2 Cor.6:17 "Touch not the unclean thing", and lPet.l:15, "Be ye holy for I am holy". Here the apostles quote OT commands which referred to unclean meats, but now (as the contexts show) their spiritual intent is to avoid unclean behavior and people. If you do that, then you've fulfilled the laws of clean and unclean. The behavior of the types of animals that were labeled unclean typified the type of people and behavior God's people were to avoid. They were not health laws, as the commandment- keepers argue. Most 'unclean' seafood has been shown to be healthier than 'clean' red meats! With better raising of pigs today, even pork has been proclaimed to be healthier than even beef and chicken now. It is secular critics, rejecting divine inspiration who claim the restriction was only for health: “those laws were given because they didn’t know how to cook it properly back then”. In that case, if it were “health”, it would be null and void anyway, as we do now know how to cook pork to avoid trichinosis, and shellfish to avoid the toxins it has if killed to early. Once again, it's clean poultry that has now surpassed pork with the threat of salmonella poisoning if not cooked completely! The Lawkeepers still insist with the "unclean", "it is killing you and you don't know it"; and it could "result in premature death after continuous usage for, say ten, or thirty, or fifty years" as Armstrong suggests, but people who eat pork and shellfish and eat healthy in the rest of their diet are no less healthy, neither die any younger than the kosher. The oldest people in the world often eat pork and are otherwise non-kosher. So then what is this negative health effect? Everyone dies, and pork has not been shown to be a cause of it. Lev.11:44 clearly shows that the purpose of those laws was holiness. But we all know now that holiness or sanctification is the work of the God through the Holy Spirit (2 Thess.2:13).
A "clean" and "unclean" was recognized in Noah's time (Gen.7:2), and before God had declared that all animals would be for food (ch.9:3), but still, there is no mention of God commanding them to avoid the so-called "unclean" animals—ONLY blood (which was mentioned in Acts 15. At that time, clean and unclean were in regard to sacrifice (8:20) and people were not yet given any meat for food. Then God allows all meat to be eaten in the next chapter. Armstrong tries to explain this away (Principles of Healthful Living, p.20) by emphasizing "as I have given you the green herb", and then draws attention to the fact that we do not eat poisonous herbs, which is taken as a "restriction" ("God did not give them as food"), so likewise, "as He gave us all green herbs" with "restrictions", so he gives us "all meats" with restrictions. But this was not a command that God gave man, but rather man on his own would also discover and avoid what was not healthy. Armstrong says that man "can not by himself determine which flesh foods are harmful", and is thus why God determined that for us. But the restrictions on meat all had to do with spiritual
"defilement" (and Armstrong had just insisted on the previous page that this law was not "spiritual"! He totally misses the meaning of the concept of "defilement"!) Nowhere are any plants termed "unclean" or "defiling" anyone, as meats later were! Nowhere do we see man led to eat these things, and be condemned by God for it. If they did, they would suffer the natural consequences, but not the judgment of the Law of Moses. And if pork and shellfish had some hidden harm (other than what is known about them not cooked properly), then we would never have people who eat them living healtlily to a ripe old age. Most if not all of those centenarians we often see on TV are not "kosher". It's amazing the lengths people will go to read things into the words of scripture.
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