Most Bible-believing Christians will affirm that God created the universe. And rightly so! As Designer of every living thing, YHVH only has the Sovereign right to declare what is right and wrong–sinful and righteous. As both designer and manufacturer, God dictated the instruction manual from which we are warned not to add or take away. Only He can determine right and wrong. The horrendous health hazards associated with sodomy proves it’s wise to adhere to those instructions. (Leviticus 18:22).
So why do so many Bible-believing Christians ignore—no, that’s too mild—defy the Creator’s instructions (TORAH) regarding what we should and should not eat?
What does Torah say about swine?
And the swine, though it divides the hoof, having cloven hooves, yet does not chew the cud, is unclean to you. Their flesh you shall not eat, and their carcasses you shall not touch. They are unclean to you. (Lev 11:7-8)
Here we have the Creator, the designer of all living things, the only One who really knows how everything works, forbidding what we can eat. Is this God, who so loved us that He gave us His only begotten Son, now depriving us of a tasty meal? Is He being mean? Or as the designer of all living creatures is He trying to protect us?
But Today We Know How!
“You mean trichinosis? WORMS!” most Christians will say. “We know to cook pork all the way now, so it must be okay. Right?”
WRONG!
If that’s the only reason God, the designer, doesn’t want us to eat pork, He would’ve so instructed. He didn’t! Besides, who wants to eat well cooked worm?
THE PIG IS A SCAVENGER.
It will always be a scavenger. Scavengers eat everything. Feces! Maggots! Dead things! God designed them as garbage disposals for the environment. Do you wash dishes in your toilet?
Swine, like vultures, eat dead things, rendering them compost. That’s what God designed pigs for. Christians who think that it’s okay to eat swine are telling God He’s wrong. It’s like using Pepsi in your fuel tank. Go ahead. You’re under grace!
A pig absorbs toxins like a sponge. Perspiration removes toxins from the body. Pork is thirty times more toxic than beef because pigs don’t sweat. Pigs are so toxic you can hardly kill them with poisons. They eat rattle snakes!
While it takes 8 to 9 hours to digest beef or venison, pork is digested in 4 hours. Digesting beef or venison releases any toxins at a slower rate, allowing for filtration by the liver. Pork, however, releases a much higher level of toxins within a shorter period of time. Cows, those creatures our all-knowing God designed to be food, have a complex digestive system. With 4 stomachs, it takes over 24 hours for cows to digest grass.
How can Christians claim to trust God for their salvation when they won’t trust Him with their diet? He said don’t eat swine; they say it’s okay! Is that Faith?
Scavengers are still scavengers! Clean and unclean still exists, just as it did before God codified His Law through Moses. That’s how Noah knew what God meant when He told him to take seven pair of clean animals, but only one pair of unclean animals onto the ark. Noah didn’t say, “What do you mean, Lord? What’s this clean and unclean business? Animals are animals. Right?”
Wrong. Noah knew the difference between clean and unclean animals.
So what about Genesis 9:3?
“Every moving thing that lives shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things.”
Contrary to what many claim, the scripture above does not permit eating those animals designed by God to be scavengers. God does not change. His Law is eternal. It does not change.
Scavengers are not clean. Therefore, they are not to be consumed as food. The verse simply adds clean animals to man’s diet as green herbs already were, since it would take some time post flood to grow crops. That is why God had Noah take seven pairs (male and female) of the clean animals aboard the ark and only one pair of every unclean beast. Or do you suppose God is capricious? He allows unclean animals to be eaten after the flood, and then changes his mind later with Moses?
No! God is not capricious! He is unchangeable. Otherwise it would be okay to eat swine after the flood, an abomination from Moses to Yeshua, then okay again, but only until the end time when it will once more become an abomination. Or haven’t you read 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’s flesh, and the abomination, and the mouse, shall be consumed together, says the LORD. For I know their works and their thoughts: it shall come, that I will gather all nations and tongues; and they shall come, and see my glory. (Isa 66:15-18)
But, We Receive with Thanksgiving!
What about 1Timothy 4:4? It says, “For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving.”
As explained in my article Error of the Lawless, one verse does not contradict the entirety of scripture. But let us read this in full context.
But the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, cleaving to deceiving spirits and teachings of demons, in lying speakers in hypocrisy, being seared in their own conscience, forbidding to marry, saying to abstain from foodswhich God created for partaking with thanksgiving by believers and those who know the truth. Because every creature of God is good, and nothing to be thrust away, if it be received with thanksgiving; for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer. (1Ti 4:1-5)
The above passage refers to “those who depart from the faith,” that faith which was handed down to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Those departing from it cleave to the teachings of demons that forbid marriage and teach men to abstain from the foods God created for believers who know the truth. God’s word is truth, Leviticus 11 is truth! Timothy goes on to say that every creature of God is good (to eat), but notice there is an if! If it is sanctified by God’s word! Swine has never been sanctified, which means set apart as food by God’s word. It is unclean!
So what is Timothy talking about?
Timothy is warning against Gnostic teaching. Gnostics believed all matter was evil. They forbade marriage and taught followers to abstain from food.
What about Peter’s vision?
Didn’t God pronounce all animals clean?
No! It was a vision using the symbolism of unclean animals, but it had nothing to do with changing dietary law. It had to do with abolishing the man-made Oral Law of the Pharisees that forbid Jews from keeping company with Gentiles. Peter interprets the vision correctly in Acts 10:28:
“Then he said to them, “You know how unlawful it is for a Jewish man to keep company with or go to one of another nation. But God has shown me that I should not call any mancommon or unclean.”
But Acts 15: 20 says:
Gentiles don’t have to follow the LAW, except for abstaining from the pollutions of idols, fornication, things strangled, and blood. Right?
WRONG AGAIN!
No one in their right mind can believe that Acts 15:20 means Gentiles do not need to follow any other of God’s Laws? What about murder? What about stealing? They aren’t one of the four. Remember that verse 21 goes on to say “For Moses of old time hath in every city them that preach him, being read in the synagogues every Sabbath day.”
Some Pharisees were telling new Gentile believers that they were not saved until they converted to (Parasitical) Judaism as proscribed by their oral tradition. They falsely taught it was necessary to adhere to their man-made traditions to make their salvation official. The apostles knew better. They knew that God had already offered salvation to them through faith and given them His Holy Spirit. But they also knew that anyone fresh out of Pagan worship needed to immediately abstain from idols, fornication, eating animals that had been strangled, and from eating blood. These were all things practiced by Pagans. But they are forbidden in God’s law.
Sabbath Instruction
The Apostles did not want to overwhelm them with all of the law God gave Moses! They realized that these new believers would go to synagogue every Sabbath where they would hear the Law of Moses being taught. They could learn the same way new believers learn today, over time.
God is not capricious! He is the designer of every living thing. Everything has a purpose to fulfill. Those who hate God defy His purposes. So before you condemn men who leave “the natural use of the woman and burn in their lust one toward another” (Rom 1:27), ask yourself do you not do the same when you leave the natural use of a scavenger and burn with lust for that ham sandwich?
In closing, let me ask this? What would God, who changes not and whose word is eternal, think of swine’s blood on His altar? Remember, you are the temple.
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Any Comment on what Yeshua stated:
Matthew 15
King James Version (KJV)
10 And he called the multitude, and said unto them, Hear, and understand:
11 Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man.
12 Then came his disciples, and said unto him, Knowest thou that the Pharisees were offended, after they heard this saying?
13 But he answered and said, Every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up.
14 Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.
15 Then answered Peter and said unto him, Declare unto us this parable.
16 And Jesus said, Are ye also yet without understanding?
17 Do not ye yet understand, that whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the belly, and is cast out into the draught?
18 But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man.
19 For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies:
20 These are the things which defile a man: but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man.
Yes, John, I have a comment. Don’t take scripture out of context. To understand what Yeshua was saying you must go back to verse 1. It reads: Mat 15:1 Then came to Jesus scribes and Pharisees, which were of Jerusalem, saying,
Mat 15:2 Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? for they wash not their hands when they eat bread.
Mat 15:3 But he answered and said unto them, Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition?
In verse 11 when he says “Not that which goes into the mouth defiles a man; but that which comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man,” Yeshua is talking about the ceremonial hand-washing that is part of the oral tradition. He is NOT referring to HIS eternal law. To assume that he was is to assume the Scriptures are a bunch of contradictions. He just said in 5:17-20 that not one jot or tittle would pass from the law. That includes Leviticus 11. I hope this clears up the confusion.
We decided to eat only clean foods about ten years ago and have not regretted it for a moment! It is such a pleasure to serve YHVH!
Amen!
The biggest “duh” I ever received regarding “swine” was the realization that most Christians who celebrate Easter (another pagan origin holiday) eat ham for their celebration meal of the resurrection of “Jesus”. If that isn’t a slap in the face of the Torah observant Jewish Messiah Yeshua, I don’t know what is! They don’t realize that they are participating in the evil deeds of darkness and sharing in the pagan belief that “Tammuz” the son of the Babylonian god and goddess was killed by a boar (swine) and that the 40 days of lent leading up to Easter are the 40 days of Tammuz in which the pagans mourned the death of their “god” and so they would eat swine flesh in remembrance of Tammuz, not the resurrection of Yeshua! Of course when the Feasts of YHVH were done away with, so much was lost! Father forgive us, for we have been ignorant of our defilements! Please read the entire chapter of Ephesians 5 for perspective on these subjects. “For you were once darkness, but now you are light – walk as children of the Light”!… “And have no fellowship with the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but rather expose them..” Thank you for so graphically exposing the truth.
Thank you! Yes, eating, of all things, swine for Easter is a finger in God’s eye! Yet most Christians just don’t get it, or don’t WANT to get it is probably more like it. But, praise Yah, more and more are coming back to TORAH!
I as a Christian have never realized that it was wrong to eat pork, or the other foods that are listed in Leviticus..I sincerely believed that God had cleansed these animals. I have already resolved to stop eating fish, because of the radiation in the oceans, but now my resolve is to follow the laws of God, and not eat those foods, because I love the Lord, and not because of the poisons. I also never realized that swine were so unclean. I will now do as the Lord says an abstain from the foods that he calls unclean. I truly believed that when God lowered the sheet of food before Peter, that he was talking about people, not food, as I’ve been told in Church that God cleansed the foods, as well as people. This is just one more bit of confusion that I have about the Bible and what is being taught in Churches these days.
Lorral, thank you so much for sharing. Following God’s instruction is truly a blessing, not bondage. Yah be praised!
Like the article, Christine. It has been almost a year now me and my husband have been pork free. We keep Torah now including the dietary laws of YHVH. This has been the best thing ever in our lives, now we know the truth about keeping the instructions of YHVH. Shalom
Thanks for sharing, Sharon. It is a blessing, isn’t it? I didn’t say so in the article, but when I first decided to be obedient I did it as a sacrifice of love. But over the past five years I can tell you it is no longer a sacrifice, but a joy because I know that God knows so much more than I do. I will not eat those things He did not design as food for man any more than I would use laundry detergent in my fuel tank.
Blessings,
Chris
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