound reasons God did this. 1. The first reason God fed them with manna was so that they might develop a humble disposition. This says one servant of the Lord, “As a general thing, the Lord did not provide His people with flesh meat in the desert; because He knew that the use of this diet would create disease and insubordination.” Thus, “In order to modify the disposition, and bring the higher powers of the mind into active exercise, He (God) removed from them the flesh of dead animals. He gave them angel's food, manna from heaven.” S.D.A. Bible Commentary Vol. 1 p 1112. 2. The second reason God fed them with manna was to prove them or test them if they would obey His law or not. The food we eat and how often we eat certainly has a direct effect on our behaviour toward those in authority, especially to God. I will explain the science later. 3. Finally, the Lord fed them manna because He wanted to bring them prosperity in every realm of their lives at the later end.
BIBLE SCIENCE Everyone that strives for the mastery must be temperate in all things. So, as we humble our soul in obedience eating a simple diet and the anti-typical manna, Christ, we will advance in spiritual power and add to our mental faculty, advance studies and object lessons, which will educate us to bring the base passions of the soul into subjection to the higher powers of the mind. Thus, as new attitudes and thought patterns are created, we are transformed into the living word of God and made ready to live with Him in the New Jerusalem. From these three points cited above one can deduce that the feeding of the children of Israel for forty years with manna was a way of preparing them spiritually to enter the promise land. However, because the Israelites were unwilling to suffer the hardship God had designed to make them victorious, as He was leading them through to the land of promise that they might be partakers of the greater joy which was to come, many of them were destroyed in the wilderness. Question: Have you ever wondered why with the visible manifestation of God in the midst of the children of Israel and with all the miracles they saw; they still rebelled against God and His servants? Answer: It is because the act of gratifying our appetite, tend to strengthen our cacoethes behaviour: that is to say, gratifying our appetite cause us to form a psychological and physical automatic pattern of behaviour without using reason in reaction to temptation. Thus, we are given over to an intense persistent and overpowering desire to do whatever comes to our mind, like a kleptomaniac, someone with an irrational urge to steal, even in the absence of an economic motive.
BIBLE SCIENCE The Science of Salvation I have come across many who have tried to disprove the word of God, and the Spirit of prophecy, but the more God teaches me about the human anatomy, the more I am led to believe His Holy word in its entirety, and delight myself in His testimonies. I have learned from text books that the human brain is comprised of three main divisions: The Prosencephalon (forebrain), the Mesencephalon (midbrain), and the rhombencephalon (hindbrain). Of the three main parts, the most complex is the forebrain. This section of the brain makes it possible for us to gain knowledge or skills, and to retain that which we have learned. It is also responsible for the varied choices we make from day-to-day.
BIBLE SCIENCE The forebrain itself is divided into two parts. First is the Telencephalon. This region of the forebrain includes the Cerebral Cortex, and the Corpus Callosum, which connects the two hemispheres of the brain.
BIBLE SCIENCE The second part is the Diencephalon, which includes the Thalamus, Hypothalamus and Cerebellum. Sin has always been an addiction that affects the psychological and physiological processes of the mind and the body. Therefore, the function of these sections of the brain; the Diencephalon and the Telencephalon are frequently spoken of in the Bible. Contrary to expectations, you will not see the word Diencephalon or Telencephalon in the Bible, so do not go looking for these words in the Bible.
BIBLE SCIENCE Nevertheless, what you will see is how the display of luxury, and the trappings of a self-gratifying lifestyle strengthen our sensation of hunger and thirst, which reside in the Diencephalon, and cause us to desire the experience of the wide-ranging worldly pleasures that does nothing but benumb the spiritual perceptions, and weaken our mental faculties, which resides in the Telencephalon. Thus, making it difficult for us to do the right things, to keep our body and mind subjected to the will of God. That is why we need to be taught how eating and drinking affect our ability to understand how willpower and self-control; the two constituents of our character are strengthened that we might remain steadfast to the systematic knowledge of principles revealed in God's word, instead of being weakened to the point that God’s law is effaced from our minds and we are carried about by our uncontrolled corrupt propensities and every wind of doctrine. HERE IS WHAT I HAVE LEARNED For Mankind to resolutely control our own behaviour, we must be prompt by cerebral reasoning, and consciously choose to cast ourselves on Christ by faith, and with a fixed and persistent intent, do what God has revealed to us in His word.
BIBLE SCIENCE The God in whom we live, and move, and have our being, has shown me that the limbic system deals with three key functions: emotions, memories and arousal and the Hypothalamus; the basal part of the Diencephalon plays a major role in this portion of the brain by governing our autonomic nervous system and linking the entire nervous system to the endocrine system. In layman terms, our emotions, our state of heightened sexual urges or of fight and flight, our sensation of hunger and thirst for food and water, as well as our appetite for life and its varied offerings are all rendered active when within the limbic system certain hypothalamic controlled hormones are secreted into the blood stream, which in turn cause the pituitary gland to release an upsurge of its own hormones into the blood to regulate the functions of other organs and systems on which it has a specific effect.
BIBLE SCIENCE Moreover, the Lord explained to me that the anatomical throne of reason and willpower is located within the frontal cortex. The frontal cortex is that part of the Cerebral cortex in either hemisphere of the brain, lying directly behind the forehead. Hence, He gave us an injunction in Deuteronomy 6: 5 to love him with all our heart (mind), soul (personage), and might (endocrine and nervous system). Thus saith the Lord, our benignant King, all the powers of the brain: the frontal lobe, parietal lobe, temporal lobe, the occipital lobe, thalamus, the hypothalamus, hippocampus, amygdala, olfactory bulb, and the cerebellum accounts for the mind; our entire personage makes us a living soul; and the endocrine system, and the nervous system which runs from our brain to our spinal cord and our appendages (arms, legs, hands and feet) along with all the sensory nerves of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system accounts for our might.
BIBLE SCIENCE The Lord God, my teacher, showed me that many professed Christians of the gospel do not understand the whole truth as the inspired word put it forth, that the “body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God.” 1 Corinthians 6: 19. Thus, they are failing to recognise the relation between the brain and the digestive system, between health reform and sanctification. What does health reform have to do with Sanctification? “Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.” 1 Corinthians 10: 31. Question: Why must I eat and drink to glorify God? Answer: “What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit which are God’s.” 1 Corinthians 6: 19, 20. Question: Do you notice the two areas in which we are told to glorify God? Consider the covenant that I made with the house of Israel, says the Lord, “this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; after those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” Jeremiah 31: 33, 34.
BIBLE SCIENCE It was vital that God made a covenant with us to put His law in our inward parts and write it in our hearts because the first temptation that came upon humanity, which was directed at the body, by way of our appetite, marred the neural circuitry on which the laws were written. The Devil attacked our first parents body this way, for he knew very well that success would cause him to weaken them and their future posterity willpower and self-control; the two constituents of our CHARACTER. Thus, he is now able to have a strong hold over us one generation after the next to do his bidding. Read chapter 26-Parents’ Legacy to children (in the book Adventist Home) Let me make this as plain as I can possibly make it; because food is for the body and the body is for the Lord, Satan's attack on the body temple is an attack on the mind to break-down the two constituents of our character (willpower and self-control), and remove the law of God from our inward parts, and erase it from our heart; that he (Satan) might sit on God's throne in our mind, and exalt his throne above the stars of God. In other words, our inability to resist the gratification of appetite and whimsical desires allows the devil to accomplish in us the work he failed to do in heaven. (Read Isaiah 14: 12-17; Revelation 12: 7-9.)
BIBLE SCIENCE • Do you see the link between the brain and the digestive system?
Dear brothers and sisters be not deceived, “sinful indulgence defiles the body (and mind), and unfits men for spiritual worship.” Therefore, “He who cherishes the light which God has given him upon health reform (not vegetarianism, I say, health reform), has an important aid in the work of becoming sanctified through the truth, and fitted for immortality. But if he disregards that light, and lives in violation of natural law, he must pay the penalty; his spiritual powers are benumbed, and how can he perfect holiness in the fear of God?” Christian Temperance and Bible hygiene p. 10. Allow me to share with you two amazing phenomenon the Lord has shown me that task place in our soul when we are being transformed into His Holy image. BIBLE SCIENCE Remember “Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright.” Then afterward when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.” Hebrews 12: 16, 17.
BIBLE SCIENCE Neuroplasticity (Read Romans 12: 1, 2) Neuroplasticity is the remarkable ability of the brain to change constantly the structure, function and organization of the neural circuitry in the brain, in order that it might recognise and remember the data that has been recorded on the nerve pathway of the hippocampus: a highly complex neural structure located within the limbic system. The hippocampus consists of myelinated nerve fibres and is on each side of the brain inside the medial temporal lobe; and plays a central role in the formation of episodic or long-term memories base on the skill or knowledge we learn from day-to-day.
Neuroplasticity occurs through anatomical changes, metabolic changes, and neurochemical changes; this is how we are being transformed by the renewal of our mind. The same particular course of neural activity is wrought by the Holy Spirit in our mind in the process of sanctification as we read the Bible, pray and practise its tenets, which without makes our heart impervious to the dew of heaven and affects our social behaviour. BIBLE SCIENCE
BIBLE SCIENCE Synaptic Pruning (Read John 15:1, 2) The synaptic pruning processes render capable the removal of incorrectly or superfluous wired small-scaled axon terminal arbours and large-scale inappropriate collateral relative axon fibres from certain target areas of the brain where the least synaptic contact with other dendritic fibre occurs. Therefore, whatever connection those axon fibres had with other neurons is removed; and as a result of their deletion, those axon terminals have no more part to play in the synaptic thought process that takes place in the Cerebral cortex under the sun, while all other connections of the same neuron are strengthened. This complex process leave only neurons that frequently transmit pieces of information from various parts of the cortex (i.e. the temporal cortex and the occipital cortex) through to the hippocampus where the new data is compared with previously recorded memories to bring ideas or events together to form new thoughts, feelings and motives; that like Jesus, we may hate evil and love righteousness.
The illustrations above bring me to the salient point of my presentation that I want you to grasp. In the sealing process of His servants, God, the husband man uses the same principle of neuroplasticity and synaptic pruning to transform and prune various branches of our life as the brain is constantly being shaped by the food we eat and drink, the characteristics of our environment, and the things that we see, hear, say, do and think about, through the neurological regulatory action of the metabolic changes, and neurochemicals that our body synthesise to bring about anatomical changes, which in turn affect us spiritually. HOW IT WORKS The Sanctification of our life is unexplainable; it can be known only through one’s life experiences as one keep under one’s body, and bring it into subjection. Now, although what I have learned, experience; and shared with you is sound doctrine and require you to live ascetically, exercising bodily discipline and humility, without the indwelling power of Christ in your life, my wise counsel lacks the vital energy needed to transform your character. For no one can change his or her heart just by practicing a healthy lifestyle. We are not changed by human might or power; we are changed by the Spirit of the Lord as we cooperate with Him. BIBLE SCIENCE
BIBLE SCIENCE Jeremiah 13: 23 make it clear that we cannot change the sinful condition of our mind. The only agency of providence implemented to accomplish the renewal of the mind to form a sanctified character is, the Bible. Thus, it is written, “sanctify them through Thy truth; Thy word is truth.” John 17:17. Therefore, any willful disregard shown to the Ten Commandments or the health laws that govern our being, by doing or eating whatever we desire, will hinder the operation of God’s grace and prevent the miraculously formation of new nerve endings (neurogenesis) that restore sin damaged neurons to optimal functionality and strengthen good existing neural path ways in the brain. “And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.” Deuteronomy 6: 6-9. God's grace facilitates the process of neuroplasticity and synaptic pruning to bring a about a miraculously change in the neural circuitry of our brain as a ray of light from His word illuminates the soul, exerting an influence that revives in the mind of the believer, the claims of God’s health laws and moral laws, especially the fourth commandment which has been overlooked. It is thus God begins the unfolding of the new life-principle, which changes the tenor of our thoughts, feelings and motives, and brings our heart into perfect acquiescence to His heart. Hence, it is written, “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature (creation) old things are passed away; (and) behold, all things are become new. And all this are of God, who hath reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given us the ministry of reconciliation.” 2 Corinthians 5: 17, 18.
BIBLE SCIENCE There is no other name given to us whereby we might be saved except the holy name of Jesus our Lord. In like manner, there is no other medium through which God sanctifies us to renew His character in our soul except the mind. Therefore, in order to ensure that we maintain a healthy psychological state of mind and a holy spiritual state of mind, we are told to take due care when choosing what and when to eat and drink that we might keep under our body, and bringing it into subjection. ……………………..
