Clean and Unclean foods 
Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14

Also see www.detailshere.com/cleanoruncleanfoods.htm 
and http://www.iiw.org/net96/lectures/18.txt 

The dangers of eating unclean meat

And for  those of you wishing an out so you don't have to abide in this , I will provide one at http://www.truthorfables.com/Unclean_Meat.htm  I don't agree with that website but therein lies a scapegoat if that is what you are looking for.. The problem I have with the thinking that it is okay to eat these unclean foods is that every one of them has a scientific health reason for not eating them. In my opinion God was pretty smart, like making all bottom feeding fish without scales for example. Bottom feeders contain hundreds of times more toxic metals and harmful chemicals than fish who feed above the bottom who just happen to have fins and scales. 

Pork and dishes made from pork top many Americans' favorite food lists. Some people don't realize, however, that these foods come from an unclean animal — swine. The pig did not make the Creator's list of "clean" animals for a very good reason. Clean animals like cows and deer that chew the cud have an advanced digestive system that includes an alimentary canal and a secondary cud receptacle. They have three stomachs to process and refine their clean, vegetation-based food in a process that can take up to twenty-four hours.

Pigs or swine, on the other hand, never limit their diet to vegetation. They will eat anything they can find — including their own young and sick or dead pigs from the same pen. It's no wonder, then, that pork contains poisons and by-products that can harm you, including the destructive enzymes cadaverine and putrescine. For your health, stick to the animals that the Creator chose as his ideal food for humankind.

This hits us where we live.  "Start messing with my lifestyle,.........

Abstaining from unclean flesh is a valid and binding injunction in Christian life.  Health issues are part of it, but the distinction made is to not eat them because God determined it for us as a symbol of our being His, marked by Him, and of our being separate from the rest of the world.  The Saturday Sabbath is a sign between us and God, and so is the diet that he spelled out in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14. If you want to be marked by God; pay attention here - this is for real.

The following is from the  fundamentals book on Christian behaviour.  It doesn't give it the best treatment as it could, because the abstinence from unclean food  is a symbol of sanctification; but the main point is that the dietary code was laid down PRE-ISRAEL.  It is a universal injunction, OUTSIDE of the Levitical code, and is still binding in the New Testament church.

"Only after the Flood did God introduce flesh as food.  With all vegetation destroyed, God gave Noah and his family permission to eat flesh foods, stipulating that they were not to eat the blood in the meat (Gen. 9:3-5) or the fat.

  Another stipulation Scripture implies, is  that God told Noah  that he and his family were to eat only what God identified as clean animals. It was because Noah and his family needed the clean animals for food as well as for sacrifices (Gen. 8:20) that God instructed Noah to take seven pairs of each kind of clean animal, in contrast to only one pair of each kind of unclean, with him into the ark (Gen. 7:2, 3).  Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14 provide extensive expositions on clean and unclean foods.

By nature, unclean animals do not constitute the best food.  Many are either scavengers or predators -- from the lion and swine to the vulture and the bottom-dwelling, sucker-type fish.  Because of their habits they are more apt to be carriers of disease. God made the rules pretty specific. You can eat meat of an animal that has cloved hooves (in other words a split down the middle like cows, goats, sheep, etc) AND chews it's cud.  It has to satisfy BOTH conditions, not one or the other.  Horses and camels do not have split hooves and are not considered clean. Pigs have cloved hooves but do NOT chew their cud (cud chewers regurgitate their food, rechew it, and reswallow it - normally to a different  stomach). Pork contains a worm called the Trichina worm which gets into your muscle tissue and causes great pain. Even if you cook pork well, you are eating dead worms instead of live ones. Why was the hare or rabbit included as unclean food; as it does not have cloved hooves but has paws?  God said NOT to eat any meat from animals that walk on all fours that have  paws instead of hooves. Why is the rabbit or hare on the list of unclean foods? The rabbit re eats part of it's stool as it doesn't have separate stomachs to get the nutrients out of the food as does a cow; so it recycles part of it's feces in this manner for the purpose of extracting more nutrients from the food. Their digestive system is very inefficient, apparently, and it helps to send it through a few times and get out remaining food value.  But along the way they are also concentrating their own body's waste products. 

Leviticus 11:13 is very specific on what types of fowl you cannot eat; if it is not mentioned there, you can consider it edible. Most of us would not eat the species of birds mentioned there anyway.  God tells us not to eat flying insects that walk on all fours; with some exceptions such as the locust, grasshopper, and cricket which are okay to eat.  He tells us creatures that move around on the ground or on it's belly are not to be eaten; such as the rat, snake, weasel, or lizard.

The fish God said you can eat must have BOTH fins and scales; not one or the other, but BOTH.   This eliminates most of the bottom feeders that eat garbage off the sea or lake floor.  How interesting that he made the bottom fish to have skin but no scales, even though many have fins,  to go along with his word. What is the probability of that???  Species such as halibut, flounder, kelp greeling, octypus, cabazon, ling cod, and catfish all have skin but no scales and are on the no-no list along with shrimp, lobster, scallops, crabs, oysters, clams, snails, sea cucumbers,  - all feeding off the junk on the bottom of the sea.

Studies have revealed that "in addition to the moderate amounts of cholesterol found in both pork and shellfish, both foods contain a number of toxins and contaminants which are associated with human poisoning." In Washington where I lived; the red tide warnings every summer were broadcast to those picking and eating shellfish.  The red tide was a form of toxic plankton which the clams and oysters took in that provided a paralyzing effect on the central nervous system with a possible result of body system failure and death.

By abstaining from unclean foods, God's people demonstrated their gratefulness for their redemption from the corrupt, unclean world around them (Lev. 20:24-26; Deut. 14:2).  To introduce anything unclean into the body temple where God's Spirit dwells is less than God's ideal.

The New Testament did not abolish the distinction between the clean and unclean flesh foods.  Some believe that because these dietary laws are mentioned in Leviticus, they are merely ceremonial or ritualistic, and so are no longer valid for Christians. Yet the distinction between clean and unclean animals dates back to Noah's day -- long before Israel existed.  As principles of health, these dietary laws carry with them an ongoing obligation."

See also : http://www.net98.org/discover/25healthy.html  

and  http://www.iiw.org/net96/lectures/18.txt 

and a really in-depth, more than you ever wanted to know about this subject, analysis  can be found  here

More on this issue of clean versus unclean foods:

Other cultures think differently and we get stuck in only our own logic.  If WE westerners had written this passage, we would have said, "For every creature [that God said we could eat] is good. . . "  This understanding was present without the saying.  To the Hebrews, unclean animals SIMPLY WERE NOT FOOD, any more than we would consider bear scat as food.  It just did not enter into their thinking that there was any debate or consideration of unclean animals as food.  This was never an item of discussion in the New Testament.
 
Did you note that in this same chapter there is a verse that I could use to do away with the notion of staying fit?  "Bodily exercise profiteth little. . ."  But do you think that is what Paul is here saying?  Nope.  Paul is concerned lest physical austerity or exercise of any kind should be made an end in itself, to the detriment of godliness of character.  In our day, we might say, "Physical regimens with intent to subdue the flesh by strength of self-will profit nothing to spiritual growth."
 
Okay, I digress. . .
 
Your quote below comes from verse 4, but did you not notice that verse 3 has already qualified it?  These false teachers (gnostics) who are coming into the *church are bringing in various heresies such as "forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, [and take special note WHICH meats they were saying to abstain from] WHICH GOD CREATED TO BE RECEIVED WITH THANKSGIVING . . . ."  As you pointed out, Leviticus 11 shows which ones are clean and unclean.  We are not in doubt about which ones God created to be received.
 
(*We should go into this at length, sometime, because Christians today follow so much "proof-text" false teaching that is derived from failing to understand the issues in the fledgling church of Paul's day. . .we totally lift it out of context and make it say that which is never intended. . .Peter himself, even at that time, commented on how Paul's teachings are hard and the unstable would twist their meaning. . so be careful in reading Paul. . he is an intellectual, philosopher, theologian, 'all things to all people' kind of guy)
 
The Gnostics believed all matter was evil, and that the human body, being material, must have its passions repressed and denied.  According to this theory, marriage became a concession to the lusts of the flesh, and was therefore sinful. 
 
For ceremonial, ritualistic reasons these ascetics considered the total prohibition of certain foods to be spiritually desirable.  The prohibition of certain foods on particular religious days may also be included in the apostle's warning.  [by the way, "meats" in the KJV, generally means "food," not animal flesh].
 
The study of these ascetics and their developing Gnosticism is quite interesting and once you know what is going on, a lot of stuff in Paul's writings makes perfect sense and the apparent contradictions are cleared up.
 
There is really no quarrel anywhere in the early church about eating foods declared unclean by Scripture.  The problem in Corinth was food offered to idols (1 Cor. 8), and before that, eating with unwashed hands (Matt. 15:17-20).  It was a question of ceremonial, ritual purity.  The false teachers' theories were "but rules taught by men" (Matt. 15:9).  The Jerusalem council addressed the problem of food candidly (Acts 15:20, 29).  It should be pointed out that the cross made no physical change in human beings or animals.  What the cross did for believing Gentiles was to purify "their hearts by faith" (Acts 15:9).  Peter gave an inpired interpretation of his vision of a sheet let down from heaven containing "all kinds of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles" (Acts10:12).  He said, "God has shown me that I should not call any man impure or unclean" (vs. 28).  Paul's counsel to Timothy had to do with the food restrictions of the Gnostics of his day, not with Jewish food restrictions.
 
The foundation of every man-made religion is the attempt to gain merit toward salvation through human effort.  It was not the Holy Spirit that actuated the false teachers' prohibitions but their desire to establish their own righteousness apart from Christ.  The Bible says not to be overscrupulous or make a fetish of wisdom (Eccl. 7:16) and this is exactly what the false teachers at Ephesus were doing.  This made them haughty, overbearing, arrogant, and authoritarian.  They felt quite competent to prescribe for others, even to commanding people to conform to their beliefs and practices.
 
On the other hand, the obedient, thankful child of God is full of gratitude for all God's marvelous gifts.  He is not indifferent about diet and health.  God's faithful peole live by the NT injunction, "Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God" (1 Cor. 10:31).  Christians are sober and self-denying, but never OVERLY so.

To Market to Market to Buy ...a Fat Hog?

by Katy Chamberlin
...It’s amazing how much confusion there is out there today regarding what is healthful food

The world is full of individuals who have fallen prey to all manner of infirmity, sickness and disease-sometimes merely uncomfortable, but more often crippling or even fatal-who, either in ignorance or with supposed superior knowledge, have disregarded the unchangeable health laws.

...Hogs! They were created as scavengers; as a rule they are meat-eating animals that clean up anything that is left dead in the fields, etc. If any animal should die in the field and lie in the sun until it is broken open and the maggots and putrefaction have set in, the swine or other scavengers will come and eat up the filth and putrid matter. Scavengers were never meant for human consumption.

...Scavengers, such as the swine, are the filthiest and most abominable creatures. In their very nature they are poisonous, diseased and deadly. The flesh of the swine is said by many authorities to be the prime cause of much of our American ill health, causing blood disease, weakness of the stomach, liver troubles, eczema, consumption, tumors, cancer, trichinosis, etc.

...The swine’s anatomy has but one poorly constructed stomach arrangement and very limited excretory organs generally. Consequently, in about four hours after the pig has eaten his polluted swill and other putrid, offensive matter, man may eat the same, second hand-off the ribs of the pig.

...John Johnson, a farmer of Williams, Iowa, speaks on this subject. He states that the swine in Iowa are principally fed on corn, but “will eat anything we give them. If anything dies, we throw it to the hogs. I have actually seen hogs chewing at the cancer of other hogs and these hogs are shipped to market. Many times cattle are infected from the incurable diseases of the hog called the ‘mad itch.’ It is transmitted by the hog’s saliva left on the corn, which cattle eat. The itching in the cattle becomes so intense they will run from stump to stump until they rub their skin from their mouths and soon die. When the saliva from the hog’s mouth will poison cattle in this way, how can hogs be fit for man to eat?”(1)

...Farmers know that when they are feeding cattle, it pays for them to keep hogs, so that the hogs can follow after the cattle, eat the filth from the cattle, and thus turn it into pork for the public market.

...Swine have “running sores” under their hoofs. If you ever get the opportunity to visit a farm that raises hogs, lift the front hoof of the hog, and, with just a little pressure, greenish matter will ooze out from between the toes. This is one small outlet for the various heinous poisons that the hog takes into his body. Occasionally this artery becomes stopped up, the poison backs up into his system, and greenish growths are formed in various parts of his body.

...“On a close analysis of this filthy scrofulous serum, or the ‘culture’ of its bacilli under varied conditions, it is seen to contain the elements of many dangerous diseases and combinations; yet how toothsome is pickled pig’s feet to ignorance, unbelief, and disobedience.” (2)

...Some may be led to conclude that if the hog was kept in clean quarters and given nothing but pure food to eat, its flesh would then be just as desirable for human consumption as the flesh of any other animal, but that just isn’t true. The naturally filthy hog could be forced into the most sanitary conditions, nourished upon delicacies, and still would be unfit for food due to the basic physiological functions of it system. For this reason, God states in the Scriptures, “It is unclean to you. Of their flesh shall ye not eat.”

...The Scriptures warn us about the diseases lurking in these unclean animals, (they are scavengers of the earth). These signals have been placed there for very good reasons. They are flashing red lights to keep us from impending disaster.

...During recent years discoveries by the medical establishment has brought to light reasons why God, thousands of years ago, condemned the hog as unfit for food. The microscope has revealed that the flesh of hogs is often infested with trichina worms, which when taken into the human body, multiply and begin to work their way through the entire system, even into the brain and heart This condition is known as trichinosis. Even today in America, the public is warned and advised to cook ALL pork well done. This is to make sure that the only trichinae worm you eat is a cooked one. But it is a known fact that heat does not guarantee the killing of all pork worms, The larva are very tiny and you can unknowingly swallow several hundred of them. Then when the natural warmth and even temperature of your body envelops them, they dissolve and become free to go about the task of growing and breeding further in your body. To suffer the symptoms of pork worm poisoning you need not eat but one pregnant parasite. If the number of parasites is sufficient, the body responds with symptoms similar to reactions to food poisoning. Later rheumatic-like pains may begin, or the worms may settle temporarily in the heart. Inflammation in the cardiac region may follow. In some cases the brain or nervous system may be disturbed, as though worms had invaded brain or nerves, which possibly they do. Even invasion of the muscles may be fatal if the worms are numerous enough.

...“In the pork which we Americans eat, there too often lurk myriads (countless numbers) of baffling and sinister parasites. They are minute spiral worms which scientists call Trichinella spirals. A single serving of infected pork-even a single mouthful-can kill or cripple, or condemn the victim to a lifetime of aches and pains. In the flesh of a pig, the trichinae are often so minute and so nearly transparent that to find them, even with a microscope, is a task for expert scientific inspectors…

...“Remember this: When you see stamped on a pork product the words, U.S. Government Inspected and Passed, those words do not mean that any official inspection whatever has been made as to whether this pork has trichinosis or not. It has merely passed the routine inspection given meat in general.

...“The trichina is just one worm found in the swine. There is a large round worm, the gullet worm, three kinds of stomach worms, a tiny hairworm, a hookworm, and the thornheaded worm, in the small intestine. There are several species of nodular worms and one species of whipworm in the large intestine, and the kidney worm. The large round worm can be as big as eighteen inches.

...“A special report given to medical personnel at a Doctors and Nurses Conference on Communicable Disease at the Wesley Medical Center, Wichita, Kansas, in 1962 said that one out of three people are infected with trichinosis.” (3)
“In a Colorado town pork sausage showing the trichina worms was taken by the federal pathologists from a peddler of fresh pork sausage after a family had been made severely ill from eating his product. One girl, age 18, was so ill that she was taken to the hospital where, on account of the heavy infestation of her diaphragm, her breathing was so bad that she had to receive oxygen inhalations three times a day to keep her alive. A small piece of muscle taken from her deltoid, or shoulder muscle, showed trichinae infestation. The family was at first diagnosed as having influenza, or muscular rheumatism. This mistake is probably often made in light cases of trichinosis, which probably affects about one person out of every four in this country.

...“In an effort to cull out the trichinae-infested hogs, or the worst of them, an attempt was made for a time to examine microscopically the tissues of each hog, by having a room full of microscopists examining bits of muscle tissue. The difficulty of this can be better understood when it is known that in Chicago alone there are two packing houses that can kill, dress, and pack six hundred hogs an hour each, which means an average of one every six seconds. This effort had to be abandoned as impractical and expensive, and so the Department of Agriculture, in a bulletin on trichinosis, says that ‘no practical system has yet been devised by which persons who eat raw or imperfectly cooked pork can be protected from the danger of trichinosis.’

...“In this same bulletin it is pointed out that in Germany, where microscopical examination of pork for trichinae is systematically carried out, there occurred in seventeen years 6,329 cases of trichinosis, 32 percent of which were from inspected meat that had been passed as free from trichinae infestation. To safeguard the consuming public, the government has prepared a poster for the use of the meat trade, warning the public to ‘cook pork and its products thoroughly.’ The reason is not given on the poster, but it offers to send an explanatory leaflet on request. It would not add to the attractiveness of pork as a food, nor would it tend to increase the sale of pork products, to inform the public bluntly that among garbage-fed hogs trichinosis infection is common, with a slightly decreased frequency among hogs in general. Garbage-fed rats have their tissues loaded with the trichina worms. Hogs eating such rats quickly become heavily infested with this loathsome disease.

...“As in all the wonderful instruction given by Moses, there was an excellent reason for his warning against the filth-eating hogs; and certainly those who do eat them should follow the government’s warning, for dead trichinae worms are preferable to live ones.” (4)


REFERENCES:

1. Elmer A. Josephson, God’s Key to Health and Happiness, (Fleming H. Revel Co., N.J., 1962), p 48.
2. The Defender, published in Wichita, Kansas
3. Laird S. Godsborough, Pork, Reader’s Digest, March, 1950
4. O.S. Parrett, M.D. Diseases of Food Animals, (Southern Publishing Association, Nashville, TN), pp 8-11.
5. (Also) Shahrazad Ali, How Not To Eat Pork, Civilized Publ, Philadelphia, PA, 1985.


Copyright 1999 - Katy Chamberlin. View more health articles by Katy's at Freeedom of Health.

 
      In Genesis we are told that God made man in His own image and likeness (Gen. 1:26), and immediately gave man the following dietary guidelines: "And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat." (Gen. 1:29).
      Man's first diet did not include any animal products, but only plant foods like seeds, grains, and fruits from the garden. After man sinned, he was driven out of the Garden of Eden and the herb of the field (vegetables containing minerals, antioxidants, and phytochemicals) were added to his diet (see Gen.3:18).
     In Genesis 9:2, 3, since "every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground" because of the great flood (see Gen 7:23), God made a provision and gave man permission to eat "every moving thing that liveth...even as the green herb have I given you all things. But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat." (Gen. 9:3). God, as noted by the language, added flesh to man's diet after the flood, just as He added vegetables after the fall. However, the provision only gave man permission to eat "clean" animals, and never their fat or blood. Leviticus 11 lists the specific "clean" animals God allowed for food and the  "unclean" animals he forbade man to eat, most of which are scavengers.     
      In Leviticus 11:2, God told Moses to "speak unto the children of Israel, saying, these are the beasts which ye shall eat among all the beasts that are on the earth." Here the Lord prohibited man to eat swine's flesh--things like pork chops, ham, bacon, pepperoni, and Jimmie Dean Pure Pork Sausage, fish that did not have fins and scales like craps, lobsters, shrimp, and oysters, and a number of other creatures such as birds of prey, etc. Why did God forbid His people to eat these "unclean" animals?
      I believe the main reason was for sanitary purposes. These creatures are scavengers and feed on the waste and filth of the earth, whether in the waters or on the land. Take the pig for instance. The animal is truly a scavenger and it will eat just about anything--from garbage to rattlesnakes. I have read that the pig doesn't sweat and tends to be frequently infested with the trichina worm. The trichina worm has the ability, science has discovered, to cross the blood-brain barrier. If it does and gets in your brain, the symptoms can be similar to that of a brain tumor. Misdiagnoses of a brain tumor rather than a trichina parasite have been reported.  One of my own employees was having headaches and a brain scan taken at U.C. Davis Medical Center. The scan which was done to rule out a tumor actually revealed two worms in her brain. Yuck! Now think for a minute--have you ever been told to cook pork well? For what reason?  The answer is to kill the trichina worms. Well, who wants to eat dead ones?
      Years ago in an issue of Health and Life, there appeared an article by T. C. Desmond--chairman of the Trichinosis Commission of New York. The article was entitled, "One in Six is Infected with Deadly Pork Parasite." In the article Desmond stated, "One out of twenty-five pork products purchased over the retail counter was found by the Pigcommission to contain parasites. It has been estimated that our present hog crop may provide us with 60,000,000 trichinae-infested meals. Another article stated: "The worms enter the human digestive tract as tiny, almost invisible cysts which digest and release the worms, so that they burrow through the walls of the stomach or duodenum to the bloodstream. The result is symptoms similar to food poisoning if the number of parasites is sufficient. Later may come rheumatic-like heart pain because of worms settling temporarily in the heart. Inflammation in the cardiac region may follow. In some cases the brain or nervous system may be disturbed. as though worms had invaded the brain or nerves, which possibly they do. Even invasions of the muscles may be fatal if the worms are numerous enough." Illinois Health Messenger
      A friend of mine who worked at a meat packing plant once told me that he would get infections in his finger followed by a red line was running up his arm just from handling bacon and ham. He also said, "On one occasion, hams were turning green and I was ordered to smoke them and package them for sale back East." He continued, "Another time the bacon was outdated and I was told to repackage the bacon and stamp a new date on the package and resell it." How gross and deceptive! Is it any wonder why the Lord said, "And the swine, though he divide the hoof, and be clovenfooted, yet he cheweth not the cud, he is unclean to you.  Of their flesh shall ye not eat, and their carcass shall ye not touch; they are unclean to you." (Lev. 11:7,8). 
      If you carefully examine the front foot of the pig, you will find a small abrasion. If you then press the pig's leg just above the abrasion, you will squeeze out a teaspoon of filthy matter. Some have called it "pork gravy." It is actually an outlet or drain for the dirty filth of which the pig's lymph system is filled. If you then carefully examine this filthy scrofulous serum, you will find that it contains many diseases, bacteria and viruses.  Pickled pig's feet anyone?
      God commanded us not to eat, or even touch, the dead animal, because pigs are high in fat, cholesterol, deadly diseases, and trichina worms! Yet, even with all the bad publicity about pork and the health dangers of eating the pig, the devil smiles as Americans feast on their dead bodies from head to toe. The pigs head is turned into head cheese (ears and tails inserted), his stomach is transformed into tripe, his intestines are used for sausage covers, his heart, liver, and kidneys are eaten, and his feet are pickled. Even his bristles are used in brushes and his skin for wallets and purses. In the end, men and women "squeal and grunt" from the pain caused from their perverted appetites and for eating what God said not to!   
      In the January 22, 1996 issue of U.S. News and World Report, the popular news weekly had an interesting article entitled, "Hog heaven and hell-Pig farming has gone high tech, and that's creating new pollution woes." The article said, "Last June 21, after heavy rains some 25 million gallons of feces and urine flushed from the buildings where pigs were confined...The reddish-brown tide, more than twice the volume of oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez, poured knee-deep for two hours across the highway between Whaley's re-brick bungalow and the First Church of God....The stinking slumgaullion drained into the New River where it killed virtually all aquatic life in the 17-mile stretch between Richlands and Jacksonville and left a stench for several days....Wastes from big pig farms also threaten well water and surface water with parasites, bacteria, and viruses. These include salmonella, streptococcus, giardia, listeria, along with avian botulism and cholera."  Would you like ham, bacon, or sausage with your eggs? This is the same reason fish were dying in Lake Erie years ago which authorities called "Fishteria." In fact, I it so happened that I was seated next to a Federal Inspector who just got back from inspecting the lake and shared his findings with me. 
       God made scavengers of the sea just as He made pigs and birds of prey to be the scavengers of the land. I remember at one of our cooking schools while I was addressing the subject of unclean meats, a man seated in the back row started waving his hand. After calling on him, he anxiously shared the following story. He told us how he used to catch crabs for a living and that his greatest catch was early in the morning right in the docks where the boats were kept. He soon realized the reason for the quantity of crabs in this location was because the boats were dumping their toilets filled with human waste into the water and the crabs were enjoying the feast! No wonder the Lord refers to fish without fins and scales as "abominations". I refer to crabs, shrimp, and lobsters as the cockroaches of the sea and shrimp as little garbage-gulpers that swim approximately six inches from the surface of the ocean to feed on the scum and waste that floats to the top. Certain shellfish, if caught and eaten during the months that end in "R" (September, October, etc.), can kill you. I can safely say the 21-Shrimp Special at Red Lobster for $7.99 is NO BARGAIN, and you can be certain I avoid Long John Silvers like the plague. Some people say they actually serve fish with their grease. One writer referred to shellfish as insects of the ocean. "After all, he said, "They have way too many legs."  
      Then there are the other little creatures that God has told us not to eat. As far as snails, I don't think I really even need to comment. We cringe whenever we crush them under our shoe or see them in the garden, but somehow they become a delicacy when these little snot balls are sautéed in wine and butter. All of these foods our high in fat and cholesterol and can contribute to arteriosclerosis.
      What will the Lord have to say about are food choices when He comes? One vivid answer is at the Second Coming of our Lord, Jesus Christ and has been recorded by the prophet 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 with 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 saith the Lord." (Isaiah 66:15-17). Strong words! Evidently those slain of the Lord will be the ones hiding in the garden just like Adam and Eve because they had eaten what the Lord said not to! Will we do the same?

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