OUT OF TOWN TILL FRIDAY

 I AM OUT OF TOWN TILL FRIDAY

 

Christians and Wine? #1

What the Bible teaches

The question of whether a Christian can, with the Lord's approval, drink alcoholic beverages has been a controversial issue among Biblical scholars for a long, long time. The word of God has a great deal to say on this topic. The Lord does not want us to be in ignorance concerning His teaching on the use of alcohol. The truth as to whether a Christian can or can not drink alcoholic beverages can be found in the word of God. by Keith Hunt I was prompted to compile and write on this subject after reading a booklet entitled "Should Christians Drink Fermented Wine?" by E. L. Saunders( Worldwide Missions Outreach, 24497 Fraser Highway, Langley, B.C. Canada V3A 4P6 ). He in turn was prompted to write his booklet after receiving an article called "Is it Christian To Drink" by Norman F. Rowe (Answers Magazine, Box 1234, Santa Cruz, Calif. 95061 ). Pastor E. L. Saunders' booklet is 52 pages in length, containing some technical research which we shall give you later. But what is Mr. Saunders overall attitude towards alcohol and those Christians who possibley from ignorance or from sincere study believe its alright to drink alcohol in moderation? Here are some of his statements: "....So-called 'commandment-keeping, Church of God, Sabbatarian, Feast Day Observing, Worldwide, Christains' laugh and joke at cocktail parties while sinners grope in darkness...... Let me address my dear brethren who contend for alcohol beverages: How much of the joy of the Holy Ghost is there in evidence among the wine drinkers? ....The fountain of living waters is not the case of beer and wine and ( believe it or not) even hard liquor that is brought and consumed in abundance at the observance of ' feast-day festivals '....Prov.20:1, 'Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging; and whosoever is deceived thereby,is not wise ....You see,alcohol has innate properties that can overpower human judgment and reason, that when one partakes of it internally, it is as if the wine is saying to the one drinking it, 'I have deceived you! You have yielded to the temptation, you are my slave! I will make a wretched drunkard of you. You do not think so, but you will see the devastating results and you will not be able to free yourself!' YES, WINE IS A MOCKER! ....I believe herein is the difference between the spiritual Christian and the carnal Christian. I find no evidence of Spirit-filled Christians seeking occasion to drink alcoholic beverages in the New Testament ....Well, the liquor industry sure knows how to deceive people today in their subtle advertising of the 'smooth taste' of their particular brand and of the 'sparkle' of the aged product! But Mr. Rowe would alleviate any concern by glibly declaring, '....the Bible in no way prohibits or even discourages the moderate use of wine '....Ecc1. 10:19.... verses 18,19 Amp. Ver. When the 'moderate drinker' should be 'repairing the breaches' (fixing a leaky tap or a broken window, etc.) he is 'relaxing' with a glass of wine. 'Sipping Christians' usually have dirty back yards. The wife has to cut the lawn, if the husband is the drinker; the husband has to change the diaper, if the wife is the drinker! If both are drinkers, the children 'shift for themselves '! ....Phil.4:8. Take another look at these words and contemplate upon their significance: 'true, honest, just, pure, lovely, good report.' I would submit that the person who is challenged with the ramifications of the above terms from the pen of Paul, would hardly have time or interest to use Mr.Rowe's 'Key to Christian Drinking'" ( Should Christians Drink Fermented Wine? Pages 32-45). For Mr.Saunders to write in his booklet about being filled with more of the Holy Spirit, love, patience, honesty and dedication to do the work of God AND THEN state that "Sipping Christians usually have dirty back yards..." etc. is I find, at the least DIS-honest and at the most LACKING the Spirit he wants to emphasize. He is either being dishonest with such statements or he has lived a very sheltered life within the confines of his theological views. I have known over the last 35 years, dozens of very sincere dedicated, zealous Christians who were well respected in their community, had clean lovely homes, fine marriages, clean healthy children who did not have to 'shift for themselves,' men and women, husbands and wives who exhibited in their daily living the fruits of God's spirit. Some of these individuals were ministers, some were deacons, some deaconesses, many were just dedicated Christians AND WERE as Mr.Saunders would call them "Sipping Christians." Mr.Saunders asks the question, "How much joy of the Holy Ghost is there in evidence among the wine drinkers?" Somehow that question tells me that he just can not aquaint "Sipping Christians" with having joy in the Holy Spirit, which again is an indication of his lack of experience within the community of Christians who do believe that drinking alcoholic beverages in moderation is not condemned by God. Such glandular and emotional statements as contained in Mr. Saunders' booklet have once more( and it has been many times I have read and heard such emotional comments over the years in regards to alcohol, makeup, jewelry, card playing, theatre going and the like) made it plain to me how some people want to aquaint Spirituality with THINGS. "I am more holy than you because I do not drink wine and you do" seems to be the attitude of some, or "You are a carnal Christian because you go to the movie theatre, I am a Spiritual Christian because I do not" is another attitude. "You can not be a real Christian because you play cards" some others might say, and on and on it goes. Certainly if God plainly commanded us in His word "You shall not play cards" then a Christian would obey his heavenly Father. If the Lord has plainly stated in His word "You shall not drink alcoholic beverages" then as Christians we should obey. It is interesting to note that with all the many passages in the Bible relating to this topic of alcohol and all the people who have written to denounce other Christians as sinning if they should take "a sip" I have never been shown by these individuals a clear plain verse that says, "It is a sin to drink wine" or "You shall not partake of anything that may make you drunk." With all the problems that Paul had to contend with, which included one time when the Corinthians got drunk before and during the Passover service (1 Cor.11), surely God could have inspired Paul to once and for all give a simple plain "Thus says the Lord" on the issue of whether a Christian should or should not drink wine, whether it was sin to partake of alcoholic liquids. As large as some feel this issue is - that drinking wine will make you a drunkard, that you will end up an alcoholic, it will ruin your marriage, deprave your children, fry your brain, or give you a dirty back yard - surely it was also an issue among the Church of the fist century, yet the NT is lacking any direct "Thus says the Lord on the issue of drinking wine." Is it possible that there is no such statement in the NT - that there was no issue in the NT church over whether drinking wine or alcohol was a sin or not a sin - because the answer was already known It is now time to give some of the technicalities of this subject as contained in the booklet "Should Christians Drink Fermented Wine" by E. L. Saunders: Quote: "There are three Hebrew words translated 'wine' in our English Bible in the O.T. 1 .'Yayin' (mentioned about 120 times) in most cases refers to fermented wine unless the contex would indicate otherwise.... 2.The second word is 'Tirosh' (mentioned 37 times in the O.T.) It is number 8492 in Strong's Exhaustive Concordance and it comes from another Hebrew word 'Yaresh' (No.3423), meaning 'to expell.' So the correct meaning of 'Tirosh' is the fresh newly - expelled juice of the grape, or 'must' as it is sometimes called, and in some cases 'new wine' or 'sweet wine.' 3. Another Hebrew word translated 'wine' is 'Aciyc' (aw-sees) No.6071 in Strong's Concordance (found four times in O.T.) It comes from the Hebrew word 'Acac' meaning, 'to squeeze out juice' therefore, it refers to just trodden out grape juice; new, sweet wine. So it is obvious that the English word 'wine' is not translated from the same root Hebrew word having the same meaning. It is unfortunate Mr. Rowe did not make a thorough enough research of the word 'wine' or he would not have said, 'In the instances where such blunt indication is absent, there appears no indication that it could be otherwise because the root meaning of both 'Tirosh' and 'Aciyc' does indicate a clear difference in meaning from 'Yayin.'' Yes, there is a clear Biblical distinction between grape juice and fermented wine....'Tirosh' translated 'wine' in English is therefore the fresh juice of the grape....There are frequent passages where we find the expression 'corn, wine and oil.' In each of the following the word 'wine' is translated from the Hebrew 'tirosh' and it should be obvious from the context that the word means grape juice. Deut.7:13.... 11:14 .... 18:3,4 .... 33:28 .... 2 Kings 18:32 .... 2 Chron.31:5 .... 32:27, 28 .... Ps. 4:7 .... Isa. 24:7 .... 36:16,17 ..... Jer. 31:12 ..... Hosea 2:8 .... Joel 1:10 .... 2:19 .... Micah 6:15 ..... Haggai 1:11 .... Zech.9:17 .... Neh.5:11 .... 10:37 .... 13:15 .... Jer.31:12 So we see from the above passages the clear indication that 'wine' can be nothing else but the fresh produce of the grape - juice. Reason would dictate that in a country where vineyards were so plentiful, grape juice could quite feasibly be a national drink.... So we see that: 1. The Hebrew word 'Yayin' denotes fermented wine. 2. The Hebrew word 'Tirosh' denotes grape juice, or, as it is sometimes called 'new wine' or 'sweet wine' or 'must' .... Yayin, being alcoholic, often produced drunkeness with its harmful results....The Jewish Encyclopedia makes a clear distinction nbetween Yayin and Tirosh. I quote from Vol. 12, P.533, (1906 Ed.), 'Tirosh' includes all kinds of sweet juices and must, and does not include fermented wine.' On page 532 we find this information, 'There were different kinds of wine. Yayin was ordinary, natured, fermented wine; Tirosh was the new wine and Shekar was an old, powerful wine (strong drink). Wine differed from Shekar, rendered strong drink (Isa.28:7, Luke 1:15) in that wine was made from the juice of the grape, and shekar from the juice and/or other fruits and of grain. Shekar was fermented for it was capable of intoxication (Isa.28:7; 29:9)..... The priest and the prophet have erred through strong drink,they are swallowed up of wine, they are out of the way through strong drink, they err in vision....' " End Quote Concerning the Greek word 'oinos' in the NT Mr.Saunders writes: "....when we come to the N.T.the Greek word 'oinos' translated 'wine' was a composite word, sometimes meaning fermented wine and sometimes un-fermented.... Let's look at the passage in Luke 5:37.... This is an example of 'oinos' meaning 'new wine' as we find translated in A.V. Now we have already proved 'new wine' to mean fresh grape juice before fermentation sets in...." End quote We have seen that Mr.Saunders wrote "The Hebrew word 'Yayin' denotes fermented wine." He even quoted from the Jewish Ency. which also says the same thing. So now all we would have to do is take Strong's Concordance and look up ever place in the OT where the word 'Yayin' is used and see what we find. Ahhhh !!! We would find passages that 'our wine and alcohol condemners' would not want us to see. So in an appendix note Mr.Saunders adds: Quote: "We have shown the distinction between the two Hebrew words' 'Yayin' and 'Tirosh' and that 'yayin' refers to alcoholic wine and 'tirosh' to grapejuice (p.11). However, I felt it necessary to add this information. There are some instances in the Bible where 'yayin' is used and the contex would indicate clearly that grapejuice is meant....Jer.40:10,12 .... 48:33 .... Isa. 16:10. ....So we find that 'yayin' is a generic word applied to the juice of the grape in all conditions, whether sour or sweet, old or new, fermented or unfermented. In view of the fact that the Bible speaks so strongly against the use of alcoholic wine in many places, reason would dictate that where the word is used in a positive sense it would refer to the unfermented 'wine'......." End quote And that dear reader and searcher for truth is how you 'do away with' all the positive verses in the Bible on wine. Very cleaver indeed! Mr.Saunders on page 13 of his booklet really takes Mr.Rowe and others to taske, who would ... Quote: "undertake to write on so controversial a subject as 'WINE' and not provide the above information (more or less) is, at the least, unlearned, and at the most, irresponsible. To mislead by not providing essential facts when they are so easily available, is dangerous in its consequences....To arrive at truth, one must lay aside bias, sectism, prejudice, partiality and self-interest.... Everyone knows the cliche, 'the truth hurts' But honest people still desire to know the truth, regardless of the cost, including self-denial" End quote Okay friend, are you willing to search the word of God for the truth about drinking alcohol? If so the next pages are for you. As I do not want to be guilty of not giving you as many scriptural facts as possible in your study of this issue, I have given you information from very well known and respected Bible Encyclopedias. You may want to go to others that are in your local library. You must now judge how accurate Mr. Saunders possition is in the light of what is to follow. .............................................. TO BE CONTINUED

FOOD LAWS ARE THEY DONE AWAY?

 

NT Food Laws

Does the NT abolish the OT food laws?

by Harold Hemenway Beginning in chronological order, we know that John the Baptist ate "LOCUSTS and wild honey" (Matt. 3:4) and Jesus said there was no greater human being than him up till that time (Matt. 11:11). Obviously he obeyed the food laws! Why else would a person single out LOCUSTS as food? Next we come to Jesus Christ who condemned the scribes and Pharisees because they "strain at (or "out" -- A.S.V.) a GNAT, and swallow a CAMEL" (Matt. 23:24) figuratively speaking. But why did Christ use this particular figure of speech if he was intending to somehow cleanse both the GNAT and the CAMEL and abolish such an "artificial" distinction? (see Matt. 7:10 also) Obviously he had no intention of abolishing the clean/unclean food laws! Some argue that Christ actually said all foods were clean in Mark 7:19. Indeed, the R.S.V. does read, "since it enters, not his heart but his stomach, and so passes on? (Thus he declared all foods clean.)" but this is a blatant mistranslation. Lamsa's Bible is clearer: "Because it does not enter into his heart, but into his stomach, and then is thrown out through the intestines, thereby purifying the food" or "purging all meats" (KJV) or "which eliminate all foods" (Fenton). The context is digestion, not dietary laws! When Christ taught one verse earlier that "whatsoever goes into a man from outside cannot defile him," (RSV) he was speaking spiritually, not physically, in the first place. In the second place, he was referring to eating "bread with unwashed hands" (7:5) and with unwashed "pots and cups" (7:8), not to eating arsenic or cyanide or trichinae in pork! Furthermore, the washing spoken of here refers only to ceremonial washing, not sanitary, hygienic cleansing with water! The water was poured on both hands, which must be free of anything covering them, such as gravel, mortar, &c.; The hands were lifted up, so as to make the water run to the wrist, in order to ensure that the whole hand was washed, and that the water polluted by the hand did not again run down the fingers. Similarly, each hand was rubbed with the other (the fist), provided the hand that rubbed had been affused: otherwise the rubbing might be done against the head, or even against a WALL." (vol. 2, p.ll, Life and Times of Jesus The Messiah) This ritual purification was done before and after meals and was repeated if the hands were 'defiled' (p.12, ibid.). The water-pots were used in washing the vessels used for eating (vol. 1, p.357, ibid.). If this washing wasn't done, the food was considered contaminated in the opinion of the Pharisees! Even in Christ's day, many Jews misunderstood his teaching and thought he permitted the drinking of blood and eating of human flesh! This is the reason "many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him" (John 6:66). They didn't understand that he was speaking spiritually when he said, "He who eateth my FLESH, and drinketh my BLOOD, hath eternal life ... For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed" (6:54-55). His disciples thought he taught cannibalism! But Jesus Christ believed so firmly in the laws of clean and unclean meats that he destroyed a whole herd of SWINE being raised for food, in violation of God's law, by commanding many demons to "Go" (Matt. 8:32) into them. Christ knew the demons would drive the animals down into the sea where they would drown! Next we come to Simon Peter who, about ten years after the crucifixion, declared, "I have never eaten anything that is common (acquired contamination due to improper draining of the blood since the animal died a natural death or was strangled, etcetera. Such meat was called "common" because it could be sold to aliens if they wanted it. They were the common, polluted gentiles (Deut. 14:21). Also see Mark 7:2 and Romans 14:14 for other types of "acquired contamination.") or unclean" (inherent contamination (Lev. 11; Deut. 14)) (Acts 10:14). Peter knew the vision he'd seen didn't somehow cleanse unclean animals. Instead, Peter "doubted in himself" what the vision should mean. In Acts 10:28 Peter interprets the vision: "God hath shown me that I should not call any man common or unclean." Peter's attitude had been typical of the Jews of his day toward gentiles. It was considered "unlawful" (10:28; 11:3) to keep company with gentiles since they didn't obey God's laws and consequently a Jew could become "contaminated" by associating with them. But just as Peter heard the voice say, "What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common" (10:15) THREE times, so also there were THREE gentiles who came to take Peter to Cornelius. The vision was only an analogy! About 50 A.D., nineteen years after the crucifixion, the food laws were still in full force because we read that James, the Lord's brother, required that gentiles must "abstain from MEATS OFFERED TO IDOLS, and from BLOOD, and from THINGS STRANGLED, and from FORNICATION" (Acts 15:29). Of course, it was necessary to mention these four points of the permanent, civil law as being still binding since they dealt directly with sacrificial worship of the gentiles and the decision of the Jerusalem conference was that the sacrificial/ritualistic laws weren't required of gentile Christians! The four points above were NOT actual sacrificial laws, but were merely tied in later with the sacrificial/ritualistic sections of scripture (Ex. 34:1317; Lev. 3:17; 7:26-27; 17:10-14: Num. 25:1-2) because gentiles commonly ate their sacrifices with BLOOD, often STRANGLED those sacrifices rather than properly draining the BLOOD, presented the sacrifices to IDOLS and then committed FORNICATION with the temple prostitutes as part of the rite! But originally these laws were put in the "book of the law" and "book of the covenant" sections of scripture (Ex. 20:3-5,23; 22:16; Deut. 12:16,23-25; 15:23; 22:23-27). About 57 A.D., twenty-six years after the crucifixion, Paul, the apostle to the gentiles, warned gentiles to touch not the UNCLEAN thing" (2 Cor. 6:17). No doubt he was speaking spiritually (Eph. 5:5; 1 Cor. 7:14), but his remark certainly applies physically also since he was quoting from Isaiah 52:11 and Leviticus 11:8. In the absence of any New Testament scriptures, his audience had only the Old Testament scriptures from which to take the context. People argue that Paul did away with the food laws when he said, "I know and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus that there is nothing UNCLEAN of itself; but to him that esteemeth anything to be UNCLEAN, to him it is UNCLEAN" (Rom. 14:14). Actually this verse is mistranslated in the K.J.V. Wherever the word "UNCLEAN" appears, the actual Greek should be translated "COMMON" as in Acts 10:14. Even the context of Romans 14 shows that the controversy is between meat-eaters and vegetarians (14:2), not between clean and unclean meat-eaters! Furthermore, it appears from 1 Corinthians 8:7-8 and 10:25-28 that the reason why some of the Roman Christians were vegetarians is because they were reluctant to consume any food offered to idols, even if the BLOOD had been properly drained, simply because they felt the idol itself contaminated the meat. Since virtually all the meat sold in the gentile meat-markets was suspect, they avoided meat altogether! Thus Paul explains that nothing is COMMON of itself (simply by being associated with an idol). In another epistle of Paul, we again find a scripture "hard to be understood" (2 Pet. 3:16). In 1 Timothy 4:3-5, Paul mentions two demonic doctrines: "Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving by them who believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good and nothing is to be refused, if it is received with thanksgiving; For it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer." First of all, commas and other punctuation marks were completely unknown when the Bible was originally written. Aldus Manutious invented them in the 15th century! There should be no comma after "meats" in verse 3. Some meats were definitely NOT created by God to be received! Furthermore, those "who believe and know the truth" must believe and know "thy word" (the Bible) since Christ said, "thy word is truth" (John 17:17). So they know that the Bible forbids certain "meats." The creatures "sanctified by the word of God" are those listed as "clean" in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14! The others are NOT "creatures of God," but are "evil beasts" (Ez. 34:25). They're everywhere compared to demons and even Satan himself! For instance, the apostle John compares Satan to an "old SERPENT" (Rev. 12:9) and "three UNCLEAN spirits" to "FROGS" (16:13). He even mentions that Babylon "is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every UNCLEAN and HATEFUL BIRD" (18:2). Throughout the New Testament, demons are referred to as "UNCLEAN spirits." The word translated "UNCLEAN" in both Acts 10:14 and 2 Corinthians 6:17 (describing unclean animals) is identical to the word describing demons! Why would John, writing about 95 A.D., sixty-four years after the crucifixion, even think to call some birds "UNCLEAN" if this distinction was abolished at the "cross of Christ" or even later when the temple was destroyed (70 A.D.)? And why did he compare "UNCLEAN" spirits to frogs of all things, unless frogs were still "UNCLEAN" in 95 A.D.? So if JOHN THE BAPTIST, JESUS CHRIST, SIMON PETER, JAMES, PAUL and even JOHN THE APOSTLE all believed in, and obeyed, these food laws, why don't more Christians follow their example? Ezekiel prophesied of our day by saying, "Her priests have violated my law (Heb. "torah"), and have profaned mine holy things; they have put no difference between the holy and the profane, neither have they shown difference between the UNCLEAN and the CLEAN, and have hidden their eyes from my sabbaths, and I am profaned among them" (Ez. 22:26). FOOD LAWS IN THE MILLENNIUM In the near future, as Isaiah 66:15-17 prophesies, "the Eternal will come with fire, and with his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire.... They that sanctify themselves, and purify themselves in the gardens behind one tree in the midst, eating SWINE'S FLESH, and the abomination, and the MOUSE, shall be consumed together, saith the Eternal." ..... The Eternal is angry with those who violate these FOOD LAWS because they are hurting themselves and others by doing so! Yes, these FOOD LAWS ARE SCIENTIFIC, HEALTH PRINCIPLES! .................................................. Written 1987 (all capital words were Hemeway's)

 

Vegetarianism - God's ideal diet?

What did the Lord teach to Adam and Eve?

by Keith Hunt There are those who are vegetarians because they see that our animals are polluted from man made "shots" of this or that substance. They are well aware that most commercial meats are not anywhere as wholesome as they used to be 50 years ago and more. These people decide to become vegetarians from a modern "health" viewpoint, and if they can not obtain natural "organic" meats they will eat no meat. I admit I am one of them, and eat very very little meat unless I can obtain "organic" meat. But there are thousands of "religious" vegetarians who are non meat eaters BECAUSE they think the word of God teaches that it was the Lord's original plan for mankind to eat only fruits,seeds,grains,and nuts. No better illustration of this teaching and belief can be found than in the adult Sabbath school lessons of Jan/Feb/March l993, published by the Seventh Day Adventist Church: DIVINE DIET(GEN.1:29;3:18). "What did God originally intend for us to eat? Gen.1:29. What did He add after the fall? Gen.3:18. Before they sinned, Adam and Eve ate fruits, seeds, grains, and nuts.......When did God finally give His consent for people to eat meat, and why? Gen.9:1-3. What restrictions did God place on eating meat? Gen.7:2. Think about it: Why does it make sense now more than ever to return to God's original diet......" The scripture that religious vegetarians use to support their argument that God's original plan was to have humans eat only no meat foods, is Genesis 1:29. We shall see that when you take the WHOLE written word of God, when you do as Jesus said we should do, and that is "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God"(Mat.4:4) - when that is followed we shall see that Gen.1:29 is NOT teaching that God originally intended mankind to be vegetarians. Is ALL vegetation good for food? Of course it is not! Some vegetation if eaten will KILL YOU! Even some of the seed bearing vegetation is harmful to you. So Gen.1:29 is NOT an all encompassing simple formula as to what God intended our first parents to eat. God would have had to spend some in-depth time with them concerning diet and what they should and should not eat to remain healthy and strong. We need to remember that the first chapters of Genesis only hit the high spots - much more than what is recorded for us must have transpired. Are we to assume that after God blessed and sanctified the 7th day Sabbath, He never instructed Adam and Eve on how to keep that day holy? Are we to believe that after God created sex He never gave our first parents any instructions on sexuality? What about husband and wife relations, are we to understand that God gave no lessons of instruction on this topic to Adam and Eve before they fell into sin? The Bible gives us no time frame from the 7th day of creation to the serpent leading Eve into sin - it could have been a number of weeks, months or even years. In any event, knowing God to be the loving, kind and merciful person that He is, it would be very improbable that He did not give much more detailed instructions on many important subjects that Adam and Eve would need as they began the beginning of their lives. I have written very extensively on the law of Gen.1:29 concerning eating foods bearing seeds. In a nut shell (pun intended) the main teaching that God is giving us in Gen.1:29 is NOT that we should, or that He originally wanted us to be vegetarians, but that the vegetation we should eat should be seed bearing and green. In other words or as an example, what this verse in Genesis is teaching is that things like mushrooms or moss were not created to be food for the health and wellbeing of mankind. There is a teaching of "limitations" of what vegetation is to be eaten in this verse. This limitation teaching is the theme and main point of what God said to Adam and Eve in Gen.1:29,30 and NOT that they were only to eat vegetation. Now ask yourself this question, if it was the Lord's original "state of the art" plan for mankind to be vegetarians, then would you not suppose those Christians who were following God's original design to be the stronger - the more spiritually stronger - the less spiritually weaker? Of course you would I think,for they would be the ones going back to the way it supposedly was before sin entered the world. You would think the Bible would hold up such people as the "strong in the faith." Well hold on to that for a while, and if you believe the vegetarian only eater is the more stronger in the faith, then you are in for a big surprise, right out of the very Word of God. Before I give you that eye opening verse that will "blow your mind" (if you've never read it before), first, I want you to understand a very important point of Bible STUDY. God has caused His word to be written down as a jig-saw-puzzle. He has deliberately and methodically done this so people will be led astray and deceived - blinded from His truths. Until God removes that blindness through the power of the Holy Spirit, not only can no one come to Christ to be saved from sin, but they can not understand God's word. Oh, they may understand little portions of it, but their errors will outnumber by far the truths they have. You need to look up and read carefully these scriptures that prove what I have just said is true: Rev.12:9; Acts 4:8-12; John 6:44,65; Mark 13:11,12; Mat.13:10-16. Even those who have been called and chosen by the Father are to "Study to show thyself approved unto God,a workman that needeth not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth" (2 Tim.2:15). It was Jesus who said "Thy (the Father's) word is truth"(John 17:17). He was referring to God's inspired word as found in the Holy Bible. This only is truth, not some writings of a man or woman. I want you to turn to Isaiah the 28th chapter. Notice what Isaiah says in verse 9, "Whom shall he teach knowledge? And whom shall he make to understand DOCTRINE?" A very good question indeed, then he gives the answer, "them that are weaned with milk, and drawn from the breast." But in what way does being "weaned from the milk" mean? Isaiah was inspired to tell us in the next verse, "For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line; line upon line; here a little and there a little." God has put His word down like a jig-saw-puzzle - you must hunt and search for all the pieces of any particular area or topic before you can know and understand the truth of any doctrine. Just as Jesus spoke in parables to the vast population NOT so they would better understand but so they would NOT UNDERSTAND, so they would not "get it" but be left in darkness and sin. So, God has written His word a little here and a little there, a line here and a line there, in order that those who will not study to show themselves approved, rightly dividing(putting together) the word of truth, searching it out and fitting it together like a jig-saw-puzzle, will, "....go and fall backward, and be broken, and snared, and taken"(Isaiah 28:13). So let's put what we have just discovered into practice. Sometimes God has given us a line of truth in Genesis within the context of a certain topic and another line of truth on the same subject in another book of the Bible far away from Genesis. And this is the case here on this question as to the original diet God intended Adam and Eve to follow. We find more to this puzzle way over in the book of......TIMOTHY! Yes, way over in the New Testament. Turn to the first book of Timothy and chapter 4. Paul was inspired to foretell about the latter days and a time when some would "depart from the faith" in verse one. They would become so hardened in their false beliefs that were doctrines of demons, that their minds would be branded and just about impossible to change to acknowledge the truth. I hope dear reader your mind is not seared to the point where you can not admit your errors and rejoice in the truth. We see in verses 3-5 that Paul mentions TWO wrong doctrines in particular. One is "forbidding to marry" and we certainly have that doctrine around us today. One large Christian church still teaches its priests to remain single, and there are others who teach people not to marry when they are within God's law to do so. But now on to the second false doctrine that Paul talks about in some detail. Paul is telling us that some would depart from the faith in the latter days and teach that we should abstain from "meats" or food, of what kind? - creatures is the answer(verse 4). The word used here for "creature" is the same as James 1:18. We humans of flesh and blood are "creatures" in that sense of the word. So are cows, sheep, goats, and pigs and horses for that matter, as well as all birds and fish. Is Paul in these verses telling us that we are now allowed to eat anything that moves, creeps, wiggles or crawls? Some say he is and that God's laws concerning clean and unclean meats is no longer in effect today. As we carefully examine the words Paul uses we can see that is NOT what Paul was teaching. The meats that Paul was saying some would tell you to abstain from, were to be received with thanksgiving OF THEM which believe and know the truth. Again, let me ask, what is truth? I gave you the answer earlier - God's word is truth said Jesus. And we are to live by every word of it He told us (Mat.4:4). God's word in Lev.11 and Duet.14 gives us the laws of the clean and unclean creatures. Nothing in the New Testament teaches that New Covenant Christians are set free from the physical laws of health that were set down by the Lord under the Old Covenant, and even before that covenant came. But all of that proof must be given in another study on CLEAN AND UNCLEAN MEATS. Notice verse 4 and 5. Every creature is good and nothing to be refused FOR, verse five says, "For it is SANCTIFIED by the WORD OF GOD and prayer." Those creatures that are to be received with thankfulness by those who know the truth, are FIRST of all, sanctified by God's word - set apart by God's word. God's word sets them apart for you - tells you which kind of creatures are given to you for food to eat. It is not prayer that is first, you can not just pray over any slimy unclean creature and ask God to bless it to your bodies health when He has never sanctified it by His word for you to eat. Those who know the truth, those who know what meats are set apart as fit to eat in God's word, can receive it with a thankful heart. These sanctified creatures are to be received and not refused as some in the latter days would teach. Remember when Paul was writing this there was no large scale meat pollution of clean animals like there is today. Yet even with our polluted planet it is possible to obtain organic natural meats that only acid rain has contaminated, then acid rain has contaminated many organic vegetables also. This prophecy of Paul's should make would be "vegetarianism is God's original design" preachers SHAKE in their boots! Paul said that in the last days a departing from the faith would include a doctrine from demons that would teach people to abstain from meats/creatures which God created to be received - as given in Lev.11 and Duet.14. And that brings me to that word in verse three - CREATED! The Greek phrase reads "which God created for reception." When were these clean, sanctified by God's word, creatures made clean? Sometime after the fall of man, or after Noah's flood? No,they were CREATED clean, from the very beginning when God made them during those 7 creative days. Genesis 7 tells you that Noah took seven pairs of CLEAN animals into the ark and only two of a kind from the unclean. The animals were clean and unclean before the flood. Paul was inspired to tell us they were made this way WHEN they were created. Paul tells us they were created to be received by those who would know the truth. Did Adam and Eve know the truth? Sure they did! God walked and talked with them - instructed them in the way they ought to go. He had Adam give names to the animals, surely at that time God instructed him about which were created clean and which were created unclean - which were fit for him to eat and which were not. PAUL AND THE ROME CHURCH CONTROVERSY Even during the apostolic church age this argument of eating or NOT eating meat arose in a least one of the churches of God. And who did the Lord inspire to judge the matter, why the man who undoubtedly was the Churches most scholastic minister - the man who was highly educated and a past expert in Pharisaical teachings - the man Paul. This man was a student of the Old Testament and Jewish teachings and traditions. More important, he claimed he was personally taught by Christ - see Galatians 1:11,12. Certainly he had many of the gifts of the Spirit and was not afraid to use the scriptures to prove his point. He was not slow to use the first few chapter of Genesis to bear evidence to his stand. I would like you to note how he backed up instruction to Timothy about women teaching in the church (l Tim.2:11-14). He used the book of Genesis to prove his point concerning physical circumcision and faith to the Romans and Jews, in his book of Galatians. Paul was very well versed in the scriptures. There arose among the members of the church at Rome the issue of eating all things (within the laws of God) and eating herbs only. In other words the issue of vegetarianism as opposed to those who were not vegetarians. Here was the grand opportunity for Paul to wax eloquent and put the record straight not only for those at Rome but for the whole New Testament church from that time on. Surely if any man knew the truth of Gen.1:29 it would have been Paul. If he had been fully taught by Christ and the Holy Spirit that Gen.1:29 taught God's original ideal for mankind was vegetarianism, he now had the opportunity to proclaim that truth to the Church in straight forward language. He could have easily said as Jesus often did, "from the beginning" it was not so or it was so. He could have easily quoted Gen.1:29 as he did with other Genesis verses, to prove the faith of the herb only eaters was the correct one from an "original" point of view. He could easily have upheld as "stronger in the faith" those who taught vegetarianism as God's original ideal as found in Gen.1:29. But he did NO SUCH THING! It would seem from what he did say the verse in question in Genesis DID NOT ENTER HIS MIND for one second. He did not allude to it, quote from it, give it as an example, or even come close to it in any way. Now look at what he DID say. You will find it in Romans 14:1-2. "Him that is weak in the faith receive ye, but not to doubtful disputations. For one believes that he may eat all things: another who is weak, eateth herbs." Notice carefully, Paul is not talking about someone who is PHYSICALLY weak in body or health, but one who is weak "in THE FAITH." Now who would you say could be "weak in the faith"? A person who understands God's basic 10 commandments, who knows the 7th day Sabbath should be kept holy, who has repented and accepted Jesus as their savior, who has been baptized in water - could he/she be still looked upon as weak in the faith, not knowing too much else about the Bible, still having lots to read and learn about God's way of life? Yes I think they could be described as "a babe in Christ" - "weak in the faith". Many coming into the Church of God at Rome were from a pagan society, they knew very little about what God's word said on many aspects of living. They were still looking into the word to see how they would change their thinking, acting, and customs. Few would have come from the background that Paul was raised in, even many of the converted Jews had much to learn about the REAL truths of God's word, most of them had followed the traditions of the Pharisees or some other Jewish sect. There would be many in the church who would be as Paul said, "weak in the faith." Some understood that God's word sanctioned the eating of MEAT - "may eat all things." In passing, there are those who say this is "doing away with" the clean and unclean food laws of the Old Testament, but does Paul mean by the use of the phrase "may eat all things" that a person can now eat the plant DEADLY NIGHT SHADE, or POISON mushrooms? Of course not! The "all things" that Paul is referring to is ALL THINGS WITHIN the LAWS of God. Paul said, "another who is weak" and we have seen he was referring to weak in KNOWLEDGE, weak in the UNDERSTANDING of the faith, those, some at least, believed you should ONLY eat herbs and vegetables. These are the two verses that should "blow you away" as I told you earlier that I would give you. There is just no way around it, the truth of the matter is pretty plain to see if you are willing to see it. In Paul's mind (and he was as spiritually strong in knowledge as any one, being directly taught of Jesus - Galatians 1) those who believed that it was God's original intention, or that it was spiritually more faithful, to be a vegetarian, were WEAK IN THE FAITH! They just did not understand, they had, at least on this point of the faith, some growing in strength yet to attain. Paul did make it very clear in the following verses that the meat eater and the vegetarian were to accept each other as full members of the body of Christ. They were not to condemn each other. They were both at liberty under God, to either eat meat or not eat meat. Both were fully received by God as His child. There is no law of God that says you MUST eat meat. God has given the clean and unclean food laws to show which creatures He created to be good food for humans, but He never said a person MUST eat meat as a way of life. It is interesting in passing that the PASSOVER and those participating in it were to eat LAMB! So all circumcised men and all women were to eat lamb at least once a year under the Old Covenant. Under the New Covenant this was replaced by BREAD and the fruit of the VINE. So, from the death of Christ forward no person has to eat ANY meat, at any time, if they do not want to. Eating meat or not eating meat is a PHYSICAL thing. Spiritually it has NO influence on God at all. It is NOTHING to Him. He allowes His children to eat or not eat meat. God shows no more favor to the one or the other. This eating meat or not eating meat is strictly PHYSICAL unless the vegetarian WANTS TO MAKE IT A MATTER OF FAITH, wants to make it into a spiritual issue, then if they do, Paul was inspired to write that from THE FAITH point of view, the vegetarian was "weak in the faith" - there was no scriptural ground for their belief that it was God's original design for mankind to be herb eaters only. To take it one step further, by saying such a stand was equivalent to being "weak in the faith" would indicate that the opposite, understanding God gave clean animals to be eaten by Adam and Eve from the beginning, was to be "strong in the faith." WHAT ABOUT THE EXAMPLE OF DANIEL? Many religious vegetarians who want to take their stand on the platform of "the faith," will try to use the example of Daniel as found in the book of daniel, chapter 1 and verses 1-20. The Seventh Day Adventist study lessons before cited were true to the context when they wrote: "Daniel's test case was not so much over the benefits of vegetarianism as it was over his loyalty to God." Notice verse 8 of Daniel chapter one. He was determined in his heart "not to DEFILE himself with the portion of the king's meat, nor with the wine which he drank...." This section of Scripture does not tell us what the king was eating or drinking but whatever it was it would have DEFILED Daniel. As this young man knew the health and food laws of God he was not going to defile himself by breaking those laws. Obviously, if he had eaten the king's food he would have compromised his faith. Nothing in this section of God's word shows vegetarianism to be spiritually superior or to be God's original ideal diet for mankind. THE EXAMPLE OF JESUS It is recorded that Jesus was sinless, that He came to this earth and set us the PERFECT example of how to live - mentally, spiritually, and physically. His life in word and deed is the ultimate in perfection. He said that He did only what His Father in heaven wanted Him to do and to speak. Jesus often had confrontations with the religious leaders of His time. Many of those encounters involved PHYSICAL things, customs and rites, such as eating with unwashed hands. Sometimes Jesus would answer by taking them back to BEFORE Moses and to God's original law and ideal. The laws of clean and unclean meats had been a part of daily life among the Jews. Here was Jesus magnifying the laws of God, restoring them to their correct understanding and application, talking about the way things should be in the lives of His followers, setting the example in word and deed. If He knew that it was Scripturally correct from Gen. 1:29 that God's original ideal for mankind and especially His children, was to stop eating meat and become vegetarians, you would think that somewhere, at some time, during those three and a half years of public ministry, He would have corrected the situation, at least for His followers of that time and those to come afterwards. BUT HE NEVER UTTERED A WORD ON THE SUBJECT!! Even after His resurrection, and His return to the Father in heaven and the coming of the Holy Spirit to reveal all the truth and to bring all things to remembrance that He spoke, was anyone (that was used to write the New Testament) inspired to affirm that God's original ideal was to have all people as vegetarians. Not one word about this in the New Testament - complete SILENCE! And when something is said about the issue of eating or not eating meat, the person who believes as a matter of FAITH, is regarded by the inspired Paul as "weak in the faith." Jesus set us an example. Did Jesus eat meat? He observed the Passover all of His life - so He ate LAMB at least once every year. The Bible is full of examples of the men and women of God eating meat, eggs, fish, butter, and milk! Yes, in today's polluted societies, we need to be careful about the eating of meats, fish, milk, and the like, but then we need also to be careful about our choices of flour, rice, and sweets, for they can be terribly polluted also and/or robbed of all their natural goodness through refining processes. I have seen far too many none meat eaters, who think they are returning to God's original ideal in diet, eating, as a way of life, white flour products, white rice, white sugar, too many refined sweet products, and drinking soda pops by the carton. God's design for us was to follow His food laws as laid out in His word. I will publish other articles under this food law heading as time permits. .................................................. Written January 1993 FOOT NOTE: Some would say that in God giving man dominion over all the earth He was given the power over all creatures to rule and subdue them, so the horse would serve man, the donkey and the mule, the ox, even the elephant etc. He could train them and build circuses BUT they would not be for food, not even the "clean" animals, the argument would go. This falls in the light of God giving man dominion over the FISH of the seas! If a man was to be a vegetarian why would God hive him rulership and dominion over that which was in the sea? The sea and that in it would be of no concern for mankind if God had told him to be a vegetarian and he was only to eat nuts, grains, seeds, and plants. Man has never used the large sea creatures as cargo carriers of merchandise, so why at the beginning of man's creation was he told by the creator that he could have dominion over the fish of the sea, if he was not to eat of those fish? Surely nobody thinks this means that God was telling mankind he could catch fish to put in a glass tank and watch them swim around during the evening time while relaxing in his tent or hut because they would have no TV to view. Surely no one believes this was the Lord's instruction for man to catch fish, for Adam and Eve to catch fish, and put them in a big pond so Cain and Abel could watch them swim around. I suggest that by God telling Adam and Eve RIGHT FROM THE BEGINNING that they had dominion over the fish in the seas, He was telling them that the fish of the sea were for FOOD. As I have said in the body of this article, God would have spent a number of hours and lessons of instruction to inform Adam and Eve about His food laws - the clean and unclean animals, birds, fish and creeping things, that He had created to be good food for mankind to eat. He would have spent some time with them instructing them about what green see-bearing plants were good for food, as some of them if eaten can make you sick, or even kill you within a very short time. Verse 28 and 29 of Genesis chapter one, are GENERAL statements only. They tell us God gave to the first man and woman creatures of the sea, land and air, the plants and vegetation of the earth that was green and seed bearing, for food. These verses are GENERAL STATEMENTS and not all encompassing instructions as to what God told Adam and Eve about His food laws. In the same way Genesis 2:24,25 are not all encompassing verses about marriage and sex. The lord would have given them any number of lessons and instruction on both marriage and sex, as well as childbirth and delivery. ........................................................

MUSHROOMS AND FUNGI----NOT CREATED TO BE EATEN #1, #2

 MUSHROOMS and FUNGI....NOT created for Human FOOD #1

MUSHROOMS AND FUNGI.....not Created for Human Food #1

I  have  known  the  truth  about  mushrooms and fungi not being created by God for human food  for  decades,  but  I've  had  to  wait  for  decades  to  finally  have  someone  write  the  technicalities  of  it,  in  simple  to  understand  language  -  Michael  Pollan  has  done  just  that.  When  you  finish  reading  this  two-part  study,  some  simple  logic  common  sense  should  tell  you  that  mushrooms  and  fungi,  were  never  given  by  the  Creator  for  us  to  eat  -  Keith Hunt

GATHERING:  THE   FUNGI 

by  Michael Pollan from his book "Omnivore's Dilemma"( 2006)

.......I hadn't actually thought about the gardener's worldview in this light till I'd spent some time mushroom hunting, which proposes a whole other way of being in nature. Hunting for mushrooms is an operation that superficially resembles harvesting—you're looking around in nature for the ready-to-eat—yet you quickly discover that the two activities could hardly be more different. For starters, mushrooms are usually hunted in an unfamiliar place where you stand a very good chance of getting lost, particularly since you are looking down at the ground so determinedly the whole time. Getting lost just isn't much of a problem in the garden. (Which is why gardeners looking to create that experience plant mazes.) And whereas in your garden the ready-to-eat tomato beckons to you, flashing red from out of the undifferentiated green, mushrooms definitely hide. Picking and eating the wrong ones could get you killed, too, something not easily done in the garden. No, gratifying human needs and desires is just not what mushrooms are about. Mushrooms, you soon discover, are wild things in every way, beings pursuing their own agenda quite apart from ours. Which is why "hunting," rather than harvesting, is the mycophile's preferred term of art.

1. FIVE CHANTERELLES

It was a Sunday morning in late January when I got the call from Angelo.

"The chanterelles are up," he announced.

"How do you know? Have you been out looking?"

"No, not yet. But it's been three weeks since the big rains." We'd had a torrential week between the holidays. "They're up now, I'm sure of that. We should go tomorrow."

At the time I barely knew Angelo (we had yet to go pig hunting), which made his invitation to come mushrooming with him all the more generous. Mushroom hunters are famously protective of their "spots," and a good chanterelle spot is a precious personal possession (though not quite as precious as a good porcini spot). Before Angelo agreed to take me I'd asked a slew of acquaintances I knew to be my-cophiles if I might accompany them. (The Bay Area is home to many such people, probably because mushroom hunting marries the region's two guiding obsessions: eating and the outdoors.) I was always careful to solemnly swear to protect the location of their spots. For some people you could see at once that this was an entirely outrageous request, tantamount to asking if I might borrow their credit card for the afternoon. Others reacted more calmly, yet always cagily Angelo's friend Jean-Pierre is reputed to have good chanterelle spots right within the Berkeley city limits, but he repeatedly found polite ways to deflect my entreaties into the distant future. Several mushroom hunters responded to my request with the same joke: "Sure, you can come mushroom hunting with me, but I must tell you that immediately afterward I will have to kill you." What you fully expect to follow such a jokey warning (a warning I always parried with an offer to wear a blindfold coming and going) is some sort of conditional invitation, but it never arrives. Without ever exactly saying no, the mushroom hunter will defdy beg off or change the subject. I thought maybe the problem was that I was a writer, somebody who might do something as crazy as publish the location of a favorite spot, so I emphasized that a journalist would sooner go to jail than reveal a secret from a confidential source. This swayed precisely no one. I was beginning to think it was hopeless, that I was going to have to learn to hunt mushrooms from books—a dubious, not to mention dangerous, proposition. And then Angelo called.

Though I probably shouldn't overstate Angelo's generosity. The place he took me mushrooming was on private and gated land owned by an old friend of his, so it wasn't as though he was giving away the family jewels. The property was a vineyard outside of Glen Ellen, with several hundred untended acres of oak chaparral stretching to the northeast toward St. Helena. As soon as you stepped out of the manicured vineyard the land relaxed into gently rolling savanna, with broad sloping passages of grass, verdant after the winter rains, punctuated by shady groves of live oak and bay laurel.

The chanterelle is a mycorrhizal species, which means it lives in association with the roots of plants—oak trees, in the chanterelle's case, and usually oak trees of a venerable age. Though there must have been hundreds of promisingly ancient oaks here, Angelo, who had been hunting chanterelles on the property for years, seemed to be on a first name basis with every one of them. "That one there is a producer," he'd tell me, pointing across the meadow with his forked walking stick to an unremarkable tree. "But the one next to it, I never once found a mushroom there."

I cut my own walking stick from an oak branch and set off across the meadow to hunt beneath the tree Angelo had declared a good producer. He had instructed me to use the stick to turn over the leaf litter wherever it seemed uplifted. The stick also would carry spores from one tree to another, Angelo explained; evidently he regarded himself as something of a bumblebee to the chanterelles, transporting their genes from tree to tree. (In general mushroom hunters view their role in nature as benign.) I looked around my tree for a few minutes, walking a stooped circle under its drip line, flicking the leaf litter here and there with my stick, but I saw nothing. Eventually Angelo came over and pointed to a spot no more than a yard from where I stood. I looked, I stared, but still saw nothing but a chaotic field of tan leaves and tangled branches. Angelo got down on his knees and brushed the leaves and soil away to reveal a bright squash-colored trumpet the size of his fist. He cut it at the base with a knife and handed it to me; the mushroom was unexpectedly heavy, and cool to the touch.

How in the world had he spotted it? The mushroom hadn't even peeked up from the leaf litter yet. Apparently you had to study the leaves for subtle signs of hydraulic lift from below, and then look at the ground sideways, because the fat gold shafts of the chanterelles often reveal themselves before their tops break through the leaves. Yet when Angelo pointed to another spot under the same tree, a spot where he had obviously seen another mushroom, I was still blind. Not until he had shuffled the leaves with the tip of his stick did the golden nugget of fungus flash at me. I became convinced that Angelo had some other sense working for him besides sight, that he must be smelling the chanterelles before looking down to see them.

But that's apparendy how it goes with hunting mushrooms: You have to get your eyes on, as hunters will sometimes put it. And after following Angelo around for a while, I did begin to get my eyes on, a little, though at first, oddly enough, this would only happen when I was in Angelo's presence, working the same oak tree. Other novices talk about this phenomenon, and I suspect it's a little like the trick of the counting horse, who is not really doing arithmetic, as it appears, but is merely picking up subtle clues in the body language of its trainer. Wherever Angelo lingered, wherever the beams of his gaze raked the ground with particular intensity, I would look and occasionally would see. I was the horse who could count, the man who could find a chanterelle using someone else's eyes.

But before the morning was out I'd begun to find a few chanterelles on my own. I began to understand what it meant to have my eyes on, and the chanterelles started to pop out of the landscape, one and then another, almost as though they were beckoning to me. So had I stumbled on a particularly good spot or had I learned at last how to see them? Nature or nurture? There was no way of telling, though I did have the eerie experience of resurveying the very same patch of ground and finding a Siamese pair of chanterelles, bright as double egg yolks, in a spot where a moment before I could swear there had been nothing but the tan carpet of leaves. Either they had just popped up or visual perception is a lot more variable, and psychological, than we think. It is certainly ruled by expectation, because whenever I was convinced I was in a good spot the mushrooms were more likely to appear. "Seeing is believing" has it backward when it comes to hunting mushrooms; in this case, believing is seeing. My ability to see mushrooms seemed to function less like a window than a tool, a constructed and wielded thing.

After spotting a couple of nice ones I developed a measure of confidence that ultimately proved to be unfounded. Based on my still modest scores I worked out a snap theory of the Good Spot, which involved the optimal springiness of the soil and the distance from the trunk, but the theory didn't hold up. After a brief run of luck I prompdy went blind again—and failed to find another mushroom all day. I would say there were no more mushrooms left to find, except that Angelo was still finding them under canopies I had supposedly exhausted; not a lot— we were a few days early, he decided—but enough to fill a grocery bag.

I had managed to find a total of five, which doesn't sound like much except that several of them weighed close to a pound each. My five chanterelles were tremendous, beautiful things I couldn't wait to taste.

And that night I did. I washed off the dirt, patted them dry, and then sliced the chanterelles into creamy white slabs. They smelled faintly of apricots, and I knew at once that this was the same mushroom I had found near my house, the one I had been afraid to taste. The squashy hue matched, and these had the same shallow gills, ridges really, running up the stalk, which flared out to meet the gently in-folded cap like a stout golden vase. I sauteed the chanterelles as Angelo had recommended, first in a dry frying pan to sweat out their water, which was copious, and then with butter and shallots. The mushrooms were delicious in a subde way that could easily be overwhelmed or overlooked. They had a delicate flavor, fruity with a hint of pepper, and a firm but silky texture.

You might reasonably ask if, eating my wild mushrooms, I felt the least bit concerned about waking up dead. Did I harbor any lingering doubts that these mushrooms were really chanterelles—edible delicacies and not some deadly poison Angelo had mistaken for chanterelles? An understandable question, yet oddly enough, in view of my myco-phobic predilections, it was no longer an issue. Oh, maybe I felt the vaguest shadow of a doubt as I lifted the first forkful, but it was easily brushed aside. I trusted Angelo implicitly, and besides, these mushrooms smelled and tasted right.

At dinner that night we joked about mushroom poisoning, recalling the time Judith had stumbled upon a prodigious patch of morels while biking with her friend Christopher in Connecticut. She came home with a trash bag half full of them, an astounding haul. But I could not bring myself to serve the mushrooms until we could get some kind of confirmation that these were indeed morels and not, say, the "false morels" that the field guides warned against. But how to be sure? I couldn't quite trust the books, or at least my reading of them. The solution to the dilemma seemed obvious, if perhaps a little heartless. I proposed to Judith we put the morels in the refrigerator overnight, and then give Christopher a call in the morning. Assuming he was sufficiently alive to answer his phone, he would undoubtedly mention whether he'd eaten the morels the previous night, and we would then know ours were safe to eat. I saw no reason to mention his role as an experimental human subject.

Well, that's one way of dealing with the omnivore's dilemma. Wild mushrooms in general throw that dilemma into particularly sharp relief, since they confront us simultaneously with some of the edible world's greatest rewards and gravest risks. Arguably, mushroom eating poses the starkest case of the omnivore's dilemma, which could explain why people hold such strong feelings, pro or con, on the subject of wild mushrooms. As mycologists are fond of pointing out, you can divide most people, and even whole cultures, into mycophiles and mycophobes. Anglo-Americans are notoriously mycophobic, while Europeans and Russians tend to be passionate mycophiles, or so mush-roomers will tell you. But I suspect most of us harbor both impulses in varying proportions, approaching the wild mushroom with a heightened sense of the omnivore's basic tension as we struggle to balance our adventurousness in eating against a protective fear, our neophilia against our neophobia.

As the case of mushrooms suggests the omnivore's dilemma often comes down to a question of identification—to knowing exactly what it is you are preparing to eat. From the moment Angelo handed me that first mushroom, what is and is not a chanterelle suddenly seemed as plain to me as sunshine. I knew right then that the next time I found a chanterelle, anywhere, I would recognize it and not hesitate to eat it. Which is peculiar, when you consider that in the case of the chanterelle I found in my neighborhood, a half dozen authoritative field guides by credentialed mycologists had failed to convince me beyond a reasonable doubt of something I now was willing to bet my life on, based on the say-so of one Sicilian guy with no mycological training whatsoever. How could that be?

In deciding whether or not to ingest a new food, the omnivore will happily follow the lead of a fellow omnivore who has eaten the same food and lived to talk about it. This is one advantage we have over the rat, which has no way of sharing with other rats the results of his digestive experiments with novel foodstuffs. For the individual human, his community and culture successfully mediate the omnivore's dilemma, telling him what other people have safely eaten in the past as well as how they ate it. Just imagine if we had to decide every such edibility question on our own; only the bravest or most foolish of us would ever eat a mushroom. The social contract is a great boon to omnivores in general, and to mushroom eaters in particular.

The field guides contain our culture's accumulated wisdom on the subject of mushrooms. Curiously, though, the process of imparting and absorbing this life-and-death information works much better in person than it does on paper, whether through writing or even photography. Andrew Weil discusses this phenomenon in a wonderful series of essays on mushrooms he's collected in a volume called The Marriage of the Sun and Moon. "One learns most mushrooms in only one way: through people who know them. It is terribly difficult to do it from books, pictures, or written descriptions."

I wonder if books fail us here because the teaching transaction— This one is good to eat, that one not—is so fundamental, even primordial, that we're instinctively reluctant to trust it to any communication medium save the oldest: that is, direct personal testimony from, to put it blundy, survivors. After all, precisely what is meant by "this one," the myriad qualities embedded in that modest little pronoun, can be conveyed only imperfecdy in words and pictures. Our ability to identify plants and fungi with confidence, which after all is one of the most critical tools of our survival, involves far more sensory information than can ever be printed on a page; it is, truly, a form of "body knowledge" not easily reduced or conveyed over a distance........"

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MUSHROOM DILEMMA !!

MUSHROOM  FOLLY

by  Michael  Pollan

......So my fungiphobia was another thing I'd have to overcome if I hoped to ever serve a personally hunted and gathered meal, because wild mushrooms had to be on the menu. Mushroom hunting seems to 1 me the very soul of foraging, throwing both the risks and rewards of eating from the wild into the sharpest possible relief. If I hoped to host representatives of all three kingdoms on my plate, learning to distinguish the delicious from the deadly among the fungi was a necessity. (Actually I hoped to wangle a fourth kingdom in there—a mineral—if I could manage to locate a salt flat within driving distance of my house.)

 I began consulting field guides to help me identify the many unfamiliar species I'd been content to treat as leafy, fungal, and feathery background noise......

 I scanned the leaf litter around a couple of oaks but saw nothing. Just when I'd given up and turned to head back, however, I noticed a bright, yolky glimmer of something pushing up the carpet of leaves not two feet from where I'd just stepped. I brushed away the leaves and there it was, this big, fleshy, vase-shaped mushroom that I was dead certain had to be a chanterelle.

Or was it?

How certain was that?

I took the mushroom home, brushed off the soil, and put it on a plate, then pulled out my field guides to see if I could confirm the identification. Everything matched up: the color, the faint apricot smell, the asymmetrical trumpet shape on top, the underside etched in a shallow pattern of "false" gills. I felt fairly confident. But confident enough to eat it? Not quite. The field guide mentioned something called a "false chanterelle" that had slighdy "thinner" gills. Uh oh. Thinner, thicker: These were relative terms; how could I tell if the gills I was looking at were thin or thick ones? Compared to what? My mother's mycophobic warnings rang in my ears. I couldn't trust my eyes. I couldn't quite trust the field guide. So whom could I trust? Angelo! But that meant driving my lone mushroom across the bridge to San Francisco, which seemed excessive. My desire to saute and eat my first-found chanterelle squabbled with my doubts about it, slender as they were. But by now I had passed the point of being able to enjoy this putative chanterelle without anxiety, so I threw it out.

I didn't realize it at the time, but I had impaled myself that afternoon on the horns of the omnivore's dilemma.

....................

YES  I  GUESS  HE  HAD  IMPALED  HIMSELF  ON  A  DILEMMA!!

YOU  HAVE  TO  BE  AN  EXPERT  ON  MUSHROOMS  TO  PICK  THE  RIGHT  ONES;  IF  NOT  YOU  CAN  KILL  YOURSELF!!

NOW  GOD  TOLD  THE  FIRST  HUMANS  THE  'rule"  FOR  PLANT  EATING....FRUIT  EATING.....MUST  BEAR  SEEDS.

SIMPLE  AS  THAT..... OF  ALL  FRUITS  AND  VEGETATION  TO  EAT  IT  MUST  REPRODUCE  BY  SEEDS.

MUSHROOMS,  FUNGI,  MOSS,  SEA-WEED,  AND  SUCH  DO  NOT  BEAR  SEEDS!!

THEY  SHOULD  NOT  BE  EATEN!!

WHY  WOULD  GOD  CREATE  SOME  MUSHROOMS  THAT  LITERALLY  CAN  KILL  YOU,  AND  HAVE  IT  AS  FOOD;  NEEDING  A  PhD  TO  KNOW  WHICH  ONES  WILL  NOT  KILL  YOU.  SIMPLE  ANSWER......MUSHROOMS  WERE  NEVER  CREATED  TO  BE  EATEN  BY  HUMANS.

NOW  IT  DOES  NOT  MATTER  WHAT  SOME  "DIET-NUTRITIONIST"  HAVE  TO  SAY,  ABOUT  MUSHROOMS  HAVE  THIS  VITAMIN  OR  THAT,  OR  THIS  MINERAL  OR  THAT,  AND  HOW  GOOD  THAT  IS.  I  HAVE  A  "HEALTH  BOOK"  THAT  TELLS  YOU  ALL  THE  GOOD  VITAMINS  ETC.  IN  "PORK"  -  MAKES  NO  DIFFERENCE  -  GOD'S  LAWS  SAY  PORK  IS  AN  UNCLEAN  SUBSTANCE [I  WILL  NOT  CALL  IT  "FOOD"]  AND  IS  NOT  TO  BE  EATEN  TO  BE  HEALTHY.

THERE  IS  NO  DILEMMA  -  MUSHROOMS  ARE  NOT  TO  BE  EATEN  -  THEY  ARE  PART  OF  THE  UNCLEAN  VEGETATION  LAW  OF  GOD.

Keith Hunt