THE SACREDNESS OF BLOOD
Christians today pretend that animal sacrifice was once commanded by God who has
done away with it. The book God wrote through men, the Bible, teaches that
animal sacrifice is not banned and that we must not eat blood.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses forbid blood transfusions and say that they will prevent
a person from being raised to life and salvation.
The Bible is against eating blood which is why they oppose it.
In his Encyclopaedia of Bible Difficulties (page 85), Gleason L. Archer tries to
answer the question if Christians are allowed by God to eat blood. He correctly
concludes that Christians are not supposed to eat blood. God told Noah not to
eat flesh with the blood still in it (Genesis 9:4). Nobody can say that the
prohibition was about avoiding infection for Noah would hardly have eaten raw
meat. If he had there would have been no need for a blood ban and it would have
been enough to tell him to cook his food.
In Leviticus 17 God explains that the reason he wants nobody to eat blood is
because it is the life of the creature and life is sacred. He gives an ethical
reason for the ban meaning that it can’t be done away for right cannot become
wrong. Acts 10 where Peter seems to be told that unclean food is now clean
mentions only animals not blood so it does not lift the ban. When the apostles
later decreed that sexual sin and blood are to be banned for the Gentiles in
Acts 15 it proves that the two crimes are equally unjust not because they are
forbidden but because they are bad. It shows that Peter was not told that blood
was clean but the opposite.
It is said that God only forbade blood because he wanted to impress upon the
primitive peoples that life was sacred because they did not understand that the
soul gave life more blood did so he had to make do by banning blood. This
accuses God of deception and denies his omnipotence and is refuted by the fact
that God said the ban was forever and allowed a lot of murder and this motive is
not declared in the Bible.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses are right to teach that true Christians cannot have
blood transfusions. Transfusions are eating blood in a different way. If it is
so bad to take blood into the stomach where it is broken down then it is worse
to take it into the veins where it is not.
It is said that eating blood is literal in the Bible for blood transfusions are
a recent invention. But eating blood means that it is being taken into the body.
It is this taking in that is censured not the actual swallowing or chewing. The
argument is like saying that when a person forbids stabbing another to death he
allows you to poison her or him! Orthodox Christianity and famously antichrist
Catholicism especially will do all sorts of gymnastics to steer clear of
teaching what the Bible says on many issues and including the blood one.