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Bill,
Thanks for your questions. You have good reason to be concerned about your
sister. She's not attending a typical Evangelical Bible Study.
She's attending a bible study of a community that, at best,
can be called an aberrational group. The Seventh Day Adventists (SDA) have,
for all intents and purposes, separated themselves from orthodox Christianity,
be it Catholic or Protestant.
The SDA is nothing but a rehash of the Judaizer heresy that
St. Paul railed against.
Let's deal with some specifics. St. Paul addresses the issue of what foods
can be eaten extensively. Christ, Himself, speaking on the subject, said,
it's what comes out of the mouth and not what goes in, that makes us unclean.
To understand the dietary laws, we need to understand the history of
Israel. When Israel was enslaved in Egypt, they adopted the idolatrous
practices of their masters. They worshiped bulls and sheep. That worship
included sacrificing pigs and other animals, the Bible calls unclean, to
the idols representing a bull or a sheep. These sacrificial animals were
then eaten.
Hence, when God's call delivered them from Egypt, he called on them to
sacrifice the animals they had worshiped in Egypt. He also forbade them
from eating or sacrificing those animals they had eaten and sacrificed
in Egypt. The sacrifice was originally only supposed to happen once at
Sinai, when God gave them the 10 Commandments. However, as they waited
for Moses, the fell back into idolatry. As a result, the entire sacrificial
system described in Leviticus and Deuteronomy was instituted to remind
the Israelites, on a daily basis, that the god's of Egypt were not gods,
but animals to be eaten. The dietary prohibition on pork, an so forth,
was again given to remind Israel that they were separate and different
from the nations. They would not eat the animals, the nations sacrificed
to idols.
John
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