Posted on 10/15/2001 6:54:40 AM PDT by malakhi
| Statesmen may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free constitution is pure virtue. - John Adams |
Home field advantage.
What magic was used to allow the Patriots to defeat a far superior (hah!) Steelers team and a far, far superior (hah! hah!) Rams team?
Musta been some form of voodoo. Let's see how the new stadium works out for ya next year.
SD
I did miss the koinos and akatharos in that verse, but again Peter doesn't say "God has instructed me not to call any man or any food common or unclean."
Peter realized that God looks on the heart of man, and not on the physical. Israel was all outside show, while few had a heart that God required.
Well yeah, that's was a big gripe of Jesus, that the Jews had ADDED onto his words the tradition and beliefs of men and had gotten away from the spiritual lessons they were supposed to learning.
Gods people were moving from the physical to the spiritual, and all the things that once identified his people as such were done away with. No more circumcision, Priesthood, burnt sacrifices, blowing of horns, special clothing, Temples made by hand, praying in public, outward giving of alms, what a man eats, and now, what organization he attends or what size steeple it has on the roof, or if he fast to be seen of men.
True enough as far as that goes, but what about the new, physical things that Christ commanded? Baptism, foot washing, partaking of the Lords supper? Obviously (to me at least) Jesus (God!) didn't want to get rid of all physical things since he instituted new physical things. Jesus taught that there were spiritual components to physical acts, not that all the physical acts were bad.
Why did God give Peter a vision of what had been considered unclean animals, to point out to him that Gentiles are no longer common or unclean?
Why not give him a vision of a group of Gentile men and a voice that tells Peter to greet them with a brotherly kiss, or to wash their feet as Jesus had theirs, and then when he said not so Lord, God could have instructed him in the change.
Why did God use unclean animals at all? Peter understood what the message was, because he didn’t hesitate to stay with Cornelius, and eat with them.
You're right, Peter clearly understood the message because he said that God told him "not to call any MAN common or unclean.". Gentiles were no longer considered to unpure. Reading anything else into it (in my opinion) is the same as the Jews adding oral tradition to the law. As for why God used the example of animals I can only give theories. The verse just before Peter's vision reads:
Act 10:10 And he became very hungry and desired to eat. But while they made ready, an ecstasy fell on him.
Peter was starving. Food was on his mind. God sent him a vision that he could identify with and one that would no doubt stick in his mind which it surely did. At any rate it took him a while to figure it out, but when he saw three gentiles show up he remembered that he was commanded to eat three times. He put two and two together and understood *exactly* what the vision meant and told everyone *exactly* what it did mean.
I doubt seriously if Peter knowingly ate Pork or any of the Levitical unclean meats, because I myself, having followed the Jewish dietary laws for only 15 years, admit there are still some forms of meat that to me are still not eatable, even though I understand there is nothing wrong with it, other then my perception that stops me from it This account in Acts 10, was given for future Christians, not those who had been born and raised as a Jew, who would never be able to look on pork as anything other then unclean,
Speculation again. It may have been written for future Christians, but surely not with the understanding that God was making unclean foods clean.
and as Christ said in Mt 15: 11 Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man.
In this verse Christ was clearly berating the Pharisees for ritual handwashing, not the eating of unclean meat. Which brings up another point...Christ didn't consider swine an acceptable food either:
Mat 8:30 And there was a good way off from them a herd of many swine, feeding.
Mat 8:31 And the demons begged Him, saying, If You cast us out, allow us to go away into the herd of swine.
Mat 8:32 And He said to them, Go! And when they had come out, they went into the herd of swine. And behold, the whole herd of swine ran violently down a steep place into the sea and perished in the waters.
Here we see Christ, equating demons with swine and literally driving them away and causing them to perish. There's a clear lesson here for anyone who is willing to listen. This is the real spirituality lesson of unclean foods. If Christ believed that it was "okay" to eat unclean foods he wouldn't have wasted food here but would have used it to teach that it was okay. I believe (and this is my opinion) that listening to God about something as simple as food laws means that you hear his voice and can listen to more weighty spiritual matters. Just as every spiritual influence isn't from God, but from demons, God bans certain foods and blesses others.
Paul taught the Gentiles that it was even alright to eat food sacrificed to Idols, and I doubt seriously if they only sacrificed clean animals, and even if not, the heathen butchering it and handling it would have contaminated the food, and still Paul wasn’t concerned about it. Romans 14:14 I know, and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that there is nothing unclean of itself: but to him that esteemeth any thing to be unclean, to him it is unclean.
Paul wasn't concerned with it because he believed that things were no longer ritually unclean ala the Pharaseeic tradition. Paul was also a devout Jew, a Pharisee, who also grew up with God's meat laws. He didn't have a bunch of people telling him that it was okay to eat meat now because this verse in the new testament can possibly be interepeted this way. His scripture WAS the old testament. Of course since Gentiles were now clean it was going to be okay to eat their food, it was no longer unclean just because they touched it! But the only way you can interpet this to mean that God's food laws were overturned is too look back at it with a thousand plus years of the traditions of men.
IMVHO, If a man decides to keep the Jewish food laws, there is nothing whatsoever wrong with it unless he thinks God will be somehow impressed with it, since he is not respect of any persons. The only thing God sees in what’s inside a man, and nothing physical impresses him.
First of all I of course don't think of them as Jewish food laws. And nothing physical impresses him? Isn't physical compliance to God's demands proof of your obedience? If Jesus says, "be baptized" don't you think that choosing not to baptized shows a deliberate disregard of God's word? Acts mean something. You seem to not like it when Catholics kiss statues (or whatever they kiss lol) or perform other rituals because you apparently think they're wrong....are you ready to agree with them that it doesn't really matter?
The only reason a man who observes the clean and unclean food laws should ever mention it to another person is as his personal hygiene habits, and nothing what so ever to do with his spiritual life.
lol, the only reason I'm talking about it is because I'm being asked about it! It certainly has to do with spiritual life though as I've pointed out. Does it make me better than you that I do this? No. What does it get me? I don't know. But like I said in another thread, if God wishes me to do it, I want to do it.
Jesus wasn't "equating" anything the demons had entered the swine. Do you not believe in evil spirits?
Yes, I believe in evil spirits:
Mat 8:31 And the demons begged Him, saying, If You cast us out, allow us to go away into the herd of swine.
Jesus cast them out of the two (men?) blocking their path and ALLOWED them to go into a herd of swine.
Enoch says demons are disembodied spirits. The offspring of the fallen angels and women. The nephlim whose physical bodies were destroyed in the flood. But since they were born in this domain, their spirits have to stay here.
If theit spirits are still in this domain, does that mean we can pray to them?
SD
You're going to have to start slow and explain this to me lol...I haven't done much studying into this.
Since you pray to saints already I don't know what's stoppin' ya. :-)
Of course, but the significance you attribute to the swine as not acceptable food is not present. It could well have been a herd of clean animals, correct?
Have ya ever wondered what the writer was talking about in the first few verses of Genesis 6?
Oh nevermind. Dave says first few chapters of Genesis are a poem. Silly me for reading it like it were history. What am I thinking? :-)
sarcasm over: :-)
Yeah, right. One can barely squeek the cover open before one of the Knights Templar is there busting down your door.
SD
LOL! Okay, so is telling your wife she looks beautiful even if she looks like a wreck after chasing the kids around all day a sin?
I'm amazed you lived to tell about it. ;o)
Jesus wasn't a wasteful man. After both of the fishes and loaves mirarcles there were leftovers. Did Jesus want this food wasted?
Joh 6:11 And Jesus took the loaves, and when He had given thanks, He distributed to the disciples, and the disciples to those who had reclined; and likewise of the fish, as much as they wanted.
Joh 6:12 And when they were filled, He said to His disciples, Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing is lost.
They gathered 12 baskets after the first miracle and 7 after the next. Jesus wasn't wasteful.
If he considered swine acceptable food, he surely wouldn't allow them to be wasted by allowing demons to enter into them and having them die at sea.
Are you kidding me? Those are some of the times when she looks the most beautiful to me.
I know where you are going with this. I wouldn't feel like those lies were a sin, but I can't go by my feelings I have to go by what God says. Is there anyplace in the Bible, your half or my half ;^), where God condones someone lying, even if it is for a good purpose. BTW, silence does not equal condoning.
-ksen
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