Category: Health and Healing

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Swine in the Father’s House

Bacon Sandwich

What Western Christian church doesn’t understand is that the Torah is a set of rules and guidelines to live by that make you “different” than the peoples and nations around you. Its a code of conduct. Follow it and you will be blessed. Don’t follow it and you will be cursed (Deut 28). It is about living different, which makes you distinguished, which makes it more obvious that you are a child of Yehovah, the one true God of the universe. This is NOT legalism. This is about your identity- who are you? Are you a child of the devil and the world or are you a child of the Kingdom Yehovah and of another world?

So, eating that bacon swine flesh sandwich may not send you to hell, but it sure identifies you with the kingdom of this world. It separates you from God and the people of God. If you eat it, you miss out on the blessings of obedience. It’s your call. Blessing or curse? Obedience or disobedience. Satisfy the cravings of your flesh and eat the same flesh of a pig that was used to desecrate the Lord’s temple or walk in the Spirit?

It’s Hanukkah, so this becomes even more relevant as I am writing this. Antiochus Ephiphanes slaughtered a hog on the altar in the Lord’s temple and erected a statue to Zeus to desecrate it. The Bible says our bodies are now the temple of Holy Spirit. Hummm. That should make us think.

So also picture this-

In Luke 15:11-32, the parable of the Prodigal Son. The people of the day, no doubt, knew exactly what Yeshua was saying. Its a picture of a father and two sons. The father is, of course, Father God. The two sons are the two nations of Israel- Israel and Judah. Israel are the northern tribes that were scattered in 722 BC and never came home. They are the “lost house of Israel” (Matthew 15:24).

That is the son who found himself in the pig pen. The other brother who stayed home is the southern tribes of Judah, Judah and Benjamin. Judah came back home from Babylon and rebuilt the temple with Ezra and Nehemiah. These are the “Jews.” (Judah = Jews) They have been given charge to hold the scepter of the law for all these centuries (Gen 49:10). Its been their duty. Without them, we would have no Bible. Without them there would have been no Hanukkah. Without them there would be no nation of Israel today. Remember, Yeshua IS a Jew.

So now, with that big picture context lets ask the question, When the prodigal son (who basically represents us) comes home and embraces his father who is Yehovah God and eats the fatted calf, then reconciles with his brother who stayed home and tended the farm, will he also want to slaughter a hog on his father’s kitchen table? That is what the pagan Christian who comes back home is demanding saying, Father we love our bacon sandwich and want to bring it into Your house.”

What Peter’s vision was about in Acts 10 was “receiving” the people who had been eating unclean foods and opening the door of salvation to them. The blood of Yeshua was making the people clean. This matter does not mean that the food laws changed. It means Father will receive you no matter what you ate because of the blood of Yeshua. Remember, Yeshua said He did not come to strike a single letter from the Law (Matthew 5:18). And we must realize Yeshua would never contradict Himself. So…

The big question is, (check your heart) Do you still want to bring your bacon lover’s sandwich into the Father’s house? Do you think shrimp cocktail and lobster will be served at the Wedding Supper of the Lamb?

The Gentile church who is “Israel” needs to reconcile these big picture truths that are much deeper than just our salvation and adoption and “get out of Dodge” for free.

This may be the first time you have recognized that bacon or lobster or that shrimp cocktail or catfish dinner might be an idol in your life and you never realized it. Selah.

Please take a few moments and pray about this before you immediately dismiss it.

Grace and love.

HalleluYah!

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Food and Health Reform is Essential

Let’s see if I have this partially right-

We have a food industry that is catering to cravings and food addictions and gluttony. Then, we have people who are not taking responsibility for their own health in the way they eat and consume whatever their flesh is craving. “All I care about is that it tastes good.”

So, over a few decades we have a population of gluttonous people who are sitting in front of the television with their convenience comfort foods and automated lifestyles instead of physical exercise. We’re also becoming entertainment junkies to boot. That is another subject all together. This has created a very lazy, sick, debilitated population who are expecting the big government to take care of them when they get sick. Then, they wonder why the medical care system is overwhelmed. Then, they wonder why the insurance system is overwhelmed and unaffordable.

Then, for the doctors, they see 150 obese whiner cry babies every week begging for their problems to go away with a pill or a potion and pretty soon you have burned out doctors that become AMA protocol robots. How many doctor visits have you been to where the wait time is an hour or two past your appointment time and your exam room experience is answering questions to a tap and a click on the computer screen and the doctor does a 5 minute drop in?

(Wes Stafford, Wednesday, May 28, 2008) The waiting room fills long before patients are seen Wednesdays at the Helen M. Nickless Health Clinic, 1458 W. Center Road, Hampton Township.

The system will never fix itself. In fact, it will eventually implode unless “we, the people” do something about it, or it evolves into complete socialized medicine and we will have lost all our individual freedom. Satan wants this to happen. He wants you to be sick, sluggish, low energy- he wants you to die young. He wants you dependent on “the system.” It will make you easy to control and manipulate. Eventually, like the other mandate that is going around these days, there will eventually be a mandate for other new technology efforts to identify you, monitor you and control you with some sort of implantable device.

It’s time to preach about gluttony and the lack of self control in the church. It’s time to teach about individual responsibilities regarding our health and well-being. That will go over like a lead balloon to a “if it doesn’t taste good, I’m not going to eat it” generation.

It’s time for the food industry to be overhauled from the farm to the market. It’s time for junk food manufacturers to have a major wake up call and pay fines for selling poison to a stressed out, dependent, hungry, consumer generation.

Come on folks, what else are we going to do besides sit there, get fat and sick, pop pills and die?

It’s up to us to do something about this.