Doug Batchelor - Healing, Health and Holiness - Part 1

In January 2010, a minivan struck and killed a man crossing a Brooklyn street - especially tragic because this was no ordinary man. Joe Rollino would have been 105 years old in March. His friends said he was the model of health. A World War II vet with three purple hearts, Rollino got his start in the 1920s at the Coney Island carnival, billed as 'The Strongest Man in the World'. Five-feet five-inches tall and weighing 150 pounds, for his size he was one of the strongest men ever. He could move 3200 pounds with his back, lift 475 pounds with his teeth, and 635 pounds he could lift with one finger.

At Joe Rollino's 103rd birthday party, a friend gave him a quarter and Rollino bent it with his fingers. He then apologized because he used to do it with a dime. Did I mention that Joe Rollino didn't drink or smoke, he exercised daily, and he was a life-long vegetarian?

You know, the Bible also makes a connection between a very strong man and a unique lifestyle. The Bible says Samson did not drink and he stayed away from unclean foods. Would you like to live to a healthy 100? Anything is possible when we follow god's health plan. So join me now, as we take a deeper look into this life-changing subject.

Tonight I'm going to be sharing a topic that I think the Christian world is long overdue to understand this issue and people have suffered greatly because they do not understand this principle from the Bible that is very practical. Now, our message tonight is dealing with the subject of healing, health and holiness. It begins with a story that you find in a book of prophecy and it's in Daniel chapter 1. It tells that after King Nebuchadnezzar had conquered Babylon, he took some of the - the brightest and the best of the nation and he brought them with him back to Babylon and he said, Look, we're going to train you in the language of the Chaldeans. We're going to feed you from our cafeteria for three years and we're going to prepare to you to be ambassadors representing your part of the world and go to the University of Babylon.' and you think, 'Well, that will be really good. You'd be eating from the Babylonian cafeteria.' But there's a problem with that. Babylonians ate things that God had told His people they're not supposed to eat.

So Daniel and his three friends that had been carried off to Babylon: Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego - their Hebrew names were Hananiah, Mishael, Azariah - they said, 'We can't eat that. Please let us eat pulse' - or vegetables - 'and just give us a chance.' And the man who was in charge of the eunuchs, he said, 'I can't do that because if you start looking scrawny and sick, I'm responsible for your health and education - my head'll be on the block.' They said, 'You give us ten days.'

Notice it says in Daniel 1, verse 8, "But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile" - he would not what? "Defile himself with a portion of the king's meat." So they proposed, to Ashpenaz, prince of the eunuchs, "Prove your servants" - 'Test us' - "for ten days, let us have pulse to eat and water to drink." - 'We're not going to eat the Babylonian food and the fermented wine.' And the Bible says he consented to that - "and at the end of the ten days their countenances appeared fairer and fatter in flesh". You know, they had just come across the desert - and "...he found them ten times better" - smarter - "than all the magicians and astrologers who were in all his realm." And the first chapter of Daniel closes by saying, "And Daniel continued until the time of King Cyrus" - Daniel lived to about a hundred years of age. He must have been 15 to 17 when he was carried off.

So, it's interesting that, at this very important book of prophecy it would make a point that Daniel and his friends had purposed they would take care of their bodies. Even when they were tempted by their surroundings and even though there was social pressure to compromise, they said, 'No, this is what God says about treating our bodies as the temple of the Holy Spirit and we will not defile our bodies.

This is a truth that has been lost by much of the Christian church and it's an area where there needs to be revival and reformation, and that's also true even within our denomination. Let's look at our lesson. It's going to bring out a number of points.

First question: What was the original diet that God designed for humans? You read in Genesis 1, verse 29, "And God said, 'Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed and in every tree in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat." And the word 'meat' there, it's King James - it just means 'for food'. And so, the original diet that God gave to man was a vegetarian diet contain - it was actually fruits, grains, and nuts - beans - but later God expanded the diet.

That's the next question: After Adam and Eve sinned, - when they were evicted from the Garden of Eden, they could no longer eat from the tree of life. God then said, 'Alright, I want to give you something supplemental.' What was added to their diet at that point? Genesis 3, verse 18 He said, "You shall eat the herb of the field." - meaning vegetables. Now, I find sometimes people don't know the difference between a fruit and a vegetable. Let me test you. Apple. Fruit. Orange? Fruit. Zucchini? See? Fruit. Onion? Vegetable. Brussels sprouts? Inedible. It's real simple: that anything that is the product of the blossom is the fruit. And anything that's any other part of the plant, whether it's the stalk or the leaves or the bulbs, it's a vegetable. And so, after Adam and Eve and, you know, a lot of kids out there are really sorry that Adam and Eve sinned because they didn't want vegetables added to their diet. But after they sinned and they were told they could no longer stay in the garden, God said, 'You can also eat the herb of the field.' But the original diet for man was a vegetarian diet. And - I'll just tell you right now, I am biased. I'm a vegetarian. I encourage people to consider it. The Bible does not require you to be a vegetarian. But are you aware that we will be vegetarians in Heaven?

When God asked Adam to name the animals, he did not look at the cow and say, 'Whopper'. And he did not look at the chickens and say, 'McNuggets'. You know, he was supposed to protect them, he wasn't supposed to think about eating them. And it wasn't until after sin and especially after the flood that animals became a part of the diet.

What mammals does God say we could eat? Now, I told you I'm a vegetarian. I encourage that. But the Bible does say you're going to eat meat, but then it says if you're going to eat meat there are some criteria. You can read about this in Leviticus 11, verse 3, "Whatever parts the hoof, and is cloven footed and chews the cud, these you can eat." So it needed to have a cloven hoof - it needed both characteristics, not just one. But even some meat is not healthy. For instance, you know a camel? A camel chews the cud but it's got a paw. Now some of you are really bothered by that because you're going to have to take the camel out of your fridge tonight right after.

Well, you know, this was a problem in Christ's time. He said, 'You strain a gnat and you swallow a camel' - which is unclean. He said, 'You're worried about getting a little bitty bug in your water, but then you go eat camel steak when you go home and God says it's unclean. Have you ever been around camels? I have. Yeah. I wouldn't want to eat one. Now, some things, they chew the cud but they don't have a cloven hoof.

And then there's a couple of animals that have a cloven hoof, but they don't chew the cud. You know what's in that category? Ah, this one's very popular. Puerco - the pig, the hog, the swine - "Though it divides the hoof, having cloven hooves, yet does not chew the cud, is unclean to you." He goes on to say, "Their flesh you shall not eat, and their carcass you shall not touch." There was an abomination. Pigs are filthy. I used to take care of my neighbor's pigs when he would go on vacation and, you know, I'd always try and find some new word to describe it, but all I can come up with is to tell you that pigs are pigs. Their name is the definition. You can't improve on it. You ever been by - or driven by a pig slaughter house? Even the Bible says - like the sow that was washed returns to wallowing in the mire. And their flesh is full of disease. They're scavengers. God made some animals that are scavengers and they're made to, kind of, clean up the environment. They eat garbage. Why would you - you wouldn't eat garbage but you'll eat the garbage can when you eat a pig. How many of you remember this? 'This little piggy went to the market this little piggy stayed home. This little piggy had roast beef' - even a pig won't eat pork.

You know I - I remember reading once - I think it was one out of five autopsies done in North America - they found out that the cadavers had symptoms or evidence of Trichina poisoning. Trichinosis is a very tricky disease in that when the muscle tissue containing Trichina cysts are eaten by a human, it says the cysts are then digested in the stomach then release the larvae which "...migrate to the intestine, begin a new life cycle. Female Trichina worms live about six weeks and in that time they may release 15,000 larvae. The migration and encystment of larvae can cause fever, pain, or even death." it can cause stiffness in joints and knees and pain and it's often misdiagnosed. A person thinks, 'I've got Bursitis' or 'Arthritis' and they got Pigitis is what it is. It's from - it's very common around the world. There's a picture of a fellow. He's got his lunch on his box - back of his bike.

One nutritionist wrote a few years ago - and this is an old article, but I like the way he worded it. September 6, 1999. A "nutritionist said bacon wasn't technically meat anymore. It didn't belong to any food group at all. It was a salty nitrate-ridden, fat-laden carcinogenic thing." Why would you want to eat a carcinogenic thing? Because it tastes good. Are you going to be controlled by the spirit or by the flesh?

Now some of you are saying, 'Pastor Doug, you're coming down pretty hard on those of us who are, you know, eating meat and stuff like that. You know, God designed humans to eat meat and that's why we've got these canine teeth, you know?' I've heard that argument before. That's nonsense. This fella's got canine teeth too, and he's a vegetarian. As is the hippo and the elephant - I don't know how far I want to take this illustration but - and, actually, the digestive system of a cat or a carnivore or a dog is very smooth. Vegetarian animals have a more complex digestive system. Where they've got the broken up intestine and we're in that category. We thrive on a vegetarian diet.

People say to me all the time, 'Oh Pastor Doug, you know, you can't be healthy if you're vegetarian. You're not going to get enough B-12 and protein.' That is a myth. That is totally an uneducated statement. I've been a vegetarian for forty years. I love when I go to Subway and I order a veggie and they say, 'Do you want any cheese?' I said, 'No. I'm a vegan too.' I said, 'No, just all veggies.' I say, 'I'm a vegetarian.' 'Really?' I said, 'Yep.' I said, 'Do I look 90 years old?' And they go, 'Wow, you're not' - I usually confess that I'm kidding at that point. You notice I didn't say I was 90, I said, 'Do I look 90?' Of course, once I said, 'Do I look 70?' and they said, 'Yeah, about 70.' So I had to up it a little bit. But, no, you know, I really have been a vegetarian 40 years and I feel great. You get - you know, if you - a peanut butter and jelly sandwich has everything you need. If you use strawberry preserves you've got your fruits, grains, and nuts right there. The whole thing, you've got protein, you've got B-12 - you've got everything you need. And somebody says, 'You won't get enough,' don't believe that for a minute.

Look what happened here in the Bible. It's kind of a primitive chart but you see here, these are the people who lived in the days before the Flood. You've got Seth, Methuselah, Noah - their lives were measured in hundreds of years. After the flood, all of the vegetation was destroyed. You remember, God took the clean animals on the ark by sevens and they, ostensibly, would sacrifice them. They were allowed to eat of the sacrifice, but meat eating became a lot more predominant after the flood. And look what happened to the life span.

One of the places in the world where people live the longest is the Hunza people in the Hunza Valley in India - largely vegetarian - very common for them to live over 100 years of age. They don't have a fraction of the modern diseases that we experience.

Now, if you're going to talk about - we talked about the mammals that had to have a cloven hoof and chew the cud - what about the sea creatures? What types of fish or seafood are clean, biblically? You read in Leviticus 11, verse 9, "These you can eat of all that are in the waters: whatever has fins and scales...them you shall eat." You know, I understand that the Navy did some research back after World War II because a number of pilots and sailors were floating around in the ocean. They didn't know what they could and couldn't eat of the fish that kind of gathered around their life rafts and they said, 'We need to give them some criteria that they can remember - something simple.' And they did all this research and one of them said, 'You know, it says in the Bible that if it has fins and scales it's safe.' And they said, 'Well, let's see what that looks like.' And did all the research. They said, 'That's probably the best rule of thumb we can tell the sailors.' They found a lot of toxins in the scavengers. Catfish do not have scales.

My brother and I used to catch catfish off my dad's back porch. He was right on Biscayne Bay in Miami Beach. And, taking the hook out of the catfish, my brother's finger got poked by the dorsal fin and it was so toxic he could never bend his finger again. And people eat those things. We ate 'em too back then. Sharks, they've got cartilage on the outside. They're scavengers. And some of you are wondering, what about tuna. Tuna has scales - very small, but they've got scales. And so, they needed these things. So what would be unclean? "But in the seas" - Leviticus 11:10 still - "In all the seas of the rivers those that do not have fins and scales, all that move in the water or any living thing which is in the water, they are an abomination to you."

Now there's no time in the Bible when God calls something an abomination in one part that it is then blessed in another part. Anything that's declared by God an abomination stays an abomination. And, by the way, these are not laws just for one group of people, these are laws that God gave to humanity in the beginning.

What about the birds? If you're going to eat meat, what birds are clean? Well, the way they raise some birds, I don't want to eat anything but, biblically, it needed to be a foraging bird. The ones that are unclean - it says, "Every raven after its kind," - and the "owl, and the night hawk, and the cuckaw, and the hawk after its kind." - the scavengers - the raptors - they were unclean - the omnivores. The foraging birds like the pheasant and the quail and the chicken and the turkey, you'll be happy to know, are in the clean category. Pigeon is clean, which means they'll never starve in New York city. I wouldn't eat any of those, though. But they were typically in that category.

So, are the laws about the clean and unclean animals part of Moses' ceremonial law that ended at the cross? This is the argument - have you heard this before? No, you read in Genesis 7, when God was telling Noah to bring the animals on the ark, everyone says, 'Oh yeah, they went on the ark two by two.' Not all of them. The unclean animals went by two. The clean animals went by seven. "Come into the ark you and all your household..." and it says of the beasts that are not clean they'll bring by two. Of the clean beasts, they come by sevens. Like you might have the stag and seven does. You have the bull and - or six cows and the bull - and so they may have divided it up like that.

And so, how many here are related to Noah? That'd be all of you. How many of you never raise your hand when the pastor asks a question? Some of you were honest enough to finally raise your hand for that question. But we're all related to Noah. So God makes a distinction of clean and unclean right back there in the beginning. These things - we know today that there's health principles.

By the way, National Geographic did an article a few years ago called the Blue Zones. Did any of you here ever see this magazine? It talked about the areas of the world where people live the longest. They came up with three groups: the people that live in Sardinia - the Mediterranean, the people that live in Okinawa, Japan - some of the oldest in the world, and the third category was Seventh-day Adventists that live in Loma Linda. Or Seventh-day Adventists, but that's just an enclave down there and so they saw there was a concentration. And so, they specifically said Seventh-day Adventists. What do they attribute that to? Their healthy lifestyle.

Following the biblical criteria, among other things, having a day of rest helps also. And they live a lot longer. I was visiting a sister today, 93 years old, up and around doing fine. This is a picture of one of my church members, 111 and still going - Viola Cook. And it just was amazing to me, her brother-in-law told me - Art Reed - gave me some good advice. If you forget everything I say tonight, remember this: I said, 'Art, how come you're so old and so healthy?' he said, 'Three things: stop eating while you're still a little hungry, wake up when you're still a little sleepy, and stop talking when you still have something left to say.' Secret to life.

Does God say that eating unclean food is a serious offense? Some people think, 'Oh, the Bible laws about health are recommendations.' The Bible doesn't call them recommendations, it calls them laws. Listen to what the Bible says in Isaiah 66, verses 15 and 17: "For behold, the Lord will come with fire and with His chariots, like a whirlwind, to render His anger with fury. Those who sanctify themselves and purify themselves..." - they're declaring themselves sanctified and pure - "'eating swine's flesh and the abomination and the mouse, shall be consumed together,' says the Lord." 'Oh, Pastor Doug, are you telling me that my BLT sandwich is no more? It tastes so good.' You know, when you really think about it, there are so many good things to eat. I'm surprised - people say to me, 'Pastor Doug, you're a vegetarian. What do you eat?' Well, I eat great. Lots of things. You grow up learning a certain way and you think that's the only way. You've got to just learn to do good - learn a new way - and you'll be fine.

Some people think, 'Well, if God doesn't want us to eat it, why did He make it?' And it's almost like a bumper sticker that you would find somewhere on Bubba's truck: 'God made it so we can kill it and eat it.' He didn't make any of the animals for us to kill and eat. People quote this verse in 1 Timothy 4:4, "For every creature of God is good," - have you heard this before? - "and nothing to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving and prayer." Now they don't read the context - they don't read what it says before or after. It says, first of all, that it'll be sanctified by the Word of God. That means the creatures that are approved in the Word of God can be sanctified by prayer. But this notion that Christians believe - and this is where - boy, I hope this sinks in with thinking Christians out there - the idea that we're free now from the laws about health because we just pray and God blesses whatever we eat. You would not accept that from your children.

How many are parents out there? Are they raising their hands? If you were getting ready for work one day, and your kids were fixing their own breakfast, you know, they're a little older, and you see that they're pouring sugar frosted flakes in their bowl and they're putting sugar on top of it, then they go in the freezer and get a scoop of chocolate ice cream. Then they get some caramel syrup, and you say, 'What in the world do you think you're doing?' 'Don't worry, mom, dad, I'm going to ask Jesus to bless it.' Would you say, 'Well, that's okay, as long as you pray over it, that'll be okay.' How many would accept that? Then why do we think that we can tempt the Lord by going against the basic principles of health in the Bible and say, 'But I prayed over it.'

When the Bible talks about that? It's talking about there was a big contest between the Jewish Christians and the Gentile Christians and the Jewish Christians said, 'Oh, that meat had been offered to an idol. You can't eat it.' And Paul said, 'Look, the idol's nothing.' You pray over it - he was talking about clean animals that maybe they had bought in a Gentile marketplace - goat or turkey or sheep or whatever it was - and the Jews had a very sensitive conscience, they said, 'But it was a Gentile marketplace. They butcher things and they offer them to gods before they butcher them.' Paul said, 'Look, it's sanctified by the Word of God. God's Word said you can eat that goat - that sheep - and you've prayed over it. Don't worry about it.'

How many of you eat Chinese food in a Chinese restaurant? I do. I did this week. And when I went in, there was a Buddha in the restaurant. Now, some Christians might have a problem with that. They might say, 'I can't eat in there, there was a Buddha. I'll be supporting Buddha if I eat in that restaurant.' Paul was saying, 'Look, you pray over your food. Don't worry about what they think about - the cook might be a Buddhist - it's not going to hurt you.' this was the issue. It wasn't saying you could eat anything. That's irresponsible. We all know better than that.

What you eat is going to affect your health. How much you eat is going to affect your health. Some will say, 'What about the vision that Peter had in Acts chapter 10?' Some of you remember, it tells us that Cornelius, a Gentile, and his family full of Gentiles, an angel says, 'You must hear from Peter.' they send messengers to Peter. Normally Jews did not preach to the Gentiles in those early days. Peter's up on the roof, he's praying, he's hungry. God gives him a vision of a sheet that comes down from Heaven, full of all these unclean animals and God says, 'Arise and eat.' Notice what Peter says: 'Not so, Lord. I have never eaten anything common or unclean.' And the Bible says, 'Do not call unclean what I have cleansed.'

And he's wondering - this happens three times - he never takes anything out of the sheet - it's a vision - you can't eat a vision. He never takes anything out of the sheet. He never eats it. And he's wondering what the vision means. And some Gentiles knock on the door downstairs and Peter explains what this vision is about. He said, 'God has told me not to call any man' - that's a funny way to spell 'pig' - it doesn't say God showed me not to call any swine unclean.' He said not to call any man unclean because the Jews were calling the Gentiles unclean. This vision had nothing to do with food. It had to do with taking the gospel to the Gentiles. So pastors that say that, they're being dishonest. They know that's not what was really happening there.

Does it make a difference what we eat? Do you know why we're all having problems with sin and temptation? Because our first parents ate something they weren't supposed to eat.