President - Scott Lane, 599-7240 Vice President - Dr. Daniel Harris, 674-6229
Secretary - J.E. Hernandez, PE, 543-0435 Treasurer - Dr. Paul Wilke, 497-3663
[P.O. Box 200721, San Antonio, TX 78220-0721]

An independent nondenominational, nonprofit and volunteer, educational and evangelical outreach.

We confess the Bible to be The Word of God, Jesus Christ as the Lord, and young-earth scientific creationism.

In Leviticus Chapter 11 Moses was quoted as commanding the Hebrews not to eat the “unclean” (swine, things in the water without scales and fins, cats, dogs, birds of prey, reptiles and hares). They were allowed to eat of that which was clean which included cattle, sheep, goats, deer, fowl, and fish with scales and fins. In light of today’s medical and scientific knowledge it is clear why these commandments were given. The clams and other crawling sea and river animals were available to people either in the mouths of rivers leading into the sea, or in the rivers themselves. Also in that time most bathing, washing of clothes, washing of dishes, urination and cleaning of excrement and doing away with garbage occurred in the rivers. Thus, these bottom dwellers in that time simply were sucking in raw sewage! Rodents (hares) harbored bubonic plague, rabies, etc. Reptiles live in stagnant water which is an excellent growth medium for disease. Cats feed on rodents with their aforementioned diseases. Dogs had rabies and other diseases, which we now immunize them against.

In Numbers Chapter 19 Moses wrote, “any person touching a carcass must be cleaned.” Thus, guarding against the spread of disease. Further he wrote. “ any open vessel (jar) must be considered unclean” showing an understanding of proper hygiene and that the open jar made for an excellent growth medium for bacteria. There are even further laws regarding the transfer of disease from animal to animal. How did Moses know all this if it was not given to him by God? One suggestion is that they were the product of common sense. If people got sick after touching dead things, or after eating from an open jar then men eventually used their head and stopped doing those things. However, the evidence speaks against such conclusions.

In the case of swine the danger is trichinosis which has an incubation period of from 2 days to 3 weeks. Is it really reasonable to assume that when a person got sick that they associated its cause with a meal they had the week before or even the month before??? Neither does common sense to seem to apply with regards to the transmission of disease from corpses as evidenced by the case of a 19th century doctor in Austria who had been brought in to head a hospital which had a huge birth mortality rate. On inspection he found that the same doctors who were doing the deliveries of babies were also doing autopsies and dissections on dead bodies before helping with births. Now Coke had already tied bacteria and viruses to causing disease in 1800, so this doctor theorized that something was being transmitted from carcasses to the babies. He thus required all of his doctors to wash their hands before assisting with the births, The baby mortality rate went down 20 fold! All the other doctors ignored this evidence however and so disliked his “washing” policy that they banded together and got him fired and soon returned to going from autopsies to births without washing. So much for common sense!

Another theory is that Moses got all this from the medical knowledge of the day. He was raised in Egypt, which had the most developed culture and engineering science of the day. Surely he got most of this from them! An inspection of the Egyptian medical practices of the day belies this belief. Their normal means of treating cuts was by rubbing manure on them, which of course promoted more infections, not decreasing them. They regularly practiced bleeding with leeches to “remove the poisons from a person’s body.” A practice, which survived in medicine, all the way till the 20th century. In point of fact the account of George Washington’s death shows that in pursuit of getting the “poisons” out of his system he was systematically bled to death by his doctor, as the doctor “drew a basin of blood every few hours as Washington’s conditioned worsened and worsened.” This practice ignored the Bible pronouncement in Leviticus 17:11 “the life of the flesh is in the blood.” Thus, there seems no evidence that Moses got his medical and disease theory knowledge from the medical science of the day. In fact, an analysis of what he wrote or commanded would require degrees, or at least extensive modern training in the fields of food chain, microbiology, disease theory and bacterial immunology (all of this material and more is available from the book “None of These Diseases“ by S.I. McMillan). Was this true or did he have help from the “manufacturer?!”

In concert with this evidence of scientific “pre-knowledge” by the creator is a number studies from current medical science. For example we now have not one, but 20 studies which show that if a person attends church on even a semi-regular basis (once a month or more) that they will live longer and healthier lives. This coincides with Proverbs 3:1,2,7,and 8 which promises this. A fascinating study by Dr. Randolph Byrd, a cardiologist, in 1988 computer assigned 393 heart patients at random from the CCU at San Francisco General Hospital to either a prayer group or a non-prayer group. The patients were not informed of which group they were in. The prayer group participant’s first names and their general condition were given to those who were to pray for them,. No contact was aloud between those who agreed to pray for them in locales remote from the patients. Nor were there any instructions on how to pray. 10 months later the prayer group was: 5 times less likely to need antibiotics; 2.5 times less likely to suffer congestive heart failure; significantly less likely to suffer coronary arrest: and in general had much better prognosis (March, 1996 Reader‘s Digest). Another study has shown that prayer can reduce your blood pressure.

Now, some will dismiss findings like the blood pressure to simply being quiet and relaxed and the longer life studies to people finding relievers of stress associated with a belief in God which exists only in their own mind. But, the striking pre-science of the Bible and the overwhelming amount of medical evidence suggests to me a creator, who made us and understands and can effect our workings to a far greater degree than modern man. It all points to our being creatively designed, not produced by happenstance evolution. This whole topic coincides well with the topic for this month’s meeting of SABBSA.

On Tuesday October 14 at 7pm we will have a presentation by Dr. Randy Guliuzza a flight surgeon at Brooks Air Force Base. He will be speaking on the design of the human visual system and the human eye. A picture of Dr. Guliuzza is shown below. We meet at the Jim’s Restaurant at the corner of San Pedro and Ramsey. You are cordially invited to attend.