Chasing Compassionate People Away From Church (Part 2)
An all-creatures Bible Message

Chasing Compassionate People Away From Church (Part 2)
 
A Sermon Delivered to
The Compassionate Internet Church
 
29 Apr 2012
 
Frank L. Hoffman, Pastor

Scripture References

Genesis 8:20-22
9:1-5
Numbers 11:1-10, 31-33
Deuteronomy 8:16

Chasing compassionate people away from church has been a problem since the early church, because people hold on to their worldly ways with all it's violence and hardness of heart.

It’s important that we remember our discussion from last week about Genesis 8:20-22; and that God considered the intent of mankind’s heart to be evil from their youth, because Noah’s sacrifice of the animals voided the whole purpose of God’s separating Noah and his family from the rest of the world.
 
Furthermore, that this is a fact that all clergy should be teaching, instead of falsely saying that God wanted us to sacrifice animals and eat them, which brings us to today’s continued message of why compassionate people are being chased away from the church.
 
Let’s begin this discussion by looking at this Biblical passage: Genesis 9:1-4

1. And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.

Even though God considers them to be evil from their youth, He still blesses them to begin a new life upon the earth; but at the same time God knows the intent of their hearts and souls is filled with evil.
 
Instead of being the animals’ loving and compassionate caretakers, He knows that they will continue to kill and eat some of the animals; so along with the blessing, God curses them by separating them from the animals who used to be their companions.

2. And the fear of you and the terror of you shall be on every beast of the earth and on every bird of the sky; with everything that creeps on the ground, and all the fish of the sea, into your hand they are given.

God is not giving them into their hands to eat, only that the animals’ fate rests in their hands.
 
The humans themselves will decide whether or not to be holy and follow God’s original commandment to eat only plant foods, or to be evil and kill and eat the animals.
 
And knowing their hearts and souls, God says:

3. Every moving thing that is alive shall be food for you; I give all to you, as I gave the green plant.

There is absolutely nothing in the verse that can even remotely be considered to be a commandment to kill and eat the animals, as the majority of clergy seem to teach.
 
At best it might be considered a concession to evil humans to limit their depravity until they once again return to being truly obedient to His will.
 
And to further emphasize the point, God places another curse upon every human being that eats flesh.

4. Only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.

The word translated as life in the verse is really soul (Hebrew: neh-fesh), and as we all know it is impossible to eat any flesh without also eating some blood, no matter how much it is washed or salted.
 
God is passing judgment upon humans, as He is in the next verse.

5. “And surely I will require your lifeblood; from every beast I will require it. And from every man, from every man’s brother I will require the life of man.
NASB

If by now you are not convinced that God has cursed humans with this judgment, consider the fact that almost every one of our chronic diseases: cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and many forms of cancer can be traced to eating animal flesh and secretions, all of which are rarely found in people who eat only whole plant foods, which God commanded us to eat.
 
Why do most clergy prefer to pray for people who are sick from eating animals, instead of teaching them the truth about how to cure these diseases through eating God’s original plant food diet?
 
Do they do this because they are part of the problem of eating animals?
 
And the question we always wonder about is, are they praying against God’s curse, and thus being very ineffective?
 
The huge number of chronically sick people appears to confirm that they are.
 
If they do this, then how can they also support the compassionate people who love animals and don’t eat them, and who are not suffering from the diseases of eating animals?
 
The simple answer is that they can’t.
 
How much better it would be to tell the truth, and truly heal themselves and the church.
 
This problem is not one of Christianity alone; for Judaism, for the most part, also has the same problems of supporting the killing and eating of animals.

However, they do have four sects today that have members who teach the truth about not killing and eating animals; they are the Netzereans of Gilead and Bashan, the Essenes, the Ebionites and Karaites, the first three of whom were vegetarian in Israel at the time of Jesus.
 
Some people will say that what I’m saying isn’t true; but if it isn’t, then why would God feed the people of the Exodus in the wilderness with manna, a bread from heaven that contained no animal products?
 
The only logical answer is that He wanted them to stop eating animals.
 
We could also ask, if the Lord wanted the people to eat flesh, then why was He angry with the people when they complained about the manna, and wanted flesh as they had in Egypt? (Numbers 11:1-10)
 
Why don’t the clergy explain this truth to their congregations?
 
Now look at what we are told in Numbers 11:31-33 about what happened when they kept grumbling about wanting flesh to eat:

31. Now there went forth a wind from the LORD and it brought quail from the sea, and let them fall beside the camp, about a day’s journey on this side and a day’s journey on the other side, all around the camp and about two cubits deep on the surface of the ground.

This verse is very important to our understanding of God’s true intent: first of all, living birds don’t fall, they land, and living birds would not be 2 cubits or 3 feet deep on the surface of the ground.
 
The only explanation is that these are dead birds created by the Lord just for this purpose, and there is more:

32. The people spent all day and all night and all the next day, and gathered the quail (he who gathered least gathered ten homers) and they spread them out for themselves all around the camp.

This is further proof that these are not living birds, and this dead flesh has been lying in the desert for over 24 hours with no refrigeration and most likely without any cleaning.
 
How safe do you think it would be to eat?

33. While the meat was still between their teeth, before it was chewed, the anger of the LORD was kindled against the people, and the LORD struck the people with a very severe plague.

This plague, as the people viewed it in those days, was obviously food poisoning from bacteria in the meat, which caused many of them who ate the flesh to get sick and die.
 
Clearly, the Lord did not want them to eat any flesh.
 
Why is it so hard for most clergy to tell this truth to their congregations, instead of chasing away the compassionate people?
 
Note what we are told in Deuteronomy 8:16…

16. "In the wilderness He fed you manna which your fathers did not know, that He might humble you and that He might test you, to do good for you in the end.

Why did the Lord use manna, the bread from heaven, to humble the people?
 
Because they craved flesh, which the Lord didn’t want them to eat; so He gave them this vegan heavenly bread, to separate them from the killing ways of the world around them, so that they would learn to live peacefully and be obedient to God’s heavenly will for their lives.
 
How much better this world would be if the churches really taught the truth about God’s creation and heavenly will for our lives, where we could truly learn to be the loving, compassionate, and peacemaking children of God that Jesus calls us to be, and with the bonus of being healthy.
 
We would no longer inflict pain, suffering or death on any other living being, whether they are human or non-human, and we would begin to see true peace developing in the world.
 
There would no longer be any indifference to the suffering of others.
 
We would see business and government corruption and injustice cease.

And, according to the Bible, these compassionate peacemaking children of God would free creation from its present corruption.
 
There would be peace in the world.
 
Amen.

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