- 40th International Bible Conference, July 27, 2008     ‘Hearing you will hear and shall not understand, and seeing you will see and not perceive; for the hearts of this people have grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, so that I should heal them.’ But blessed are your eyes for they see, and your ears for they hear.”  (Matthew 13:14-16)     The Commands of the Blood that are Spread Throughout the BodyPreviously, we talked about the man by the name of Adam and the things he experienced. There was blood flowing through Adam’s body, but that blood changed because he disobeyed God’s word. In this changed state, Adam continued to have more and more children, and now we, too, as individuals, are living our lives with that blood in this world. When we hear the word “blood,” it is often the red blood that flows when we injure ourselves that first comes to mind. That blood makes up about 8-10% of our whole body weight. There are two major components to the blood. One is liquid and the other is blood cells of different types. The liquid that makes up around 55% of the entire blood is called plasma, and this plasma contains electrolytes and other components. The remaining 45% of the blood consists primarily of red blood cells, white blood cells, and blood platelets. The red blood cells have the very important role of delivering oxygen to the entire body since they contain a protein called hemoglobin, which binds easily with oxygen. The white blood cells have the roles of fighting against the harmful bacteria that enter the body and establishing the immune system, while the blood platelets are involved in the clotting of blood to stop bleeding. In our bodies there are many substances that are related to the blood. One representative example of these in liquid form is the lymphatic fluid. This is a clear fluid, which fills the interstices between structures. In simple terms, it is the fluid that is made through a filtering process. The lymphatic fluid is spread through the lymphocytes, and, when we exercise or move around, it moves together along with the movement of muscles. The lymphatic fluid plays an important role in strengthening the body’s immune system and fighting against bacteria. Then, how should we determine what to include when defining the blood that is in our bodies? The Bible verse that says, “But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood” (Genesis 9:4) warns not only against eating the red blood that we can see, but also the blood contained within various food items. Actually, within our bodies there are seceral fluids like the lymphatic fluid, each with its own physical appearance, and yet they are all another form of blood. This blood circulates through every corner of our bodies, and yet we live our lives without giving much thought as to where this blood flows to or how widely it spreads. The blood gives commands as it passes the hypothalamus in the brain. Depending on these commands, we feel sleepy, we thing that we should eat something, or we start sweating. These various reactions take place inside the body. Whether we are aware of it or not, the blood does an incredible amount of work throughout each and every member of our body.     God’s Word that Affects even the Flesh: “You Shall Not Eat …”Let’s think now about what it says in the book of Genesis. Matters of the blood do not appear directly within the events that occur in Genesis chapters 2 and 3. Nevertheless, we need to think about whether these events do not actually have anything to do with the blood. Previously, we studied the verse that says, “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being” (Genesis 2:7). When the air goes into the lungs and reaches the alveoli, it comes into direct contact with the blood. This blood carries the oxygen from the air and transports it throughout the entire body. So when the Bible says that God formed the man called Adam from the dust of the ground and breaded into his nostrils the breath of life, blood would have been a prerequisite. It doesn’t mention the word blood here, so we tend to overlook the existance of the blood and move on, but blood would clearly have formed the infrastructure. If this had not been the case, Adam would not have been able to live. Then there is something that God said to Adam, who had become a living being in this way. “Then the LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, ‘Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.’”  Genesis 2:15-17 A human being who was able to follow God’s command to “tend and keep” was created in this world, and this person heard what God said to him. Adam’s voice had not yet been heard, but God spoke to him. Also, we think about it physically, God’s words entered Adam’s ears, passed along the auditory nerves and reached his brain. This is not recorded in the Bible, but common sense tells us it would have followed this kind of process. Then we find the words, “You shall not eat,” but as we read on, later it says that he did eat. That means that food entered his stomach through his mouth. It does not say how much he chewed the food or how he swallowed it, but it is a definite fact that Adam ate the fruit. Then, after Adam ate the fruit, he knew that he was naked. The Bible says that “the eyes of both of them were opened” (Genesis 3:7). They had not been wearing clothes before this.They had simply eaten the fruit while they were naked, but it says that their eyes were opened and so they knew that they were naked. The Bible is saying that Adam became aware of his physical state through the message that passed through his eyes to his brain. In that case, let’s take some time to look into this matter carefully and examine whether or not it is related to the verse that says, “The life of the flesh is in the blood.” We say that we should chew our food thoroughly so that the food will be digested well. Also, the food needs to be mixed well with saliva in order for it to be used as it should in the making of our blood. When food that is not mixed thoroughly with saliva enters the intestines, the bacteria consumes it, creating gases that are harmful to the body. Saliva is the main decisive factor when it comes to whether the food is used as an ingredient for the making of blood or used to form harmful gases. Yet the saliva is made as the blood passes through the salivary glands. The blood transforms into saliva. Lymphatic fluid looks just like blood except it is a different color, and the same is true of saliva and blood. So, we need to think deeply about the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil about which the Bible speaks. God said to Adam, “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Genesis 2:17). Since these are God’s words, we automatically accept them in the spiritual sense. It is, of course, right to do this. God’s words applied to Adam as is, and because it was a law, when Adam disobeyed these words, obviously, he fell and became a sinner. In the Bible it says, “In the beginning was the Word” (John 1:1), but it also says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). It is simply because we lack knowledge, our hearing is dull and our eyes are blind, that we also lack understanding, but we need to bear in mind that all the words God has spoken are being accomplished before our eyes and in the sight of God. When we sin, even though we may forget about that sin, it may disappear from our memories and no evidence of it remains, in God’s view, it remains as a live action. This is a fearful fact. You should not try to force an understanding of God through science. God works is not by bringing about the things He has said as if by magic. There is clear evidence for everything that the Bible says, and, in the future, tremendous events will unfold right before our eyes. Similarly, when God said, “Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat,” not only was the law that God had ordained alive within these words, but these words also contained the effect on the body that was realized in Adam when he ate of the fruit. Since the God of which the Bible speaks is the Creator of the heavens and the earth, He sees and watches over all the cells that make up our bodies and all the capillaries that are connected to these cells. There is no way that we can know what kind of fruit grew on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, or what the components of that fruit were. Of one thing we can be certain, however, and that is that when Adam ate the fruit, his eyes were opened. Even just in a physical sense, the state of Adam’s blood after he ate the fruit was different from the way it had been before. No one can deny this. This is because God had spoken, and Adam disobeyed His words. First, we all became sinners because of Adam’s sin of disobeying God. Then, as a result of this disobedience, death came to Adam. If Adam’s punishment for opposing God’s words had only been of a spiritual nature, he should have lived eternally. Yet, even though we try to live healthily in this world as descendants of Adam, there are not many people who pass the age of one hundred. We cannot possibly deny that death will come to all of us some day. Also, we cannot help but acknowledge, through the Bible, that when this man created by God disregarded God’s word and sinned, some kind of change came about in him, that the destiny of mankind brought about by this change has been passed on down to us and spread throughout our bodies by means of the blood, affecting the deepest cells and even stimulating the brain, and that we live our lives caught up in this destiny.   The Word of God even Has an Effect on the Flesh: “He Commanded, Saying …”The Bible says, “And the LORD God commanded the man, saying …” (Genesis 2:16). If it says He commanded, that means Adam heard the command. We tend not to think deeply about what we hear with our ears. We think that because we have heard something, we have listened to it. If you examine carefully the structure of the ear, it is very complicated. First you find there is the auditory canal. This canal extends into the ear. There is a sticky substance that is excreted from the walls of this canal, and this substance prevents things like bugs from entering. At the end of the auditory canal, there is the eardrum. The sounds from outside the body travel through the air and along the auditory canal, and vibrate the eardrum. The section of the ear up to this point is called the outer ear. Then the vibrations of the eardrum pass the sound waves along to the bones of the middle ear. There are three bones of the middle ear: the malleus (hammer bone), the incus (anvil bone), and the stapes (stirrup bone). These bones take the sound waves f

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