“As for you, Daniel, conceal these words and seal up the book until the end of time; many will go back and forth, and knowledge will increase.” (Daniel 12:4)
In the Book of Genesis God called everything He had created good (tov), and He called the creation of mankind very good (tov me’od).
But, today, many people want to make God’s creation even better, refining, editing and reengineering the human mind and body and controlling the population, not to mention creating a habitat on another planet for humans to live on.
Does God have an opinion about this? Is that part of His plan for His creation?
Let’s take a look at what our Creator wants us to do with His creation and some things that mankind is doing instead.
Editing DNA concept
Designer Babies or No Babies?
“Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” (Genesis 1:26)
God’s likeness is Spirit, and we each have a portion of His Spirit in us.
God is also love, creativity, wisdom (the ability to reason), and so much more.
We have endless untapped, divine potential within each of us to manifest His image in our work and daily lives.
Yet, God placed boundaries around that potential.
For instance, He expected that Adam would mate with Eve and produce offspring of the same kind: humankind. He even told them to “increase in number.”
God does not want man mating with another kind, not animals (Leviticus 18:23) and not fallen angels (Genesis 6:1-4), since that would produce a being that is not fully made in the image of God.
So, what does God think about man altering the characteristics of humans while in the womb?
It has been 40 years since the first “test-tube baby,” which allowed eggs to be fertilized outside the womb. We are now close to editing out all of our genetic imperfections in eggs inside and outside the womb — but should we even try to do so?
Today, using a kind of genome “scissors” called CRISPR, scientists can create designer babies. Parents can one day choose the eye color, height, etc…. and try to ensure that the baby does not carry any of the diseases that they have.
Researchers are experimenting with this in many nations, such as China where scientists at Guangzhou Medical University worked with immature eggs donated by people in the process of IVF (in vitro fertilization) that would have been otherwise discarded.
The researchers fertilized each egg with sperm carrying a hereditary disease. Before the single cell started to divide, they used CRISPR to fix a mutation that destroys red blood cells.
In another egg, they fixed a mutation that causes the blood disease beta thalassemia.
Parents around the world want to be able to “design” their own babies so that they can be better looking, have less disease, and simply enjoy a better life.
It’s very appealing to “create” your own baby,
It might sound wonderful but there are consequences!
The United Nations estimated in April 2017 that the world’s population by gender as follows:
3,776,294,273 Males
3,710,295,643 Females
Since the time of Adam and Eve, almost 6,000 years, the difference is minimal when you think of all the factors of disease, wars, etc…
But God has always “created” a proportionate number of males to females.
Adonai Eloheinu, (Our Lord God) is so perfect!
But what if 80% of parents chose either male or females? What would happen to the overall population on this planet?
On the outside CRISPR and other gene therapy tools look great! They can cure hereditary illnesses, and bring us back to the disease-free state of the Garden of Eden, the way God intended.
But we know that if science can achieve a disease-free planet, man will not be content with just reaching that goal alone because not all people and nations have God’s good intentions toward mankind.
Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft and currently the 4th richest man on this planet has invested millions in CRISPR and a company developing male-dominant mosquitoes to help eradicate Malaria.
Google, headed by two billionaire founders, are also investors in CRISPR.
This sounds good right? They are helping mankind by eliminating disease.
However, Gates has said, “The world today has 6.8 billion people. That’s heading up to about 9 billion. Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, and reproductive health services, we could lower that [the population] by perhaps 10 or 15 percent.” (“Innovating to Zero” 2010 Ted Talk)
Gates was influenced by his father, who was a leader of Planned Parenthood.
Ted Turner, who founded CNN and also a billionaire, has championed population control as well.
From left to right: Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Google founders Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and CNN founder Ted Turner.
One primary reason that wealthy secular people want to reduce the population is that they think it is the only way to keep the earth’s resources sustainable for those who are alive. It is a meaningful pursuit for them.
But God told Adam and Eve to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” with their offspring, not limit it.
And He gave us creativity, ingenuity, and authority to sustain ourselves with the resources on the land He gave us.
Just as Israeli technology captures water from the air to irrigate trees and quench the thirst of soldiers, so can mankind find ingenious ways to sustain the population as we “multiply and fill the earth.”
Fortunately, not all secular billionaires want to reduce the population of mankind.
Others, instead, want to move some of us off the planet.
This inflatable habitat concept is 16 meters in diameter and could accommodate 12 people living and working on the moon.
(NASA)
Filling the Universe
God said, “Fill the earth [eretz].” (Genesis 1:28)
In Hebrew, eretz means land, as in Eretz Yisrael (Land of Israel).
Over 700 times in the Tanakh (Old Testament), eretz is translated as earth. Eretz can also refer to the nations of the earth, regions, cities, ground, soil, even the underworld. It can also mean world to describe planet earth, but not other planets.
Moreover, God said to “subdue [kabash]” the land. To subdue a land is to bring it under subjection. (Genesis 1:28)
The Israelites subdued [kabash] the land of Canaan and made it their homeland.
Today, some billionaires want to subdue more than the earth; they want to dominate the universe, beginning with our moon and Mars.
Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and now ranked the #1 richest man on this planet, worth over $190 billion is investing billions to transfer heavy industrial manufacturing to the moon and other planets.
“We will have to leave this planet. We’re going to leave it, and it’s going to make this planet better.
“We’ll come and go, and the people who want to stay will stay,” Bezos said in an interview with Geekwire in May of this year.
“Humans will ultimately use the functionally unlimited expanse of space as a giant solar powered manufacturing sector slash garbage dump,” he said.
Jeff Bezos, Founder of Amazon and Blue Origin
Bezos is not the only moon-eyed visionary.
The European Union Space Agency has its eyes set on creating a Moon Village by partnering with other nations.
It will be a hub of science, business, mining, tourism, and more.
NASA is also planning to develop a lunar base by partnering with private industry to deliver heavy payloads to the moon for eventual settlement of us earthlings.
That vision will take many decades to fully develop, but the plan is set in motion.
In the meantime, Bezos’s company Blue Origin New Shepard will be launching July 20, 2021 flying 62 miles above the earth’s surface where space begins.
Liftoff of Blue Origin. A closeup of the space pod and its interior is at the bottom left. (Blue Origin)
Looking further into the opportunities of space is Elon Musk, who was recently ranked the 2nd richest person in the world with $150 billion, is the founder of Tesla Motors and SpaceX.
He has his eyes set on colonizing Mars because he says that living on other planets is essential if mankind is to survive.
Musk wants to preserve life and believes that either we will destroy ourselves as a species or some cosmic event will do it for us, so he says we need to prepare for multi-planetary living.
Reaching the Heavens Again
Elon Musk, Founder of Tesla Motors, SpaceX, and Neuralink
The creation of designer babies and men striving to live on other planets sounds somewhat like the story of the Tower of Babel.
In Genesis 11, it was the beginning of civilization.
God scattered the people because they spoke one unifying language, which made them believe they could be super powerful, even build a tower that could reach the heavens and challenge God.
But God broke up their plan. He scattered the people and confused their language so they wouldn’t understand each other, and that made them stop building.
Today, anyone can use Google translate on their phone. You can get off a plane in a foreign country and simply talk into your phone with the Google translate app. In real time it will translate what you are saying into the other person’s language audibly! Yes the phone speaks.
You can speak in English and they will hear a computer-generated voice translating what you said in their language; all in split second!
Google, which has been focusing on Artificial Intelligence (AI), has defeated what God did at the beginning of civilization in Genesis 11!
Artificial Intelligence Could Destroy Humankind
Musk is concerned that Artificial Intelligence will exceed the intelligence and power of mankind, bringing us to extinction, or at least make us subservient to a race of robots.
So, in addition to SpaceX, Musk also heads Neuralink, which is producing a kind of ultra-thin neural mesh containing hundreds of electrodes that will cover the brain.
This mesh will interface with computers and enhance brain functions, potentially making man more intelligent and powerful than Artificial Intelligence.
In the short term, the neural mesh will improve the function of people with brain injury and disabilities. However, it is ultimately intended to turn humans into super-intelligent cyborgs.
“We are, all of us, ALREADY cyborgs,” Elon Musk said at the Beneficial Artificial Intelligence conference.
“You have a machine extension of yourself in the form of your phone and your computer and all your applications . . . by far you have more power, more capability than the President of the United States had 30 years ago,” Musk said. (Interesting Engineering)
Is this what God intended when He said to subdue [kadash] the earth and “have dominion [radah] over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth?” (Genesis 1:28)
The Hebrew word for dominion or rule is radah. It’s the kind of dominion a king has over his kingdom.
King Solomon “had dominion [radah] over all the region west of the Euphrates (land and people).” (1 Kings 4:24)
The “king of the jungle” surveys his dominion.
Radah also applies to the kind of rule a master has over a slave or man over every kind of fish, bird, and creeping creature.
It seems, then, that we are to subdue the earth in order to make it habitable for us, while having godly reign (authority) over every animal, fish, and bird on it, which God placed under us.
But are we to subdue and have dominion over other humans by editing their genes, trying to control the population, or merging them with computers?
Psalm 8:5 tells us that “we are made a little lower than Elohim,” who is God.
There is no room for artificial beings to rule man or for mankind to live on other planets that God did not give us dominion over.
Moreover, the purpose of the heavens is to “proclaim His righteousness, and all peoples see His glory.” (Psalm 97:6)
And one day very soon, God will “show wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and billows of smoke. The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD.” (Joel 2:30–31)
Yeshua (Jesus) also confirmed that before the Day of the Lord, “the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.” (Mark 13:24-25; Isaiah 13:10, 14:4)
In the past centuries, “blood moons” or lunar eclipses during which the moon appears red, have occurred on Jewish high holy days and at key events in Jewish history, as it did in 2014 and 2015. And we will be seeing more in the near future.
The good news is that we’ve been told to watch for these signs so that when these things come to pass we are to know that our redemption draws near.
May we be found ready.
We are certainly in the days right before Yeshua’s return, so please help our ministry as we reach the Jewish people with the Good News!
