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Pork
Should We Eat Pork?
Health and Longevity
In Exodus 15:26 and Deuteronomy 28:58-61, God promised Israel that if
they failed to obey him, he would inflict them with diseases, but he
also made it known that he is master healer. In Proverbs
3:1-2, we see that obedience to God's word yields long life, and in
Proverbs 4:20-22, we see that obedience of God's commands will yield
good health. What is meant by this long life and health, and
what commandments is he referencing? Is this just a
superficial promise that we should do the best we can to please God,
and He will in turn supernaturally provide us health and longevity?
The Dietary Laws
In fact, these God is speaking here of some specific commandments and
some specific responsibilities. The laws to be obeyed are the
dietary laws in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14:3-21, and the health
and longevity are the physical results of the conscious decisions of the
people to obey these dietary laws.
Christians today are also to have good health and longevity (3 John 2),
and, of course, we are to take care of our bodies. However, are
Christians subject to the dietary laws as were the Jews? We
are not under the law, but under grace (Romans 6:14). Can we
then safely ignore God's dietary laws?
Well, these laws were not given for ceremonial reasons like the
Levitical sacrifices. They still apply to us today to the
same degree that they applied to Israel, in that if we obey them, we
will have healthier bodies. The Book of Hebrews explains that
we do not need to offer sacrifices anymore, because Christ was the
only sacrifice we need. However, the dietary laws were not
rescinded with the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. They
still apply to us in principle as God's guidelines for good
nutrition. The cross did not change the nature of the animals
addressed in the dietary laws, nor the nutrition or digestive systems
of man. There is no repeal of the dietary laws in the New
Testament, and thus they transcend the dispensations.
Some have argued that the account in Acts 10:9-17 of Peter being told
by God to eat the unclean animals, tells us that the dietary laws are
canceled for us. However, this passage is dealing with God's
offer of salvation to Gentiles. He is declaring the people clean, not
the pig!
We will examine the credibility of these dietary laws in light of what
we have learned scientifically and socially. Although these
laws prohibit the eating of many animals such as camels and fish
without scales, we will confine our discussion to the pig, which is
also forbidden as food. Many of the following observations
were taken from a book by Rev. Elmer A. Josephson, entitled God's Key to Health and
Happiness, which Rev. Josephson wrote after becoming
interested in proper nutrition following a close call with cancer.
Beef
The pig falls into the category of animals forbidden as food because it
does not chew its cud. This is related to the inferior
digestion system of the pig. For example, a cow has an
extensive digestion system including an alimentary canal and a
secondary cud receptacle. The cow essentially has three
stomachs, each helping to refine the process of digestion by serving as
cleansing laboratories for the purpose of purifying the food.
Through this process, the cow's system is kept clean. The
cow's digestive cycle takes 24 hours, so the cow's food is not
converted into meat cells until its digestion has had 24 hours to rid
it of any contaminates. Since a cow eats mostly vegetable food, grass,
and hay, anyway, all of which are relatively clean, the digestion
system of the cow is more than adequate for cleaning its system, and
providing meat which is clean and healthy for human consumption.
Likewise, the chicken and the turkey have gizzards which purify their systems and their meat.
Pork
A pig, on the other hand, will eat anything, including slop, garbage,
anything rotten or decayed, manure, and even the cancer of other
pigs. Furthermore, they have but one poorly constructed
stomach, and very limited excretory organs. As a result, the
digestive cycle of the pig is only four hours, so the slop eaten by a
pig four hours ago has already been converted in meat cells, before
adequate cleansing processes could occur. Thus, the meat of a
pig is still filthy, perhaps more closely resembling four-hour old slop
than anything fit for human consumption. As an example of the
filthiness of a pig's system is that cattle become deathly ill upon
coming in contact with the saliva of a pig.
Scavengers
Why did God even create an animal with such an inferior digestive
system? The answer is quite simple. Not every
animal was created for the purpose of being consumed by man.
The pig was created as a scavenger, along with many of the other
forbidden animals such as catfish, shrimp, vultures, dogs, and rats.
Its purpose is to clean up the filth of the earth in order to prevent
the spread of diseases. Its meat was never intended to be
used for human consumption. It does not need an elaborate
digestive system like the cow because it doesn't need to keep its
system and its meat clean. By the very nature of what it
eats, its meat is poisonous, diseased, and deadly. Science
has shown that pork contributes to various blood diseases, tumors,
liver troubles, stomach disorders, and certain cancers. This
should come as no surprise once we consider the vulgar things that we are consuming when we eat pork.
Pigs often have running soars under their hooves through which greenish
poison matter will ooze when pressure is applied. The
inferior digestive system of the pig often causes its excretory
channels to clog, and the poison of the pig literally backs up, saturating all parts of the pig with poison.
There was a mink farm where the minks were routinely given cow livers
to eat. When the cow livers were replaced with pig livers and unknowingly fed to the mink, the mink died.
Snakes
A pig is the only animal of which a snake is afraid. The
snake cannot kill the pig by injecting venom into its system, because
the pig is so full of poison anyway. Instead, pigs routinely kill and eat snakes.
Israel
In 1962, it was found that the nation of Israel had the lowest death
rate of any nation on earth. We must attribute much of this
to the fact that neither Jews nor Muslims eat pork.
Unlike beef which spoils from the outside/in, pork spoils from the
inside/out. This allows for a much greater chance of unknowingly eating spoiled pig meat.
Worms
Among the health hazards of the pig are included the various parasites
that live in the pig's system. Pigs provide a home for more
than a dozen types of worms, some of which are microscopic, and others
which can grow to 18 inches in length. Among the worms found
in the pig is the deadly trichonosis worm, one mouthful of which can be
fatal. Studies show that even when pork meat was exposed to
temperatures up to 600 degrees, some trichonosis worms still survived.
Money
Why does our society not realize the dangers we have shown here
concerning pork? The answer is in dollars and
cents. (1 Timothy 6:10). First, people enjoy the taste of pig
meat, thus creating a demand. Secondly, the multiple births of mother
pigs makes for an attractive investment. Pigs often bear
eight or more offspring at a time, as opposed to a cow which usually
bears only one calf at a time. Thus, pigs can be multiplied and brought
to market more quickly. Thirdly, since a pig will eat anything, it can
be fattened on refuse, without the extensive cost of feed as with
cattle.
Conclusions
Science has proven that the dietary laws of Moses are scientific. These
laws apply to Christians today as they did to the Hebrews. In light of
all we have learned scientifically, when 2 Corinthians 7:1 tells
Christians to avoid unclean things, pork must be excluded as a proper
meat for consumption. If you have to choose between eating pork and
eating horse meat, science seems to be telling us to choose the horse
meat. By the very nature of its diet of grass and hay, its meat is cleaner and probably more free of disease.
Owen Weber 2009 |
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