An adult has about one-and-a-half gallons of blood flowing through his veins. The blood and the functions it carries out are what keep the body alive. Consider how many different parts make up your blood: one drop contains about 250 million red cells, and in the entire blood supply there are about 25 trillion! New ones need to be produced continuously, because they only last about 125 days with two million dying every second. As small as a red cell is, each one contains about 270 million hemoglobin molecules as well!
How did this come about? Medical scientists could never put such a complicated mixture together, and it certainly couldn’t have just produced itself gradually. No, when God breathed the breath of life into man, He provided a complete body system with everything that would ever be needed, our blood and all its complex parts included. Nothing was left to be further developed, and ever since it has remained the way our Creator made it.
In addition to red cells, blood also contains white cells; there is normally about one white cell to 650 red ones, and there are 2050 billion of these in the blood stream. An important duty of the white cells is to fight infection. There is also another line of defense known as antibodies, which are always present to carry on the fight against infections of all kinds. Then, too, there are platelets which are half the size of white cells. The work of these can be seen when wounds on the skin heal. The platelets stop the loss of blood by forming a scab, which is the beginning of the healing process.
The red cells are constantly doing their life-giving work of carrying oxygen to the cells of the body. The white ones are often more visible to us in the form of pus, which is composed of the bacteria and dead white cells the body has used in the battle against infection.
With so much dependent on it, we can easily see that it took a wise and divine Creator to make our blood so wonderfully complex and able to continue its work with every tick of the clock.
These thoughts remind us of One who willingly shed His blood, giving up His life on Calvary’s cross. The Bible tells us that “it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul” (Leviticus 17:1111For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul. (Leviticus 17:11)). The Lord Jesus Christ shed His blood on the cross for us. If we believe that it was His blood that can make us clean in God’s sight, then we will be saved and have eternal life. “By His own blood He . . . obtained eternal redemption for us” (Hebrews 9:1212Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. (Hebrews 9:12)). Accept the Lord Jesus Christ now as your very own Saviour, “for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:1212Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved. (Acts 4:12)).
MARCH 26, 1995
ML-03/26/1995