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Day 1497 – A New Calf – Humor Unplugged

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Welcome to Day 1497 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom

A New Calf – Humor Unplugged

Wisdom – the final frontier to true knowledge. Welcome to Wisdom-Trek! Where our mission is to create a legacy of wisdom, to seek out discernment and insights, to boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before. Hello, my friend, I am Guthrie Chamberlain, your Captain on our journey to increase Wisdom and Create a Living Legacy. Thank you for joining us today as we explore wisdom on our 2nd millennium of podcasts. This is Day 1497 of our Trek, and time for a 3-minute mini-trek called Humor Unplugged. Our Thursday podcast will provide a short and clean funny story to help you lighten up and live a rich and satisfying life. Something to cheer you and give a bit a levity in your life. We are told in Proverbs 15:30 A cheerful look brings joy to the heart; good news makes for good health. We are also encouraged in Proverbs 17:22 A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit saps a person’s strength.  Consider this your vitamin supplement of cheer for today. So let’s jump right in with today’s funny which is titled:

A New Calf

Little six-year-old Danny was so excited that he was going to the farm to spend the weekend with his granddad, who he called PaPa. He loved being with PaPa and really loved being at the farm so he could be PaPa’s big helper. PaPa and Danny worked at completing their chores as they invested all day together on Saturday. As usual, when Danny visited PaPa, they were up bright and early on Sunday morning to milk the ten milk cows before heading off to church. As PaPa was milking the cows, Danny wandered through the barn as he so loved to do. He came across one cow in a pen all by itself, and she looked enormous. Danny said, hey PaPa, what is this one cow doing all by itself, and why it is so fat. PaPa chuckled a bit and said, that’s old daisy; she is due any day now. Danny wasn’t sure what that all meant, but he was really concerned that Daisy wasn’t doing very well. They headed off to church, but it was hard for Danny to sit still as he kept thinking of poor old Daisy.

When they arrive back at the farm after church, Danny jumped out of the truck and headed to the barn. He soon came running back out with wide eyes and shouted, hey PaPa, it looks like Daisy is not doing well; she is lying down and keeps mooing. PaPa said, well, let’s get out of our Sunday go-to-meeting clothes and put on our work close, then we can check on Daisy. When they finally got back to the barn, PaPa could see that indeed, Daisy was having trouble calving. He didn’t know how little Danny would take in the whole process, but had no option but to get on with the job of assisting the birth.

PaPa got in the pen with Daisy and proceeded to stick his hand and arm in to assist as he pulled the calf free from the birth canal. Danny stood there, watching with eye ready to pop out of his head. Soon Daisy was happily cleaning it up. PaPa turned to Danny and said, well, “Danny, do you have any questions about what you just saw?”

At first, Danny was speechless and seemed overwhelmed by the experience, but finally asked, “Just how fast was that calf going when it hit the Daisy’s behind?”

I hope that brought a smile to your face today. If it did pass your smile onto some else, we all could use a kind smile each day. Our Thursday thought is, As a calf follows its mother among a thousand cows, so the good or bad deeds of a man follow him.”

Here is our verse for today:

Isaiah 11:6

In that day, the wolf and the lamb will live together; the leopard will lie down with the baby goat. The calf and the yearling will be safe with the lion, and a little child will lead them all.

Just as you enjoy these nuggets of humor, please encourage your friends and family to join us and then come along tomorrow for another day of ‘Wisdom-Trek, Creating a Legacy.’ If you would like to listen to any of our past 1496 treks or read the Wisdom Journal, they are all available at Wisdom-Trek.com.  I encourage you to subscribe to Wisdom-Trek on your favorite podcast player so that each day will be downloaded to you automatically.

Thank you for allowing me to be your guide, mentor, and most importantly, I am your friend as I serve you in through this Wisdom-Trek podcast and journal each day.

As we take this Trek of life together, let us always:

  1. Live Abundantly (Fully)
  2. Love Unconditionally
  3. Listen Intentionally
  4. Learn Continuously
  5. Lend to others Generously
  6. Lead with Integrity
  7. Leave a Living Legacy Each Day

I am Guthrie Chamberlain….reminding you to ’Keep Moving Forward,’ ‘Enjoy your Journey,’ and ‘Create a Great Day…Everyday’! See you tomorrow for Futuristic Friday!

Day 1496 – Imaging After the Fall and New Testament Application – Worldview Wednesday

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Welcome to Day 1496 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.

I am Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom

Imaging After The Fall and New Testament Application – Worldview Wednesday

Wisdom – the final frontier to true knowledge. Welcome to Wisdom-Trek! Where our mission is to create a legacy of wisdom, to seek out discernment and insights, to boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before. Hello, my friend, I am Guthrie Chamberlain, your captain on our journey to increase Wisdom and Create a Living Legacy. Thank you for joining us today as we explore wisdom on our 2nd millennium of podcasts. Today is Day 1496 of our Trek, and it is Worldview Wednesday. Creating a Biblical Worldview is essential to have a proper perspective on today’s current events. To establish a Biblical Worldview, you must have a proper understanding of God and His Word. This week, on our Worldview Wednesday episode, we will continue our study based on a course I recently completed taught by Dr. Michael Heiser. Our study is titled “Sons and Daughters of God: The Believer’s Identity, Calling, and Destiny” Throughout this multi-week course, we will demonstrate that, in the Old Testament, “sons of God” and “holy ones” refers to supernatural beings whose Father is God and who work with God to carry out His will and that this divine family was present before humanity. By fully engaging with biblical texts such as Psalm 82; Psalm 89, and Deuteronomy 32:8–9, our study will show that this divine family functions as a template for God’s human family. God desires of humans, as His imagers, to participate in His council. This study addresses issues such as polytheism, the nature of the (little ‘g’) “gods,” and Yahweh’s uniqueness. This study will apply insights to the New Testament texts and show how the metaphor of being in God’s family informs our sense of identity and mission as believers.

Imaging After The Fall and New Testament Application

·      Segment 26: Imaging After the Fall

Image Remains After The Fall

If the image of God is about us being representatives of God, the fall, the entrance of evil into the world, is certainly a factor in our understanding. Our understanding is that we continue with our purpose. I’ve met Christians that believe that after the fall, the imaging idea was totally lost. Those Christians surmise the only people who image God now are Christians or believers because they’ve been brought back to a relationship with God through redemption. I don’t believe that. I think that’s an inferior understanding of the text and leads to some dangerous theology.

For instance, in Genesis 9:6-7, which, of course, is after the fall, it’s after the flood—we read this, If anyone takes a human life, that person’s life will also be taken by human hands. For God made human beings in his own image. Now be fruitful and multiply, and repopulate the earth.” This is an obvious reference to Eden with the Edenic commands repeated. The commands that were originally given to Adam and Eve, the original imagers. The idea here is that the death penalty, taking the life of a person, is legitimized somehow, and we’re going to find out in the rest of the Torah when that situation might be the case. That idea is legitimized because God cannot tolerate the unlawful, unwarranted taking of any human life. After all, those humans are created in His own image. When you kill a person, it’s like killing God in effigy.

If the image were linked only to Christians or only believers, then this verse would, in effect, be saying, “Well, it’s only a crime if you kill someone who’s a Christian. You can kill other people, and God is not going to care about it, but only if you kill His children, then we’re in trouble.” That’s an absurdity, but this is where some thinking goes. We don’t want to go there. We want to be consistent.

The image of God is something that remains intact even after the fall. It’s important to God because we are His representation; we are His representatives—every human being is at every stage. By definition, if you are human, you are an imager of God, and this is what the biblical mindset is.

Humans Never Co-Rulers in Mesopotamian Religion

This concept is quite a bit different than ancient Near Eastern thinking about humans. Humanity as a collective in other religions—like Mesopotamian religion, even Egyptian religion. Some of these ancient Near Eastern cultures—humanity is never described as having this destiny of being with God or the gods, ruling with them in a positive co-rulership kind of relationship. No. Only the king in many of these cultures ever gets referred to as a particular god’s image. Genesis, of course, specifically Genesis 1:26 with the whole idea that all humanity images God, widens this considerably. Human beings in biblical theology are all equally God’s imagers, not just one person, not just someone with royal blood, but everyone.

God’s Program to Restore

Biblical theology dramatically democratizes the idea. After the fall, we have a problem. We need to bring back the estranged children, humans, back into God’s family. They don’t lose the image; they don’t lose the status of being His representative, but they’re in rebellion. So, something has to be done about that. After the fall, God’s program is to restore Eden, which means restoring His presence on earth, restoring His rule to earth, and the mechanism for doing that is people.

We know the biblical story. Genesis 3 is just the first in a series of rebellions. In this entire course, we focus on the rebellions both in the human and the supernatural world. The Bible covers three rebellions in the first 11 chapters of Genesis. Genesis 3 – the fall of humanity; Genesis 6 – the corruption with supernatural entities; and Genesis 11, the Tower of Babel event. After that, we have the whole problem with Israel and the wilderness wanderings. We have the period of the judges. We have the divided monarchy, idolatry. It’s a long, long road, a long, long story of rebellion. At each phase of this, though, God is trying to restore Eden.

Role of Israel and the Messiah

When we get to the Israelites, this is probably the most straightforward example to see. God has called out for Himself from nothing a new people, the people allotted to Him. His own inheritance is Israel after dispersing all of the other people into nations, assigning them to lesser gods that we talked about earlier.

Here, the story takes one people group that God creates out of nothing miraculously through Abraham and Sarah to reinstall what was lost in Eden. He’s going to dwell with them. They’re going to occupy a specific place. There’s going to be eventually, altars, tabernacles, and temples. God is going to live there. They will be His people. Back in Genesis 12, God told Abraham that “it’s through your seed that all of the nations will be blessed.” They will be brought back into a relationship. It takes a long time for this to work out, and ultimately, it only works out because of the Messiah, because God Himself, becomes a man to ratify and fulfill all of His own covenants to bring all of this about.

So the biblical story here as it relates to human imagers’ issue is that God is committed to working with people, with humans, and it is a long, arduous task. They have to be redeemed; nations have to be reunited; sin and rebellion must be rolled back; the kingdom has to be restored to earth. It is a long, terrible, but also a glorious process. This is the biblical story; it’s the biblical epic of how this is happening.

The Messiah is the key, the linchpin here. He’s both human and divine. He has an atoning death that fixes the problem of Genesis 3. We have a resurrection that ultimately fixes the problem of sinful flesh: getting new bodies, the reclaiming of the nations because the resurrection, in Paul’s thinking, is also key to the defeat of the principalities and powers. All of these things are interconnected and equally important. They all roll around, revolve around, God’s commitment to using people and not exempting them or destroying them.

Humanity’s Freedom Means No Plan B

Now, think about it. God made humanity His imager. They sin. They use one of the attributes that He has shared with them (His freedom of choice) to rebel. God is omniscient; He knows this is going to happen. But He allows it to happen. Why? Because He hasn’t created us as robots. Without an attribute like freedom, without God sharing His characteristics with us, we wouldn’t represent Him. The fact that freedom is one of those attributes means, again, that without it, if we weren’t free in some sense to make decisions to obey or not, we wouldn’t be like Him; we couldn’t be spoken of as His imager because He is not a robot. He is free.

So God is willing to work with humanity in this way; we can say to take this risk. With God, it’s not a risk because He knows the end from the beginning. But this is the biblical story. There is no plan B. God is committed to humanity, to making humanity an intimate, participatory part of everything He wants to do on this planet. There is no plan B.

This is why we have evil; it’s why evil ultimately is going to be redeemed, because God is committed to it. So we are His imagers. We are His means of turning evil into good. We are His means of restoring Eden. We have a status as His family members; we are His children.

Humanity’s Genuine Role

If we are estranged from God, we need to go back into that right relationship again through the work of Christ, and as we do, we can see why we are here, why we are members of His family. We’re able to see that this was God’s original desire, and it should be normal. Once we get that realization, we can have a sense that we have not just a contrived, pretend, artificial role in accomplishing God’s will as though everything was preprogrammed. It’s not. Our role is genuine, and God is committed to making us part of what He wants to do. All of these thoughts are present in the New Testament, but they derive from the material that we’ve been talking about: our status as family members, the concept of imaging. It gives us status, a calling, and, ultimately, a destiny.

·      Segment 27: New Testament Application of These Ideas

Introduction

We’ve covered a lot of ground in the Old Testament about the sons of God—this divine family language that we run across in the Old Testament and how humans were included in that family. We went to Genesis 1 for that, and that also took us into the matter of the image of God. We talked about how the plural and singular language interplay in Genesis 1:26–27 sort of fused or united or at least created a strong association between God and His heavenly family and His earthly family and why that was intentional. It was really about imaging God. Both God’s divine family and God’s human family, of course, have the same creator, the same Father, as it were, and that Father tasks us and tasks them in specific ways in their spheres of influence, spiritual world, or the physical world.

Introducing Christ as the Ultimate Imager of God

We want to transition now to how the New Testament repurposes this kind of language. We’re going to talk about Jesus—how He is cast as the ultimate imager of God. Remember that we talked about the image being really kind of a verbal idea rather than a thing put in a person or a quality. It’s a status and the status of representing God. Well, Jesus is the ultimate example of that, and there are New Testament passages that testify to that fact and help solidify our understanding of what imaging means.

Introducing New Testament Vocabulary Regarding Believers

We’re also going to be looking at New Testament vocabulary for believers as children of God. Some passages will be familiar; some may not be so familiar. We will learn how the children of God need to be conformed to the image of the ultimate imager, conformed to the image of Christ. He is our model for how we represent God as family members and really as His siblings.

We’re going to be talking about glorification as well. Glorification is the endpoint for sanctification. We typically talk about the word sanctification: that is, being made divine. It’s being made like Jesus and, of course, being made like a spiritual being, a spiritual family member, but still being embodied. Jesus, even after the resurrection, gets a body, and as we learned in 1 Corinthians 15, our body post-resurrection will be like the body that Jesus had after the resurrection.

Summary

This is all intentional to put us all in the same group with Him as family members, which is the way it was intended to be. Had there never been a fall, this is what we would have been looking like—sort of a jet start, a jump to glorification, solidifying our status as people, embodied beings, humans that belong in God’s family, in His direct presence. Of course, we’ve had this long interval (the biblical story) about how things were fixed after the fall, how God never gave up on that plan.

Ultimately, of course, we’re going to re-inherit all of that as believers, working our way back to Eden, moving forward into the past, as it were. We’ll discuss a little bit about our inheritance of a new Eden that brings all of this together. So that’s where we’re headed in the rest of the course, building on this language, these concepts, that we’ve seen in the Old Testament.[1]

 

That will finish our study for this week’s Worldview Wednesday. Next week we will cover “Believers as Family, Participants.”  Tomorrow we will enjoy our 3-minute Humor nugget that will provide you with a bit of cheer, which will help you to lighten up and live a rich and satisfying life. So encourage your friends and family to join us and then come along with us tomorrow for another day of ‘Wisdom-Trek, Creating a Legacy.’

If you would like to listen to any of our past 1495 treks or read the Wisdom Journal, they are available at Wisdom-Trek.com. I encourage you to subscribe to Wisdom-Trek on your favorite podcast player so that each day’s trek will be downloaded automatically.

Thank you so much for allowing me to be your guide, mentor, and, most of all, your friend as I serve you in through this Wisdom-Trek podcast and journal.

As we take this Trek together, let us always:

  1. Live Abundantly (Fully)
  2. Love Unconditionally
  3. Listen Intentionally
  4. Learn Continuously
  5. Lend to others Generously
  6. Lead with Integrity
  7. Leave a Living Legacy Each Day

I am Guthrie Chamberlain….reminding you to ’Keep Moving Forward,’ ‘Enjoy your Journey,’ and ‘Create a Great Day…Everyday’! See you Tomorrow!

[1] Heiser, M. S. (2019). Sons and Daughters of God: The Believer’s Identity, Calling, and Destiny. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.

Day 1495 – Don’t Be Lame – Wisdom Unplugged

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Welcome to Day 1495 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom

Don’t Be Lame – Wisdom Unplugged

Wisdom – the final frontier to true knowledge. Welcome to Wisdom-Trek! Where our mission is to create a legacy of wisdom, to seek out discernment and insights, to boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before. Hello, my friend, I am Guthrie Chamberlain, your captain on our journey to increase Wisdom and Create a Living Legacy. Thank you for joining us today as we explore wisdom on our 2nd millennium of podcasts. This is Day 1495 of our Trek, and it is time for our 3-minute mini trek called Wisdom Unplugged. This short nugget of wisdom includes an inspirational quote with a little bit of additional content for today’s trek. Consider this your vitamin supplement of wisdom for today. So let’s jump right in with today’s nugget:

Today’s quote is from  Latin Proverb, and it is:   If you always live with those who are lame, you will yourself learn to limp.  

Don’t Be Lame

This proverb is so true, and makes me think of so many other sayings and proverbs. One that I remember mom telling us when we were teenagers was, “If you lie down with dogs, don’t be surprised that you will rise up with fleas.” Who we invest our time with will strongly influence who we become. If you want to be successful, then you need to invest your time with successful people. If you desire to learn and show love and compassion then invest more time with those who already show those traits. Jim Rohm was credited with saying that “you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” This is so true, and I see examples of this fact nearly every day, both good, and bad. If you desire to be wise then you must invest your time with the wise. Once again the irrefutable law of planting and harvesting applies here. When you plant corn, you will harvest corn. If you plant wheat, you will harvest wheat. If you plant weeds or thornbushes, that is what you will harvest. There is no changing this universal law of God. Don’t invest time with those who are lame in spirit, or you will limp through life not being able to fulfill your God-given talents and abilities.

1 Corinthians 15:33

Don’t be fooled by those who say such things, for “bad company corrupts good character.”

That’s a wrap for today’s Wisdom Unplugged quote. If you would like free access to my database of over 11,000 inspirational quotes, the link is available on the main page of Wisdom-Trek.com. Just as you enjoy these nuggets of wisdom, encourage your friends and family to join us and then come along tomorrow for another day of ‘Wisdom-Trek, Creating a Legacy.’

If you would like to listen to any of our past 1494 treks or read the Wisdom Journal, they are available at Wisdom-Trek.com. I encourage you to subscribe to Wisdom-Trek on your favorite podcast player so that each day’s trek will be downloaded automatically.

 

Thank you for allowing me to be your guide, mentor, and most importantly, I am your friend as I serve you in through this Wisdom-Trek podcast and journal each day.

 

As we take this Trek of life together, let us always:

  1. Live Abundantly (Fully)
  2. Love Unconditionally
  3. Listen Intentionally
  4. Learn Continuously
  5. Lend to others Generously
  6. Lead with Integrity
  7. Leave a Living Legacy Each Day

I am Guthrie Chamberlain….reminding you to ’Keep Moving Forward,’ ‘Enjoy your Journey,’ and ‘Create a Great Day…Everyday’! See you tomorrow for Worldview Wednesday!

 

Day 1494 – Bible Study – Understand What Your Bible Is – Meditation Monday

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Welcome to Day 1494 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom

Bible Study – Understand What Your Bible Is – Meditation Monday

Wisdom – the final frontier to true knowledge. Welcome to Wisdom-Trek! Where our mission is to create a legacy of wisdom, to seek out discernment and insights, to boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before. Hello, my friend, I am Guthrie Chamberlain, your captain on our journey to increase Wisdom and Create a Living Legacy. Thank you for joining us today as we explore wisdom on our 2nd millennium of podcasts. This is Day 1494 of our Trek, and it is time for Meditation Monday. Taking time to relax, refocus, and reprioritize our lives is crucial in order to create a living legacy. For you, it may just be time alone for quiet reflection. You may utilize structured meditation practices. In my life, Meditation includes reading and reflecting on God’s Word and in prayer. It is a time to renew my mind, refocus on what is most important, and making sure that I am nurturing my soul, mind, and body. As you come along with me on our trek each Meditation Monday, it is my hope and prayer that you, too, will experience a time for reflection and renewing of your mind.

 We are continuing our series this week on Meditation Monday as we focus on Mastering Bible Study through a series of brief insights from Hebrew Scholar, Dr. Michael S. Heiser. Our current insights are focusing on what the Bible is. Today let us meditate on:

Bible Study – Understand What Your Bible Is

·      Insight Twenty-Seven: The Old Testament Came before the New Testament

I know what you’re thinking. How profound. Talk about having a firm grasp on the obvious. Fair enough. But some of the essential keys for Bible study are hidden in plain sight. This thought is utterly crucial, and one most Bible students miss despite its transparency. There are few things more critical for biblical theology than having this fact invade your mind and establish a permanent beachhead.

Even someone who’s never read the Bible can discover that the Old Testament came before the New Testament. That is the purpose of the Table of Contents. Yet even seasoned Christians read and study the Bible as if that observation is more a trivia point than a vital clue to competent Bible study. I know of preachers who don’t consider the Old Testament worthy of pulpit time. I’ve had many sincere Christians tell me they can’t recall the last time their pastor went through an Old Testament book. The average person in the church has been conditioned to equate the word “Bible” with “Jesus” or “the Gospels” or “the book of Revelation.” Don’t believe me? Ask a dozen people in your church this question, and see what answers you get: “What’s the Bible about?” Most answers will sound like you asked what the New Testament was about.

Ignorance of the Old Testament is a severe issue. I’d call it a hermeneutical crime. Since it came before the New Testament, it was the Bible of Jesus, the apostles, and the first Christians. The Old Testament is three-quarters of your Bible. The New Testament books quote from it for a simple reason: New Testament theology is tethered to Old Testament theology. Since it came first, it has “coherence priority’’—it is essential for understanding what follows. There isn’t a page of the New Testament that doesn’t reference the Old Testament somehow. Every New Testament doctrine has its roots in the Old Testament.

We like to say that Scripture must be interpreted in context. The Old Testament is the primary context for the New Testament. Without a grasp of the Old Testament’s purpose and theology, any commitment to context forfeits its authenticity.

·      Insight Twenty-Eight: Read the Preface to Your Bible Translation

Most nonfiction books have a preface. Whoever wrote that did so intending to convey personal thoughts to the reader that help give the book some context. A writer might recount how the book came about and what it was that prompted him or her to tackle the project in the first place. The writer might want to thank people who influenced the content or provided assistance of some kind toward its publication.

A preface differs from a chapter of introduction since it is usually considered part of the book s content. In other words, a preface doesn’t contribute to the subject matter of the book, but it does provide vital information for framing or appreciating the subject matter. In the case of a Bible translation, the preface explains how it was created and describes the publishing decisions on formatting and style.

For example, the preface to the ESV discusses its translation philosophy. The scholars who produced the ESV had as their aim a translation that was “essentially literal” and proceeds to explain that such an approach “seeks as far as possible to capture the precise wording of the original text and the personal style of each Bible writer.” Consequently, “the emphasis is on “word-for-word” correspondence, at the same time taking into account differences of grammar, syntax, and idiom between current literary English and the original languages.

There are other translation approaches, such as rendering the biblical text thought-for-thought instead of word-for-word, or preferring to paraphrase the text. For a serious study of the biblical text, this is useful information, especially if you are dependent on English translations.

We also learn from the ESV’s preface that, for the Old Testament, it occasionally departed from the traditional (“Masoretic”) Hebrew text in favor of adopting a different wording from the Dead Sea Scrolls. Rather than insert a divergent reading from the Dead Sea Scrolls in a marginal footnote, the ESV puts the alternative wording in the translation’s actual running text. This approach is most clearly evident in Deuteronomy 32:8, 43. This information is also vital for the Bible student. It offers a clear answer as to why the ESV translation would disagree with other English translations at specific points.

Before your next Bible study session, if you haven’t already done so, read the preface to your translation. Please don’t skip it. You’ll learn something you can use in your Bible study.

Joshua 1:8

Study this Book of Instruction continually. Meditate on it day and night so you will be sure to obey everything written in it. Only then will you prosper and succeed in all you do.

That is a wrap for today’s Meditation. Next week we will continue our trek on Meditation Monday as we take time to reflect on what is most important in creating our living legacy. On tomorrow’s trek, we will explore another wisdom quote. This 3-minute wisdom supplement will assist you in becoming healthy, wealthy, and wise each day. Thank you for joining me on this trek called life. Encourage your friends and family to join us and then come along tomorrow for another day of ‘Wisdom-Trek, Creating a Legacy.’  

If you would like to listen to any of the past 1493 daily treks or read the daily Journal, they are available at Wisdom-Trek.com. I encourage you to subscribe to Wisdom-Trek on your favorite podcast player so that each day will be downloaded to you automatically.

Thank you for allowing me to be your guide, mentor, and most importantly, I am your friend as I serve you through this Wisdom-Trek podcast and Journal.

As we take this Trek of life together, let us always:

  1. Live Abundantly (Fully)
  2. Love Unconditionally
  3. Listen Intentionally
  4. Learn Continuously
  5. Lend to others Generously
  6. Lead with Integrity
  7. Leave a Living Legacy Each Day

I am Guthrie Chamberlain….reminding you to ’Keep Moving Forward,’ ‘Enjoy your Journey,’ and ‘Create a Great Day…Everyday’! See you tomorrow!

Day 1493 – The Other Pandemic – Aging – Ask Gramps

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Welcome to Day 1493 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me. 

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom

The Other Pandemic – Aging – Ask Gramps

Wisdom – the final frontier to true knowledge. Welcome to Wisdom-Trek! Where our mission is to create a legacy of wisdom, to seek out discernment and insights, to boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before. Hello, my friend, I am Guthrie Chamberlain, your captain on our journey to increase Wisdom and Create a Living Legacy. Thank you for joining us today as we explore wisdom on our 2nd millennium of podcasts. Today is Day 1493 of our Trek, and our focus on Fridays is the future technological and societal advances, so we call it Futuristic Fridays. My personality is one that has always been very future-oriented. Since my childhood, I have yearned for the exploration and discovery of new technologies and advancements for the future. I grew up with the original Star Trek series, and even today, as I am now on my 65th revolution around the sun, I still dream of traveling in space. Each week we will explore rapidly converging technologies and advancements, which will radically change our lives. At times, the topics may sound like something out of a science fiction novel, but each area that we explore is already well on its way of becoming a reality over the next couple of decades.

To keep with our theme of “Ask Gramps,” I will put our weekly topics in the form of a question to get us on track. This week’s question is, Hey Gramps, I understand that Covid-19 has impacted nearly every country in the world and has become a politically charged subject, but how does it compare to other diseases? 

The Other Pandemic – Aging

Last week we learned how Artificial Intelligence would change our shopping experiences. This week, I want to focus on a pandemic that is not considered a pandemic, aging. I am using some of the information mentioned in Peter Diamandis’s blogs and book “The Future is Faster Than You Think.”

As the world continues to face the ravages of COVID-19, there is a second pandemic killing everyone… it’s called aging. You may think to yourself, Gramps, that’s silly. Everyone ages, and everyone will eventually die. While I understand that, ask yourself, can what we consider a typical lifespan be increased significantly? For the first time in history, scientists and entrepreneurs think there’s a way to slow aging in its tracks, and perhaps even reverse it.

In today’s podcast, we’ll do a quick review of the cutting-edge technology that gives me tremendous hope that we can add a healthy 20 or 30 years onto our healthspan, ultimately making 100 years old the “new 60.”

COVID-19 Comparison: As of today, over 36 million confirmed COVID-19 cases have been recorded globally, and those are only the ones that have been tested. Since its initial outbreak, over 1 million deaths globally have been in patients who have tested positive with COVID-19. I realize that some individuals may have died of other causes during this period, but it is still significant. Not to minimize this number at all, because all life is precious. As a point of reference, globally, cardiovascular disease kills over 18 million per year and cancer over 10 million.  Some of the Covid patients would have been in these numbers.

To put this in context, approximately 7.8 billion people are alive today, roughly 9 percent of them over the age of 65 and suffering from the deadliest disease on Earth: Aging.

Without competition, aging is the #1 correlated variable for deaths due to heart disease, cancer, diabetes, respiratory disease, and dementia. In effect, 9 percent of the population equates to 720 million confirmed cases of aging. Even then, this is an extraordinarily conservative estimate as many people begin experiencing the effects of aging in their 50s.

Despite these figures, the world is only just beginning to recognize aging as a disease. So far, no one has recovered from this disease in the history of humanity, and barring fundamental scientific breakthroughs, you can confidently assume it will take your life.

As a society today, we accept that aging (and death) is a part of life, but nothing says our lives can’t be significantly extended.

Many species on Earth live far longer lives. The Bowhead whale can reach 200 years of age, while the Greenland Shark and Sea Turtles can make it to more than 400 years.

If they can, why can’t we? Clearly, it is either a hardware or a software problem, both of which are within the grasp of our understanding, and soon within reach of our modification. Some of these technologies are gene therapy, CRISPR, and cell therapies, to name a few.

In his book, Lifespan by Dr. David Sinclair of Harvard Medical School, he gives a host of compelling evidence to show there is no reason people born today cannot live to at least 120 in healthy condition, if not 150 and beyond.

As scientists and entrepreneurs race to unlock and rewire the biology of aging, here are some key technologies you can track today to extend your healthspan. Which is to say, the amount of time you have to live a healthy, functional life, avoiding expensive, bed-ridden, end-of-life care.

We are going to focus on the following four technologies:

  1. CRISPR & Gene Therapy
  2. Stem Cell Therapy
  3. Wnt Pathway Manipulation
  4. Senolytic Medicines

(1) CRISPR & Gene Therapy: Why does cheaper, faster genomic sequencing matter? It’s a healthcare gamechanger.

At its base level, aging is ultimately the dis-regulation or breakdown of the cells in our body. Consider that there are a few main ways to repair such situations. “Gene Therapy” is one such technology that effectively inserts a gene into specific cells in your body, restoring the instruction set that is corrupted or missing. A second technique called CRISPR-Cas9 allows you to edit (similar to cut and paste) the DNA sequence inside your cells.

CRISPR-Cas9, for example, has become our leading weapon in the fight against genetic diseases. Technically, it’s an engineering tool that allows us to target precise locations in the gene code and then rewrite that DNA.

Want to remove the string of DNA that produces muscular dystrophy? Just target that spot in the genome, unleash CRISPR-Cas9, snip, snip, and snip—problem solved. More importantly, CRISPR is cheap, fast, and getting easier to use. Most recently, scientists at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard unveiled CRISPR 2.0, a next-generation editor that’s extremely precise. It can target and change a single letter in a single string of DNA. What good is a single letter out of 3.2 billion?

As explained by David Liu, the Harvard chemical biologist who led the work “of more than 50,000 genetic changes currently known to be associated with disease in humans, 32,000 of those are caused by the simple swap of one base pair for another.”

(2) Stem Cell Therapy: Each of us is a collection of over 30 trillion human cells. Every one of these cells, those in your brain, lungs, liver, skin, and everywhere else, are derived from a single pluripotent type of cell called a stem cell.

When we are young, our bodies are teeming with stem cells that can replace any damaged tissue. They are the restorative engines of our bodies, helping us repair damage. But as we age, the number of stem cells in our tissues and bloodstream can reduce 100X or 1,000X, making repair much more difficult.

What if we could “restore our body’s rejuvenative engine,” our stem cell population? What if we could take stem cells from the human placenta, an organ whose stem cells actually “form” the fetus, and augment your current stem cell population?

Celularity (a company founded by stem cell pioneer Bob Hariri and Peter Diamandis), for instance, has now demonstrated that placental-derived stem cells given to animals can extend life up to 30 percent. Showing incredible promise, Celularity now aims to make this approach viable in humans, harnessing stem cells to amplify the body’s ability to fight disease and heal itself.

(3) Wnt Pathway Manipulation: An incredible company based in San Diego, called Samumed, is now targeting the signaling pathways that regulate the self-renewal and differentiation of adult stem cells, a pathway known as “wnt.”

In animal studies, as well as Phase-1 and Phase-2 human clinical trials, these drugs (small molecules) have been shown to regrow cartilage, heal tendons, remove wrinkles, and, by the way, stop a multitude of cancers and reverse Alzheimer’s. This research also explains why Samumed, a stealth mode company, has a $12 billion valuation. Samumed has developed nine different so-called “regenerative medicines.” All are in the FDA’s pipeline, including everything from hair-loss treatments to Alzheimer’s drugs.

(4) Senolytic Medicines: Over the arc of your life, the cells in your body divide until they reach what is known as the Hayflick limit, or the number of times a normal human cell population will divide before cell division stops, which is typically about 50 divisions.

What follows typically next is programmed cell death or destruction by the immune system.

However, a tiny fraction of cells become ‘senescent cells,’ evading this fate to linger indefinitely. These lingering cells secrete a potent mix of molecules that trigger chronic inflammation, damage the surrounding tissue structures, and change nearby cells’ behavior for the worse.

Senescent cells appear to be one of the root causes of aging, causing everything from fibrosis and blood vessel calcification to localized inflammatory conditions such as osteoarthritis and diminished lung function.

Fortunately, scientific and entrepreneurial communities alike have begun to work on senolytic therapies, driving forward technologies that selectively destroy senescent cells out of the laboratory and into a half-dozen startup companies.

One such prominent company in the field is Unity Biotechnology, which is developing senolytic medicines to selectively eliminate senescent cells with an initial focus on delivering localized therapy in osteoarthritis, ophthalmology, and pulmonary disease.

 Beyond these four areas above, countless other therapeutics and approaches range from metformin, NAD boosters, rapalogs, and GDF-11 to a new generation of AI/Machine Learning-enhanced molecules being discovered. Added to this, the research that is being fast-tracked for Covid-19, humans’ potential lifespan will easily exceed 100 while allowing you to maintain an active lifestyle.

God gives us wisdom, and as Christ-followers, we know that we will not live forever in our current human bodies, but with these new technologies, the sanctity of human life can be extended well beyond what it is today. This will give us additional opportunities to build God’s kingdom and share His good news.

Proverbs 3:15-17

Wisdom is more precious than rubies;

nothing you desire can compare with her.

She offers you long life in her right hand,

and riches and honor in her left.

She will guide you down delightful paths;

all her ways are satisfying.

That is a wrap for today’s question. Join us again next Futuristic Friday as we look at another exciting exponential technology area on our ‘Ask Gramps’ episode. Our next trek is Meditation Monday, where we will help you reflect on what is most important in life. So encourage your friends and family to join us and then come along on Monday for another day of ‘Wisdom-Trek, Creating a Legacy.’

If you would like to listen to any of the past 1492 daily treks or read the associated journals, they are available at Wisdom-Trek.com. I encourage you to subscribe to Wisdom-Trek on your favorite podcast player so that each day will be downloaded to you automatically.

Thank you for allowing me to be your guide, mentor, but most importantly, I am your friend as I serve you in through this Wisdom-Trek podcast and journal.

As we take this Trek of life together, let us always:

  1. Live Abundantly (Fully)
  2. Love Unconditionally
  3. Listen Intentionally
  4. Learn Continuously
  5. Lend to others Generously
  6. Lead with Integrity
  7. Leave a Living Legacy Each Day

I am Guthrie Chamberlain….reminding you to ’Keep Moving Forward,’ ‘Enjoy your Journey,’ and ‘Create a Great Day…Everyday’! See you on Monday!