Herbert W Armstrong

   Now I remember one time when I got out to Ambassador College, I couldn't afford a whole lot, so we had beans and biscuits and honey, and that was about what we ate most of the time. And somebody said, "Hey, you know, you better watch out, you can't eat too much honey." I said, "What are you talking about?" Why, he says, "As a matter of fact, there's a scripture that says don't eat too much honey." I said, "Why, you gotta be kidding. The Bible doesn't take enough time to talk about eating too much honey. That's ridiculous." He said, "Well, let me show you." Sure enough, he did. Got a Concordance and I stuck my nose in the book and it did say that. Still does.

   But you know, I was surprised how many things the Bible has to say. For example, look at Luke chapter 10. Luke chapter 10. The Bible is the foundation of all knowledge. Of course, this is the story of the Good Samaritan, beginning verse 33 (Luke 10:33). A certain Samaritan, unclean Babylonian transplant in Palestine, came where he saw this man who had fallen among these thieves. When he saw him, he had compassion on him, and he went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast and brought him to an inn and took care of him.

   Now you know, when I read that, I just believe man should live by every word of God. You know, it says there that with wounds you pour in oil and wine. Seems simple enough to me. So you know, when somebody gets a bad burn, you keep it soaked in wine, you don't even have a scar.

   And I remember my brother one time, we were playing football out in the field over in East Texas and he fell on this big piece of bottle and just cut a big slab out of the heel of his hand there, just a piece of pie. And it, you know, we, he said, "Well, boy, oh boy." And I said, "You know what, the Bible says if you just pour wine and oil in there, wine is strong enough to kill the germs and oil mollifies it, and it'll heal right back normally and you can't even tell where it was." Now, you know, you can look at his hand, you can't even tell which one he fell on.

   But what does man do? You know, man doesn't want to take the Bible as the foundation of knowledge. So what happens when man falls and gets cut? Iodine, alcohol. Well, that's just as good as wine, isn't it? No, it isn't. No, it isn't as good. Now why isn't it as good? Well, you know what happens when you have a scar and you pour alcohol in it? Alcohol is way too strong. It pickles the skin. And you'll have a tough scar there. So later on, any time you get banged or bumped, you know, you have to open that old scar. So you've seen boxers and boy, the other guy goes through his scars because they'll split those open and they'll bleed again. But you know, if you pour oil and wine in, that skin is as tough as other skin.

   Now, how much does that really work, you know, pouring in wine and oil? I remember my wife up in Chicago one time. We were, she was working on some dishes and slipped her hand down in the glass trying to wash the inside of it and cut a big slab out of the back of her hand. And you know, I said, "Well, what do you want to do? You want me to dash to the hospital, let them give you some stitches, or what do you want to do?" She said, "Well, let's just pour wine and oil in there and put a butterfly on there and forget about it." You know, you look at her hands and see if you can tell where she cut her hand. But you know, you can follow the Bible, it means what it says.

   Now let me show you a couple of other examples of this same thing. Notice Isaiah the first chapter. You know, why isn't wine and oil good enough? Why would you want to use something more? I mean, isn't wine strong enough in alcohol to kill germs? Yeah, it does. It'll kill any germ. What about oil? Oil mollifies and keeps it soft where it will heal normally? Yeah, it sure will. But you know, if you use iodine and you use alcohol, that pickles your skin, that sears and cooks the outer edge of it, and you try to get it back together.

   And you know, I've got hands that have stitches on them. I had blood poisoning and this is before I realized you could just follow what the Bible said. So I've got stitches on there and boy, I play softball and my hands get hurt and they ache and you know, the weather changes and you can feel that aching in your bones there. If I'd been smart enough to just do what the Bible said, I could avoid a lot of that.

   Notice Isaiah the first chapter. Here God likens the nation to a man (Isaiah 1:4). "A sinful nation, a people heavy with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters. They've forsaken the Eternal, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel to anger, they're gone away backwards. Why should you be stricken anymore? You will revolt more and more. The whole head is sick and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot, even unto the head, there's no soundness in it. But wounds, bruises, putrefying sores, they've not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment."

   So you notice there again it's very plain what you do with wounds, bruises, putrefying sores, wounds, same thing like that thief that fell among, or the man that fell among the thieves and was beaten. Close up the wound, bind it up with gauze or cloth, or mollify it with ointment, pour wine and oil in.

   You know, I've seen man's vanity too. You know, a man will fall and injure himself and especially if there are girls around or women around, he will, "Well, that's nothing, just a broken arm, just a compound fracture. Ah, it's nothing," you know, "just a bad cut." And you know, you get blood poisoning. You're gonna be tough, you're gonna be a man and you're gonna show your ignorance when you do that. And all you could do is pour wine and oil in, you don't have any troubles.

   Now I wonder about the rest of the Bible. You know, there's a verse over in the Song of Solomon. In fact, there are quite a few of them in the Song of Solomon. Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, right at the front of Isaiah. Notice this verse in the Song of Solomon. It's Chapter 5 (Solomon 5:1). "I am come into my garden, my sister, my spouse. I've gathered my myrrh with my spice."

   You know, a lot of times you can read health books today and boy, they'll say don't eat spice, don't use spice. I don't pay a bit of attention to that, you know, I'm not gonna go by that. I mean, if the Bible says you tithe mint, anise, and cummin, if the Bible says "I've gathered my myrrh with my spice," I'm gonna use spice. And I can read all the books all day long and say don't ever use any salt. I don't pay any attention because there's a verse in the Bible that says salt is good. So I'm gonna use salt. Now if I get a high blood pressure problem and I need to cut down my high blood pressure, there are other ways I can do that. I might go off salt temporarily, to keep from killing myself till I get my health better.

   But you know, is the Bible the foundation of all knowledge? Is it accurate? Is it safe? Can you follow it in health areas? Well, read on. Notice what he says here. "I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey."

   You know, I remember some boys from Milwaukee who grew up in Milwaukee all their lives. They had chickens in the zoo even, and cows, because these guys lived their whole lives in town. So they came on a circuit with us one time and at our home in Genoa, we sat down and I had this honeycomb, put it out there on the table for breakfast. They looked at that and said, "Man, you eat that wax? Why sure you eat the wax." I said, "Boy, that'll glue up your insides. You just eat the honey out of it." I said, "Never heard any such thing." I said, "It says in the Bible, I eat my honey with my honeycomb." They said, "Oh yeah it does, where?" So I showed them this verse and several others. They said, "Well, I'll be. Pass the wax."

   You know, they started eating this honeycomb. Now I don’t think most of us realize what honeycomb can do for you. You know, if you eat honeycomb when you have hay fever or sinus trouble, it's the best thing you can do. Just eat the honeycomb. Eat the honey with the honeycomb. You know, if you have bad hay fever and sinus trouble too, you know, you can drink burgundy wine. That's the best thing in the world, honey, honeycomb, and wine. You get rid of it in a hurry. But you can take all of your sinus tablets and all your pills and all of your nasal inhalants and all that you want and it will give you cancer of the sinus cavities and mastoids and everything else, you know.

   But ah, notice what else it says here. "I've eaten my honey with my honeycomb with my honey. I have drunk my wine with my milk. Eat, O friends, drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved."

   And what happens when you drink your wine with your milk? We had a little old lady up in Lawrence, Kansas. Her name is Grandma Owens. She was up in her 80s and she had a hard time sleeping. In fact, she couldn't sleep enough, but she started having some spirit problems one time, you know. I got a call in the middle of the night and dashed over and talked with her and said, "Look, if you have a hard time sleeping, why don't you just pour you a little glass of wine and pour you a little glass of milk and drink them down. I’ll guarantee you you won't have any trouble. Throw away your sleeping pills, you know, throw away any artificial mechanical man-made brew that you've used to put yourself to sleep and just drink your wine with your milk."

   Boy, you know, the next day she was terrified because she woke up and it was about noon and she slept all the way from early evening all the way till noon. She thought she slept all the way through the Sabbath and missed church. But you know, God knows what he's talking about. You drink your wine with your milk. They work together.

   You know what wine does? Wine aids digesting food and milk is hard to digest, but wine works very well digesting food. In fact, I've got a clipping at home that talks about wine compared to penicillin as a germ killer. It says, really if you get a true wine that isn't a white wine made without the peeling, you get more germ killer in wine than you do in penicillin and there aren't any possible side effects. You can't improve on wine, you know, why use penicillin? You can't improve on wine.

   But, you know, I find people that are always having stomach troubles, always having the flu, always having colds over and over and over. There's a scripture that tells you what to do in a case like that. In fact, you might notice I Timothy chapter 5.

   And I might just mention too, when you should be anointed, you know, we used to anoint people automatically when they get pregnant, and we don't do that anymore. What are we assuming they're gonna fall and crush the baby or, you know, why assume bad news? You can't be anointed for what you're feeling like you might get tomorrow. You know, you can't get anointed for a headache. A headache's not an ailment. You know, a headache is a symptom. There's something wrong with you that brings on a headache, a headache itself isn't an ailment.

   What kind of a headache do you have? Eye strain, sinus headache? What kind of headache you have from nerves? You gotta put an end to the cause. You know, that would be like driving down the street and your oil light comes on in your car, so you just take your hammer and a little plonk and got rid of that didn’t it. That didn't get rid of it. You just knocked out the warning light. You still got trouble. That's the way people do, they get a headache, pop, pop an aspirin, get rid of that headache. Of course you eat very many aspirin, you get a bloody bleeding stomach too. You get troubles using too many aspirin. You don't need them anyway.

   What's causing your headache? I remember when I came into the church, I had terrible sinus trouble. In fact, I just had splitting headaches and sinus trouble. My dad take me to the doctor and he put me under heat lamps, and I had all kinds of different treatments with sinus trouble. Well, I went in and asked Mr. Armstrong to anoint me. Never to this day if I ever had another sinus headache. Now that's been about 26 years ago. I never have had one and don't ever expect to have one ever again. So I could have been taking aspirin all that time trying to get rid of a sinus headache.

   But what causes your headache, nerves, then work on the cause. What causes your headache? Migraine headache? Blood pressure problem? You know, deal with the cause. Don't deal with the effect. That's the way humans are though.

   Now Mr. Meredith gave a very good guideline on being anointed. He said, "Now look, if I get the flu, I want to look back and say, alright, now what have I been doing? You know, I knew I've been missing sleep. I knew I've been eating junk. I knew I hadn't been exercising. I knew I hadn't gotten fresh air and sunshine and I hadn't been doing my part. So am I gonna just come before God and ask God to apply that lashing and beating and that ripped body and stripes of Christ in a careless attitude like that? Be ridiculous, you know. It's a serious thing when you call on God to apply the beaten, broken suffering. You know, ripped body of Christ for your healing. That's not trivia. That's not minor."

   You know, when I anoint somebody, I want to know we're asking God for a miracle. We're asking God to intervene with normal laws, to supersede any normal law. We're asking God to work a miracle. Otherwise I'm not gonna want to anoint anybody, you know.

   But, you know, if you've got the flu, I tell you what I do. I wasn't anointed when I had the flu. Why wasn’t I? Well, because I knew I'd been playing Russian roulette, you know, I hadn't been watching what I've been eating. I hadn't been exercising. I hadn't been getting out and getting fresh air and sunshine. I've been neglecting seven laws of health, so you neglect the laws, you pay the penalty. So God had mercy on me and let the penalty end in a hurry, but you know I never was anointed. So now I can be anointed when I really want a miracle, when I need a miracle. Just to ask God to be anointed for every little trivia, I'm not gonna do that. You're asking God for a miracle.

   Now, notice here in I Timothy chapter 5. I remember this little old widow we visited too. Like my grandmother was one of them too. My granddad died and she was dying. She didn't have any appetite. She didn't want to eat. She didn't care. She just had no desire. So she went to see Doctor Fair from Big Sandy over in Longview, and he said, "Well, you know, Grandma Blackwell," he said, "I've been the doctor for your family for many years. So I'm probably gonna lose you with what I'm gonna have to tell you. But," he said, "I'll tell you what." He said, "If you just take a can of beer and in the afternoon start sipping on a can of beer, and I don't care if it takes you all afternoon and all evening. Just slowly all the rest of the day sip on that can of beer. That will give you an appetite, that will relax your nerves, that will help you to be more at ease and sleep better, and you know that will do you more good than anything."

   Well, she didn’t live but 20 years after that. You know, 92 years old when she finally died, still sipping her can of beer every day, at least till she got checked into the hospital and they didn't kind of go along with that kind of prescription.

   But notice here in I Timothy 5 what the apostle Paul had to tell Timothy (I Timothy 5:23). "Drink no longer water." Boy, that's weird, isn't that odd. Drink no longer water. You don't think you can drink too much water, do you? Yeah, you sure can. You can drink too much of anything. You can eat too much of anything. Drink no longer water. As a matter of fact, if you read the Greek word there it says quit being a water bibber. That's really what he's saying. Quit being a water bibber.

   But you know, you look in Timothy's background, his dad died when he's young, he was brought up by his grandmother and his mother. Now you surely don't expect them to be giving young Timothy as he grew up, wine, do you? But you know the Jews from the time their kids are small, when they teach them something, they put a little taste of wine in their mouth. They get it out of Isaiah, verse in the Bible. Every time they learn something, they give them a little taste of wine because they want to associate learning with good taste, something that's good. And you know the Jews have the least alcohol problem of any people.

   But you notice what this is. Timothy, Grandma and your mom, they mothered you, they grandmothered you. Therefore, you've just been a water bibber. But now "use a little wine for your stomach's sake and your often infirmities." Look at what it is. If you have often infirmities, Doctor Timothy just gave you a prescription there. If you have often infirmities, if you're the kind that's always coming down with female troubles monthly or always coming down with headaches or flu, colds, you know, no matter what it is, your often infirmities, doesn't say what kind, all kinds. It helps digest your food. It helps kill germs.

   You know, we used to have a habit when our girls would come in from school. We'd give them a little glass of wine. We'd make them wash their hands and face, because we didn't want them bringing whatever they got at school into the house and living with it all the rest of the day. You know, I never spent a penny on our oldest girl, she's 24. Next one's 22, and the next one's 20. And every year I'd go in to fill my income tax, he'd say, "Now we come to good medical expenses." I'd say, "None." The guy look at you like you're crazy, you know, like you didn't know what was a medical expense. And you say, "Well, you mean to tell me you got 4 kids and you didn't have any medical expense? Boy, you sure were lucky." And I said, "No, I didn't say lucky. I mean, 5 years you filled out the same income tax and it's been the same every year, that isn't luck. 5 years with 4 kids." Boy, that's real odds, you know.

   Well, we believe in following God's laws. I mentioned that to you. I said, you know, we believe if you follow God's laws, you'll prevent all kinds of ailments and sickness. I mentioned to them about my girls not having spent any money on doctors.

   All right, now you do this. What happens if you drink too much water? You're gonna dry out your grease gun, you know, your appendix is the grease gun of your intestines. If you've got a weak appendix, hereditary or whatever, and you just keep drinking lots of water, you keep your intestines dry, and then things don't slide along in them very well. You got all the oil out of there. Maybe you need to take a little olive oil or take a little oil of some kind, but you can drink too much water, so you have bowel indigestion, intestinal trouble. God says use a little wine for your stomach's sake. Use a little wine for your often infirmities. I guarantee you that works. It works a great deal.

   Notice back in Ezekiel 16. Here's a real unique one. Ezekiel 16 (Ezekiel 16:4-5). God says, "As for your birth, your nativity, in the day you were born, now you know this is dead obvious. On a day when a baby is born you cut the navel you washed them in water to supple. You were not salted at all."

   Come on, you've got to be kidding. Salt a newborn baby on the day he's born. What is this anyway? Can you imagine that a newborn baby, the day he's born, you salt him. What in the world would you ever do that for? You know what happens when you rub a little lub on a baby with a little bit of salt? Stimulates the skin and makes the skin where it doesn't have all kinds of rashes when it's a little baby.

   You know, we've tried this. I mean, if it says in the Bible that's good enough for me, you know, all the doctors can just fall over on the floor laughing if they want to, but that's too bad, you know. Sooner or later they'll wise up and find out God knew what he was talking about because that makes your skin a lot more firm and dense and a lot better resistance and gets your capillaries right under your skin circulating and gives a real good healthy baby skin resistance to condition. Well, it just says you were not salted. That's good enough for me. I mean, if it says salt babies, salt babies then.

   Well, you know, there are a lot of things in here. Let's come back to one example. II Kings chapter 20. The Bible is the foundation of all knowledge. Medical, health, the Bible is the foundation, and it works, sure as everything. II Kings 20. Hezekiah was sick to death. Turned his face to the wall. Besought God. Isaiah didn't even get out of the inner court and they had to come back and tell him God had seen his tears. God had heard him.

   Notice verse 5 (II Kings 20:5). "I'll heal you. On the 3rd day you'll go up unto the house of the Eternal, and I'll add to your days 15 years. I'll deliver you and this city out of the hands of the king of Assyria." Well, Isaiah took a lump of figs. They took and laid it on the boil, and he recovered.

   Now can you imagine that? A lump of figs? What in the world is a lump of figs do? Well, you know, our son, when he was just newly born, my wife got a kidney infection and he all of a sudden started having lymph gland troubles, and he had a big knot on his lymph glands pulled out about like a grapefruit on his neck here. So dumb dumb me, I just remembered this II Kings 20 and it said they took a lump of figs, so boy, we put a lump of figs on there.

   And you know, the first thing we noticed, it started getting red, and the first thing you noticed, it started kind of coming to a lump out there, and the first thing you notice, it just burst open and start draining and drained for days and days and days and days and days. And you know, I didn't know afterward that if that had burst inwardly, he'd either have been an epileptic or else he'd have died from the poison flooding his system. But I just dumbly applied what II Kings 20 said.

   You know, if anybody has a boil, or they have something that needs to be drawn to the surface and poison taken out, and if you got a splinter down deep and you can't get it out, just put a lump of figs on there. I'll tell you, it'll draw it out. You know, it doesn't cost you for the prescription. I mean, just take a lump of figs, make a watery fig paste, put it right on there. I mean, I'll tell you that works.

   It's kind of odd, you know. One of the really funny ones I like is when the Bible talks about a land flowing with milk and honey. Then I get out Rodale's encyclopedia, which I spent a bunch of money buying, and you know, he says milk is one of the most ridiculous foods for a human to use. Milk, can you imagine that? God says the promised land is a land flowing with milk and honey. Well, I wonder what modern man would say. Let's not let it flow with milk and honey. Let's have it flow with pablum and sugar, I guess.

   Well, God says the land flowing with milk and honey. You know, milk is one of the two perfect foods. There are the two foods that have every known vitamin and mineral and food quality that a man has ever found. There are 2 of them, and milk is one of them. And wheat's the other one. Wheat, you know, they've gotten wheat that was buried in tombs in Egypt that's been buried for centuries. And they test it and it's got nutritional value just like it did before as long as you don't crack that kernel of wheat. That wheat just seems to sit there.

   And you can look in the latest Natural History magazine in the public library. They've got a section in there about seeds and how long they can stay before they begin to sprout or lose their life or lose their nutritional value.

   Well, in Deuteronomy 8, chapter 8, verse 8 (Deuteronomy 8:8). Here God talks about the promised land. "The Eternal your God brings you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley and vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of oil olive and honey."

   Now you know if we're going to write a modern Bible, we couldn't do that. We'd say the Lord your God has brought you into a good land. A land of Baby Ruth and Coca-Cola’s and Aspirin and Tums for the tummy and dumbs for the dummy, you know that's about what we'd have to say.

   Well, that's too bad. God says the land of wheat, barley. Barley? What on earth is that? Do you ever eaten any barley? Boy, that's rare. You know, that's kind of funny too in every food, God made one of each that's alkaline. And millet is an alkaline cereal, and the others are acid. Almonds are an alkaline nut, and the rest are acid.

   But you know, the most alkaline food that exists. Next time you get acid stomach instead of popping a Tums in there, an Alka-Seltzer or whatever. Buy a little can of black olives. Just eat a little can of black olives. I'll guarantee you it will neutralize the acid. And you won't have any side effects either. It won't give you any lasting trouble or make you addicted to it either.

   But notice God calls the promised land a land of wheat and barley, vines, fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil, honey. "Wherein you'll eat bread without scarcity." That's the most maligned food there is, bread, boy. Do you want to find the health books? I've never seen one yet. It wasn't death on bread. What bread are they talking about? Wonder Bread builds strong bodies 12 ways. That's what they're talking about. They're not talking about homemade bread, and they're not talking about whole wheat bread.

   You know, people badmouth pie and ice cream, boy, that's great. Eat all the pie you want as long as you make it with fruit and whole wheat flour. I mean, it's one of the most nourishing foods that exists. Same way with ice cream, you know, if you use whole milk, raw milk, and you use honey, what in the world is wrong with ice cream? One of the best foods there ever could be. It's got the, you know, it's got two of the best foods that exist, land flowing with milk and honey.

   But if you're going to use white sugar and you're going to use homogenized milk. And I can't imagine man being so dumb in a way because God makes milk come out of the cow where it just automatically separates itself. So man whips it up so it won't separate. First thing, homogenizes it, pasteurizes it, vitamin D-izes it, and you know, fixes it up for you. So your body has the hardest time on Earth breaking down milk. When God made it where it breaks itself down.

   Same way with honey, you know, honey is already digested for you. The bee did that. It's kind of funny too. I've read that one article here, but you know you can put any germ known to man in honey. TB germ, impetigo germ. It won't live 3 minutes. Now that may not be Safe Way honey. Heated and filtered and all that, but you just take plain pure honey right straight from the bees and you can put any germ man has. You know you can put an impetigo germ on that table there and one year later a kid bumping up against it can get impetigo. That's how tough that germ is. Well, they just live there and live there, but you just take a piece of good honey and dab it on there and it'll kill it in 3 minutes. Oh boy, no wonder God says land flowing with milk and honey.

   Now let's come back and look at a few other examples. Psalm 104 is a good verse. I think if I hadn't known this verse, I wouldn't be around today. Psalm 104. I was racehorsing all over Illinois and had a heart attack and got sidetracked and put to bed and didn't even get out of bed for a month and didn't even get out of the house for 6 weeks and it was kind of shifted to the side for a while.

   And then notice what this says, Psalm 104. Two verses here (Psalm 104:14-15). "He causes the grass to grow for the cattle." I remember a family we visited in Milwaukee when they first came into the church. They had this theory on green life. They were green life salesmen, and they had the idea that you plant wheat and oats, you know, and don't let it come to the head and make a kernel, when it's grass cut it. That's when it's live, growing, living, mow it, cut it right then and eat grass like a cow, except you don't have 9 stomachs to do it with. So you eat grass like a cow and you wipe out your kidneys. One of those men just couldn't believe that. He just still believed that green life was great. And then we had his funeral a few years afterwards, kidney failure.

   But you know God made grass for cattle. God didn't make grass for me. You know, I'm not made with teeth that work sideways like rabbits eat grass. I'm not made like cows with nine stomachs to eat grass. I'm not made like sheep and goats eat grass. God didn't make grass for me. I don't eat rose tips. I don't eat grass. I don't eat wheat grass. I don't eat oat grass, ryegrass. I don't eat grass. I feel sorry for people who get dupped into eating it from some Adventist health food people that get some idea by analyzing something mechanically, you can tell a lot.

   You know, take a leg off this table there and analyze it, man, that's good iron. So pop it in your mouth and swallow it, and you've got good iron. Well, that's ridiculous. You know, you can analyze pork and it's got more protein in it than beef does. That means pork's better for you. More protein. No, it isn't either. It's not fit to eat. It's also got a lot more fat. It's got a lot more poisons in the system because it didn't have any way of eliminating poisons.

   Now I hope you do a little bit of studying before you go around eating oat grass and wheat grass and ryegrass and stuff. God caused the grass to grow for the cattle. And herb for the service of man, there's a difference. You read back in Genesis creation, there's a difference between herb and grass. One is for man, the other is for cattle. He may bring forth food out of the earth for both animal creation and human creation, and wine that makes glad the heart of man, and oil to make his face to shine.

   Now that doesn't mean, you know, we use powder to take away shine. We don't like to have our face shine. Well, this means a radiant, healthy, beaming countenance that comes from the foods that God created. Wine makes glad the heart of man, oil makes his face to shine, and bread which strengthens man's heart. Bread which strengthens man's heart.

   And you know God likens the very life of Christ, His very body, to bread. Bread plays a great significance all the way through the Bible. When God talks about prophesying doom, he talks about taking away the whole stay of bread. When he gives you a sample prayer, he says, "Give us this day our daily bread." And yet in health books, you know, you shouldn't eat much bread. Depends on what kind of bread you're eating.

   You know, I went to Doctor Roy Lee of the Lee Foundation. He was up in his 70s or 80s when I went to him. I talked with him. He was gonna give me this pill and this pill and this pill, about 3 or 4 different ones, and I said, "Say, I wonder now if I got fresh wheat and soaked it overnight and ate it with honey as a cereal with milk on it and if I had fresh wheat and made it into fresh bread, the same day you grind the wheat," he say, "Look, if you're gonna do that, just forget about the pills."

   And you know, that was '64 when I had the heart trouble. I never have had any trouble since. I can go as hard as I want to in reason and not have trouble. But you know we got a little wheat grinder over there and we get wheat from Kansas. My wife goes in and puts this wheat in this grinder and makes bread with it. Well, I eat bread and milk. I mean, I eat all I can hold every day, any day, all day, and I don't pay a bit of attention to health books. They say, "Oh, you shouldn't drink milk, you shouldn't eat bread."

   Let me show you a dietitian's nightmare. There's a good one back here. Here's a dietitian's nightmare. Genesis 18. Alive, you're half dead," which for some reason I've still got in my library. But it takes a long list of don't eat this with this, don't eat that with that, don't eat this with this, don't eat this with that. If it contradicts the Bible, I just ignore it. Don’t even pay any attention to it.

   Notice Genesis 18:6. Now if you can imagine this, God Almighty, the Eternal, appears to Abraham in the plains of Mamre. Well, he lifts up his eyes and 3 men, 2 angels and God. Abraham runs out to meet them, very hospitable, very humble. Verse 6, "Abraham hastened into the tent to Sarah and said, make ready quickly, 60 pounds of fine meal." Man, he's feeding an army, 60 pounds. You got to be kidding. There are but two angels and God and Abraham. Who all else is he feeding? Well, maybe there are 48,000 servants. I don't know, but he didn't even have that many servants. You remember later when he rounded up all of his servants and went out to fight those kings. How many did he have?

   But I'll tell you this is 60 pounds of fine meal, "knead it, make cakes upon the hearth." Come on now, you don't feed God pancakes. I mean, when God and the angels come down, have angel food cake or something. What are you going to feed them? Well, Abraham fed God flapjacks, pancakes. I mean you can be sure they're whole wheat though, they weren't, uh, Aunt Jemima deal.

   "Abraham ran unto the herd and fetched a calf tender and good." Oh, don't eat veal, don't eat veal. It's immature. It's youthful. It hadn't grown to the maturity, you know, I've read all kinds of books that are down on veal, but I'm going to eat it. Verse 7 says a calf tender and good. That's what I believe. I mean, you can stack books up knee deep telling me don't eat veal. I'm not going to pay a bit of attention. I mean you can show me what they analyze chemically and I don't pay a bit of attention. If the Bible says fetch a calf tender and good, that's good enough for me.

   You don't have to age beef. Where did they come up with that aging bit? Well, since man knew that from the time it gets from the farmer where you slaughter it to the Safeway in the plastic wrapper to the time you get it on your stove, it's going to be aged anyway, so you might as well tell people that's good for it and you know you can sell them aged beef. Well, I don't, I know in the parable of the prodigal son they had a fatted calf, so it's not wrong to put a calf up and feed it before you butcher it because that's in the Bible.

   But notice what happened here anyway. "Abraham ran to the herd, fetched the calf tender and good, gave it to a young man. He hastened to dress it. He took" - the word isn't butter here but curd - "and milk and the calf which he dressed." Now wait just a minute now. You're going to tell me you're going to eat flapjacks, veal, milk and curd? You're going to feed that to God? Well, not if you've read "Man Alive, You're Half Dead," you wouldn't. But if you're dumb enough to go by the Bible, you would.

   You know, if I came to your house and you served me a flapjack and curd, which is like cottage cheese, and milk. And boy that's good enough. That's what they fed God and the angels. Boy, that's good enough for me. I don't care.

   Now notice even worse what Melchizedek did. Genesis 14. Genesis 14 (Genesis 14:18). "Melchizedek, King of Salem, brought forth bread and wine. And he was the priest of the Most High God." Bread and wine. Boy, that doesn't sound like a very good balance. Bread and wine. Bread's the staff of life. Bread's got vitamin E in it.

   You know, too, there again man gets carried away, vitamins. Maybe you've heard Mr. Armstrong say there ain't no such thing. Isn’t any such thing. You going to tell me there's a vitamin? I'd like for you to show me a vitamin C. Then don't you get suspicious when they letter them A B C D E F G H I J, and then B1 and 2 and 3 and 12 and 32 and you know it looks like algebra instead of foods. What's all this vitamin A, B and C and all that stuff? What's all that mean anyway?

   Well, you look up a dictionary, the word vitamin. It's a compound word, vital mineral. Two words, vital minerals. What are vital minerals? Well, iron, phosphorus, and potassium and trace minerals, but you know if you eat honey, you get all the trace minerals you can use. If you eat honey instead of sugar, you don't need to worry about trace minerals. Forget about it. You get all of them you need. They'll strengthen your bones. They'll help you to have good healthy bones too. If you got kidney troubles, you know, you can get potassium and phosphorus and your kidneys will rebuild themselves.

   And you know your body can go with half your liver. And you've seen John Wayne running around 7 years with one lung. Now he's running around without a stomach. 70 some years old, your body is pretty tough, but you know, why put it through the mill? Why make it suffer like you do?

   Well, I think it's one reason God revealed the knowledge of the health laws to his people because they live long lives and they live busy lives. You know, one of the things it says in obeying God, it says "love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength." It takes it to you know, it can wipe you out. I mean after 4 days up in Oklahoma and a 1000 miles in 4 days and all the preaching and teaching and talking and visiting, we went to Springfield and talked to people over there and got in at 1 o'clock one night, people talked till 3 o'clock in the morning. You know, I couldn't have done that if I hadn't been following God's laws. I'd had ham sandwiches and all that for years. I'd have kicked the bucket.

   But, notice Melchizedek, bread and wine. That's something else. Now you know God made a law that people are to be circumcised on the 8th day. And let me read to you out of the Mother's Encyclopedia. What it says here under circumcision. "The time for circumcision. According to Jewish law, of which ritualistic circumcision is a part, it should be done on the 8th day of life. Now, how does God arrive at that sum, kind of flip a coin and said well seven is a good number, let’s go past it and eight. This particular day was probably selected after centuries of experimentation through trial and error."

   Well, what about all those guys got circumcised before you found out the right day, you know, that's kind of bad, isn't it? But can you imagine man's admitting that's the way he does. And prescribe some medicine. 40 years later, he comes out with a better one and he tells you what all that first one did to you. But he never did tell you all that while you were using it till he came up with a new one. But man never gets leery, "Hey, I wonder what this one's gonna do to me for 40 years till he comes up with another new one." Boy, 100 million guinea pigs, that's what we are, you know. Can you believe that?

   "No doubt the Jews found, as we have, that when circumcision was done earlier, the child had a greater tendency to hemorrhage. According to Dr. Quick of Marquette University, the answer to this riddle is now known. He claims that a full term child is born with a relatively high prothrombin level of its blood." That's what we call vitamin K for clot, not even spelled right though, K L O T clot. That ain't the way you spell it, but it's vitamin K, because you already got a C and you don't want to have a C 1 and 2 and 3 and 4.

   "Prothrombin is a substance which plays a significant role in the clotting of blood, and its quantity in the body at any time is directly affected by the chemical vitamin K. Doctor Quick states that the prothrombin level drops rapidly after birth and does not start to rise until the child is several days old."

   But you know it's handier for the doctor while he's got you in there, you gave birth the 2nd or 3rd day, circumcise him. But you're taking a chance on the clotting. "Oh, they'll give him a shot to make it clot." Oh, that's great, that wonderful? Little baby, 3 days old, got to get a shot already, make his blood clot. Just leave him alone and circumcise him on the 8th day and God gave him something.

   They're just as dumb about nursing mothers, you know, you know what they do. These intellectuals get you in the hospital. You give birth to a baby. The milk starts to come in, but before milk comes in, stupid human body has got this dumb colostrum. So just get rid of that crud, and then as soon as the milk's there, then you know, you know what that does though? Lo and behold they found out that that colostrum has a content in it that just cleanses the baby's lungs and things of mucus that's there to let it start breathing air gradually.

   You know, how would you like to be a newborn baby out here breathing oxygen all of a sudden? Well, you know, it ought to be gradual, so your body gradually gets rid of this mucus through this colostrum and then it gets stronger and stronger and then you are ready to breathe that air all by itself when the milk comes in. But boy, man's too smart for God. "Dumb stupid human body has that colostrum, just get rid of it." And you know, man, sometimes is so smart.

   Anyway, "the child is several days old, it doesn't reach satisfactory levels again until about the 7th day. This he believes is the reason that a circumcision done before the 8th day, unless within the first several hours after birth, it's more likely to bleed excessively than a circumcision done the 8th day or later. Usually when the child weighs 6 pounds or more and strong and well, the operation is done between the 8th and 10th days. But if the child is puny or weak, the procedure is deferred until later. In the last few years, some brave new spirits have been circumcising the child as soon as it's born, taking advantage of the temporary high prothrombin level. I've seen several of these cases and they seem to do just as well as children circumcised at a later time."

   Well we'll find out later that you can't beat the 8th day. I mean, God said the 8th day. You want to improve on that? You want to second guess God? And you know, well, yeah, but you know, just because God says it. Well, that ought to be good enough for anybody.

   Notice back here in Proverbs chapter 10. Here's another scripture that's kind of hidden away and all of a sudden man finds out how smart it is. Verse 26, Proverbs 10:26, "As vinegar to the teeth, and as smoke to the eyes, so is the sluggard to them that send him."

   Now analyze the last part of that proverb. What happens when you send a sluggard on a mission? Well, what is a sluggard? Well, a bum, a lazy, just while away time, not pay much attention to instructions. What does a sluggard do to people that send him, pay him, hire him, send him out to do a job? Well, just gradually eat away your business, eat away your profit, eat away your income, your growth.

   What does vinegar do to the teeth? Vinegar is acid. So foods that turn to acid in your mouth, they're going to rot your teeth. They're gonna eat away your teeth just like a sluggard eats away your business. What does smoke do to the eyes? All Lucky Strike smokers say, "Not a thing, not a thing." Well, you can't show me a verse in the Bible that says smoking is bad for you. Well, smoke does to your eyes what vinegar does to your teeth, what a sluggard does to your business. Sure enough, God shows you way back there.

   You don't need to worry about foods you eat that don't turn to acid in your mouth. But if you eat foods that turn to acid in your mouth, you better brush your teeth or clean your teeth or you're gonna rot your teeth. God didn't make them immortal, indestructible.

   Notice back in Genesis chapter 9. You know, a lot of times we mistake the word kosher. You can see little cases on things that are Jewish tokens for kosher, but you know, I remember being in Chicago and going out on West Madison Street and looking at the meat markets there and buy kosher ham. Kosher ham. Yeah, kosher ham. Kosher ham, yeah, what's kosher mean anyway? That doesn't mean it's listed in the Bible as being clean. All the word kosher means is that a priest is there to be sure it's killed properly, that it's bled to death, that it didn't strangle or kill some other way, shot in the head or something. To be sure it bled properly. Kosher doesn't mean clean and unclean. Not in itself, most things that are kosher are clean, but I mean you go up sometime in Chicago and look at the kosher ham.

   Well, notice here in Genesis chapter 9 (Genesis 9:3). "Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you." Now of course here they just got off the Ark and God's telling man now that it's alright to go back and start eating creatures again, that he didn't just have to eat fruit or vegetables or whatever they ate on the ark, but now man is perfectly alright to eat the living souls again. "Even as the green herb."

   Now all green herbs aren't edible, you don't eat poison ivy and you don't eat bull nettle and stuff like that. So even as the green herb, he said every moving thing that lives, so some are to be eaten and some aren't. "But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, you shall not eat."

   Now, why did God say not eat the blood? Well, now, you know, where the animals carry their poisons, their diseases, their germs, you know, an animal can be a carrier without having an ailment itself. And if you eat something that dies of itself, God's law says you can't do that. How do you know what it died of? You know, if you're, your one of your cows dies out in the pasture all of a sudden, it died of itself, you go out and you eat it, boy, you know, you're playing Russian roulette, whatever that cow died of, you're just taking a chance, you're gonna get it too. God had a law. You can't eat of anything that dies of itself. You can't eat the blood.

   In fact, notice back here in Leviticus 3. A big part of the poisons that are accumulated in a creature are stored up in the blood and the fat. So man goes around, boy, he eats fat, fat pork, fat pig, fat ham, fat, you know, fat in beef is fairly easy to cut away compared to fat in bacon and fat in pigs.

   Notice what God says here, not by what something eats that makes it unclean, you know, chickens eat the same things pigs do, but chickens are right to eat and pigs aren't. But pigs aren't made to handle what they eat. It stores up in all that fat and in their blood, and then man eats the pig and boy, trichinosis and all kinds of ailments he gets.

   Notice verse 17 of Leviticus 3 (Leviticus 3:17). "It shall be a statute, a perpetual statute for your generations throughout all your dwellings that you eat neither fat nor blood." Because God wants to spare you diseases, germs, poisons that accumulate in the animal's fat and in the animal's blood. So it should be killed properly, bled to death, and it should have the fat taken out of it.

   But, you know man just pays no attention to God, so he gets cholesterol lining the inside of his arteries. Get’s high blood pressure because the pipes are made smaller by all that crud on the inside of the pipe. Man, if you just live by God's laws.

   You know a while back I was all keyed up and tense and all troubled, and I thought I was having some real bad high blood pressure troubles. So I went in and had my blood pressure checked, and the guy said, "Why, there isn't anything wrong with your blood pressure, said you got the blood pressure of a 25 year old." So, you know, I'm a few years older now, so that is good news. But why should I worry about having high blood pressure? I don't eat fat. I don't eat blood.

   You know, people don't need to worry about a little bit of butter. You know, if you use certain things that other people might say, "Oh, don't use butter, that's bad cholesterol problem," not if you don't eat a bunch of pork and a bunch of other unclean creatures, all the shrimp and catfish and lobsters and all of that.

   Notice Proverbs chapter 20, verse 30, Proverbs 20:30. "The blueness of a wound cleanses away evil. So do stripes the inward parts of the belly."

   Now you know the other works. Discipline, spanking your children in love and balance, stripes cleanse away the inward parts of the belly. They settle somebody down, they keep them from all the troubles and frustrations and debts and worries and ulcers, stripes do that to the inward parts of the belly, but the blueness of the wound, you know, when you've got a wound and you will notice it gets blue around it. That's no bad news, that's good news. You better watch out if it starts having a red streak headed up your arm or up your leg. The blueness of the wound, boy, that's a good sign. You got good healthy rich blood in there cleaning up the wound and making it strong and healthy, but you watch out if you get a red streak because then you're headed for blood poisoning, and you got real troubles.

   Now, I want to come to one other scripture. I've got quite a few more here and I'll have to wait and finish it some other time, but Song of Solomon again. All the running around I used to do in Illinois, I had a real bad low blood pressure problem from lack of rest and everything else, and I've got a book Mr. Herbert Armstrong used to give all of us, "The Fast Way to Health." It's kind of a tricky title by Doctor Frank McCoy. But he has all kinds of things in here of different foods that help you under different conditions, and it was written in the old days when people were a lot healthier, you know, I wouldn't try to go on some of these 2 or 3 week diets like he recommends in here, but when we graduated from college, Mr. Armstrong gave us this book as a good health counsel.

   And another good book that's out recently is called "Food Is Your Best Medicine." Written by a doctor from Southern California named Bieler, B I E L E R. And you know what he found out, he practiced medicine for 50 years, and as he went on with his practice, he began to use suggestions of diet, suggestions of exercise, tranquil mind, sunshine, fresh air. He began to come up with some of these health laws, the seven laws of radiant health. And you know, he finally just said far more people he did good that way than he'd ever done with medicines. In fact, one guy says, you know, you can tell an older doctor from a younger doctor because the younger doctor gives more and more medicines for less and less, and the older doctor gives less and less medicines for more and more. But for 50 years he practiced medicine. Then he finally decided you can do more good by this food. So if you have trouble with your kidneys, he gives foods in there you need to eat to rebuild your kidneys. I know it works.

   But notice the Song of Solomon here. In this case, chapter 2 (Song of Solomon 2:5), this is a little bit poorly translated in the King James Version. So I'll read it out of the Revised Standard Version. "Revive me with apples. Sustain me with raisins."

   Now, you know, that's a pretty good idea when you check up on those two foods, revive me with apples. You know, why do we say the fruit they ate in the Garden of Eden was an apple? Is that connected with fertility, is that connected with life, with vigor, with being revived or you know what is this love apple people talk about?

   Well, sure enough, you know, they find in an apple. In fact, I've got an article at home in my clipping file that says an apple a day not only keeps the doctor away, but the dentist too. And it shows that people ate an apple after each meal, you throw away your toothbrush, throw away all the toothpaste you buy, throw away everything that way. An apple a day doesn't only keep the doctor away, it keeps the dentist away too.

   And you know this "Fast Way to Health" here. And many other books, if you have low blood pressure, you know, you can build your blood pressure 10 points in one week. Eat 6 or 8 apples a day. And your blood pressure will go up by 10 points in 1 week. You know the same way with lemons and cutting your blood pressure too, because the only things they found out in nature that you can take to cut that cholesterol off the inside of your arteries. One of the things is lemon juice and the other is wine. It'll just cut that off. Now you may find out yourself, you get the flu or you get congestion and you take wine, you can even feel it just cutting phlegm and crud out of your system. That's what it does.

   Now, there are several sayings we've run across in health in the past. One of them. People say "Feed a cold and starve a fever." Now you better go back and find out who said that and how he said that. Is that telling you the thing to do with a cold is feed it? Oh, absolutely not. That is totally mistaken. What he's saying there is if you feed a cold, you're gonna have to starve a fever. That's what he said. You don't feed a cold. When you start to get a cold, you starve it out. That'll kill it in a hurry. It gets rid of it quickly. That's why most of us that live God's way and we may not have colds in 40 years, some of us. And it's not odd to not have a cold for 25 years.

   But you know one thing different when you get the flu, you got something else on your hands and it's the wrong thing to do to fast when you got the flu. You heard doctors on the TV say if you get the flu, go to bed and take plenty of liquids. So you don't want to fast when you got the flu because the flu is a weakening condition. It's very, very weakening to your system. And the last thing you need to do is fast. And here your body is trying to eliminate a bunch of poisons and crud in it, so you fast and dump more poisons and crud in it. Boy, you better be in good health or you won't last through it. You can kill yourself fasting when you got the flu. That's just a bad thing to do. Now you can drown it out, you can take a lot of liquids and do yourself some good.

   Well, you know this, what about raisins? "Sustain me with raisins." It's one of the best sources of iron there is, raisins. You know, my wife was the first doctor, first baby we had, she'd go into the doctor and he's, "Boy, you're anemic, you're gonna have troubles. Let me give you these iron shots. Let me give you these iron pills." We said, "Wait, let us try. We'll be back in a few weeks and let's check again." Boy, we had raisin salad, raisin bran, raisin bread, raisin cereal, raisin, everything was raisins. I mean, you know, we didn't eat anything, didn't have raisins in it. Raisins, ice cream, raisins everything. But I'll tell you, by the time the baby was born, she didn't have any trouble with iron. So, you know, it works.

   Now I saw one guy at the feast last year, a year before last. This guy came up, looked me over and said, "Hey, you really gotten plump." I said, "You know, my wife and I, we've found the solution." "Oh yeah, huh?" "Yeah, we've got this new book we've read." And you know I didn't want to tell him he looked like a ghost or like a skeleton, but he looked terrible to me. He was pale, looked washed out and weak and like if you blew too hard he'd just fall over, but you know he's sure he found this great cure and it was a combination diet with pills.

   And he was telling me all about all these pills. "These are natural pills," and how many of these pills he take, boy, oh boy, you know, I found out, I just say, "Well, you know it sounds like that might be kind of expensive though." "Well, only so much a week." So, "Wow, that's more than your tithe. You're gonna spend more per week on pills than your tithe?" Boy, I'm not gonna do that. Pills, in the first place I haven't seen any pills that'll do what you can't do naturally.

   You know, you want vitamin C? All your body can take is one glass of orange juice in the morning. That's all the vitamin C you need the whole day. Now if you're going to eat candy bars it isn’t. You're gonna eat junk the rest of the day it isn’t, hot chocolate and cokes and all that stuff. But then if you take one of those, just drink another glass of orange juice and you caught up again.

   But you know people sell you vitamin C. I argued with a couple of my brothers about vitamin C pills. Boy, they pop vitamin C pills and they get a cold that lasts 6 weeks. I get one that lasts 3 or 4 days, but all I do is flood it with tomato juice, vitamin C, orange juice, grapefruit juice, lemon juice. You know, why in the world take a vitamin C pill when there's vitamin C in natural food? Where does C come from anyway? You know, you ever looked under a microscope? "Oh, that's a vitamin C. I'll be, look at that thing." You never will. There ain't no such thing. They are telling you about a certain reaction a certain food has in your system. There isn't any such thing.

   Vitamin E, they don't even know how much your body can take yet. I know one of our ministers, boy, he just thought vitamin E was the greatest. So he was getting this wheat germ oil. I mean he was. You stop and think how much wheat it takes to make a jar of wheat germ oil. You know, if you eat wheat, you can't eat much of it. I'll guarantee you, you come over to see me and I'll serve a great big old bowl full of wheat kernels soaked overnight with honey in it and milk, and I guarantee you can't eat that. You'd throw it up, you couldn't eat all of it. But you grind all that up and see how much wheat germ oil it'll make. And how many bowls full of wheat would you have to eat to get a dose of wheat germ oil?

   But one day he was racing up the stairs to class and just fell out. Heart just boom, struck out and he just fell out. How many articles I read warning about vitamin D, you know, people get the idea, boy, when your kids are growing up, sock it to them and get them that cod liver oil. Boy they just give them that cod liver oil right and left. Now, you know, you ought to stop and think of cod liver oil. How many cod livers you're gonna have to eat to get that much cod liver oil? And who wants to eat cod livers anyway, you know, any kind of liver is hard, not cod liver.

   Cod liver oil, you know what happens when you get your kids too much cod liver oil, they'll stay out of the sunshine. They can't stand it. They'll get fever blisters, they'll get stomach sores, they'll get, because they can't stand all that vitamin D, your body can only take so much vitamin D. We get warned about skin cancer, too much sunshine. But boy, people just pop vitamin D and vitamin E.

   Now there's a use for vitamin E. I know one of my brother's girls had a scar on her leg. She fell on a bicycle and hurt herself, and it's embarrassing because girls want their legs to be pretty, you know, and here she had this scar there. So he took these little wheat germ oil deals and rubbed them on, rubbed them on her leg, and he kept doing that, kept doing that and the scar finally just disappeared because vitamin E will do that. I mean, there are good uses of vitamin E, but even the doctors don't know the daily requirement.

   Well, I'm not going to spend all my money on a bunch of pills. I don't care how natural they are, you know, people say, "Well, it's natural and it's organic," so is lectern. I'm not gonna eat it though. That's natural and organic.

   You know, vitamin. Well, vital minerals. What are the vital minerals? Phosphorus, potassium, where do you get those? Green beans, lima beans. Well, you don't like green beans and lima beans. All right, get them somewhere else. There's plenty of other food that has it in them. But boy I'll tell you, we need to get away from a bunch of modern chemistry with a bunch of their ideas.

   You scan down this and see now. So I've read a lot of attacks on mustard too, but I don't pay any attention to that, you know, if the Bible says the kingdom of God is like a grain of mustard seed, boy, I'm gonna eat mustard. I mean, you can tell me it'll be hard on my heart if you want, but not if I'm eating, not eating pork, not if I'm not eating catfish and shrimp, not if I'm not eating crud that was created to be garbage cans instead of food.

   A lot of health books do you read? They say, "Oh, don't eat things that are fried." Oh come back just a second. Leviticus chapter 2. I'll tell you, the priests ate things fried just as much as they eat things broiled, but some people see eating fried chicken and then they, it's a dietitian's nightmare they think.

   Well, Leviticus chapter 2, verse 4 says (Leviticus 2:4), "And if you bring an oblation of a meal offering, bake it in the oven," alright, that's one way the priest would take a meal offering baked in the oven. Verse 5, "If your oblation be a meal offering in a pan," baked in a pan. OK, you can either bake it in the oven or broil it in the pan. Verse 7, "If your oblation be a meal offering in the frying pan," uh oh. Boy, that's a no, no there. Don't eat fried chicken, fried fish, fried okra, fried eggplant, fried squash.

   Well, I can't stand it slimy and slippery and gag like an oyster, you know, I can't do it that way. So I'll eat it fried and I'll just lean on Leviticus 2:7 and say it said those priests could eat things fried in the frying pan. Boy, I like fried chicken. I don't care that much about broiled chicken or baked chicken or barbecue chicken or stewed chicken or, but boy I like fried chicken. So I'm gonna eat fried chicken.

   You know, I hope we can get a balance on health and not worry about all the man's opinions and ideas. Notice Matthew chapter 3 and we'll quit here. Notice I didn't say finish but quit. Matthew 3. I thought this sermon ought to be before Passover and before spring because this is flu season and if we can all be a little bit more vigorous about following God's laws on health, then we can save ourselves lost man hours with sickness and things.

   Matthew, those same Milwaukee city dudes that came down, we put to practice this scripture too. Verse 4 (Matthew 3:4), the same John the Baptist had his raiment of camel's hair and a leathern girdle about his loins and his food was locusts and wild honey. Locusts, that's grasshoppers. Grasshoppers.

   Well, you, you look up the word grasshopper. It says back in God's law, you can eat grasshoppers. Boy oh boy, you know you can think of eating a ham sandwich. You can think of good old bacon and lettuce and tomato sandwich, but grasshoppers, well, that's one of the reasons we got too many of them because people won't eat them.

   But you know they eat them over in Arabia. In fact, if they see a black cloud of locusts coming up, they just build a big fire all along here and they go flying through there and good roast grasshoppers right on the other side. I'll tell you they're good. We ate them at a church picnic up in Illinois one time. We went out in this field and caught a bunch of grasshoppers. I mean they taste good. They're just like salted peanuts, except when you swallow them at the back of the throat you taste that, kind of taste bad, but you break off those barbs on the legs, don't eat those, that wouldn't go down that way.

   But you know these city dudes in Milwaukee came out one time and I said, I said, "You believe in living by every word of God?" "Yes sir, brother, sure do." And I said, "Alright, let me show you." So I turned to Matthew 3 and it says locusts and wild honey. Uh oh. So they ate the honey and the honeycomb, and they said, "Well, pass the locusts." So these weren't as good. I passed the little can over and they dipped in there and took out a locust and chewed it and. Baked in peanut oil, and it tasted all right, but they've been there a long time in that can, I guess, and they weren't very fresh.

   But you know, we may well eat locusts when we're somewhere where we need good food. So I hope you're willing to live by every word of God and I've got a poem at home I'll bring when I can find it. It's called "From His Tail to His Snout." About the pig, boy, you know, we eat his ears and eat his knuckles and eat his nose and his snout and then we eat that pig from top to bottom, but no, no thank you on those locusts. No, no, pass those right on by.

   Well, there's a lot more in the Bible about health and foods and we'll get to those in another time.