Is eating for Christians? If so, which food is suitable?
Reprint from The Witchtower, 04/2010
“They are like the bread … all those eating it will defile themselves.” – Hosea 9:4
Some believe that Christians should not eat at all. They base their opinion, among others, on the July 22, 2001 Awake! issue. It says: “A Gallup Youth Survey of 13- to 17-year-olds in the United States revealed that 56 percent of them say a prayer before dinner.” (page 13) Jonathan, a young man from Germany, indicated: “Most people pray to false gods before their meals. Since true Christians must abstain from everything that is connected to false religion, for me it is out of the question that a servant of God would defile himself by eating.”
In the first century, some worshippers of God had the same attitude. The Bible says: “The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat.” (Mark 7:3) But is this approach based on the Bible? Obviously not, since the Pharisees and Scribes told Jesus: “The disciples of John fast … and so do those of the Pharisees, but yours eat.” (Luke 5:33) Indeed, Christians “have authority to eat,” as Paul wrote later. – 1 Corinthians 9:4.
Hence it is out of the question that Christians may eat. But can they voluntarily abandon eating? Or are they obliged to eat? It is interesting what Jesus did when he raised the daughter of Jairus. The account says: “Her spirit returned, and she rose instantly, and he ordered something to be given her to eat.” (Luke 8:55) So he considered eating the most important thing of all.
Jesus imitated his heavenly father in this regard. Moses advised the Israelites against the gods of the neighboring peoples and called these “the product of the hands of man, wood and stone, which cannot see or hear or eat or smell.” (Deuteronomy 4:28) Doubtless he would not have pointed out that these gods ‘cannot eat’ if the true God could not do that either. Hence Jehovah can eat, and as Christians we must be “imitators of God.” – Ephesians 5:1.
A divine mission
In fact, eating is a divine command, since according to the prophet Isaiah “this is what the Sovereign Lord Jehovah has said: ‘Look! My own servants will eat.’” (Isaiah 65:13) On another occasion he instructed his readers: “Let there be … an eating!” – Isaiah 21:5.
Some may object that they are already overweight and would better make a diet. But according to Isaiah 11:6 also “the well-fed animal” would be among God’s people, and this verse applies to “beastlike men.” (Isaiah’s Prophecy – Light for All Mankind, volume I, page 164) Indeed a diet would be contradictory to God’s righteous principles, for he said: “All the fat ones of the earth shall eat.” (Psalm 22:29) God appreciates when his worshippers eat, be they slim or fat.
The prophet Zechariah said: “Every … cooking pot in Jerusalem and in Judah must become something holy belonging to Jehovah of armies, and all … must do boiling in them.” (Zechariah 14:21) Eating is a sacred duty for worshippers of Jehovah. Indeed, “he who eats, eats to Jehovah.” (Romans 14:6) Thus the question is not if but what God’s servants should eat.
In the past, Jehovah provided uncommon food from time to time. Likely the prophet Ezekiel was in the bathroom when God instructed him: “Son of man, what you find, eat. Eat this roll.” (Ezekiel 3:1) We can imitate Ezekiel in hard times, but there is yet another food that is suitable for Christians.
Meat
Christians must be “imitators of God,” and God ate meat when he visited his friend Abraham. (Ephesians 5:1; Genesis 18:3, 8) His son Isaac ate meat, too; he said to Jacob (whom he thought was Esau): “Bring me some game and make me a tasty dish and, ah, let me eat!” – Genesis 27:7.
Later eating was regulated in the law. Jehovah told the Israelites through Moses: “As for the flesh, everybody … may eat the flesh.” (Leviticus 7:19) Later he added: “Because your soul craves to eat meat, whenever your soul craves it you may eat meat.” (Deuteronomy 12:20) Was this only a recommendation? No, God commanded specifically: “You must eat meat.” (Deuteronomy 12:15) Vegetarians would have transgressed against God’s law, and whoever did that had to be stoned.
Jehovah reinforced this instruction when he commanded through Jeremiah: “Eat flesh!” (Jeremiah 7:21) Even later, Jesus mentioned a king who said: “I have prepared my dinner, my bulls and fattened animals are slaughtered.” (Matthew 22:4) Indeed, “flesh is true food.” – John 6:55.
In paradise, meat will be the common food. Jesus foretold how a father in paradise will react to the resurrection of his son: “Bring the fattened young bull, slaughter it and let us eat and enjoy ourselves, because this my son was dead and came to life again.” – Luke 15:23, 24.
Bread
Hence there can be no doubt that meat is suitable food for Christians. But what about bread? Note how king Saul reacted when a witch tried to induce him to eat bread. She told him: “’Let me set before you a piece of bread, and you eat, that power may come to be in you, because you will go on your way.’ But he refused and said: ‘I am not going to eat.’” (1 Samuel 28:22, 23) Since he insisted on not eating bread, the hag knew only one alternative: “The woman had a fattened calf at the house, which she butchered at once … Then she set it before Saul and his men, and they ate.” – 1 Samuel 28:24, 25, NIV.
Saul followed his own rules, for he had commanded: “Cursed is the man that eats bread.” (1 Samuel 14:24) With this, however, he only repeated a principle from the Mosaic Law. Even there Jehovah had ordered: “You must eat no bread.” (Leviticus 23:14) Moses himself “ate no bread.” (Exodus 34:28) The Israelites followed his example and therefore were blessed by God, so that he could tell them: “While I kept guiding you forty years in the wilderness, your garments did not wear out upon you, and your sandal did not wear out upon your foot. Bread you did not eat.” – Deuteronomy 29:5, 6.
Granted, in a moment of weakness, even David “ate the loaves … which it is not lawful for anybody to eat.” (Mark 2:26) But he knew that God’s servants did usually not eat bread; at old age he wrote: “A young man I used to be, I have also grown old, and yet I have not seen anyone righteous left entirely, nor his offspring looking for bread.” (Psalm 37:25) Righteous people looked for meat at the market, not for bread. A capable woman described by the mother of king Lemuel heeded this divine principle: “She is watching over the goings-on of her household, and the bread … she does not eat.” – Proverbs 31:27.
Temptations
Some years later, the apostate king Jeroboam tried to entice a prophet of God to commit a deed because he had caught Jeroboam at worshipping a golden calf. “But the man of the true God said to the king: ‘If you gave me half of your house I would not come with you and eat bread’ … For that is the way he commanded me by the word of Jehovah, saying, ‘You must not eat bread.’” (1 Kings 13:8, 9) Later, however, he was fooled into bread eating and was put to death by divine intervention. – 1 Kings 13:23-26.
The prophet Ezekiel too was instructed by Jehovah: “Bread … you should not eat.” (Ezekiel 24:17) Finally, Jesus Christ was tempted by the devil himself. Satan asked him: “If you are a son of God, tell this stone to become a loaf of bread.” (Luke 4:3) But Jesus pointed out the divine principle and replied: “It is written, ‘Man must not live by bread.’” (Luke 4:3) Later he instructed his disciples to carry “no bread” for their trips. (Luke 9:4, NIV) The disciples confirmed “that they had no loaves.” – Mark 8:16.
Some worshippers of God tried to eat bread secretly. During Solomon’s reign, a woman said: “Bread eaten in secrecy – it is pleasant.” (Proverbs 9:17) Later some Israelites smuggled bread into their villages and said: “At the risk of our soul we bring in our bread.” (Lamentations 5:9) But they did not go unpunished. The Bible says with regard to such people: “They did not put faith in God … Men ate the very bread … They had not turned aside from their desire … when God’s wrath itself ascended against them.” (Psalm 78:22-31) Indeed, “bread … is pleasurable to a man, but afterward his mouth will be filled with gravel.” – Proverbs 20:17.
Beware of bread
Furthermore the Bible uses bread as a symbol of wickedness. Wise Solomon called the food of the wicked ones “the bread of wickedness.” (Proverbs 4:17) The prophet Isaiah warned the Israelites against “bread in the form of distress.” (Isaiah 30:20) Finally Jesus advised his disciples: “Watch out for the leaven!” (Luke 12:1) The Bible usually mentions bread in a negative context and even calls it “contemptible bread.” – Numbers 21:5.
Hence eating bread is out of the question for worshippers of God. But “in all the land of Egypt there was found bread,” and “in the Bible, Egypt often symbolizes Satan’s world.” (Genesis 41:54; Isaiah’s Prophecy – Light for All Mankind, volume I, page 201) For worldlings bread is suitable, and to them we can offer it.
The prophet Hosea said regarding apostates: “They are like the bread … all those eating it will defile themselves.” (Hosea 9:4) Jesus called Judas Iscariot, his traitor, the one “that used to feed on … bread.” (John 13:18) That is why the Bible counsels us: “If the one hating you is hungry, give him bread to eat.” (Proverbs 25:21) With regard to the apostate Israelites who should soon be killed at the destruction of Jerusalem, Jehovah said: “They will have to eat bread.” – Ezekiel 4:16.
Soon, after the last worldling has been annihilated in Armageddon, bread will not be anymore. Jehovah then “will send hunger on the land; not hunger for bread.” (Amos 8:11, Postmodern Bible) The prophet Jeremiah foretold regarding the New Jerusalem, the future capital: “There is no bread anymore in the city.” – Jeremiah 38:9.
Cake
Can the same principles as for bread be applied to cake? Granted, the prophet Ezekiel ate cake. He did this, however, as a prophetic example for the apostate Israelites. Jehovah instructed him: “And as a round cake of barley you will eat it … upon dung cakes of the excrement of mankind you will bake it.” (Ezekiel 4:12) It was a onetime event by which Jehovah wanted to teach the Israelites a lesson.
Apart from that, the Bible speaks of cake in the same way as of bread. On one occasion, Tamar wanted to induce her brother Amnon to cake eating: “Then she took the flour dough and kneaded it and made the cakes under his eyes and cooked the heart-shaped cakes. Finally she took the deep pan and poured it out before him.” (2 Samuel 13:8, 9) But obviously he knew the divine principles: “Amnon refused to eat.” – 2 Samuel 13:9.
Later the prophet Elijah suspected a widow of eating cake in secrecy. She was innocent though, and she professed: “As Jehovah your God is living, I have no round cake.” (1 Kings 17:12) She also knew which consequences the eating of cake would have: “Then my son and I will die.” (1 Kings 17:12, NLT) The psalmist wrote that only apostates are concerned with cake. – Psalm 35:16.
In actual fact, cake is even connected with false religion. Jeremiah reports that idolatresses offered “sacrificial cakes” to the “queen of the heavens” with the consent of their husbands. (Jeremiah 7:18; 44:19) For sure, it was not for nothing that God had this account included in his word. Cake surely is no suitable food for worshippers of Jehovah.
Fruits and vegetables
Since bread, cake, and other types of pastry are out of the question: What about fruits and vegetables? Interestingly, Jehovah God commanded even the first human couple: “You must not eat from the tree.” (Genesis 2:17, NIV) God later repeated this principle and forbid his people to eat field crops by themselves. He said: “The fruitage of your ground … a people will eat whom you have not known.” (Deuteronomy 28:33) As with bread, the Israelites could sell fruits and vegetables to foreigners.
In the Mosaic Law, God aptly summarized what the food chain should be like among his people: “I shall certainly give vegetation in your field for your domestic animals, and you will indeed eat and be satisfied.” (Deuteronomy 11:15) Jehovah provided the “vegetation” not for humans but for their “domestic animals;” the humans should then “eat” the flesh of these animals “and be satisfied.”
This fact was confirmed by the experience of king Nebuchadnezzar. If it would have been common back then that humans ate fruits and vegetables, God would not have told him: “The vegetation is what they will give even to you to eat just like bulls.” (Daniel 4:25) This pagan ruler who had walked in opposition to Jehovah had to eat vegetables as a punishment. Even today, children who see a cow ask their parents: “I am thinking of mad King Nebuchadnezzar … Do you think he also chewed the cud?” – Awake!, January 8, 1983, page 26.
Fruits and vegetables were made for animals, not for humans. In Elisha’s time, his attendant made a disastrous mistake. Elisha instructed him: “Put the large cooking pot on and boil stew for the sons of the prophets.” (2 Kings 4:38) Obviously this man lacked correct knowledge of God’s law, since he “went picking wild gourds … and sliced them into the stewpot.” (2 Kings 4:39) Fortunately, the “sons of the prophets” knew that eating vegetables was forbidden under penalty of death according to God’s law: “As soon as they ate from the stew, they themselves cried out and began saying: ‘There is death in the pot’ … And they were not able to eat.” (2 Kings 4:40) Elisha understood the gravity of the situation, and immediately he advised the cook: “Pour it out!”
– 2 Kings 4:41, NASB.
Apostates
The apostate king Ahab who was married to wicked Jezebel ignored God’s principles regarding vegetables intentionally. He “spoke to Naboth, saying: ‘Do give me your vineyard, that it may serve as a garden of vegetables to me, for it is close by my house.’” (1 Kings 41:2) Naboth obeyed God and used his garden to grow wine, which was designated by God as the appropriate beverage for his worshippers. (John 15:1; 1 Timothy 5:23) Wicked Ahab though wanted to turn the vineyard into “a garden of vegetables.”
Naboth knew that this would be a sin against God, and so he rejected Ahab’s offer: “It is unthinkable on my part, from Jehovah’s standpoint.” (1 Kings 21:3) Hence Jezebel had him put to death by means of false accusations, so that Ahab could conclude his illegal project. (1 Kings 21:11-16) Because of him and other fruit eaters, Jehovah had to bring judgment upon Israel. Jeremiah described it like the following: “I saw, and, look! the orchard itself was a wilderness … It was because of Jehovah, because of his burning anger.” – Jeremiah 4:26.
So it stirred Jehovah’s wrath when the Israelites ate fruits and vegetables. Jesus imitated his heavenly father in that regard. When he passed a fig tree and came to know that Jews had eaten from it, he cursed it and said: “Let no one eat fruit from you anymore forever!” (Mark 11:14) Hence there can be no doubt that Christians must abstain from fruits and vegetables.
The right food
Thus meat is the only food that is appropriate for worshippers of Jehovah. Before someone became a Jehovah’s Witness, he was part of the world, the antitypical Egypt, and may have eaten fruits and vegetables. He has to change his diet in order to meet Jehovah’s requirements. Thereby he has to avoid a complaining attitude and must not imitate certain Israelites who complained about the obligation to eat only meat: “In Egypt … there were cucumbers, melons, onions, and garlic.” (Numbers 11:5, CEV) But as a holy people for Jehovah, they were not allowed to defile themselves with fruits and vegetables anymore.
That he chose flesh as the appropriate food for his people is an impressing proof of Jehovah’s wisdom and kindness. Many people dislike vegetables, others are allergic to fruits. But “no man ever hated … flesh.” (Ephesians 5:29) Granted, some worldly scientists claim that eating too much meat would be hazardous to health. But David, a faithful servant of God, knew that consuming flesh is not dangerous. He sung under inspiration: “What can flesh do to me?” – Psalm 56:4.
A diet that consists only of meat is not necessarily monotonous. The apostle Paul hinted the Corinthians at this fact when he wrote: “Not all flesh is the same flesh.” (1 Corinthians 15:39) Apart from beef, pork, and poultry, there is lamb and ostrich meat. Also there are different ways of cooking, so that a varied diet is possible. In any case let us imitate faithful Israelites of Moses’ time who said: “Do give us meat, and let us eat!” – Numbers 11:13.
Meat – the right way
How should meat be cooked? Jehovah God instructed the prophet Ezekiel: “Make the logs many. Kindle the fire. Boil the flesh thoroughly. And empty out the broth, and let the bones themselves become piping hot.” (Ezekiel 24:10) Ezekiel should boil his meat in a pot on a log fire. In the Mosaic Law too, God commanded his people: “Boil the flesh.” – Leviticus 8:31.
Hence boiling is the classic way of cooking meat, and surely it is acceptable to God. Other methods however, like grilling of frying, are not specifically mentioned in the Bible. So we can assume that it is not important for God how we cook our meat, as long as we observe his prompt: “Get up, eat much flesh!” – Daniel 7:5.
When shopping, we have to heed the following principle though: “You must not eat any fat of a bull or a young ram or a goat.” (Leviticus 7:23) Actually, the Mosaic Law does no more apply to us, but God has not changed. (Malachi 3:6) Therefore we should only choose lean pieces when we purchase beef, lamb, or chevon. As regards pork, we can also eat fatty pieces, since the Mosaic Law did not specifically mention the fat of pigs.
Where should we eat?
It seems that eating in public is was uncommon in Israel. Uriah the Hittite asked: “Shall I go into my own house to eat?” (2 Samuel 11:11) Many centuries later, some Christians had a false attitude and ate in public. The apostle Paul trounced them and said: “Certainly you do have houses for eating.” (1 Corinthians 11:22) Worshippers of God should eat only at home.
The current world that is ruled by Satan offers many temptations. These include snack stalls which could induce a Christian to eat in public. May we not be distracted by such lures, but let us imitate Uriah who wanted to eat only in his own house.
Remaining faithful to God
What we subsist on has direct influence on our relationship to God. The apostle Paul wrote regarding followers of false religions: “Some think it is all right to eat anything, while those whose faith is weak will eat … vegetables.” (Romans 14:2, CEV) Some Christians in the first century mistakenly thought they could “eat anything” without losing their righteous stand before God. Others were weak in faith and were fooled into eating fruits and vegetables. Both groups along with others “who do not know God [and his principles regarding food] … will undergo the judicial punishment of everlasting destruction.” – 2 Thessalonians 1:8, 9.
If we remain faithful to Jehovah God and keep abstaining from fruits, vegetables, bread, cake, and other vegetarian food, we will be allowed to live forever in a paradise. God will then carry out his original purpose, according to which animals are “born naturally to be caught and destroyed.” (2 Peter 2:12) Satan’s world along with its animal welfare organizations trying to detain people from eating flesh will then be a thing of the past. Are we not happy about these wonderful prospects?
