We are having a bit of trouble with our technology, however, I’m sure you will get a “lot out of it”.

 

Sorry the video is a little less than desired

Accountability

In Cells, Proofreading and Repair Testify to Intelligent Design and Foresight

Evolution News @DiscoveryCSC

September 10, 2020, 12:23 PM

 

Rocks don’t care if they break. The very concepts of proofreading and repair imply accuracy for a purpose. In cells, complex multi-part machines find errors and fix them. Is this not evidence of intentionality and programming? As these new research papers show, the machines involved show exquisite craftsmanship and efficient action to keep other parts — machines outside their own structural needs — humming along.

 

How can they do that? How do they know? They bear an uncanny resemblance to surgeons or linemen that are trained as first responders to potentially catastrophic situations, and yet they work robotically in the dark without eyes or brains. Such things do not just appear by blind material processes. Proofreading and repair systems had to be operational from the beginning of life, because considering the lethal consequences without them, it’s hard to conceive of any primitive organism surviving, let alone progressing up an evolutionary ladder. Now, behold in wonder what is going on in our cells.

 

Stop and Reel

Before cells divide, billions of DNA base pairs must be precisely duplicated. About one time in 10 million, a wrong base is inserted into the copy. Researchers at North Carolina State University found “genome guardians” that “stop and reel in DNA” during this important operation. Two enzymes cooperate to proofread the copy. They halt the duplication when a mismatch is found until more machines can fix the error.

 

A pair of proteins known as MutS and MutL work together to initiate repair of these mismatches. MutS slides along the newly created side of the DNA strand after it’s replicated, proofreading it. When it finds a mismatch, it locks into place at the site of the error and recruits MutL to come and join it. MutL marks the newly formed DNA strand as defective and signals a different protein to gobble up the portion of the DNA containing the error. Then the nucleotide matching starts over, filling the gap again. The entire process reduces replication errors around a thousand-fold, serving as one of our body’s best defenses against genetic mutations that can lead to cancer. [Emphasis added.]

 

Well, is that not a tragedy for Darwin? Evolutionists need those mutations to build eyes and wings!

 

Repair Squads

When cells divide, double-stranded breaks can occur. These are particularly dangerous, often associated with cancer. Medical researchers at University of Texas Health in San Antonio confirm that DNA repair requires multiple tools. Drs. Daley, Sung, and Burma at UT knew that the repair operation, called homologous recombination, is done by resection enzymes, but they were curious why so many different enzymes were involved. Why does the cell “need three or four different enzymes that seem to accomplish the same task in repairing double-strand breaks”? The “perceived redundancy,” they concluded, “is really a very naïve notion.” Like a skilled workman, the cell maintains “An array of tools, each one finely tuned.”

 

“It’s like an engine mechanic who has a set of tools at his disposal,” Dr. Sung said. “The tool he uses depends on the issue that needs to be repaired. In like fashion, each DNA repair tool in our cells is designed to repair a distinctive type of break in our DNA.”

 

Surgical Team

Another type of error can occur when a gene is being transcribed. If RNA polymerase (RNAP, the transcribing machine) hits a lesion caused by UV radiation or some other mutagen, the transcription can stall. Thankfully, there is a programmed response called transcription-coupled nucleotide excision repair (TC-NER) that knows what to do. That’s a good thing, because faulty repair can lead to “the severe neurological disorder Cockayne syndrome,” characterized by microcephaly, delayed development, short stature, low weight gain, and numerous other problems like oversensitivity to sunlight, “hearing loss, vision loss, severe tooth decay, bone abnormalities, hands and feet that are cold all the time, and changes in the brain that can be seen on brain scans” (Genetics Home Reference).

 

Four researchers from Washington University, publishing in PNAS1, learned more about the poorly understood process of TC-NER, and revealed a plethora of molecular machines and factors involved. “The initiation of TC-NER upon RNAP stalling requires specific factors,” they begin. “These factors respond rapidly to transcription-blocking DNA damage, binding to stalled RNAP to coordinate assembly of downstream NER factors.” Moreover, the repair program must be able to handle a variety of situations. The technical details are too inscrutable for most readers to describe here (and this was about research on yeast!); suffice it to say that TC-NER is a well-choreographed, irreducibly complex process that, fortunately, works most of the time. Children with Type 2 Cockayne Syndrome may only live up to age 7 (NIH).

 

Preventive Repair

The cell has mechanisms for preventing errors, too. Research at Mt. Sinai Medical Center in New York City “has unraveled for the first time the three-dimensional structure and mechanism of a complex enzyme that protects cells from constant DNA damage, opening the door to discovery of new therapeutics for the treatment of chemotherapy-resistant cancers.” They used cryo-electron microscopy to study DNA polymerase ζ at a near-atomic level. This important enzyme’s “architecture and mechanism have been a mystery to scientists for years.” Could any primitive life-form get by without something like this?

 

DNA polymerase ζ is the crucial enzyme that allows cells to battle the more than 100,000 DNA-damaging events that occur daily from normal metabolic activities and environmental intrusions like ultraviolet light, ionizing radiation, and industrial carcinogens. The Mount Sinai team, which included first author Radhika Malik, PhD, Assistant Professor of Pharmacological Sciences, learned how the enzyme protects the cells from natural and manmade environmental as well cellular stresses through an intricate structure of four different proteins that connect to each other in a pentameric, or daisy chain-like, configuration.

 

Didn’t the Darwinians tell us that UV light and ionizing radiation were sources of the “building blocks of life” and the mutations that nature can select to build humans from bacteria? No way. These findings are published in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology2.

 

Genetic Bouncers

DNA bases on opposite strands connect via hydrogen bonds, but sometimes a protein interloper makes a bogus connection. “Covalent cross-links between proteins and DNA are among the most hazardous types of DNA damage,” says the Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich. Fortunately (again), there’s an app for that.

 

Chemical lesions in the genetic material DNA can have catastrophic consequences for cells, and even for the organism concerned. This explains why the efficient identification and rapid repair of DNA damage is vital for survival. DNA-protein crosslinks (DPCs), which are formed when proteins are adventitiously attached to DNA, are particularly harmful. DPCs are removed by the action of a dedicated enzyme — the protease SPRTN — which cleaves the bond between the protein and the DNA.

 

DPCs can occur during natural metabolism or by contact with synthetic chemicals. SPRTN has a challenging job, they say, because it must be able to tackle a variety of situations; “the enzyme has to be able to identify many different structures as aberrant.” Its two domains must engage for it to recognize the error and fix it. Julian Stingele explains this fail-safe system:

 

One binds to double-stranded, and the other to single-stranded DNA. “So the protein uses a modular system for substrate recognition. Only when both domains are engaged is the enzyme active — and DNA in which double-stranded and single-stranded regions occur in close proximity is often found in the vicinity of crosslinks,” says Stingele.

 

When this system isn’t working properly, patients are subject to liver cancer and early aging.

 

An Act of Mind

We have just looked at five different types of errors that are repaired by five different systems of molecular machines. Each system must first recognize the error and then know what to do; otherwise, the consequences can be catastrophic. In each case, the machinery is well designed and finely tuned to solve the problem, and it does so rapidly and efficiently. That takes foresight, and foresight implies intelligent design. As Marcos Eberlin says in his book Foresight: How the Chemistry of Life Reveals Planning and Purpose, “This act of anticipation — foresight — is not a characteristic of blind material processes. It is an act of intelligence, of a mind” (p. 81).

 

Notes

Duan et al., “Genome-wide role of Rad26 in promoting transcription-coupled nucleotide excision repair in yeast chromatin.” PNAS August 4, 2020 117 (31) 18608-18616. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2003868117

Malik et al., “Structure and mechanism of B-family DNA polymerase ζ specialized for translesion DNA synthesis.” Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, 17 August 2020. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41594-020-0476-7

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In Cells, Proofreading and Repair Testify to Intelligent Design and Foresight

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The Power of Christ

Casting out Demons, And Healing the sick

Part 1

Part 2

 

Sermon by Mitch Wilborn today

 

 

Sermon April 25, 2020

Introduction

Good Morning

 May all honor and Glory be Gods

As a reminder, we went through a series of sermons on entering the narrow gate, we are now on the path.

So again, welcome to the difficult path that leads to life.

The Challenge:

John 20:29 Where Jesus informs Thomas that he believes because he has seen, and how blessed those are who believe, yet have not seen.

The keyword is believing, how do we get to the level of seeing belief without seeing?

I am considering a sermon series on Hebrews, that seems to be a good place to start our walk.

 

 

 

Hebrews 1:1-3

God’s Supreme Revelation

1 God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets,
2 has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds;
3 who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high

4 having become so much better than the angels, as He has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they.

This is as far as I got…

So today’s sermon is going to be on the power of Christ, and this may extend into a number of sermons.

Isn’t that what this is all about?

It’s through the power of Christ we can know we are saved.

Isn’t this the foundation of all other things?

The key to it all is Faith,

And that faith can be understood, and gained by the power of Christ.

Faith and I would say the faith that has become belief… no longer something unseen, but seen. Seen in the Glory and Power of Christ.

In many instances of His power of healing, He mentions to those saved… go your way for your faith has made you well.

In another instance, He tells the apostles that if they had the faith of a mustard seed, practically the smallest seed on Earth, they could move mountains.

And here they were, the Apostles, those with Christ, those given the ability to heal, those who witnessed the power in person… eyewitnesses… and they didn’t even have the faith of the smallest seed in the garden.

Since this is the key, the focal point, the foundation of the power of Christ, we will be seeing this over and over again as we explore the Power of Christ.

 

James 2:14-26 tells Faith without works is dead… we must do the works.

We grow through work, and the work completes us.

 

I understand love, agape love which means putting others’ needs before our own, and this is the highest form of love.

I could not grasp the idea of loving a stranger, at least not in the sense of love as we understand it.

But putting the needs of others in the form of agape love leads to that ability to love all God’s creatures.

In recent months (apparently, I must be a slow learner, but I prefer to say, God brought me along slowly) I have learned living by the Agape love of putting others’ needs ahead of my own leads to the loving heart.

The heart that truly loves God’s creation. To love others in such a way, when they suffer, I suffer.

When they are blessed, I am blessed,

and I rejoice in their blessings. It’s much like joining in the celebration with the father who called his friends to celebrate with him when his prodigal son returned. But again, that comes over time.

I also know in 1st Peter 3:15 that we are to be able to defend the scripture and our faith, and this is a command.

It comes from the Greek word apologia, which means to give a logical or legal defense.

And, it also takes ongoing study, and the work leads to a deeper belief.

We are told to examine the path we are about to take, make a logical decision based upon facts… as the saying of Missouri, Show Me…

This is the foundation of Christian Apologetics.

So in brief…

we must know scripture to understand it, to know how to live by it, and how to defend it. And, we must do the works, and learn to love through agape love, putting God’s will before our own, and others need before our own…

I have often said Christian Apologetics gives our faith the third dimension of our faith.

I was wrong.

When we say three dimensional, we mean 3 sides to the object. Height, width, and depth.

Knowing Scripture is the 1st dimension, the height of the cube.

Knowing how to defend the scripture through apologetics is the 2nd dimension, the width of the cube.

But love, this is the depth of the cube.

Allow me to offer an illustration of this.

When we look at a picture of the ocean, we see what it looks like.

We see the “Height” of the ocean.

When we see a video of the ocean, we see what it looks like, and we see it moving, and we can often hear it.

We see the “height and the “width” of the ocean.

However, when we go to the ocean, we have all the above, but now we can dive into the middle of it, be engulfed by it.

We experience the depth of the ocean.

Remember when you were young on a hot summer day, and you jumped into a cold pool, and how it shocked you alive? That is how faith is when we truly have it, it is being engulfed in the love of God, and being shocked alive by it.

So as we begin this journey on the difficult path, we are going to take a trip to that cold pool, and jump in, and be shocked into life, and then we are going to start walking towards that glory land engulfed in the love of God.

Now if you will simply go to the next video, we will continue with today’s sermon.

 

 

2nd video starts here

Sermon:

Let’s just examine the power of Christ, the various aspects of it.

• He has the power to heal
• He has the power to save
• He has the power to pardon
• His power is infinite
• His power over Nature
• He has the power to give life
• He has the power to cast out demons
• He has the power to know what we are thinking
• He has the power to look into the future
• He has the power to raise the dead
• He had the power to end His own human life
• And He had the power to take His life back up.
• I often think, of course from a human perspective His greatest power may have been the power to resist all temptation.

Let’s just begin by looking at His power to heal.

Matthew 12:13 Then He said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” And he stretched it out, and it was restored as whole as the other.

Matthew 15:28 Then Jesus answered and said to her, “O woman, great is your faith! Let it be to you as you desire.” And her daughter was healed from that very hour.

 

Casting out Demons

Matthew 12:28 But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, surely the kingdom of God has come upon you.

Matthew 17:16-20 So I brought him to Your disciples, but they could not cure him.”

 17 Then Jesus answered and said, “O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? Bring him here to Me.” 18 And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him; and the child was cured from that very hour.

19 Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why could we not cast it out?”

20 So Jesus said to them, “Because of your unbelief; for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.

Mark 1:25-27

But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be quiet, and come out of him!” 26 And when the unclean spirit had convulsed him and cried out with a loud voice, he came out of him.

27 Then they were all amazed, so that they questioned among themselves, saying, “What is this? What new doctrine is this? For with authority He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey Him.”

Even The demons believe and shutter… for with authority He commands even the demons and they obey…

What is the point here?

Belief… true belief means obedience to Christ’s commands with no choice in the matter.

1 John 2: 4 If you say you believe me, and do not do as I command you are a liar, and the truth is not in you…

the true test of faith, of belief, is your wiliness to obey the Christ.

 

We have looked at various passages concerning healing and casting out demons, which is the cause of a lot of sicknesses.

IN the beginning, I explained how I had come to the understanding of true faith, how to obtain it, the three-dimensional aspect of it.

I didn’t explain how we obtain it.

How do we fulfill the requirement of total belief, and never have to worry about 1 John 2:4?

We must understand what must be done… then learn the word, learn how to defend it, live by the agape love, putting others’ needs ahead of our own, doing the will of God, obeying Christ’s commands…

But does this knowledge, and following the guide put us there? No, it’s through our continued study, and work, and then patience.

Let’s recap this.

The three sides or dimensions of the faith that has become a belief.

Learn the scripture through study

Do the works

Learn the defenses

Work at agape love, in order to develop the deep overwhelming love of God and all His creation.

In closing.

Allow me to close with a story.

THERE ARE BRIDGES ALL THE WAY

A young girl, unaccustomed to traveling, was taking a train ride through the country, and it happened that in the course of the day her train was obliged to cross two branches of a river and several wide streams. The water seen in advance always awakened doubts and fears in the child. She did not understand how it could safely be crossed. As they drew near the river, however, a bridge appeared and furnished a way over. Two or three times the experience was repeated, and finally, the child leaned back with a long breath of relief and confidence.

 

“Somebody has put bridges for us all the way!” she said in trusting content.

 

That is life. We fear so many evils, so many troubles look dark ahead, so many difficulties seem insurmountable as they loom before us; but as we advance we find that there is a way through them. God has built bridges for us all the way.

Source: American Messenger, 1922

But it isn’t until we cross several of those bridges that we begin to understand that concept.

So patience is the foundation of the work.

So As I leave here today, I will again leave you with

Numbers 6:24 – 25

24 “The Lord bless you and keep you;

25 The Lord make His face shine upon you,

And be gracious to you;

And, I pray as you leave here today, that you leave with the peace, overwhelming love of God, and patience as we make our way through this difficult path.