HOW CAN BLOOD SAVE YOUR LIFE?

Conclusion of BLOOD AND TRUE CHRISTIANS

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 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." 

Next time: HOW CAN BLOOD SAVE YOUR LIFE?/WHAT OF USING BLOOD AS MEDICINE?

From the Watchtower magazine