"It’s not really a matter of living forever, it’s just a matter of not wanting to die."
This from Cambridge University researcher Aubrey de Grey who is publicizing his belief that human immortality is just around the corner...well, 25 years or so.
De Grey directs the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS) project, in which he has defined seven causes of aging, all of which he thinks will be completely overcome soon. Furthermore, eternal youthfulness will be enjoyed. De Grey says people will be able to live in a splendid balance of the life force as if they were 20-25 years of age.
Of course, De Grey's hopes to defeat death are sheer fantasy.
Science, which is merely the study of God's creation, cannot be used as a weapon against His purposes. And it is God that has decreed, "It is appointed unto men once to die, and then the judgment." (Hebrews 9:27) No one escapes.
However, man can conquer death through resurrection. And that comes through faith in Jesus Christ, accepting the sacrifice for sin He provided by dying in our place on the cross. Man's hope for eternal life cannot be found in a mythical Fountain of Youth but rather in the singular sacrifice of Jesus. "But whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water which I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life." (John 4:14)
Michelangelo wisely wrote, "Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him." The great Christian artist understood that the inescapable reality of death was the motivation to effectively prepare for it; specifically, by receiving Christ's atoning sacrifice in man's behalf. Jesus said "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die..." (John 11:26).
No matter what the "Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence" attempt to do about it, death will come to Aubrey De Grey...and to you and me. Therefore, instead of wishful thinking, science fiction, whistling through the graveyard, or any other distractions, men must first face the irreducible fact of death, and then make sure of one's salvation from death through the triumph of Christ's resurrection.
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you..." (1 Peter 1:3-4).
