Dr. Barbo: You have to have multiple systems at work in concert. The brain has to produce certain enzymes or hormones that stimulate the ovary. But if they don’t do it in the right order, the right amounts aren’t produced. You don’t get an egg developing. And then when the egg develops from the follicle stimulating hormone that makes this follicle or egg grow and produce estrogen at a certain level which it must reach, then that estrogen feeds back to the brain and produces another hormone, which in turn, stimulates the ovary to cause ovulation. And unless you have both of it, it won’t work. That’s just one of the steps in getting pregnant.

Mike After a lifetime in medicine, Dr. Barbo says systems as complex as reproduction could not evolve by chance.

Dr. Barbo: As you look at the many steps that have to occur, and all the things that can go wrong, you wonder why anyone ever gets pregnant. To get human life, there's such a series of things which have to work. All at the right time, and its just impossible for me to believe that this all just evolved. If you look at it from a mathematical standpoint, the probability that all of the enzymatic reactions could have occurred at the right time, and continue to happen, mathematically, I don’t believe it’s probable. So there are just so many things that there had to be a mastermind somewhere.

Dr. Fountain: It begins with Genesis 1 and goes on through Revelation 22! The Bible is so incredibly rich in many things. I had Hepatitis B myself, and for six years I struggled with an increasingly active chronic hepatitis, which was going on to cirrhosis and so on. I was in trouble, I had been told by my physician. Take it easy, but how do you take it easy in a stress filled environment like that? There was no way. In early 1987, I knew I was in trouble. My liver was increasing in size. We were due to come back to the U.S. at the end of March, and I knew that some changes had to be made. Many people were praying, but things were getting worse. I went out to a church center some miles away for a weekend to talk to church leaders and school teachers and community leaders about health. My wife was very upset about my going. She said, ‘You don’t need to go out there. Just tell them you can’t come! You are just not feeling up to it.’ I said, ‘Well, I promised them.’ So on I went. In these discussions we often talk about the importance of obedience to God’s laws. It’s good for our health, and it’s also how we get along better with each other. And I asked the question, ‘Which of the ten commandments affect our health? The usual answer - the seventh commandment, thou shalt not commit adultery. But in this case, a school teacher replied very quickly, ‘The fourth commandment.’ And I said, ‘What do you mean?’ And he said, ‘Well, God said we are to remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Our bodies need one day of rest a week. That is good for our health.’ Well, this man had no clue when he said that, that he was actually the voice of God speaking to me. And the Lord very clearly said to me, ‘You are a sinner. You are working seven days a week.’ And I said, ‘But Lord, I’m doing it for your sake.’ And he said, ‘That doesn’t make me happy.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, but there’s all this work to do on Sunday. It’s all for your glory.’ And He said, ‘It doesn’t glorify me for you to destroy your own body.’ So, I had to confess my sin. I did it quietly, while the rest were carrying on. And then asked for help to change. And that, I truly believe, was the beginning of my own healing process. It was a year later that the virus, the Hepatitis B, disappeared.

Mike: Veteran missionary, Dr. Dan Fountain, sharing with us a favorite passage of scripture.

Dr. Swenson: We have incredible frequency of nerve endings in the skin, and it’s for pain, for example, as well as just any pressure sensation, as well as temperature. Without those nerve endings, for example, without the pain fibers, it is clearly shown in medicine that it would be devastating. We would lose our fingers. We would lose not only the use of our fingers, but actually they would be destroyed by trauma or heat of cold or something like that. So pain is a gift to us, quite honestly, the pain fibers that we have. The touch fibers are very sensitive. You know with your eyes closed, you can detect very delicate differences in touch, so it’s a very remarkable organ. When I see the body, it is not a cosmic, random accident. It is a miracle to me. When I see a little baby born into the world, it is a miracle. And I think not only 2000 years ago, the time of Christ, when he breathed in and breathed out, that I am now sharing that respiration with him. When I breathe in and breathe out, 150 million air molecules with every breath. The other thing that I think about is the red blood cells. We have so many red blood cells in our body, that if you took those out, and put them side by side, they would go around the earth at the equator four times also. But I think about God, as he was setting up the body and he was setting up the red blood cell, did he pause maybe for a second, realizing that Jesus would have to shed these in the payment for sin? When we think about Jesus’ suffering and the shedding of blood, we know that, even in the first teaspoon of blood, that he shed one red blood cell for every human being that has ever lived. I don’t know if that is important to God or not. It’s important for me to think about it. I think about the red blood cell that came out and had my name on it. And one divine red blood cell is sufficient to pay for my sins. I mean, because divinity is so incredibly precious and so valuable, of infinite worth, and that was enough. And yet, that was very personal. And I choose to think of it that way.

Mike: Dr. Swenson believes the complexity of human biology and human chemistry are a clear and compelling argument for divine creation. As the Bible says, man is fearfully and wonderfully made.

Dr. Channell: One of the things that I find interesting is that sperm actually survive in the cervical mucous much longer than most people realize, where it serves as a repository or a bank, where sperm are slowly released into the uterus. And they can survive up to 48 hours in that environment. But it’s only at around the time of ovulation that that occurs. At every other time of the menstrual cycle, the cervical mucous is totally inhospitable to sperm, and sperm can’t make their way through it at all. So it’s just at the precise moment, or the time around that moment, that God has chosen to make that so the sperm can make their way into the uterus and meet up with the egg.

Mike: No wonder the Bible says that God’s children are fearfully and wonderfully made. Amazing details of human conception on today’s Explorer.

Dr. Harrell: Those primary teeth fit the mouth just right; right number and right size. Yet as we grow larger and bigger, and have need for new teeth, we get a completely new set in, which also fits the mouth just right, and is the right number and size. Interestingly enough, some of those permanent teeth follow the same position and path as the primary teeth before them, but because we get extras, they come in behind the primary teeth, so it’s not just a matter of having one for one. You have some that wait until the time’s ready for them to come in.

Mike: Dr. Harrell says that, although scientists have a number of theories, it still is not known definitively how your body knows when to abandon the temporary teeth in favor of a permanent set. As the Bible says, man is fearfully and wonderfully made. Taking a look at those gap-toothed smiles on today’s edition of Explorer

Dr. Beam: There is a whole cascade of chemical reactions that occur when injury happens. This is surgical injury or trauma or whatever. In surgery, the tissue that we go through we injure, it’s not just a very precise little knife edge thing, if you look at it at the cellular level. It extends back from the edge remarkable distances, particularly with some of the things we use where we use electrical coterie or something to get into the abdomen. Once the cells have been damaged, they release chemicals or enzymes that turn on a whole cascade of things; by doing this, this turns on this, which turns on this, and it goes on down, thirty, fifty steps. Each thing in that step is critically important for one aspect of either turning on a reparative system, or turning on a cleaning out system to get rid of the dead stuff that we have there. It turns on a protective system for cells that are partially injured, but not killed. And it all happens in a very precise sequence. The cleaning up process gets all the dead stuff out about the time that’s beginning to come to its completion. The reparative things are starting, but all of that is very early. The scar tissue as it is being formed, starts out as one form of scar tissue, it’s a very plastic kind of scar tissue, and then as stresses, or tensions, form in the wound, or in the incision, the scar tissue lines up so that it will be most strong in the area of its need. It’s just beautiful the way all that happens, and you can look at that with microscopes, or even with electron microscopy to see how these little filaments are being laid down, and initially it’s very disordered, but then it comes out as a very ordered system. Very impressive!

Mike: As a Christian believer, Dr. Beam sees the human body as clear and compelling evidence of God’s creative genius. As the Bible says, man is fearfully and wonderfully made.