egg

Nature – The Chicken Egg

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A fertilized chicken egg is a very special creation. Before even thinking about a chick developing in an egg, it is interesting to ponder a few questions about the shell:

How does a chicken manage to get a shell around that slippery, raw, fertilized egg?

How does a chicken know it needs to make a shell with porosity so that the chick will be able to breathe?

How would mindless evolution know how to manufacture such a shell?

It turns out that the chicken has little to do with the formation of an eggshell—the egg actually grows the shell around itself! It does this using processes that are also seen in bones and seashells. Around the egg is a membrane, and evenly spaced on the membrane are points where columns of calcite (a form of calcium carbonate) form. These columns stack together side by side to form the shell. The shell itself is highly specialized. Each eggshell has about 10,000 tiny pores. The developing chick needs these pores to breathe.

Within the first few days after the egg is laid, blood vessels begin to grow out of the developing chick. Two of these attach to the membrane under the eggshell and two attach to the yolk. By the fifth day, the tiny heart is pumping blood through the vessels. The chick feeds from the yolk with the yolk vessels and breathes through the membrane vessels. The chick gives off carbon dioxide and water vapor as it digests the yolk. These waste products are picked up by the blood vessels and leave through the pores in the eggshell. … So here’s another question:

What makes those blood vessels grow out of the chick, and how do they know where to go and what to attach to?

By the nineteenth day, the chick has gotten very big and the oxygen it has been getting through the pores in the shell is no longer sufficient to sustain its life. How does it know what to do next? A small tooth called the “egg-tooth” has grown on the end of its beak and the chick uses this to peck a hole into an air sack at the flat end of the egg. The air sack provides only six hours of air for the chick to breathe, so instead of relaxing and breathing deeply, the chick pecks a small hole through the shell to gain access to the outside air. Two days later, on the twenty-first day, the chick “hatches” out of the shell.

Each step in the development of the chick defies evolutionary logic because if even one step in the process is missing or out of order, the chick will die. Timing is absolutely crucial!

The process must be orchestrated by God our Creator. The impersonal plus time/plus chance is not an adequate explanation for the wondrous complexities of life as we observe it. There had to be a Designer and His name is the Lord Jesus Christ (John 1; Colossians 1; Hebrews 1).

Sources: Dr. Jobe Martin, The Evolution of a Creationist (Rockwell, Texas: Biblical Discipleship Publishers, 2013), pages 209-211 and howstuffworks.com

Restoring the Temple – The Reproductive System

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“Thou shalt keep therefore his statutes, and his commandments, which I command thee this day, that it may go well with thee, and with thy children after thee, and that thou mayest prolong [thy] days upon the earth, which the Lord thy God giveth thee, for ever.”

—Deuteronomy 4:40.

In the beginning, God caused Adam to fall into a deep sleep. A rib was taken from his side, and from it, woman was created. God had a plan. Part of that plan included marriage and family. In Genesis 2, He said that man should leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife. This was, of course, before there were any fathers or mothers, yet God mentions those relationships. Adam named his wife Eve, “because she was the mother of all living.” Genesis 3:20.

A female child is born with all the oocytes (eggs) that she will ever have—approximately 2 million, although only about 400 ever reach maturity. One egg is released—a process called ovulation—each month from puberty to menopause. Some women feel this when it occurs, experiencing a sharp pain or twinge in their lower abdomen. This phenomenon is called mittelschmerz, middle pain. When an egg is released from the ovary, it is “caught” by the fingerlike projections on the ends of the fallopian tubes. From there, the egg journeys through the tube to the uterus. If spermatozoa from the husband fertilize the egg (often in the fallopian tube), then the egg will implant in the wall of the uterus. Several hundred million spermatozoa are released from the male, but only a few thousand reach the woman’s body. If fertilization does not take place, then the egg continues to travel out of the body.

The definition of fertilization is the fusion of two distinctive cells into a totally unique DNA combination. Remember that DNA is what makes you specifically you. You are a unique blend of your father’s and your mother’s DNA. How many possible combinations of DNA can occur with fertilization? About 70 trillion. The only people that share the same DNA are identical twins (or other identical multiples). Most of us have at least seen a set of identical twins and know that although they may be incredibly alike in appearance, they are still very different in personality. Evolutionists like to say that this genetic variation enhances the survival of the population. I like to think that God makes us different so that we each can bring a unique talent and perspective in our relationships to God and to one another.

Normally, one sperm manages to fertilize one egg. When that one sperm gets through the outer barrier of the egg, the egg sends a chemical signal to shut out all the rest. However, there is the possibility of twins, or more. This happens in different ways. Identical twins occur when one egg is fertilized by one sperm, and afterwards, the cell splits into two. Fraternal twins occur when two eggs are released by the ovary and each is fertilized by a separate sperm. There is another possibility, called polar body twinning. This occurs when the egg splits prior to fertilization and two sperm fertilize the subsequent two eggs. These twins share 75 percent of their DNA and are sort of half-identical.

Sometime, after fertilization takes place, the brand new individual (currently a ball of cells) implants into the wall of the uterus. The placenta is a wondrous organ made by interlocking cells of the mother and child. The blood of the mother and that of the baby do not mix, but are separated by only a thousandth of a millimeter. Mother’s blood, hopefully rich in oxygen, water, and nutrients, releases this life-giving material across capillary walls into the capillaries of the fetus in the uterus, which then travel up through the umbilical cord and into the baby. Waste products from the baby are then released into the mother’s blood stream, where they exit her body along with her own wastes.

The period of time between fertilization and birth is usually nine months, divided into trimesters, each about three months in length. In the first trimester, cells become specialized, or differentiated. This means that a cell will permanently become a brain cell, or a liver cell, or maybe a cell on the skin of a toe. By the third week, these cells are forming into organs. The embryo becomes a fetus by the seventh week. By the second month, most of every major organ system is in place.

In the second trimester, the fetus increases in size and the bony part of the skeleton begins to form. The mother starts to feel the movement of her baby. During the last trimester the lungs and heart begin maturing in preparation for breathing air. Antibodies from the mother are transferred to the baby, conferring temporary immunity at birth.

After nine months comes the birth of the long awaited baby. This baby is the result of a combination of a genetic blueprint and what the mother puts into her body. Ellen White also said that fathers are a part of the responsibility of the physical and spiritual welfare of the unborn child. “[God] will enable her [the mother] to transmit to her offspring qualities that will help them to gain success in this life and to win eternal life. Fathers as well as mothers are involved in this responsibility, and they too should seek earnestly for divine grace that their influence may be such as God can approve. The inquiry of every father and mother should be, ‘What shall we do unto the child that shall be born?’ [Judges 13:8.] By many the effect of prenatal influence has been lightly regarded; but the instruction sent from heaven . . . shows how the matter is looked upon by the Creator.” The Signs of the Times, February 26, 1902.

Each of us is a wonder that God made and knew from the beginning. The Word tells us that our bodies are temples. Our loving Father gave us the choice to bring glory to Him by our thoughts and actions, made unique by our created individuality.

“With gladness and rejoicing shall they be brought: they shall enter into the king’s palace. Instead of thy fathers shall be thy children, whom thou mayest make princes in all the earth. I will make thy name to be remembered in all generations: therefore shall the people praise thee for ever and ever.” Psalm 45:15–17.

Sheryle Beaudry, a certified teletriage nurse, writes from Estacada, Oregon where she lives with her husband and twin daughters. She may be contacted by e-mail at sbeaudryrn@hotmail.com.

Children’s Story — Left to Die

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The Somme River rises above St. Quentin, near the Belgian border, in northern France, and flows into the English Channel. In what was once a rich farming area near the river, the astounding scene took place.

Before the war, this man was an irreligious man. He had attended some evangelistic meetings once but did not become a Christian. After entering the war he was shipped to France. As he was crossing an open field, shrapnel struck him down. His fellow soldiers left him as they deemed him dead.

“I could hear the battle,” he related, “and the humming of bullets was all about me. I saw that I was bleeding and hoped that a corpsman would find me. But night came without one person coming near by the bit of a hollow where I fell.

“The next morning I was very weak from the loss of blood and from hunger. I had a little food in my knapsack but was unable to turn over or to unbuckle my straps to get it. I realized that I was lying in my own blood. I was helpless and giving myself up to die.

“Five days later, the medical corpsmen were out in the field searching for any one who could possibly still have life in him. I saw them come closer and closer. I tried to call to them, but they were too far away to hear my weak voice.

“Closer and closer they came. Finally, after what seemed an eternity, one of them stopped, cupped his hand to his ear, and heard my plea for help. After administering some first aid, he called to a companion to get a stretcher. When the two of them started to take me off, I asked them to look around and see if they could see what had saved my life. Puzzled and thinking I was delirious, they started on with their task.

“Wait,” I cried, “at least look at the evidence of what has happened.” After seeing those ten definite objects of proof that I had miraculously been preserved from starvation, we made our way to the mobile army surgical hospital.

“In the portable hospital tent, I had time to reflect back on the astounding way in which that God I had rejected in those evangelistic meetings had not rejected me. I gave my heart to Him and vowed to go back home, look up the people who held the meetings, and allow them to help me become a real bonafide Christian.

“My testimony of God’s stunning battlefield protection was confirmed by the two medics so that no one would miss out on the power of it all through doubt or disbelief.

“You see, when I could not turn over or unbuckle my strap with my one free arm so that I could eat the meager provisions of my K-rations, the Lord interceded.

“Lying there the morning after my being wounded, I first thought I was having a hallucination, because standing near the very tip of the five fingers of my one free hand was a real, live hen!

“What’s more, the hen laid an egg right then and there!”

“I broke the egg, cupping most of its contents in one half of the shell, and swallowed it. It was not much, but it was enough to keep me alive until the next day.

“What’s even more wonderful is the fact that this same hen that I saw walk slowly away after laying that first egg came back to almost the very same spot the next day to lay another egg.

“The hen came from a nearby shelled farm house, an orderly told me later. But it came five days in a row. And the corspmen saw the ten halves of the five eggs broken by my body.”

 

By W.A. Spicer from the book The Hand that Intervenes, 33–35.