Epaphroditus - PH61-01

Advanced Bible Doctrine - Philippians 2:25-30

That raises for us the interesting question of physical healings in which so many people are so deeply interested in these days, particularly if you've just been to your doctor, and he tells you that you're dying of cancer. Suddenly, the interest in physical healing rises precipitously. The interest in healing in the New Testament was very great because it was a world filled with disease, and it was a world which lacked the medical abilities to help people that we have today. Therefore, when the gift of healing came on the scene in the New Testament church, it was indeed a godsend to the people who came in touch with the apostolic group.

The charismatic movement, formerly known as the Pentecostal movement in this country, has focused attention on the issue of instantaneous physical healings today. This indeed was a New Testament miracle. It was used to authenticate the new message delivered by the apostles relative to Christianity, and to introduce the new age of the church, and to make clear that God had now postponed the fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant which Jesus the Messiah came to fulfill. But because He was rejected by His people and murdered by them, God now postponed the fulfillment of that covenant and the introduction of the Millennial Kingdom.

Instead, God turned to the new thing of the church. After the church age has been fulfilled, and the believers are taken home to heaven, God will again return to his program for Israel and fulfill the Abrahamic covenant. Then the golden age of the millennium will come upon the earthly scene.

In order to establish this dramatic switch, this monumental change from what had been the order for centuries, it was necessary that God should interject Himself in a supernatural way in the lives of people in order to establish that what these men were saying was from God. They were not inventing these things. These supernatural interjections had to be verifiable things. If a man spoke in a language that he himself did not know, it was significant. It was obviously a supernatural act. If a man could take a person whose eyes were blind from birth and restore those eyes to sight, that was supernatural. It was a verifiable event, and no one could question it. Obviously, God was behind the worker who was performing such a miracle.

So Paul, we find, had the gift of healing, as was true of all the apostles. In Acts 19:11-12, we read that, "God wrought special miracles by the hands of Paul." I was interviewed on the charismatic radio program last week, and the rebuttal to that program came a week ago. The person who was refuting what I had said challenged that Paul had the gift of healing. He pointed out, when he finally did get around to this verse, that, "This verse doesn't say that Paul had the gift of healing–that Paul was able to heal people." However, I think that is pretty far-stretched, for you will see that verse 11 says, "God wrought miracles by the hands of Paul." Then verse 12 goes on and gives an example of one of those miracles by the hands of Paul: "So that." In the Greek, that is a little word which means "here's the result" of what Paul did with his hands: "From his body were brought into the sick handkerchiefs or aprons, and diseases departed from them, and the evil spirits went out of them."

However, if you should still have some questions after reading that, that Paul had the gift of healing, if you'll turn over to Act 28:8-9, I think this would have conclusively answered the question. And I'm sorry somebody didn't get a chance to call in on the phone lines to call his attention to these two verses.

Paul is on the island of Malta. He himself has just been bitten by a poisonous snake, and miraculously survived. There is a man on the island named Publius, a chief. He has a father who is sick. So notice Acts 28:7: "In the same quarters were possessions of the chief man of the island whose name was Publius, who received us and lodged us three days courteously. And it came to pass that the father of Publius lay sick of a fever and a bloody flux, to whom Paul entered in and prayed, and laid his hands on him and healed him." I don't know what else that means except that Paul had the gift of healing.

"So when this was done, others also in the island who had diseases came and were healed." Obviously, this was, by the context, presumably again by the hands of Paul. So I think there's hardly any doubt that Paul had the gift of healing. Now, you may say, "So why did this dean of this charismatic Bible school want to make such an issue with you over the fact that you had said, 'Paul had the gift of feeling?'" Well, because as we come to Epaphroditus here in our study of Philippians, we find that Paul expresses to us the fact that he had a concern at a certain point that Epaphroditus was going to die on him. This then suggests to us that something must have been out of order with Paul's ability to heal. Otherwise, he would not have had any concern. He would have known all along that he could exercise the gift of healing, and he would have healed Epaphroditus.

This is certainly the same thing that we found about Trophimus in 2 Timothy 4:20, that Paul had to leave behind at Miletus because he was so sick, and Paul could not take him along. That certainly does indicate to us that Paul, for some reason, who could do these marvelous healings on the island of Malta, could not heal his friend Trophimus, one of his apostolic party in the city of Miletus, but had to go on and leave him there to get well.

Well, the answer must be that something had happened, and Paul was no longer able to heal. This was indicating that, within the lifetime of Paul himself, as he came toward the end of his life, the gift of healing (the supernatural gift of instantaneous, verifiable, complete healing) had performed its purpose of verification of the New Testament message of Christianity, and now was phasing out. God never intended to go around using the gift of healing to remove disease and sickness from the earth. It was a sign gift of something that was taking place.

Well, the defense of the charismatics is that a person who had the gift of healing couldn't always use it at will. That is a second cop-out in order to cover their tracks. For it is obvious that charismatic healers today cannot instantaneously heal people at will. If you bring a person with cancer, I can tell you one thing beyond a shadow of a doubt. If you bring a person with cancer to a Kathryn Kuhlman or to an Oral Roberts, that person is going to die of cancer, unless, in spite of Kuhlman and Roberts, that person has what occasionally happens with cancer–spontaneous remission, where just for no reason, the doctors can't explain, the cancer reverses itself and leaves. That could happen under God's guiding hand as a result of your prayers. But unless that happens, I can guarantee you that if that person walks up to Kuhlman or Roberts with cancer, they will also leave with cancer. They cannot produce the healings.

So obviously, they have to say, "Well, it's only if God wills it. It's not up to me. It's not in my control to use it as I wish." However, I point out to you Matthew 8:2, where the Lord Jesus Christ was acting as the God man, but acting in the same pattern as did the apostles after Him, as a human being, exercising a supernatural gift. Remember that. Jesus operated as a man with a supernatural gift, functioning under the power of the Holy Spirit. This is just as you and I have a supernatural spiritual gift, and we function under the power of the Holy Spirit, whether it be the gift of teaching; the gift of ministering; the gift of administration; the gift of giving; the gift of faith; or, the other gifts, we operate under the power of the Holy Spirit, and we have ability to use those gifts as Spirit-filled believers. The Spirit of God uses us to use those gifts.

The Lord Jesus operated the same way. He was a man. The power of the Spirit of God enabled Him and directed Him to use supernatural abilities. So Matthew 8:2 says, "And behold, there came a leper to Jesus and worshiped Him, saying, 'Lord, if You will, You can make me clean.' And Jesus put forth His hand and touched him, saying, 'I will. Be clean.' And immediately his leprosy was cleansed." What Jesus did was the pattern of all spiritual gifts. There is no ground for suggesting that a person who has a spiritual gift cannot use that gift under his own volition. It is under his volitional control.

Obviously, if you go back to 1 Corinthians 14, you find some regulations given concerning the use of the gift of tongues. Part of those regulations is, under certain conditions, you are not to use the gift of tongues in a church service. Now, how could Paul tell people, "Under these conditions, you cannot use your gift," if he was not implying that they could, by their will, exercise that gift, which is what they were doing. So suddenly all over the auditorium, people were speaking in foreign languages; ignoring one another in a very unloving fashion; and, causing disorder and making the unbelievers look at them and say, "That's a bunch of crazy kooks there." Paul said, "I'm going to give you some regulations for the use of the gift of tongues." The first regulation is that a woman is not to use it. She doesn't have this gift. If she uses, it will be pure gibberish, like the priestesses down at the temple do.

Number two: when a person speaks in tongues in a service, the second thing that happens is that everybody gets silent, and you wait for somebody with the gift of interpretation to interpret that foreign language. If nobody has the gift of interpretation and speaks up and interprets that tongue, there are to be no more tongues in that service. That is because there is no interpreter present. Therefore, don't turn your gift on. As you read, it is quite obvious that a person could turn his gift on and turn it off.

The interesting thing about this is that even the charismatics today do not deny that they can use their tongues gift at will. When John Sherrill, who worked for Norman Vincent Peale on Guideposts magazine, was assigned the job of researching the tongues movement, and to write an article on it, one of the things that he did is reported in his book called They Speak with Other Tongues). One of the things you may read in his book, on his procedure in his examination, was that he went to charismatics and he asked them to speak in tongues. They would come to his office; he'd take them into a room; he would have a tape recorder there; they would turn the tape recorder on; and, the charismatic would turn on the tongues. He'd make all these recordings. He made all kinds of recordings of charismatics speaking in tongues, so that they could be analyzed by professors of linguistics at universities to see if there was any language structure to them. They found there was no language structure to them, and that they were a repetition of a few repeated syllables, in very distinctively American accents, by the way (in all of them, whatever the gibberish was).

These people made no denial that they could turn the tongues on any time they wanted to. Isn't it interesting that people who do not deny that they have control over speaking in tongues, when they elect to do so in a service, are so careful to want to deny that the gift of healing was operational at the command of the one who possessed it? Why is that? Why does Kathryn Kuhlman constantly say in a service, "I do not heal, but it is God the Holy Spirit who is healing you?" Well, that was true of the apostles. Obviously, they didn't heal. It was God who was healing through them.

The reason that Katherine Coleman and Oral Roberts constantly reiterate this is because when they get up in a service, the impression that is given to people is that God the Holy Spirit is going to move in this room, and he's going to strike like lightning. Kathryn Kuhlman says, "Some of you have come in sick. God the Holy Spirit is going to strike some of you, and you're going to go out of here well. I, Kathryn Kuhlman, don't know who it's going to be." Sometimes she will say in her meetings, "Wouldn't it be wonderful if all of you who came here today with illnesses would go home healed?" This is in order to keep establishing that she has no control over it.

Do you know why she has to do this? Because if she did not establish this, some character would come up to her with a child whose eyes are blind and say, "Would you restore my baby's eyes?" And she would be put on the spot to use the gift of healing that she claims to have. You could have gone up to Paul and Peter to do that, just as this man, the leper, came up to Jesus and said, "Jesus, if You will, You can you can take away this malignant disease I have." And Jesus said, "I will. It's gone." If you had gone up to Paul and Peter with that baby's blind eyes, they would have said, "I'll heal her." And they would have given that child her sight.

Understand this about the charismatic movement, and you will have caught a big important feature. The reason they stress, "I don't heal" is not because of humility, and not because they want to give God the credit. It is one of those tactics to cover their tracks. Therefore, you can never go up to a healer and say, "OK, if you claim to have the gift of healing, I've got a broken arm here. It's a nice compound fracture. You can see the bone here and the bone here sticking right through the skin. Heal it." You can never go up to them with this because they will say, "Well sir, that's up to God the Holy Spirit. I can't decide whether you can be healed or not."

So the apostle Paul, and all the evidence we have in the New Testament, indicates that, while he could heal, he came to the point where he could not heal. This indicated that the gift of healing had a purpose; it had been fulfilled; it was temporary; and, it was phasing out, even during his lifetime.

Organic Disease

There's a difference between a functional breakdown and an organic breakdown. Some of you may have a functional disability. I'm going to give you some case histories of that. Maybe you can't raise your hand up. You just can't raise your hand.

When I was a teenager, one of the jokes I used to use was that I would say, "You know, I had an injury to my arm one time, and since then I can't raise my hand any higher than this." And I would hold my arm at shoulder level. They would all look at me, and you could just see the sympathy. I'd say, "Yeah, I just can't lift that any higher." Then I would say, "Before the accident, I could lift it up here," and I'd put it straight up overhead. And they thought they saw healing take place instantaneously.

If I really thought that I couldn't lift my hand any higher than this since I had this accident, or since something happened that I had a mental block, I might not lift my hand higher than this. But all of a sudden, if somebody created a condition that removed whatever was the guilt complex or whatever was causing the block, if they could remove it under some emotional stimulation of the moment, suddenly I could raise my hand up over my head. That's because the problem is a functional disorder. There is nothing organically wrong with the arm. That's the difference.

The only kind of healings that take place in charismatic meetings are functional disorders. No organic disorders are ever healed–only functional. There is, of course, within every human heart, the determination to stay alive, unless you're nuts. Heaven is our home, but we are not particularly homesick. It is the characteristic of human beings to fight down to the line. We stress to you that God does heal today. James 5:14-15 make it very clear that there is a prayer of faith which brings healing. But God is not using any human being today, as he did in the New Testament times, to bring instantaneous miracle healings. The charismatics say, "Yes, God is doing that." If you ask them who is doing that, they'll mention people like Kuhlman and Roberts.

Sickness, however, will drive people in desperation to seek out any hope under any condition in order to get well. For this reason, in Job 2:4, Satan made the observation, "All that a man has will he give for his life." That is a human principle. It is true. All that a man has, particularly if he's operating on human viewpoint, will he give for his human life.

So people who are ordinarily very intelligent; people who are balanced in judgment; and, people who cannot easily be fooled, and who are ready to question and to investigate, are the same people who become extremely irrational in what they will do in pursuing a healing when they find they have some desperate terminal illness. How sad it is when a Christian has not learned the doctrine of dying grace. In heaven's name, if you have not learned the doctrine of dying grace, start learning it. You should understand that the grace of God is not only for your living, but when the time comes for you to check out, and God is all through with your life and your service and your ministry, He will give you magnificent grace by which to leave this world and enter His presence. It will preserve you from playing the fool of seeking some desperate healing at the hands of the charlatans, whether they be the sincere ones like Kuhlman and Roberts, or the openly deceptive ones like the psychic healers in the Philippians. Sickness drives people to desperation. They're determined, indeed, to fight to the very end.

Dr. William Nolen has written a book entitled Healing: A Doctor in Search of a Miracle. He makes an interesting observation from the point of view of himself as an experienced medical man. In his book on page 8, he says, "Some patients, however, won't accept the diagnoses we doctors lay on them. Like the rest of us, they don't want to die, and they refuse to believe that nothing can be done for them. If the medical profession can't help them, then somewhere, somehow, they'll find someone who will. They won't quit. What kind of patient will refuse to accept a doctor's word that his case is hopeless? Any kind: poor; rich; stupid; or, brilliant. Men and women from each and every social class go looking for salvation elsewhere when a medical doctor admits that he can't help." On page 8, he says, "So the search for cures and perfect health goes on. There's a long list of those who profess the ability to do for patients the things we doctors can't do. And patients flock to them. It's sad, but understandable."

We're going to see where this observation led this doctor. But I just want to establish that people who have desperate sicknesses will do desperate things.

God's Plan for Us

However, the human body is a strange thing. It is a marvelous self-healing factory. That's how God made it. You know that a doctor does a lot of things just to prevent infection, and to set up conditions for healing. Actually, when you get a broken bone, there is nothing the doctor can do except to align the two ends of it, and then to put a splint on the thing in order to keep it rigid to give you the weeks that it needs in order for the calcium callous to build around it. Once he has put the splint on, there's absolutely nothing that you can do for that arm. Beyond that, it's all over. God has given you a great capacity for self-healing. That is critical in understanding how the charismatic movement is getting away with murder today among people.

Nutrition

For example, there is nothing more hazardous than white sugar. Every element of the B complex vitamins, for example, that are in sugar originally, in order to digest them, have been taken out. So there is nothing but a sweetening taste and a destructive effect in the use of white sugar. Yet it permeates everything we do.

Things that we have on the shelf in the way of canned goods can sit there for 20 years. If you open the contents and put it out on the ground, the bugs will walk around it. They won't eat it because of the preservatives and the chemicals that are in it in order to make it last for 20 years. But it's a wonderful American way of life. I won't get too far into nutrition at this time. I just want to call to your attention to the fact that we operate on the basis of nutrition, and that God has promised us that it is His will that we should have good health. It is not God's will that you should be sickly. For that reason, let's look at a few verse to establish that:

In Exodus 15:26, God is speaking through Moses to the Israelites: "If you will diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord your God, and will do that which is right in His sight, and will give ear to His commandments and keep all his statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon you which I have brought upon the Egyptians. For I am the Lord that heals you."

This verse is telling the Jewish people that God is giving them certain commandments which were designed exclusively to keep them from falling into the diseases of the heathen nations around them who were nutritionally guilty of certain violations which resulted in physical breakdowns. God said, "I'll protect you. You'll never have these things if you will go back to the statutes which I have given you, concerning diet, and be faithful to them. You will live a healthy happy life in a strong functioning body.

We have the same thing in Deuteronomy 28:58-61. In Proverbs 3:1-2, the same principle is reiterated: "My son, forget not My law, but let your heart keep My commandments, for length of days and long life and peace shall they add to you." What? The Commandments of God.

Proverbs 4:20-22: "My son, attend to My words and incline your ear unto my sayings. Let them not depart from your eyes. Keep them in the midst of your heart, for they are life to those that find them, and health to all their flesh." What is God specifically speaking about here? What is He referring to when he says, "I have certain commandments which, if you will be obedient to them, will bring you health?"

Dietary Laws

These laws were not given for ceremonial reasons. Therefore, what God has said in them is applicable to us today. The laws of Leviticus 11 and the laws of Deuteronomy 14:3-21 are laws that are applicable like the Ten Commandments in their principle of righteousness are applicable to us today. What God says is morally right under the Ten Commandments is still morally right today. What God says is good nutrition and good dietary practice for My people of Israel is still good dietary practice for us today.

Reverend Elmer A. Josephson wrote a book called God's Key to Health and Happiness. This man is a pastor and a conference speaker who, for 30 years, has done research on nutrition. This book is the compilation of his studies and his experiences. In 1936, his doctor announced to him, rather unceremoniously, that he was a dead man. He had cancer of the stomach, and he actually proceeded to draw up his own funeral service, and he was certain that his tombstone was going to bear the date 1937 or 1938. In his moment of desperation as a minister of the Word of God, he said, "Maybe I can find some answers in the Bible. The doctors have given up on me." So he turned to a study of the dietary laws. This led him to realize that there were certain things that he had been practicing in the way of things he ate that were in direct violation of these dietary laws, and caused him to say, "I wonder if perhaps this is not part of the reason for what I am suffering now." This was because he not only had cancer of the stomach. He had a series of other things, any one of which was enough to kill a person. So he was in really desperate straits.

One of the things that he came upon in his studies concerning the dietary laws was that that has to do with pig meat. I thought it might be interesting for me just to read what he has to say to you on that. He begins the chapter by saying, "Warning: those with weak stomachs should not read this chapter immediately before or after meals. In quoting the dietary laws, they read: 'These are the beasts which you shall eat among the beasts that are on the earth. Whatsoever parts the hoof, and is cloven-hoofed, and chews the cud among the beasts, that shall you eat. Nevertheless, these shall you not eat them that chew the cud and of them that divide the hoof: the camel, because he chooses the cud, but doesn't divide the hoof. He is unclean unto you (not ceremonially unclean, but for dietary physical reasons).'

Pigs

"The clean animals chew the cud and have a divided hoof such as the ox, sheep, goat, deer, cows, steer, buffalo, etc. Because of the sacculated condition of the elementary canal and the secondary cud receptacle, these animals have practically 3 stomachs as refining agencies and cleansing laboratories for the purifying of their food. This cleanses their systems of all poisonous and deleterious matter. It takes their clean vegetable food over 24 hours to be turned into flesh, which flesh even the pre-Mosaic Law said was clean. This was not mere ceremonial cleansing, but it was made hygienically and physiologically clean and wholesome."

In other words, he said, if you eat beef, it will have come from an animal that, whatever that animal ate, takes over 24 hours before what that animal ate is converted into beefsteak (cells) through a cleansing process. Continuing:

"In comparison, we find that the swine (the hog's) anatomy, as a supplement to his bad habit of eating any putrid thing he finds, has but one poorly constructed stomach arrangement, and very limited excretory organs generally. Consequently, in about 4 hours after he has eaten his polluted swill and other putrid and offensive matter, man may eat the same (second-hand) off the ribs of the pig."

In the case of a pig, he could eat a pile of cockroaches. Four hours later, you could have a cockroach ham sandwich. Do you understand what we're saying? Four hours later, he has converted what he has eaten into meat. Continuing:

"Now some ask, 'Why did the Lord make the unclean animals?' They were created as scavengers. As a rule, they are meat-eating animals that clean up anything that is left dead in the fields. If a dog or any animal whatsoever should die in the field and lie in the sun and bloat until it is broken open and the maggots and putrefaction has set in, then the swine or other scavengers will come and eat up all this filth and putrid matter, thereby keeping diseased germs from spreading over the earth and killing off mankind. Scavengers were never created for human consumption. The God-given Mosaic Law condemns this meat manufactured out of the filthiest and most abominable matter as unclean. In its very nature, it is 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 diseases; weaknesses of the stomach; liver troubles; consumption; cancers; tumors; eczema; and, so on."

It is interesting that a few weeks ago in the Dallas News, they had the article that they are now considering taking bacon off the market as a food because they have traced again and again cancer in animals to bacon. Continuing:

"It is also essential for our own welfare to observe the dietary law regarding the clean fish identified by fins and scales. Among these, we have a large variety of such fish as the bass, pike, sunfish, perch, salmon, and tuna. The scaleless fish and all shellfish, including the oyster, clam, lobster, shrimp, and so on, modern science discovers to be but lumps of devitalized and disease-producing filth because of the inadequate excretion. These are the scavengers, the garbage cans of the waters and the seas. The unclean fowls which are prohibited are named in the dietary laws given in Leviticus 11. The chicken and turkey are clean by virtue of the gizzard that separates and cleanses all matter before it becomes flesh. Why are some so naive as to pay hard-earned cash for the dietetic advice given by imperfect physicians, who are limited in knowledge, while rejecting a perfect nutritional program given so freely by an all-wise, all-knowing, infallible Creator? We are aware that special prescribed diets by expert physicians are sometimes necessary. But there is evidence that even these could eventually be eliminated if the scriptural dietary law was adhered to strictly.

"Let us follow the counsel of the chief nutritionist, our Lord Himself, since, with so many, especially for breakfast, hog is the number one choice meat dish of all the unclean beasts. I don't know why they slighted the rats, the skunks, the dogs, and the cats, but swine do get bigger and have larger litters, and so make more filthy lucre.

"Let us consider the diet of this palate tickler. Mr. John Johnson of Williams, Iowa, a farmer, speaks on this subject. He states that, 'The swine in Iowa are principally fed corn, but will eat anything we give them. If anything dies, we throw it to the hogs. I've actually seen hogs chewing at the cancer of other hogs, and these hogs are then 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 saliva on the corn which cattle eat. The itch in the cattle becomes so intense they will run from stump to stump until they rub their skin from their mouths and will 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?

"While conducting a campaign in Litchfield, Minnesota, the pastor of the church told me of one of his members who raised hogs. At regular periods, this farmer would go to the poultry hatchery and load his trailer full of the old rotten eggs that hadn't hatched, many with dead chicks in various stages in them. This, of course, would make a gooey, bloody, stinky mess. Sometimes this farmer would stop by the parsonage, and the pastor stated the smell was so horrible and stunk up the neighborhood so badly that it was a source of real embarrassment to him. The farmer would feed this decayed, rotten, stinky substance to his hogs. Remember that what a hog eats is on his bones in four hours and ready for consumption by you.

"The family's primary meat dish was the swine. It was no wonder to me when I learned of the constant sickness in that household. If swine are raised in a lot with other animals such as the horse, the cow, and so on, they will eat and drink the very refuse of these animals. This is a common occurrence on farms where the animals are not separated.

"While on vacation as a boy, I remember visiting a family in Coatesville, Nebraska who were farmers. I noticed the wife of my host kept a slop bucket where she dumped all sorts of refuse: sour matter; rotten tomatoes; garbage; dirty dishwater; and, well, almost anything. She would take this down to the pig pen and slop the hogs. How they loved it. In a few days, they slaughtered the hogs, and started putting all these second-hand delicate cuts on the table in its various forms.

"I could never figure out what made slop good for human consumption just because a hog ate it. Did feeding rotten filthy garbage, maggots and all, to a hog sanctify and cleanse it as some would have us believe? Did anything biologically happened to the swine when Christ died? Or did the digestive tract of man have some kind of miracle transformation?

"No, the Bible, science, and experience have all proven the contrary. The hog is still unclean. They all actually have running sores under their hoofs. To prove it to yourself, visit a farm some time where they are raised, and lift the front hoof of a hog. With just a little pressure, you will find greenish matter oozing out from between his toes. This is one small outlet for the various heinous poisons he takes into his body. Sometimes this artery becomes stopped up, and the poisons back up into his system, and greenish growths are formed in various parts of his body.

"During a campaign in south Minnesota, the leader of the Young People's Society told me that he had worked only a few days at a certain meatpacking plants that summer, and had seen these hogs come down the line with these big greenish growths. We were instructed to just trim them off, and when the meat inspector came by, he put his stamp upon them. Such statements have been made also by others who have worked in meat packing plants.

"While in the same area in Minnesota, I had the opportunity of visiting a mink farm which was owned by one of the members of my host church. This meat raiser who knew his business said, 'If we fed pork or any part of the swine to our mink, they would die. We feed them horse meat, and they thrive on it. But without exception, after eating pork products, they sicken and die.' On this certain mink farm, they brought up old broken down horses, and used an average of three a day. If you have a choice, you better eat horse meat instead of swine, if you prefer health to sickness and life to death. Though a horse is in the unclean category, it is a vegetarian, and it does not eat all the vile putrid refuse that a hog revels in. Stop and consider.

"The following story is on court record. The Silver Moon Mink Farm of New Holstein, Wisconsin, owned by The Langfelds, ordered a supply of beef livers from a meat packing house for their meat. Instead, the packers shipped in pork livers, unbeknown to the Langfelds who fed it to the mink. What was the result? All the mink died. Yes, there was a lawsuit, and the meat packers had to pay. Let the mink teach us a lesson. Shouldn't we be more discriminating about our diet than a glorified weasel?

"This story comes from Florida, which was told me by a native son of that Sunshine State. He related, 'Whenever we have a snake infested area in Florida, we just turn the hogs loose on them. The only animal that a snake is afraid of is the hog. The swine are so full of poison, the snakes can't kill them. But the hogs kill and eat the snakes.' Brother, if you still want ham, help yourself. Fools rush in where serpents fear to tread.

"People have asked me, 'Cant' we eat pork and still go to heaven.' Sure, I answered. You might even go a little quicker.

A slaughterer in a packing house in Minnesota told me that they use every part of the hog: 'Nothing is wasted: pork; pork chops; ham; bacon; the intestines for sausages and wieners; head cheese of the head; pickled the feet; brains; liver; the hide for bacon rind; etc. Wieners and lunch meats, unless specified as beef, are mostly made of the worst trimmings of pork and other meats. There's only one thing that we do not utilize in the hog,' he said, 'and that is the grunt.' I couldn't help saying, 'That isn't lost either, brother. The swine eater will get plenty of grunts and groans before the final countdown.'

"As this book is about to go to print, the following word comes from Jerusalem, Israel, which is a powerful commentary on the subject. Israel's parliament approved, by a vote of 42 to 15, a ban on pig-raising in Israel. It prohibits the raising, keeping, or slaughtering of swine except in Nazareth and six other places which have a large Christian population. Both Jewish and Muslim religious law forbid eating of pork. The new law allows swine farmers a year to dispose of present holdings of pigs. After that date, anyone caught raising the animals (except for scientific purposes or displaying in zoos) will face a fine of $333. Renting of premises for a pig sty carries a fine of 500 pounds.

"While Prime Minister Mr. Ben-Gurion of Israel stated at a 1962 jubilee celebration of Israel's medical association that Israel has the lowest death rate in the world, could this merely be chance? Of course not. It is because the people of Israel as a whole observe the dietary laws of God, which insures them against untold physical affliction, disease, and premature death."

The worst part is coming, so we're going to pause here before lunch, and we shall continue in the next session.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1973

Back to the Advanced Bible Doctrine (Philippians) index