Now we have the FOUNDATION on which knowledge of the physical details of sex ought to be built. We have now, the true, wholesome, clean and God-directed attitude as our approach to the biological facts. Now you may view the physical facts with right attitude, clean mind and profound respect and awe for the wisdom of God for having designed SEX for man's highest GOOD!
God's ways are PERFECT! They are the bestowal of HIS LOVE! We are ready now to proceed in receiving the necessary BIOLOGICAL knowledge. And even in this physical area, the true WAY is the WAY OF LOVE! Revelation provides the only right APPROACH.
There are TWO biological differences we need to understand. First is the difference between human and animal FEMALES. So far as reproduction itself goes, the physical process is the same in humans as in mammals. But beyond the purpose of reproduction there are vital differences.
All reproduction in animals and humans comes from a union of male and female elements or cells. Most all physical life is carried on by reproduction through sex. Walt Whitman wrote that we see "everywhere sex, everywhere the urge of procreation." Flowers, plants, vegetables; the whole of the animal kingdom from the smallest insect to largest mammal; and humans, too - all are male and female. There is an old Latin phrase, Omne ex ovo, meaning everything comes from an egg.
The beginning of reproduction - in mammals and humans - is from an egg, or ovum. The ovum always is produced by the female. Yet every ovum - human or animal - is infertile of itself. Life must be imparted to it by a sperm cell, called a spermatozoon (plural, spermatozoa), produced within the body of the male. Within the ovum is a nucleus, or dormant germ. After a sperm cell enters an egg cell, it unites with the nucleus, and then a new human or animal has been begotten, and is well on its way to developing into the same kind, or species, as its parents.
This fertilization of the ovum is called conception, or begettal. A woman in whom such conception has occurred is said to be pregnant. The growing state, from conception until birth, is called gestation, or period of the mother-to-be's pregnancy. Its birth is called parturition.
This physical process of reproduction is the same in mammals as in humans. But aside from the reproductive process, there are extremely important biological differences between human and animal females.
But in ANIMALS, there is no menstruation in the sense and manner it occurs in women. Female animals have instead, a rutting period. It does not occur with the frequency of humans. In dogs, for example, females have a rutting time about every six to eight months. In other animals, this occurs less, and in some more frequently. They produce an ovum only once in that period. At all other times, female animals are virtually sexless! The female does not allow the breeding act, and the male animal seldom attempts it. If one does, the female will fight him off with all her strength.
But at this rutting time, commonly spoken of by farmers as a time when the animal is "in heat," the sexual organs secrete substances which release an odor. This excites the animals automatically (instinct) to sexual intercourse for breeding.
In the animal world, SEX SERVES NO PURPOSE EXCEPT REPRODUCTION! No expression of love, in the human sense exists. The female sex organs in animals are absolutely DORMANT at all times, except during the rutting period. It would be utterly IMPOSSIBLE to arouse a female animal sexually, during all this long time from one rutting period to the next. Experiments in artificial insemination have proven that animals cannot be impregnated during the long periods between rutting times. With animals there is no marriage - no home - no family relationship. No husband-and-wife sexual LOVE relationship. Females are sexless between rutting periods!
Female humans do not have a "rutting period," or a mating period when they are "in heat." Between the age of puberty and the time of menopause - roughly between ages fourteen and forty-four, or a duration of approximately thirty years - women have the monthly period (approximately each twenty-eight days) when they menstruate. Female animals do not menstruate.
But when "in heat," the female animal is beside herself with desire for mating. And until she is relieved, by the fertilization of the ripe ovum from coital breeding by the male of her kind, she knows no rest. Actually, unless the female animal is soon bred, she will make every effort - run any risk - to attain pregnancy.
But in women, such things are utterly different! Women are never "in heat." The presence of an ovum in a Fallopian tube (when it is ready to be fertilized) makes little or no difference in either a woman's desire for, or reluctance against sexual intercourse. The Kinsey reports and other surveys of doctors, have shown that in many if not most women, no difference whatever is noted. In the minority, the difference in either desire or abhorrence is slight and merely relative. What does all this MEAN?
It means that, except for purposes of producing progeny, the functions and responses of sex in women are entirely different from sex in animals. Although marital coitus should never, of course, occur during menstruation (see Ezek. 18:6 and parallel scriptures), there is NO TIME during the month when a women is virtually sexless - when sex functioning goes dormant - when she is unable to engage in coitus with her husband. She is as much capable of coitus at one time as another.
God made WOMAN, as well as MAN, on a plane infinitely higher than animals! He created SEX in HUMANS as a means of bestowing reciprocal LOVE. He created women so that their sex organs may be used for the purpose of sharing LOVE when pregnancy is virtually IMPOSSIBLE. (At least, when the "rhythm method" advocates say it is.)
Animals DO NOT MARRY. The use of sex for breeding purposes in animals is not a matter of lovemaking! Can you imagine a big bull and a cow in passionate embrace, with their "arms around each other" - that is, trying to wrap their front legs with their hoofs around each other, trying to hug and kis and caress and make LOVE? If a circus could ever train a bull and a cow to put on such an act, it would be sure to bring the house down with side-splitting laughter. You may be sure the circus people would have thought of that - and done it - long ago, IF IT WERE POSSIBLE to train a bull and a cow to go into a LOVE embrace! Sex SERVES NO PURPOSE OF LOVE with animals!
With mammals, reproduction is brought about by the same process as in humans. But animals DO NOT MARRY. Animals do not have either the "philia" or the "Eros" love. Animals cannot receive the "agape" love from God. With animals, sex does not stimulate desire for LOVE - or for that matter for lust.
WHY do people refer to human LUST as "animal passion"? Why do some women say, "Men are BRUTES"? WHY INSULT THE ANIMALS? They do only what God set their brains to cause them to do BY INSTINCT
In women, sex is a LOVE stimulant. Women can, and usually do, engage in sex as a LOVE embrace, even at times when pregnancy is impossible! Female animals cannot. When a female animal is served by the male, there is NO LOVE EMBRACE - no lovemaking. The male mounts on the back of the female, imparts the fertilizing spermatozoa and departs. Human bodies were deliberately designed BY GOD in a different manner - so that sex in humans becomes an embrace of love.
How, WHEN and WHY then, did animal instinct disappear, and human MIND with its human SPIRIT, arrive on the scene? And if no intelligent GOD designed and created sex for definite PURPOSES, just how do we explain these amazing sex differences between animals and humans? And WHY such a total gap in fossil findings? WHY no intermediate species?
There is yet one other amazing factor the evolutionist will have difficulty in explaining. And that is what happens after human menopause. Women have been given a duration of approximately thirty years of fertility, during which they may become mothers. At an age averaging thirteen or fourteen, girls reach the age of puberty. At that age their breasts develop, for the purpose of supplying milk to newborn babies. Their sex organs mature, and their ovaries begin to produce ova.
These egg cells usually are produced at the rate of one every twenty-eight days, alternating from each ovary. If the ovum is fertilized in the Fallopian tube, a new human life has been begotten. It then continues on into the womb or uterus, where it is protected, nourished and gradually developed ready to be born after approximately nine months.
But if the ovum is not met by a sperm cell and fertilized - and some doctors say it has a life of only forty-eight hours after leaving the ovary - it dies. Meanwhile, with the releasing of each egg cell from an ovary, the uterus has been prepared to receive a fertilized embryo. But if fertilization did not take place, then the womb discharges a little blood through the vagina, gradually over a period of about 5 days. This is called menstruation.
Although the menstrual period occurs generally about every twenty-eight days, many if not most girls experience irregularity beginning at the age of puberty. Sometimes this irregularity persists for some years before a regular rhythm is established. Unless this irregularity is quite excessive, it need cause no alarm.
As soon as a girl begins her menstrual periods, she is physically capable of becoming a mother. But she is not yet, for some years, mentally and emotionally mature enough for motherhood. This physical capacity for reproduction continues for approximately thirty years. Then a woman reaches the "change of life" period, called menopause.
Here again the wise design of a loving, all-intelligent Creator is emphasized. After this stage of life, women simply should no longer carry the responsibilities of caring for babies and training young children. Children begin to "get on their nerves." Neither women nor men ever reach the age where they no longer enjoy children. You see, this is the age when they usually become grandparents. God has designed things so that all grandparents find their own grandchildren are just as sweet, lovely and dear to them as their own. They now have the privilege (barring geographical separation) of ENJOYING the grand-children - on occasion.
It is a real JOY to see the little tots come scampering into the grandparent's home. But after an hour, or two or three, it is somehow a welcome relief when their parents take the kiddies home. Grandma just simply ought not be burdened down too often with the care and responsibility of the children. So there was intelligence, wisdom, loving concern, in the designing hand of the Creator. When a woman reaches this stage of life, her ovaries cease manufacturing ova.
No SUCH CHANGE TAKES PLACE IN MEN. There is a mild sort of menopause in men - more mental than physical. But men may become fathers into a very ripe old age. BUT WHAT ABOUT EXPRESSING LOVE THROUGH SEX?
The Creator designed HUMAN sex (but not animal sex) as a means of expressing pure, righteous and undefiled LOVE. And God commands, "Husbands, LOVE your wives!" And also for women "to LOVE their own husbands." Now should a husband and wife stop LOVING each other, after age forty-five or fifty? NEVER!
And so a benevolent, loving GOD, designed women so that they are freed from exposure to pregnancies after this stage of life - BUT THEIR PARTICIPATION IN SEXUAL LOVE WITH THEIR HUSBANDS DOES NOT CEASE! Actually most women are either less reluctant (if inhibited by the dualistic repression), or else more desirous of sexual intercourse with their husbands after this period than they were before!
It is true that after this age, physical sex drives in both sexes begin to slow down gradually. The act of coitus will not be desired quite so often. But if the wife slows down, so also does her husband. So a God who had great outgoing concern for us - His own potential children - designed humans so that husband and wife continue to be endeared to each other by coitus all through life. And if that is true of expression of physical love, the giving of spiritual love, by those endowed with GOD'S Spirit, conversely should intensify and deepen as the years flit by.
MARRIAGE is ordained "until death do us part." One purpose of marriage is sexual LOVE. When the other purpose - childbearing - ceases, sexual LOVE continues to draw husband and wife ever closer in the bond of true LOVE - until death parts them! Can anyone contemplate these wonderful facts of the Creator's wisdom and love and power, without an emotional feeling of awe, reverence, respect and gratitude?
How WONDERFUL are the works of GOD'S hands! So we have these marked differences between human and animal females. These physical, biological differences, as well as God's WORD, prove that sex in HUMANS was designed for a PURPOSE not applicable to animals. It was designed for MARRIAGE - for FAMILY relationship - for expression of love between husband and wife. And sex provides the means for this bestowal of love "until death do us part," even into old age!