Future Citizens of Heaven:

Put down your earthly flags!
There will be no borders in the New Earth, nor love of country,race or class there.

Ditch these sentiments before He comes or you will be left with your sins of nationalistic pride. Don't make your arm of flesh your downfall.

ALL pride in human institutions is faulty.

Cling to His country, "The Promise of the New Earth."

As for meat:

"Flesh was never the best food; but its use is now doubly objectionable, since disease in animals is so rapidly increasing. Those who use flesh foods little know what they are eating. Often if they could see the animals when living and know the quality of the meat they eat, they would turn from it with loathing. People are continually eating flesh that is filled with tuberculous and cancerous germs. Tuberculosis, cancer, and other fatal diseases are thus communicated. {CG 382.3}
The effects of a flesh diet may not be immediately realized, but this is no evidence that it is not harmful. Few can be made to believe that it is the meat they have eaten which has poisoned their blood and caused their suffering. Many die of diseases wholly due to meat eating, while the real cause is not suspected by themselves or by others." {CG 382.4}

AMEN! Ikan! A very timely post, as to where to put our priorities. Also, if that quote was observed by all of us, we would not have to fear for the disease for ourselves. And, we very well might be an influence on our loved ones who still eat meat.

I was so thankful to read that your Mother is better, perhaps this will even have a bearing on her thinking.

In His Love,
Dora

I hope she does wake up, Dora, thank you.

As for nationalism:

"The Holy Spirit operates the same the world over. When it is received into the heart, the whole character is changed. "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." [2 COR. 5:17.] Old habits and customs and national pride and prejudice are broken down. "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance." [GAL. 5:22, 23.] When these are abiding in the soul, there will be unity of thought and action." {GW92 364.2}

Sad that Advent believers will let meat and nationalism cause a rift between them even for a second.

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I am not going to spar with you, J.R. Layman.

My comments were in relation to how quickly the USA shut its borders to Canada when one isolated diseased cow with Mad Cow Disease was discovered in Canada, however, when one was discovered within the borders of the USA itself, the USA was giving reasons why Japan shouldn't close its borders to the USA as the US had done to Canada.

My comments had nothing to do with being a Canadian. If I were an American, I would have had the same concerns.

After saying all that, we should be looking at the ramifications of Mad Cow disease, and both the reaction of Canada and now the USA in relation to it. This tells me that both Canada and the USA are more concerned in the economic loss than in the health of its own citizens. The problem is that money speaks louder than the health concerns of its respective citizens. I do commend both Canada and the USA for recalling the beef that they fear may have come from the respective affected diseased cows.

The Mad Cow disease is only one reason of many reasons why it is better and safer to be a vegetarian. What we see happening, first overseas, then in Canada, and now in the USA gives credence in what Ellen White wrote about animal food in these last days. It is definitely as sign of the times that we are in.

Amen, once again! In the church where we attend, there are so many who still eat meat, and seem to just shut their ears and eyes to what is happening.

I mentioned recently to a church member about a neighbor buying a load of chicken manure to mix with the cow feed. The member was shocked. I believe even more shocked than when we first learned that cows were fed to other cows! It is awful to think what all the animals are fed which are being raised for human consumption.

It is certainly time to go back to God's plan for us, and to leave the meat, dairy products and eggs at the store.

The odd myth among Adventists who talk about eating "clean" meat is shackling the Health Reform Message in non-SDA eyes. How can we claim freedom from ceremonial laws when we talk like and eat like this?? Sounds Jewish to everyone.

However, I am against any form of force among us concerning diet. One must decide from love and knowledge, not peer pressure.

Some of the remarks posted on this thread border on the ludicrous. Some folks should stop embarrassing themselves ….by making statements which have no relationship to established SCIENTIFIC FACT! The chances of becoming ill with Creutzfeld-Jacobs Disease (CJD), due to eating bovine meat are so infinitesimal that some here have as much credibility as Chicken Little when she is shouting “The Sky is falling“

quote:

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“Regardless of the cause, since first identified in the 1980s CSFAN reports that as of May 2003 there have been in total approximately 139 cases of vCJD worldwide, with only 1 case in 2000. Diarrhea diseases, in contrast, cause 2.2 million deaths every year.

Those fretting about mad cow probably think nothing of taking a bath (which kills 320 Americans a year), walking downstairs (which kills 1,421 Americans annually) or driving their car (which kills 42,000 of us each year). Our odds of getting vCJD from eating British beef, said the CDC, is about one in ten billion

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Excerpts from
Tech Central Station
From http://www.techcentralstation.com/122903F.html

Don't Have a Cow, Man
By Sandy Szwarc, RN, BSN, CCP

quote:

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If it's biologically implausible for humans to get mad cow from beef, why the alarm? "Because you don't let the facts get in the way of a good story," said Venter. "The mad cow disease story would be a non-story in the U.S. if it were not for the propaganda efforts of vegetarian groups," said the National Council Against Health Fraud. "EarthSave, PETA, PCRM, and the Seventh-day Adventist website have seized upon the opportunity to frighten people into behaving in ways they find ideologically delightful."


We can be assured of one thing when it comes to the safety of our food: media hysteria will be inversely proportional to actual risks.

Alfred Hitchcock knew a shadowy figure was far more terrifying than a well-lit known villain. Nothing haunts us more than our own imaginations, said Frank Furedi, sociologist at the University of Kent in Canterbury and author of The Culture of Fear (Continuum Publishing, 2002). Likewise today's newspapers and television networks have found that fictitious, sensationalized, "what-if?" scares of hidden dangers lurking in our foods make the juiciest stories guaranteed to capture audiences and sell papers.

The mania surrounding mad cow is already proving this point.
Since one aged dairy cow in Washington state was discovered last week to have bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or "mad cow disease," there's been an explosion of news stories panicking about the safety of our beef.

What is known is that BSE is not contagious and cows cannot give it to each other or other animals just by living together. Nor can they give it to people. There's never been a single case. Despite that fact, 4.5 million innocent healthy cows were destroyed in England during the peak of their mad cow hysteria, devastating beef and dairy farms and creating an environmental disaster in disposing of all those dead carcasses. (Who needs terrorists when citizens can destroy their own food system?) With hope, reason will prevail, as it has in Canada since their BSE case last May, and the unnecessary mass slaughter of healthy animals won't be repeated.

Cows with BSE act like animals and people with other spongiform encephalopathies -- they lose muscle control, waste away and die. Creutzfeld-Jacobs Disease (CJD), one of the human spongiform encephalopathies, occurs spontaneously in about 1 in a million people, according to the World Health Organization. It appears to have a genetic component 5 to 10% of the time, with a small percentage iatrogenic. CJD is unrelated to mad cow as evidenced by the fact it occurs in England about the same frequency as the rest of the world, reports the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and APHIS. CJD has been around a long, long time -- long before mad cow ever hit the news, according to Konrad Eugster, MD, executive director of the Texas Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Laboratory at Texas A&M University.

In light of British panic over mad cow, their Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee has been closely studying and monitoring these diseases since 1990. On March 20, 1996 it noted 10 cases of human CJD that occurred in younger people and lasted longer than typically seen. Besides the fact that most variant-CJD victims had eaten beef at some time -- although no one had eaten brain tissue and one of the ten patients had been a vegetarian since 1991 -- they could find no scientific evidence linking BSE and vCJD.

That didn't stop vCJD from being labeled the human form of mad cow. A popular orthodoxy has evolved, fueled by media frenzy, that meat contaminated with the brain prions of mad cows could give people the disease. "It's all been much ado about nothing," said Scott C. Ratzan, director of the Emerson College/Tufts University School of Medicine Program in Health Communications and editor of the Journal of Health Communications. "Based on available scientific evidence, we can be virtually certain that mad cow disease poses no threat to humans."

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The simple FACT is, that while it make’s a lot of good health sense to not eat “meat.” THERE IS NO SCRIPTURAL PROHIBITION against doing so. And to suggest that some SDA’s are not as good as other SDA’s because they eat “clean meat” and haven’t reached a decision as to not eating “meat.” HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THEIR SPIRITUAL CONDITION!!!!!!!!! Ellen White never said so, indeed she didn’t give up “meat eating” till 1890’s, a full 40 years AFTER her “Health Reform Vision!” And indeed she was eating even OYSTERS, as late at 1881!

Well, you can trust "science" or you can trust God's Messenger. Or you can pretend to do both.

However, let's look at the SOP FACTS:

"Greater reforms should be seen among the people who claim to be looking for the soon appearing of Christ. Health reform is to do among our people a work which it has not yet done. There are those who ought to be awake to the danger of meat eating, who are still eating the flesh of animals, thus endangering the physical, mental, and spiritual health. Many who are now only half converted on the question of meat eating will go from God's people to walk no more with them." {CD 382.1} This was 1902.

Plain enough?

Frankly, I don't care how long it took EGW, you or anyone else to see the FACT that meat-eating effects the whole person. I will face the music spiritually alone, not being able to blame others for any of my disobedience.

This was God's Message to us, right? Or was it just Sister White's opinion?

Let's get spiritually honest, not culturally biased, Adventist or Canadian or Texan or Chinese!

Ikan

Ellen White said so elegantly

quote:

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There are those who ought to be awake to the danger of meat eating, who are still eating the flesh of animals

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A idea I totally agree with it!

She SAID “THE DANGER OF MEAT EATING” She DID NOT SAY, “THE SIN OF MEAT EATING“!!!!!!

My PROBLEM is with folks like YOU, who will take the meaning and context OUT OF PROPORTION to what Ellen White wrote. Making the issue of eating meat an OBEDIENCE issue, subject to the penalties of SIN...in using words such as "DISOBEDIENCE." Both making the issue of meat eating and Ellen White an EXTRA BIBLICAL issue!

Remember

quote:

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Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in your brother's way. Romans 13:14

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Your condemnation of any Adventist who don't see things your way, reminds me of the following quotation from the words of inspiration

quote:

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A legal religion is insufficient to bring the soul into harmony with God. The hard, rigid orthodoxy of the Pharisees, destitute of contrition, tenderness, or love, was only a stumbling block to sinners. They were like the salt that had lost its savor; for their influence had no power to preserve the world from corruption. The only true faith is that which "worketh by love" (Galatians 5:6) to purify the soul. It is as leaven that transforms the character.Thoughts From the Mount of Blessing, page 53, paragraph 2

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JR, I do not mean this as being argumentative. But, I do feel that vegetarians have a right to state their reasons for their choice.

You speak of it not being a sin to eat meat...it would be for me now, if I ate it, when I know there are all kinds of other things much better for me.

But..I wouldn't choose now to eat meat,although I ate it for years. In fact, I cannot now stand to smell it cooking. I have no quarrel with you eating meat if you like, for that is up to each individual. But, no, I don't think anyone is being very smart if they continue to eat meat, with all the knowledge we have about it. Nor do I believe they are going by what we know to be God's ideal diet, if they continue to choose to eat meat. But, those are just my observations and beliefs.

Also, God won't force you or anyone else to not eat meat. Nor will I get "brownie points" for my choice. We do make choices everyday, and when we choose wrong, and later see that wrong, and ask God to forgive us, He does, but doesn't usually remove the consequences.