Christian Vegetarianism

Swami Nirmalananda Giri

The Esoteric Side Of Diet

Although diet is commonly considered a matter of physical health alone, since the Hermetic principle “as above, so below” is a fundamental truth of the cosmos, diet is a crucial aspect of emotional, intellectual, and spiritual development. This is presented to us immediately in Genesis. The first sin of the human race involved eating.1 Moreover, it was only after eating that Adam and Eve perceived their nakedness.2 This dramatically demonstrates that diet and consciousness are interrelated.

“Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.”3

The spiritual traditions of all ages, whose purpose is the freeing of the human being through conscious evolution, have been unanimous in stating that the basic requisite of the path to enlightenment is purification. According to the Beatitudes it is purification which results in the Divine Vision: “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.”4 The first of “the first works”5 requisite for the successful cultivation of consciousness is that of purifying oneself on all levels, beginning with the purification of the body through diet.

Since the human being is composed of many aspects or levels in his fundamental makeup, it is necessary that the process of purification be instituted and maintained on all those levels. And since it is the physical level which dominates the horizons of our consciousness, obviously the process should begin there–in fact, the purification of all our subtler levels depends upon the purification of our physical entity. This makes sense when we realize that all that goes to constitute a human being is formed of energies of various types, and the only source of energy is that which is brought into the body through sunlight, air and food. Though light and air are essential sources of energy, it is material food that provides by far the greatest amount of the energy from which our multilevel complex is shaped.

When we realize that any physical object has all the levels which we do, namely, the physical, biomagnetic, sensory, intellectual and will bodies, we can understand the importance of the kind and quality of food we eat. For not only does the physical substance of the food become assimilated into our physical body, so also do the subtler energies become united to our inner levels.

Meat, Fish, and Eggs

The effect of ingested meat, fish, and eggs on the mental and psychic states of those who eat them is detrimental to any attempts at attaining higher consciousness. It is even destructive of normal, balanced mental states for, as said above, our minds are fields of energy which absorb the subtle energies of whatever we eat and are affected thereby. To eat meat is to absorb the mental state of the animal. (Serious psychological research is being done on this subject right now.) It is virtually the same as grafting an animal’s living brain into our brain–a horrible thought!

If that seems a bit too esoteric, just consider that anything dead is toxic, since it is decaying, and therefore unfit for food. Even more, the animals are slaughtered in an atmosphere of intense fear, and as a consequence their flesh is filled with an abnormal amount of various hormones such as adrenaline–which are transferred to us when we eat it. Even worse, today’s animals are raised on chemicals that produce abnormal growth and weight. So we are both eating an abnormal substance and taking in large amounts of artificial growth hormones and various “wonder drug” compounds. Recently several deaths have been attributed to eating meat which contained harmful chemicals from cattle feed. And for years it has been known that cattle grazing in fields next to highways have very high levels of lead in their flesh because of automobile exhaust. Those who eat such cattle run a great risk of lead poisoning.

We Are What We Eat

We cannot get a marble statue from clay, nor can we get wheat bread from barley meal–the end product is still going to consist of the nature of the material started with. So it is with all our bodies, gross and subtle. They will reflect the character of the food which has gone into their formation. Because of this, the Christian Church from the beginning urged its members to abstain from various harmful substances which adversely affected either their health or consciousness.

Jesus the Essene

One of the major factors needed for an intelligent understanding of Christianity–and of vegetarianism within Christianity–is the fact that Jesus of Nazareth was an Essene. Joachim and Anna, the parents of the Virgin Mary, were both from renowned Essene families. Saint Joseph was also an Essene. The twelve Apostles were Essenes, most of them being cousins of Jesus. The Master of the Essenes was Saint John the Baptist, also a cousin of Jesus. (Baptism was the initial purificatory rite of the Essenes to prepare aspirants for initiation.)

Thus the first Christians were not ordinary Jews–they were Essene Jews. Wherever the Apostles went after the Ascension of Christ they preached first to the Essene Jews and then to the Gentiles who were initiates of the Mystery religions of that time. (This is one reason the ordinary Jews were so offended by the Christian Jews–they actually preferred initiated Gentiles to Jews who were not Essenes.)

So to grasp the character of Christianity’s roots we not only need to know about Judaism, we must acquaint ourselves with Essene Judaism, which was quite distinctive.

Vegetarian Essenes

Pacifism was a fundamental principle of the Essenes. The commandment “Thou shalt not kill” was interpreted in the broadest sense to include all destruction of life. Therefore Essenes were strict vegetarians. They would not wear leather since it involved animal slaughter. Nor would they wear wool since it was common to kill the sheep just after it was sheared, and they considered shearing cruel, even if the sheep was allowed to live. (The same principle was observed by Appollonius of Tyana, as well.)

It was a long-standing tradition among the Essenes that the Messiah would be born into an Essene family. But His Essene background was one of the reasons Jesus was so hated by the Judeans (mistranslated “the Jews” in English versions of the Gospels).

Animal Sacrifice

The aspect of the Essene position on non-killing that most offended other Jews was the refusal of the Essenes to offer animal sacrifice in the Temple. Such a refusal was considered an implied criticism–if not a rejection–of the Law. The Essenes, however, like Appollonius of Tyana among the Greeks and Romans (who killed him because of his efforts to abolish animal sacrifice), insisted that the prescription of animal sacrifice was meant to be fulfilled spiritually, the animals being symbols of human negativity. So adamant were the Essenes on this point that they established for themselves a Tabernacle on Mount Carmel where they usually worshipped. They mostly made monetary offerings to the Temple in Jerusalem, but whenever they offered animals it was understood that those animals were not to be killed, but would be allowed to live in the Temple gardens until they died naturally. As an incentive to this, the Essenes offered animals–such as dairy cattle–which could benefit the Temple and its priests while remaining alive.

Although this attitude toward animal sacrifice was not liked by the rest of Israel, since the Essenes had existed from the days of Moses (his brother Aaron having been their first Master), their interpretation of the Law regarding animal sacrifice could not be successfully challenged. Also, a perusal of the prophets in the Old Testament reveals a definite antagonism toward animal sacrifice,6 since all the prophets were Essenes–both Isaiah and Jeremiah having been Masters of the Essenes.

Transmigration

The Essenes considered that God had prohibited the killing of both animals and human beings because of the transmigration of souls–that is, that the individual soul starts at the lowest rung of evolution and passes through all lower forms of life, eventually coming to the human form and evolving beyond that, as well. Since all souls are evolving upward at the will of God, to interrupt their evolution by killing them is a defiance of the Divine purpose. Saint Paul had this in mind when he wrote: “For meat destroy not the work of God.”7

Just as it would be insane for someone with a college degree to go into a grade school and kill and eat the first and second graders, saying that he had the right to do so because he was better educated, so it is morally insane for us to kill and eat a being simply because it is lesser in evolution. We are all students in the same school, and animals have the same divine right to live as do we. Therefore, to cause them suffering and stop their evolution is a crime against the divine spark within them–the same divine life that is within us, as well.

Because of this, too, the Essenes were vegetarians. If we look at the history of religion–especially in the Christian West–we will find that whenever there has been a movement of spiritual regeneration, the first principle adopted has been that of strict vegetarianism. The Nazarites of the Old Testament were never to eat meat. Samson was a Nazarite, which proves that vegetarians are hardly weaklings.

The Passover Lamb?

In the Torah8 it is implied that every Jew must eat of the sacrificial lamb during the Passover celebration. Since Essenes were vegetarians, did they–including Jesus and Saint John–comply with this? They felt no need to. It was a contention of the Essenes that the Torah had been corrupted both in its text and observance. For this reason, too, they did not usually worship in the Temple at Jerusalem but rather in the tabernacle on Mount Carmel which they maintained according to the original instructions of the Torah. (That is, it was not a permanent building, but a tent-like structure to remind the worshippers that the imperishable God dwells in the quickly-passing tabernacle of the perishable human body).

True Nature of the “Animals” Sacrificed

It was their opinion that the “animals” originally offered in sacrifice were effigies of animals that represented the particular failing or fault from which the offerer wished to be freed. Appollonius of Tyana taught this in relation to the ancient Greek sacrifices, and urged a return to that practice. In the Essene practice, each person molded the effigies with his own hands, while praying and concentrating deeply on the traits he wished to have corrected.

The effigies were made of five substances: powdered frankincense, flour, water, olive oil, and salt. When these effigies had dried, they were taken to the tabernacle. The altar of the tabernacle was a metal structure with a grating over the top and hot coals within (there was usually not an actual fire). The effigies were laid upon this grating and burnt by the intense heat. As they burned, through the force of the heat the olive oil and frankincense liquefied and boiled or seeped upward. This fragrant liquid was called “the blood” of the sacrifice. It was this with which Moses consecrated the tabernacle, its equipment, and the priests,9 not animal blood. And it was just such a “lamb” whose “blood” was sprinkled on the doorposts in Egypt.10

Essene Passover “Lambs”

For the Passover observance, the Essenes would bake a lamb effigy using the same ingredients–except for the frankincense they would substitute honey and cinnamon (or, lacking honey, they would use a kind of raisin syrup). This was the only paschal lamb acceptable to them–and therefore to Our Lord and His apostles.

Contemporary Jewish Vegetarian Passover

In later centuries vegetarian Jews have represented the paschal lamb by placing a leg bone of a lamb on the Passover table. Many vegetarian Jews in our time find that offensive–understandably so–and use a celery stalk or similar “bony” vegetable instead. I have observed this myself when celebrating Passover with vegetarian Jewish friends.

What Did John the Baptist Eat?

What, then, about the statement in Saint Matthew’s Gospel11 that John the Baptist only ate locusts and wild honey? Did he eat insects? No. The “locusts” which Saint John ate were not insects, but the pods of the locust tree which even today are known as “Saint John’s Bread,” and to those of us who frequent health food stores as carob.

The Multiplied Fish

Why, then, did Jesus feed the people with fish when He multiplied the food? Simply because that was what they had. However, there is a very interesting distinction made between the bread and the fish in the Gospels of Saints Matthew, Mark, and John.12 When writing of the feeding of the five thousand, all three Evangelists are careful to note that Jesus first took the bread, blessed it, divided it and gave it for distribution. But the fish He simply gave for distribution! He gave no blessing to the eating of fish because it was not given by God to man for food. Moreover, since it was already dead He did not kill anything–He just made more of it. Of course, His disciples ate only the bread, while the others ate the fish as well. (There is also a speculation that the “fish” were actually a preparation made by the Galileans from a plant that grew in the Sea of Galilee.)

The Sacrifices of Cain and Abel

Let us go back to the beginning of the Bible. In Genesis13 we read that when Abel offered sheep to God, and Cain his brother offered “the fruit of the ground,” “the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering: but unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect.” This is cited by desperate carnivores as evidence against the vegetarian position. But where in this account of Cain and Abel’s sacrifice is there any mention of eating whatsoever–either of vegetables or of animals?

It is obvious that the acceptability or unacceptability of the sacrifices was a matter of the inner disposition of those who offered. For “the Lord looketh on the heart.”14 Considering that later on non-animal food substances were daily offerings in the Temple, it would not be logical to conclude from this story that animal offering is acceptable and vegetable offering is not. (Though that, too, would have absolutely nothing to do with the principles of vegetarianism.)

Nor can it reasonably be concluded from the Genesis account that the animals offered by Abel were killed. Rather, they were dedicated to the service of God–just as the Essenes insisted upon doing at the time of Jesus.

The killing of animals and the eating of their flesh was absolutely unknown to Adam, Eve, and their children. Only later in the spiritual degeneracy of the human race did the practice of flesh-eating arise.

God Has Spoken Even at the Beginning

It is interesting that carnivores consistently see only what they like in their reading of Genesis, and completely ignore the explicit statements that vegetarianism was the divinely ordained diet for both humans and animals. “And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.”15

From this we see that neither humans nor animals are natural flesh-eaters. To be so is to violate the divine pattern.

The Psychic Effect of Meat-Eating

Besides negative energies, meat-eaters also must contend with the influence of negative intelligences in the form of obsessing spirits, for the vibrations of meat attract such entities. One of the reasons the Essenes abhorred animal slaughter was the fact that wherever blood is spilt all kinds of negative entities gather. Because the blood of the sacrifices attracted evil spirits, the priests who served in the temple at Jerusalem wore specially magnetized bells whose ringing repelled such beings. This was necessary for their protection.

Because of this affinity of negative spirits and energies for meat and blood, some shamanic healers place raw meat at the feet of their patients so the disease energies and entities will pass from the ill person into the meat, which is then destroyed. This being so, what will be the condition of the human being whose entire body is pervaded with the substance of animal flesh and blood? Such a body will be susceptible to evil and negative influences which will not be confined to the physical body alone but will invade the rest of our bodies as well.

The mental, emotional, and physical states of the meat-eater are rendered susceptible to negative influences. It is true, many people have strong enough intelligence and will to withstand much of those influences, but what a waste of life energy that requires! The wise hear the exhortation of Higher Consciousness: “Touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you.”16

The Spiritual Value of Vegetarianism

The major thing to keep in mind when considering the subject of vegetarianism is its relevancy in relation to our explorations of consciousness. We need only ask: Does it facilitate my spiritual growth–the development and expansion of my consciousness? The answer is Yes.

That this is true is demonstrated in the Second Book of Esdras.17 When Esdras pled with God for prophetic guidance, God told him: “Go into a field of flowers, where no house is builded, and eat only the flowers of the field; taste no flesh, drink no wine, but eat flowers only; And pray unto the Highest continually, then will I come and talk with thee. So I went my way into the field which is called Ardath, like as he commanded me; and there I sat among the flowers, and did eat of the herbs of the field, and the meat of the same satisfied me.”18 After seven days Esdras received a revelation from the Lord, but first he had to refine his mental energies by diet–mere devotion and prayer was not enough. (Nor would diet have availed anything without prayer.)

As already discussed, many supposedly moral or spiritual problems are only matters of energy behavior. If the energies are modified and recentered where they belong, instantly the problem vanishes. But such a modification and repositioning is not possible with energies other than those absorbed from sunlight, air, and plant life. This is why, as already cited, God told the first human beings: “Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat [food].”19 The Psalmist affirmed this dietary regimen when he wrote: “He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man: that he may bring forth food out of the earth.”20

Daniel, Prophet and Vegetarian

In the Old Testament we have an example of abstinence from meat as a basis for physical and psychic health. Daniel and his fellow Essenes refused to eat the meat provided by the King of Babylon. Here is the account.

“The king spake unto Ashpenaz the master of his eunuchs, that he should bring certain of the children of Israel, and of the king’s seed, and of the princes; Children in whom was no blemish, but well favoured, and skilful in all wisdom, and cunning in knowledge, and understanding science, and such as had ability in them to stand in the king’s palace, and whom they might teach the learning and the tongue of the Chaldeans. And the king appointed them a daily provision of the king’s meat, and of the wine which he drank: so nourishing them three years, that at the end thereof they might stand before the king.

“Now among these were of the children of Judah, Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah: Unto whom the prince of the eunuchs gave names: for he gave unto Daniel the name of Belteshazzar; and to Hananiah, of Shadrach; and to Mishael, of Meshach; and to Azariah, of Abednego.

“But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king’s meat, nor with the wine which he drank: therefore he requested of the prince of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself. Now God had brought Daniel into favour and tender love with the prince of the eunuchs. And the prince of the eunuchs said unto Daniel, I fear my lord the king, who hath appointed your meat and your drink: for why should he see your faces worse liking than the children which are of your sort? then shall ye make me endanger my head to the king.

“Then said Daniel to Melzar, whom the prince of the eunuchs had set over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, Prove thy servants, I beseech thee, ten days; and let them give us pulse to eat, and water to drink. Then let our countenances be looked upon before thee, and the countenance of the children that eat of the portion of the king’s meat: and as thou seest, deal with thy servants.

“So he consented to them in this matter, and proved them ten days. And at the end of ten days their countenances appeared fairer and fatter in flesh than all the children which did eat the portion of the king’s meat. Thus Melzar took away the portion of their meat, and the wine that they should drink; and gave them pulse.

“As for these four children, God gave them knowledge and skill in all learning and wisdom: and Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams.

“Now at the end of the days that the king had said he should bring them in, then the prince of the eunuchs brought them in before Nebuchadnezzar. And the king communed with them; and among them all was found none like Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah: therefore stood they before the king. And in all matters of wisdom and understanding, that the king inquired of them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and astrologers that were in all his realm.”21 The proof of the philosophical pudding was in the physical eating!

We should not overlook the fact that Daniel and his friends are said to have been “ten times better than all the magicians and astrologers that were in all his realm.” This indicates that the King was questioning them on esoteric matters, proving indeed that “as for these four children, God gave them knowledge and skill in all learning and wisdom: and Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams.”

Abstinence from meat is shown by this incident to be essential for the opening of higher consciousness.

Original Christian Vegetarianism According to Saint Peter

From the time of Daniel we can move forward to the Christian era and see what the Fathers and Saints of the Church have thought about the eating of meat.

One of Saint Peter’s closest Roman disciples was Clement, a young man destined to be both Bishop of Rome and a saint of the Church. When he met Saint Peter and asked to be his disciple, he answered: “How is it that you want to remain with me for always without understanding my way of life and purpose? You see that I eat only bread and olives and a few greens.”

He kept careful records of Saint Peter’s informal talks, usually known as The Clementine Homilies. Here are some segments of Saint Peter’s words that deal with the value of a non-meat diet and the evils of meat-eating.

“The things which are pleasing to God are these:…not to taste dead flesh, not to touch blood…” (Homily VII, section iv).

“This is the service He [God] has appointed:…to abstain from the table of devils, that is, from food offered to idols, from dead carcases,…and from blood” (Homily VII, section viii).

It is intriguing that Saint Peter calls the table upon which meat is offered “the table of devils.” At first hearing this seems remarkably strong, but when we realize that it is the work of evil (“demons”) to destroy life and halt evolution, then it becomes comprehensible. Further, evil entities are drawn to wherever suffering and destruction are perpetrated, vampiristically drawing energy from the spilt blood of the innocent. For this reason, as already pointed out, the priests who were serving in the temple compound at Jerusalem always wore consecrated bells on their clothes so the vibrations made by the priests’ movements would repel the negative entities that thronged around the blood of the animal sacrifices. (There was so much blood, that stone drains were constructed to carry it away from the Temple itself into the Temple gardens where it “watered” the ground as fertilizer. Who but a demon would not be repelled at such a picture? And imagine the vibration of the plants in such a garden!)

Further in this section–no doubt having in mind the ludicrous idea that it is not wrong to eat the flesh of animals that have died naturally or been killed by other animals–Saint Peter specifically mentions such animals as part of the “demon diet.”

In Homily VIII, section xv, Saint Peter speaks of those ancients who would “turn, contrary to nature, to the eating of animals.…They, on account of their mongrel nature, not being pleased with purity of food, longed only after the taste of blood. Wherefore they first tasted flesh.”

Why does Saint Peter call such people “mongrels”? First, because the human diet is vegetarian, as outlined in Genesis. “And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.” So those who ate the flesh of animals were mixing the diets of humans and demons. (Flesh is not the normal diet of animals either.) “And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.”) Further, since our life-force energies are derived almost totally from our food–which should be vegetable–if we eat meat, our life energies become a mixture of human and animal energies. And morally speaking such a practice mixes the ways of human and demonic life. What term for such a situation could be more appropriate than “mongrel”? And surely the term is not as bad as the condition and the practice that produces it.

Continuing the subject of the first meat-eaters–for, as we have seen, human beings were originally vegetarians–Saint Peter tells us: “But when irrational animals fell short, these mongrel men tasted also human flesh. For it was not a long step to the consumption of flesh like their own, having first tasted it in other forms.”

We need only recall our own modern history which includes the cannibalism in Roanoke, Virginia, the Donner party, the concentration camps in Germany (my father worked with a refugee who had eaten human flesh in the death camp during World War II), and the Andes plane crash. And contemporary (carnivore) society considers that the cannibalism was justified! Such is the mentality of those who will eat the flesh of the innocent. On the other hand we have record of thousands of people in rural India who have died of starvation but never even considered killing their farm animals.

Truly astonishing is Saint Peter’s account of the effect of meat-eating upon the ancient world: “By the shedding of much blood, the pure air being defiled with impure vapor, and sickening those who breathed it, rendered them liable to diseases, so that thenceforth men died prematurely. But the earth being by these means greatly defiled, these first teemed with poison-darting and deadly creatures. All things, therefore, going from bad to worse, on account of these brutal demons, God wished to cast them away like an evil leaven, lest each generation from a wicked seed, being like to that before it, and equally impious, should empty the world to come of saved men. And for this purpose, having warned a certain righteous man, with his three sons, together with their wives and their children, to save themselves in an ark, He sent a deluge of water, that all being destroyed, the purified world might be handed over to him who was saved in the ark, in order to [make possible] a second beginning of life. And thus it came to pass” (Homily VIII, section xvii).

Saint Bernard

In the twelfth century the great mystic teacher of the Church, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, wrote the Rule for the Knights Templar. There he simply stated in the twenty-sixth section: “It is understood that the custom of eating flesh corrupts the body.” Surely a word to the wise is still sufficient.

Saint Paisius Velichkovsky

One of the latest canonized saints of the Eastern Orthodox Church is Saint Paisius Velichkovsky, the eighteenth century writer on interior life whose efforts completely revitalized the Hesychast system of Christian meditation throughout the Slavic countries, and whose influence is still a major force in Eastern Christian mysticism. Writing about those (even bishops) who would force us to eat meat by misapplied quotations from the Bible, especially Saint Paul, Saint Paisius says: “It is not right for us to comply in this matter even with an angel.” This is firm conviction! Why was the saint so adamant about this? He further writes: “It [meat-eating] cripples heedfulness of mind. From the beginning of the creation of the world and of man the will of God–which is true and perfect–was not to eat meat. Because of this, not only in Paradise, but even up to the Flood, there was no eating of meat among men.”

Saint Basil of Poiana Marului

A basic text Saint Paisius Velichkovsky recommended for those who wished to take up the practice of meditation was an entire book by the great eighteenth-century Hesychast monk, Saint Basil of Poiana Marului, on the evils of eating meat. In that he says: “Meat is the food most associated with sinful passions…, and because of it the bones of the ancients fell in the desert and they did not behold the promised land. Just as manna was then called the bread of the angels,22 because it came down from heaven, so here also bread is called the food of the angels, and not meat, because bread was sent to many of the saints from on high by the holy angels.…We see that manna was sent from heaven to the ancients, but in the new grace many desert dwellers, instead of manna, received bread, but never meat–sometime through the holy angels, sometimes from the birds of the air, sometimes by the invisible hand of God.…There is a great multitude of divine fathers, both anchorites and those living in communities, who received food sent to them by god–but never meat.…So we have learned one thing for certain, that God neither by Himself, nor through His holy angels, nor through the birds of the air, ever gave meat to His servants in the new grace, but only bread.…The witness of God Himself that we should abstain from meat is far greater and more certain than the permission of certain men who allow it. Assuring us of this, God has never shown Himself sending His servants food that consists of meat.”

“The passionate pleasure provided by meat is like the furnace of the Chaldees fired up seven times over, while that derived and contrived from plain food is like the lion’s den where Daniel was once cast in.23 Just as that furnace is a far more fearsome torment than the lions and their den, so enslavement to the belly and love of pleasure when it is enslaved to eating meat is far more fearful than what occurs with plain foods.”

“Abstaining from meat is a divine law unto salvation and a virtue that is pleasing to God.”

1) “And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.” (Genesis 3:6) [Go back]

2) “And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked.” (Genesis 3:7) [Go back]

3) I John 3:2,3 [Go back]

4) Matthew 5:8 [Go back]

5) Revelation 2:5 [Go back]

6) “Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?” (Psalms 50:13). “For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings” (Hosea 6:6). “And Samuel said, Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams” (I Samuel 15:22). “To do justice and judgment is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice” (Proverbs 21:3). “To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the Lord.…I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats” (Isaiah 1:11). “For I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices” (Isaiah 1:11). [Go back]

7) Romans 14:20 [Go back]

8) Exodus 12 [Go back]

9) Exodus 24:6,8 [Go back]

10) Exodus 12:7 [Go back]

11) Matthew 3:4 [Go back]

12) Matthew 14:19; Mark 6:41; John 6:11 [Go back]

13) 4:1-5 [Go back]

14) First Samuel 16:7 [Go back]

15) Genesis 1:29,30 [Go back]

16) II Corinthians 6:17 [Go back]

17) The Fourth Book of Ezra was originally in the Bible–including the King James Version–but was later removed. [Go back]

18) Second Esdras 9:24-26 [Go back]

19) Genesis 1:29 [Go back]

20) Psalm 104:14 [Go back]

21) Daniel 1:3-20 [Go back]

22) Psalms 77:25 [Go back]

23) See the third and sixth chapters of Daniel. [Go back]