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Blood—Vital for LifeHow Can Blood Save Your Life?
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“The precepts hereby set down in a precise and methodical manner [in Acts 15] are qualified as indispensable, giving the strongest proof that in the apostles’ minds this was not a temporary arrangement, or a provisional measure.”—Professor Édouard Reuss, University of Strasbourg.
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Blood—Vital for LifeHow Can Blood Save Your Life?
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Note what happened when, years after Jesus’ death, a question arose about whether someone becoming a Christian had to keep all of Israel’s laws. This was discussed at a council of the Christian governing body, which included the apostles. Jesus’ half brother James referred to writings containing the commands about blood stated to Noah and to the nation of Israel. Would such be binding on Christians?—Acts 15:1-21.
That council sent their decision to all congregations: Christians need not keep the code given to Moses, but it is “necessary” for them to “keep abstaining from things sacrificed to idols and from blood and from things strangled [unbled meat] and from fornication.” (Acts 15:22-29) The apostles were not presenting a mere ritual or dietary ordinance. The decree set out fundamental ethical norms, which early Christians complied with. About a decade later they acknowledged that they should still “keep themselves from what is sacrificed to idols as well as from blood . . . and from fornication.”—Acts 21:25.
You know that millions of people attend churches. Most of them would probably agree that Christian ethics involve not giving worship to idols and not sharing in gross immorality. However, it is worth our noting that the apostles put avoiding blood on the same high moral level as avoiding those wrongs. Their decree concluded: “If you carefully keep yourselves from these things, you will prosper. Good health to you!”—Acts 15:29.
The apostolic decree was long understood as binding. Eusebius tells of a young woman near the end of the second century who, before dying under torture, made the point that Christians “are not allowed to eat the blood even of irrational animals.” She was not exercising a right to die. She wanted to live, but she would not compromise her principles. Do you not respect those who put principle above personal gain?
Scientist Joseph Priestley concluded: “The prohibition to eat blood, given to Noah, seems to be obligatory on all his posterity . . . If we interpret [the] prohibition of the apostles by the practice of the primitive Christians, who can hardly be supposed not to have rightly understood the nature and extent of it, we cannot but conclude, that it was intended to be absolute and perpetual; for blood was not eaten by any Christians for many centuries.”
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