By Hal Lindsey
A company in South Korea has taken an order for what will be the first commercial cloning of a pet dog. The company, RNL Bio, said earlier this week that it is cloning a pit bull terrier for a lady in California. The lady wants her dead pet cloned and is willing to cough up the $150,000 fee. The cloning will be conducted by a research team from Seoul National University. The Seoul National University team produced the world's first cloned dog, Snuffy, in 2005. RNL Bio is the university's business agent. RNL's CEO expects as many as 500 orders within a few years from rich pet owners in the United States, Japan and Europe.
Cloning is now a commercial business. If history is any judge, it is just a matter of time before we progress from dogs to humans.
It is simply another sign post pointing toward the return of Christ will occur in this generation. If not, the signs are pointing instead to the extinction of the human race.
At the rate human knowledge is expanding, it won't belong before the brain's electrical impulses can be captured and imaged the way a hard drive is today, in effect, storing "you" in a digital format. And it won't be much longer after that before some whiz kid figures a way to transfer that image.
Add cloning to the mixture and the result would be a form of immortality. One could theoretically clone endless "blanks" of oneself and, barring violent death, live forever. It might be expensive, but how much is too much – if the alternative is death, anyway?
That may not be necessary, in any case. DNA research suggests that somewhere in the genetic code is the secret to eternal life – a kind of master switch that will turn off the normal aging process. That is the Holy Grail of genetic research, but even if such a master switch is never found, DNA research is leading to the eradication of all kinds of killer diseases.
At the very least, humanity will continue to enjoy ever-increasing life spans as medical research moves forward.
Either or both of these scenarios are more than possible; they are probable within the lifetime of some of those who are reading these words.
But both suggest dire consequences for the continuation of the human race. If life spans were extended, there would be less incentive to increase the current population. China's "one-child" policy could seem generous by comparison.
And then there is the possibility of endless cloning. Again, no reason to replenish the earth, and whatever the child of a clone might be, he would not be in the strictest sense of the word, "human." (If there really were no difference, there'd be no word for "clone.")
Within a few generations, the human race would be hopelessly contaminated, assuming there were any meaningful human reproduction at all.
According to Genesis 6:1-6, the "sons of God" intermarried with "the daughters of men" and produced offspring that Genesis calls "giants" and "mighty men of renown." Genesis 6:9 records that Noah was found to be a "just" man and "perfect in his generations," i.e., untainted by the hybrid genes introduced into the human bloodline. Genesis 6:12 says that by this time, "all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth."
God saved Noah and his family alive and destroyed the hybrid population by sending the Flood.
When asked by His disciples to outline the signs of His return at the end of the age, Jesus told them, "And as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man" (Luke 17:26).
Anybody want to buy a dog?