[This brief story is taken from Nelson’s Complete Book of Stories, Illustrations, & Quotations, 2000]
William Cooper’s hymn speaks of “a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel’s veins, where sinners, plunged beneath that flood, lose all their guilty stains.” The apostle John said that the blood of Jesus Christ “cleanses us from all sin.” The multitude in Revelation 7 had washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the lamb.
But how is blood a cleaning agent? To us, blood is a soiling or staining agent, something we try to scrub off, not scrub with.
All that we have learned about physiology in recent years confirms the accuracy of the still jarring juxtaposition of blood and cleansing….
I suggest a simple experiment if you truly wish to grasp the function of blood as a cleansing agent. Find a blood pressure test kit and wrap the cuff around your upper arm. When it is in position, have a friend pump it up to about 200 mm. of mercury, a sufficient pressure to stop the flow of blood in your arm. Initially your arm will feel an uncomfortable tightness beneath the cuff. Now comes the revealing part of the experiment: perform any easy task with your cuffed arm. Merely flex your fingers and make a fist about ten times in succession, or cut paper with scissors or drive a nail into wood with a hammer.
The first few movements will seem quite normal as the muscles obediently contract and relax. Then you will feel a slight weakness. Almost without warning a hot flash of pain will strike, after maybe ten movements. Your muscles will cramp. If you force yourself to continue the simple task, you will likely cry out in absolute agony. Finally, you cannot will yourself to continue; the pain overwhelms you.
When you release the tourniquet and air escapes from the cuff, blood will rush into your aching arm and a wonderful sense of relief will soothe your muscles. The pain is worth enduring just to experience that acute relief. Your muscles move freely, the pain vanishes, and life feels good again. Physiologically, you have just experienced the cleansing power of blood.
While the blood supply to your arm was shut off, you forced your muscles to keep working. As they converted oxygen into energy, they produced certain waste products (metabolites) that are normally flushed away instantly in the bloodstream. Due to the constricted blood flow, however, these metabolites accumulated in your cells. They were not “/cleansed” by the swirling stream of blood, and therefore in a few minutes you felt the agony of retained toxins.[1]
Next: Principle #2: Healthy Blood Through Fasting: How We Properly Detoxify The Body
Return To: Biblical Health Study
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[1] Paul Brand and Philip Yancy, “Blood: The Miracle of Cleansing, Part 1,” Christianity Today, February 18, 1983, 13.
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Scripture quotations taken from the NASB.
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