Good Morning!! Thank you all for your prayers and kind support this week! May God bless you as you each deserve! As always when we speak on what we might put in our mouths, there has been quite a few letters stating God "changed his mind". The answer here is if He did, He would NOT be God! Mal 3:6 Acts 10 and 11 are not hard to understand if you read them. It is when you try to take them out of the context of the passage when things get difficult for you. Think, Peter had the vision, would not he know what they meant?

Last week we talked a bit about the temple your body is and how we ought to refrain from polluting it. You know, the body was designed by God to repair itself and God also designed the fuel! As we read in Gen 1:

"And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb producing seed that is on the whole earth, and every tree in which is the fruit of a tree producing seed: it shall be food for you;" Genesis 1:29 Darby

but we see He even changed that diet slightly for the animals!

"and to every animal of the earth, and to every fowl of the heavens, and to everything that creepeth on the earth, in which is a living soul, every green herb for food. And it was so." Genesis 1:30, Darby

This was the original diet for both man and animal which has the breath of life in it! There was, you notice, no meat eating at all even for the animals before sin entered! There was no death before sin! Not even among the animals! We should note, heaven will be the same way! An interesting passage is Isaiah 6:

"The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the young lion and the fatted beast together, and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the she-bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the adder, and the weaned child shall put forth its hand to the viper's den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of Jehovah, as the waters cover the sea." Isaiah 11:6-9, Darby

Isaiah liked this picture of Paradise. Over in the 65th chapter where Isaiah is describing what happens AFTER he creates the new heaven and new earth, (verse 17) we read,

""The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox; and dust shall be the serpent's meat. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith Jehovah." Isaiah 65:25, Darby

As God designed it, nothing was harmful to His creation. It all functioned in complete peace and harmony. Only after sin entered the picture, did death and sickness arrive.

If God designed our diet, how and why was it changed? Well, we all know the story of the original sin. The downfall of man came from what? Yes, his disobedience in eating something God had told him not to! Man's appetite has been a problem right from the very beginning hasn't it? If anything this has become worse and much worse today in that we continue to eat those things God has told us not to! Right after the flood when there was little vegetation on this earth yet, man was allowed to eat meat. Gen 9: Notice and skipped over by most churches, there were seven of each clean animal and the unclean only were two by two which entered the ark with Noah! Gen 7:2-3 Had Noah or his children have eaten unclean meat here, that animal would have ceased right then to exist! There were only the two! And there are no offspring unless there ARE two!! God created male and female to be a complete unit and without this unity, whatever creature dies and is no more! Some state the clean and unclean laws came into existence during the Exodus but as shown here, mankind already knew which were clean and which were unclean didn't he? Like the Ten Commandments, these dietary laws were given Moses because people forgot and polluted themselves, not because they were something new. God had NOT changed here! He can't change and retain His being God! Man changed. It is ALWAYS man changing! God during Moses' time was trying to bring His people back to Him. Back in-line with His unchanging self! He declared all these things again so people could know and correct where they were falling short. Nothing God does is ever done in anything but an act of love and is always done with His creation's well being in mind. Like your child when you are raising him you attempted to keep things which would hurt him away from the child. Not because you are a tyrant but because you knew that thing would hurt him. Do we think our loving Father is any less? As we fall farther and farther away from God we do more and more things detrimental to our own well being! It is a symptom of sin. Our diseases arrive because of the things we do to ourselves which are NOT in line with God's plan.

I'm going to pick on one unclean meat here in particular as even the USDA won't grade it because it is too filthy. This one is used very much in pagan cultures and even in Biblical times was offered to idols. It is the meat of the pig. We all know it is dirty. We even use the terms when referring to people sometimes, "filthy as a pig", "their place is a pigsty", and even "acts like a pig", so we know the status of this animal even when we claim we don't, don't we? Interestingly, in the United States a study has been done by looking at the time of autopsy as to what is the cause of arthritis. Did you know that 80 percent of the people diagnosed with arthritis don't have the disease at all but suffer from trichinosis! The symptoms are the same!! The paracite which can live through even cooking produces arthritic like swellings and pain in the joints of humans. You would think since this is a known fact that people would avoid eating this meat wherever possible wouldn't you? But that is not the case! It seems people tend to eat it anyway in what is perhaps defiance. One interesting little point in this vein is the Jew when he falls away from the church, goes out of his way to be seen eating pork and will adopt also the wearing of pigskin gloves! It seems when we go against what God says, we don't stop until we are completely filthy! We should also keep in mind the little statement of Isaiah,

"For, behold, the LORD will come with fire, and with his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire. For by fire and by his sword will the LORD plead with all flesh: and the slain of the LORD shall be many. They that sanctify themselves, and purify themselves in the gardens behind one tree in the midst, eating swine' flesh, and the abomination, and the mouse, shall be consumed together, saith the LORD." Isaiah 66:15-17, KJV

I also quoted Isaiah 65:2-5 last week. We do these things right to God's face! We show no repentance, how is God supposed to be to help us with our having this attitude?

God did provide some clean meats but even these are being made deadly here in these last days! Echoli which is found in fecal matter, has contaminated even the hamburger in fast food places! And the "pure beef" USDA designation has been relaxed in hamburger to allow the inclusion of both horse and swine meats, as well as higher amounts of other filth!! (Mouse droppings, rodent hair) Just reading about it is enough to make one sick, much less eating it! It is about time for man to get back to God's original diet I think! Besides living an average of 8 years longer, vegetarians tend to not be sick nearly as often, tend remain productive right up until their death, and suffer from less than a fifth number of cancers! One other interesting point, it seems two additional years are added to the subject for each generation of vegetarian parents as well! I wonder what it would be like if the whole family tree was vegetarian? Perhaps we would be back at the 120 years God allowed!! It would seem God did indeed know what was best for us after all but we have never grown up enough to know it! I want to mention here that not all vegetarians are perfect in their habits as well, some smoke which we all know shortens life, some in too many sweets, some overindulge in alcohol, some over eat even vegetables! What we want to look at and question in our lives, is any thing which is contrary to God's plan! Perhaps it is past time to do much good for us to help cleanse the temple, but the least we can do is not continue to pollute it!

'Till next time, may God be with you each day and lets joyfully look forward to going home!

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