FBC Adult Sunday School – March 20, 2022

There are two sheets in the back. The one on your left as you face to the front is from last week.

The new one's on the right and depending on how far we get today. I can tell you as a health care provider for several decades that the pastor is fully recovered.

And that is based upon not objective evidence, but it's based upon this.

You see this picture? The pastor is continuing to send me harassing emails with pictures of stuff.

I think he was doodling on here when his fever was a little elevated. No, actually this is a picture of a publication that John Hopkins came out with this year.

And they based it on the latest studies using cryo -electron microscopy and also magnetic resonance imaging.

And so they're able to take these, you know how small these structures are right? Again, how big is a cell?

How many cross the diameter of a hair? About 25. That's the only number

Mike now officially remembers is 25. That's a good number.

I'm sure he knows a few more than that. But anyhow, what they've done is they've computerized this in color enhancement.

So that you can see all of these little structures. So you're looking at just a fraction of a cell with a slice that has been computer enhanced.

So we've talked about some of these little structures. Remember they're called organelles. An organ is a group of tissues that has a specific function.

And organelles, we said, are microscopic organs. None of which

Darwin was able to see. Otherwise he would have kiboshed his own theory.

So just absolutely some beautiful structures that are there.

Okay, now the limits of evolution. This is a really, in my opinion, simple concept that you can lay out for someone and say, explain this to me.

Now you've heard me do that kind of stuff before right? This stuff we look at and there's just no way it could ever have evolved.

So, how do the amino acids assemble into proteins? You guys know what proteins are.

There's vegetable proteins and animal proteins and all of that. Proteins are made up of 20 smaller building blocks called amino acids.

And we said that there were how many letters in the alphabet? How many words? Infinite, right?

Because you can keep playing with it. And all of you people that do texting and stuff, you keep inventing new words that us old people have no idea what you're talking about.

So you can take these 20 different amino acids, you can put them the same one, or you can just choose and keep playing with those 20 and these proteins can get large.

They can get several hundred thousand amino acids long. We don't have words that are several hundred thousand letters long.

I know in the medical world some of those words sound like it, but they're not. Do you get it?

So very, very complex. So what came first, proteins or protein synthesis?

Do you remember last week we did the protein synthesis with those ribosomes? We showed you the two videos.

So you started with that DNA, the DNA partially in hooks. You make a template called

RNA and that now is the model that leaves the nucleus and goes out and it starts feeding on the amino acids which feed through the

Pac -Man. Remember the Pac -Man? And out the other end come the finished proteins. How many proteins per cell per second?

Don't be so cheap. Let's go with 150 ,000. Okay, yeah, so two numbers now he's got down.

So, I mean, it's just, and it takes a lot of energy. Every time you hook one amino acid to another, it takes molecules of ATP.

So even if you're sleeping, are you using energy? So, and this is where I can begin to get into marital issues because I would tell my students who are mainly females,

I'm going to say, you know, when you're working hard and the guy on a Saturday afternoon is sitting on the couch watching football and you say, get up you lazy bum, has he been busy the whole time?

Making proteins. Okay, it doesn't gain traction.

Gentlemen, don't try it at home, Jim. Those cast iron frying pans, they don't get any lighter.

Okay, so here we go. The smallest bacteria that we know contains 482 proteins which are made up of amino acids and has 562 ,000 bases, nitrogenous bases in its

DNA. Relatively simple. DNA requires 30 specialized protein.

DNA replication. So even before a DNA can replicate, how many finished proteins do you have to have to replicate that DNA?

Okay, 30. If you don't have all 30 of those proteins, can your

DNA replicate? No, if you can't replicate your DNA, then the cell can't reproduce.

The cell dies and it's game over. 200 billion years later, you evolve another cell, but you don't have those 30 proteins.

Do you get it? You have to have all this equipment on the front end to get it to work.

Consider a tiny little protein made up of 150 amino acids.

First, you have to form the correct bond. In other words, you've got to have each of these things.

There's different ways for amino acids to bond, and we're not going to get into the chemistry, but in each case it has to be the correct kind of bond.

So the likelihood that you're going to get all those 150 amino acids to form the correct bond between them, right, making this long snake, is 1 in 10 to the 45th.

That's 1 followed by how many zeros? 45 zeros. That's the third one.

You just love this math stuff. Is that a big number? Bigger. Bigger than the federal deficit.

A lot bigger. Then, as these things bond, they can either do a left -handed spiral or a right -handed spiral.

All of them have got to be the right -handed spiral. Okay? So they've got to bond, but when they bond, they have to twist the right direction.

So now you have 1 in 10 to the 45th, and 1 times 10 to the 45th, which now you're up to 1 in 10 to the 90th.

Then you have to have the correct sequence. So if it's valine, proline, leucine, isoleucine, isoleucine, because every time you go, you have to choose the correct one out of the 20.

That now bumps you up to 10 to the 195th power. What did we say mathematically was considered to be infinite?

1 in 10 to the 30th. How many elementary particles, for the sake of simplicity, electrons, protons, and neutrons, how many electrons, protons, and neutrons in the entire universe?

10 to the 90th. So to evolve by chance, the simplest protein in the simplest bacteria is 1 in 10 to the 195th.

Are we done discussing the possibility of evolution? It's over.

They can't explain that one, folks. Did you catch the simplicity of the math there?

I mean, in theory. Right? So let's just say, because time and chance, time and chance, time and chance, you end up with this scrawly little protein.

What's it going to do? It's going to sit there. Can a protein live?

A protein is not alive. No, it's just there. So you need all these other proteins and all.

Even if you put all the proteins together, in fats and carbohydrates, you have this blob.

Now, what is life? Don't even go there. How does a cell become alive?

Pixie dust. Right? Okay. Making 150 amino acid protein assumes the existence of all 20 amino acids.

All of them would have had to have evolved by chance first.

So there was an experiment called the Miller -Ulrey experiment. Miller -Ulrey, U -L -R -E -Y.

It is still in textbooks. And what they did is they were able to take amino acids, put them in an environment, in a vat, basically, like in a retort tube, make the perfect environment, and just spark it with electrical charges, and they were able to make proteins.

And they said, we have proven evolution. Well, the problem is this.

They used a methane -rich environment. Methane is a gas. We now know that in the early days, we didn't have a methane -rich environment.

It was an oxygen -rich environment. They tried repeating that experiment with oxygen.

Is oxygen destructive? Especially in Chevrolets. And roofs.

Right? Oxygen is an oxidizer. So it causes rust. You can put all those little amino acids in an oxygen -rich environment, and you can't form proteins.

Even after we know that, is that still showing up in the textbooks?

Yeah. Some of them. A lot of them have gotten rid of them, but some, it's still in there. And it's dishonest, is what it is.

But you hear that quoted, yeah. Well, yes, you'd have to have all the correct rotation once, just by time and chance.

It's just mathematically. Moving on. I'm not shutting you off, but if somebody says, just say, come on, really?

Here's the numbers. It is a dead subject. We've got to move on, because it can't.

It can't. Yes.

Perfectly designed lab conditions, as opposed to random primordial ooze.

No problem. Exactly.

Do you see where it really goes dead end quickly, folks? It really goes dead end. Okay. So, there we are.

Urinary system. Okay. I find this little guy fascinating.

I'm glad this thing works. So, basically, when we're looking at the kidney, and these are about the size of your fist.

In the world of boxing, what's an illegal shot? Kidney punch.

Now, just follow what's happening here, if we can. So, you have this outer skin, so to speak, that wraps around most organs, including your kidneys.

It's a really tough, fibrous thing, and we call it the capsule. Then, inside the capsule, the first major layer is this thing called the cortex, and then also part of the cortex, it has these columns that come down like that, and then you have these pyramid -shaped things, which make up this layer called the medulla.

So, this is a cross -section of the kidney, and basically what happens is, here comes your large renal artery, one to the left, one to the right, and about 20 % of the blood that's coming right out of your heart, down the aorta, 10 % of it goes to the left kidney, and 10 % of it goes to the right kidney.

Is that a lot of blood flow? That is a chunk of blood flow, folks.

So, here comes this big renal artery, one to the left side, one to the right side, and we're going to see what happens to them, but then, essentially, what's going to happen is the blood tends to come to this outer portion here.

Now, do you see this little guy called the nephron? I'm going to show you a close -up.

We're going to get smaller and smaller and smaller, which is typically what we've been doing. So, each kidney has one million of those little nephrons.

Exactly. I've counted them. No. Approximately a million. And what these guys are responsible, they make the urine.

Well, if you've got a million of these guys like this, facing this way, and they hang this thing that goes down there, so then, eventually, what's going to happen, at the end of this, there's a one -way valve called the papilla, so the concentrated urine ends up here, and then it goes into this all -open space.

These are called the minor and major calyces. Then it goes into this central region called the pelvis and the ureter.

Did you get it? And then it's osteolavista. So, again, blood comes towards the periphery, feeds into these million nephrons, they make the urine, and you get rid of those toxic substances.

And if your kidneys shut down, and you're not near dialysis, are you going to die? You're going to die.

Okay, so here we go with the nephron. Are you with me?

Remember that squirrely little thing that we... So here's the nephron, and here's one of those pyramid -shaped things that are out in the medulla.

How many nephrons per kidney? A million. And so there we go.

Now, that big blood vessel, the renal artery, it breaks down into one million little blood vessels known as afferent arterioles.

An arteriole is a tiny blood vessel, a little larger than a capillary. So here's the afferent blood supply coming in.

It comes into this tuft of capillaries known as the glomerulus.

How small are capillaries? You've got about 60 ,000 miles of them in your body.

The diameter of a capillary is essentially just big enough for a single red blood cell to go through.

Does that make sense? Well, we evolved these specialized capillaries in there.

They're called fenestrated. Ladies, do you know what a sieve is? Okay, and that's what those capillaries are.

They have special bigger holes in them, so they leak. We call it filtration.

But they leak like crazy. So you have blood coming in, these leaky capillaries, and then the blood continues out.

But where all of these things have all those little microscopic holes in them, things like ions, waste proteins, amino acids, junk, can actually sneak out.

But do you lose blood cells? No, they can't get through. So blood in, you lose junk, and then blood goes back and it leaves the kidney.

Do you get the idea? Okay, now follow this. Please. Is your blood a part of you?

Yes. It is within your system. No. Is the food in your stomach a part of you?

No. Wow. If I had really long fingers, well, and I'll do this in class, and some of the students, they say, you're really weird.

So if I go over to Ed, what do you have for breakfast, Ed? Some eggs.

Okay. So if he was back there chewing on something, and I said, open your mouth,

Ed, and I stuck my finger in his mouth, but I never touched him, is that weird?

Is it illegal? No. When he bites me, that would be illegal.

But if I had really long fingers, I could go down, never touch him, go down and snag a little whole wheat bread and pull it back out, because he doesn't own it until he absorbs it.

Do you get it? Do you get it? So in a weird way, all the stuff in your digestive tract you don't own until you absorb it, right?

Similarly, your blood you own because it's with you, but the stuff that leaves your bloodstream and gets out into this tube, which eventually goes into the bladder, this would be pre -urine, and the stuff in your bladder is urine, you don't own it because it has left, it's just waiting to get voided.

Do you get that idea? Okay. You're smarter than my students, because they didn't get it.

So a million of these little nephrons, amazing little structures, and notice how tiny these capillaries are, these are basically almost the same size.

Yes, sir? What happens if it's bigger than a blood cell and you can't get out of it?

You won't really have anything in your bloodstream bigger than basically a red blood cell.

Yeah. Now you can get certain other things, like sickle cell, well they get a sickle shell shape to them, and they can begin to slice the insides of the capillaries, and that's where you can have fatality if you have a double mutation.

Yeah. I mean, we're talking really delicate structures here, right? Okay. So here we go.

Here's a bigger artery, and it gets smaller and smaller and smaller, and so here is that aferin arteriole, here's the capillary network, you follow this?

Here's the aferin arteriole. Now notice what happens, because these get more and more complex.

That aferin arteriole comes, do you see that nephron here that was nice and simple to see?

Okay, here we go. Now what's going to happen is this guy, this is blood in, glomerulus, where it leaks and the waste products leave, and the aferin arteriole, this is going to send off what's known as the peritubular capillary network, and it's just going to wrap around like that.

Do you get it? Okay, so there you go. Now, the contents within this tube, do you own them or not?

They have left your system, right? Now here's part of the problem.

Some of the stuff in this guy is it leaves and gets caught by this thing, some of it left and you want it back.

Other stuff wouldn't leave and you're going to have to force it out. Now, I can make a simplistic drawing like this.

If that blue tube represents your nephron tubule, and the green tube represents the peritubular capillary network, now from here to the very end when it's actually leaving, are you going to try to get rid of some stuff that wouldn't leave here?

So do you ever have relatives that come and stay and they won't leave?

Do you know how to get rid of them? You pack their bags, you set them on the front porch, and when they go out to retrieve them, you close the door.

The technical term here, if it wouldn't leave and you're now going to force it from the blood into the tube to leave, that's called secretion.

So you just secreted your relatives. On the other hand, if it left and you want it back, then you resorb it.

So this whole mess right here is a battle between getting rid of what wouldn't leave and getting back what left.

And so right here, because this is your pre -urine, 45 gallons a day.

45. Now, aren't you glad you don't make 45 gallons a year in a day?

Well, I'm just thinking. Do the rough math here.

It's about 2 gallons an hour. You guys would all be catheterized.

Other option is, just think of how many stalls we'd have in the church.

So you go from how many gallons? Another number for Mike over here. From roughly 45 down to maybe 2 quarts, right?

Is this an amazing little structure? How many of these in the body? A million, exactly.

Right? Oh, yeah. Now, all sorts of bad things can happen.

Obviously, these are really delicate structures. There's certain kinds of bacteria that like to hang out right there.

Is this big or is that small? That is really tiny. That's just a little under the microscope.

And I wish I could show you guys this under a microscope. You can see them, but they're really, really tiny.

And that's even at 400 power. So, if bacteria get in there, certain species of bacteria, you can have acute glomerulonephritis.

Because, again, that's the glomerulus. You can go from healthy to basically dead in 24 hours.

With certain types of an acute glomerulonephritis, because what it will do is it will just basically shut this down and turn it into scar tissue.

Because if this gets overly inflamed, you can't uninflame it. Does that make sense? It's not big enough to recover.

Now, obviously, dialysis would be needed immediately because the kidney's not bouncing back.

But do you see how delicate this is? Fortunately, that's a very rare condition. On the other hand, some people develop chronic glomerulonephritis where they start out with the million, but then they lose 10%, 15%.

You can lose about 60 % to 70%, and then it's going to get back to the dialysis unit.

But take care of those buggers because you only have how many of them? Two times a million.

Yeah. Okay. Let's see what's next.

Yeah, we're not quite done with that. So I'll let you analyze that because I didn't get this far, so I haven't read up on it.

Do you kind of see that in there, all of that stuff that we were talking about? So again, blood supply, the afferent, glomerulus, efferent, peritubular capillary network, you're concentrating, concentrating, and then basically these are the small sewer pipes,

I've referred to them. They're called the collecting ducts, and then they go down to each of the bottom of those pyramids with the one -way valve, dump into the minor, the major calluses, into the pelvis of the kidney, and then out you go.

You get the flow of things, pun intended? Okay. Now, this is really cool.

The juxtaglomerular apparatus. You know how many points you get for that in Scrabble?

You should never lose a Scrabble game. The juxtaglomerular apparatus detects low blood volume, blood pressure.

It secretes a hormone, that's a chemical called renin, that eventually results in the adrenal cortex, the adrenal gland, releasing aldosterone that restores blood volume and pressure through the reabsorption of sodium ions, and that's kind of simplistic, but we don't want to get it any more complex because it gets just uglier and uglier.

So here we go. Here is, so remember this?

Here is the afferent arteriole, and it really doesn't make which way, I've seen it drawn both ways.

So you have the efferent and the afferent arteriole, there's the glomerulus, here's that tubule.

Now, what this group of cells right there, that's known as the juxtaglomerular apparatus, and what it basically does is it monitors chemical composition between the blood supply that is leaving the glomerulus and the distal convoluted tubule, which contains the fluid that's basically urine.

Do you get it? So you're doing a chemical analysis 24 hours a day on the difference of ion concentration between your blood and the urine.

And if those two things get out of kilter, then these cells release, cause the adrenal gland to release a hormone known as aldosterone, which retains sodium ions, which reduces urine output.

How long did this take to evolve? Remember we talked about feedback mechanisms?

And I don't want to, I think I can do this with Pastor, so what happened here last week?

No, seriously. He went from feeling apparently pretty good until, what, 10, 15 minutes before?

So all these feedback, and we've been, I don't know if you've been there before, but I've been in a similar situation.

You feel good and all of a sudden you think, oh, well we all had the ability to just go sit down.

He really didn't. And finally enough feedback mechanisms just said, what are we doing?

Let's hit the reset button, right? I don't care how hard he tried to hold on, his body was saying, we're checking out for a little bit.

And I don't mean to make light of it, but this is just one of thousands of feedback systems that your body is constantly monitoring so that we don't die.

Because if the chemical difference between these two gets too much, will you die?

You will. So you don't have to think about this. It is automatic.

Questions on that? Yeah. And this is just, we could go to, yeah.

So it's just all this stuff, and this is one of the more simple ones.

Because now we're tying in the whole endocrine system, and I don't have to tell you, if hormones get out of control, can bad things happen?

Yes, sir. How does this all work?

Like, don't work, but then if we have problems?

Yes. Well, I'm sure that tube was still there.

When we get into those questions, and they tend to be speculative, but I would say in a situation like that is, yes, these worked.

They were there. They were designed to do what they're supposed to do, because when you're doing chemical breakdown of products, you do produce noxious substances.

But we do know those systems were working for hundreds of years.

Right? Yeah. So I haven't seen too many people whose kidneys are still going strong after 120, so I guess that's impartial how we would answer that.

Okay. So, let's get to the immune system. We won't cover this today in its entirety.

We don't need to erase anything. So I'm going to give you a quick overview, and then I'm going to throw up a diagram that I do.

Is the immune system entirely appropriate for us to talk about in light of the big

C word that's been plaguing us for a couple of years? Yeah. So I just want to touch some stuff, throw up a diagram, and make sure

I quit in time, Pastor, because sometimes I get carried away with this stuff. Okay. So, your body is comprised of approximately 100 trillion cells.

Now, before you guys were hatched, right, you were in a sterile environment.

Correct? Surrounded by the amnionic sac in your own little parasitic world sucking nutrients out of mom left and right.

We covered that previously. Before you were born, you were made up of all these different kinds of proteins.

Bazillions of different kinds of proteins. I've heard numbers of anywhere from 200 ,000, 250 ,000 plus different kinds of proteins that are in the human body.

Every protein in your body was indexed.

You know those little Rolodexes? Okay. Those younger people, they have no idea what

I'm talking about. That's good. Ed, you can explain it to your kids later. But the little

Rolodex. So before you were born, your immune system did a survey of all the proteins that comprised your body and they were written on the little

Rolodexes. Then you popped out into the world. Is it a mean, hostile environment?

Yes. And all of a sudden, your body and its immune system were exposed to foreign proteins.

Okay. Now, basically, every cell in your body has surface receptor proteins sticking up through the phospholipid bilayer.

And that IDs you as self versus non -self.

Do you get the idea? So if I'm a white blood cell, my job is to survey the body.

So all I do is I kind of back float. I don't do the American Crawl. It's not normal to put your face down in the water.

So I do the side stroke or the back stroke because then I'm going through the body. I'm checking out the different cells.

Well, so here we got there and there. See those little guys? Those are his receptor proteins.

Now, if I'm a white blood cell, I have these little receptors and I go along. And as long as they check out okay,

I put down in my little log book, self. He's a self cell. Right?

Got it? On the other hand, I'm coming over here and I'm checking. I'm thinking, whoa,

I don't think I've seen this. And I go to check it and it's not self. It's wrong receptors.

What is he? Non -self. What do

I have to do to him or that cell? Just destroy him.

Let's just cut right to the chase. Don't be nice. We're going to destroy him. So if I don't have the equipment, but as a

T cell, I would. And this is phenomenal how this, this is going on 24 -7, folks, all the time.

So what I'll do is I'll just kind of cuddle up right next to this cell and I release either opsins or granzymes.

So I can squirt out these little chemicals, get up nice and close. How you doing? He says fine.

I hit him with this stuff and it will actually perforate like perforins. It'll perforate a hole in his cell membrane.

If I punch a hole in his cell membrane, he will lose homeostasis and die.

Then there's a bigger white blood cell called a macrophage. And I say, hey, lunch.

And he comes flying over and just snarfs them up. And that occurs all the time. So whether you get viruses that attack and get inside a cell or you have bacteria or you get wrong blood transfusion, all of that stuff is now recognized as what?

Non -self. The T -cells are supposed to kill them. The macrophages will eat them.

And that occurs all the time so you do not die.

I mean, just write that. Because if they take over, you're going to die. They really will.

So in a nutshell. So even non -self things that are alive have surface markers.

And all of those little, this is a key word now, all of those surface markers are called antigens.

They're little proteins that are sticking up on all of your cells and bacteria, etc.

And they recognize as self or non -self. White blood cells go looking for antigens and to see if they're self or non -self.

And that is probably a good place to stop because the chart that I'm going to put up to supplement this is going to get crazy.

Okay. Let's close in prayer. Father, once again we marvel at the incredible complexity, all the feedback mechanisms that you designed and engineered within humans, let alone other species.

Indeed, the apparent from a surface simpleness of the human body screams design and demands that we glorify you and praise your name.

So Father, help us to be more effective in doing that, sharing the truths of the magnificence of the human body perhaps as a witnessing tool to ultimately be able to share with people the greatest miracle and that is the conversion of hearts that only you can do.

So thank you for this time, for each one that came out this morning. Help us to see you truly as you are and to worship acceptably.

Be with pastor as we go into the time of worship, as he breaks forth the word, musicians as they help lead in song.

May indeed today be a wonderful time of worship and praise. We pray this in your son's name.