There Will Be No More Death

Dominion Over The Animals.
The bible, on many occasions, says that man was given “dominion” over the animals.
People have twisted this to mean that they can do anything they wish to animals.
What is meant by “dominion” is the ability to impose our will.
We do indeed rule over all animals, as we are the most powerful species on the planet.
This however, does not mean it is okay to abuse this power, through animal abuse, and other wicked acts.
( Denis Giron )

If a man earnestly seeks a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from animal food.
( Leo Tolstoy )

For every beast of the forest is Mine, the cattle on a thousand hills.
I know every bird of the mountains, and everything that moves in the field is Mine.
( Psalm 50:10-11 )

There Will Be No More Death.
The prophecy described in the Hebrew Bible, the Book of Isaiah 11:6–9 foresees a return to a vegetarian world like that described in the earliest chapters of the Book of Genesis — back to Eden, where the cow, bear, snake, and the children of humanity coexist in peace.
Lambs and wolves will feed together and lions will be vegetarians again:
“The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them. The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox.”
The New Testament Book of Revelation 21:4 says: “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death, or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

To do charity and justice is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice.
( Proverbs 21:3 )

The Bible Story Of Beating A Donkey.
Throughout the bible there are many stories that have a strong moral value.
Whenever you read a story in the bible, ask yourself what the moral of that story was.
It has to have a moral, because if there is no moral, then the story has no relevance.
Surely nothing in the bible is irrelevant.
In Numbers 22: 21-34, there is the story of Balaam beating his donkey.
Within these verses is a strong story about animal abuse, suffering, and animal rights.
( Denis Giron )

What I want is mercy, not sacrifice.
( Hosea 6:6 )

God Does Not Command Animal Sacrifice.
The idea of animal rights being expressed in the bible comes under fire from those who point to instances of animal sacrifice.
I admit the many mentionings of animal sacrifice in the bible have troubled me in the past.
How can a merciful God command us to sacrifice animals?
The truth of the matter is, we are NOT supposed to sacrifice animals.
God does not command us to do this.
The truth is, in Moses’ time, after the Jews came out of Egypt, God allowed animal sacrifices for that time period.
The great Jewish philosopher Abarbanel believed animal sacrifice was briefly allowed by God in order to end the idolatry the Jews practiced in Egypt.
He cited a Jewish writing that indicated that the Jews had become accustomed to sacrifices in Egypt.
To wean them from these idolatrous practices, God tolerated the sacrifices but commanded that they be offered in one central sanctuary.
( Denis Giron )

Your Hands Are Full Of Blood.
The multitude of your sacrifices, what are they to me?
I have more than enough of burnt offerings, of rams and the fat of fattened animals.
I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats.
When you come to appear before me, who has asked this of you, this trampling of my courts?
Stop bringing meaningless offerings.
Your incense is detestable to me.
New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations, I cannot bear your evil assemblies.
Your New Moon festivals and your appointed feasts my soul hates.
They have become a burden to me.
I am weary of bearing them.
When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you.
Even if you offer many prayers, I will not listen.
Your hands are full of blood.
Wash and make yourselves clean.
Take your evil deeds out of my sight.
Stop doing wrong.
( Isaiah 1:11-16 )

Jesus Was A Vegetarian.
Across the globe, there is a small handful of vegetarian Christians who assert that Jesus was a vegetarian.
The bible, and other sources, seems to support this belief.
Vegetarianism is not without precedent in the Christian, or even Catholic faiths.
Many early church fathers were vegetarian, including St. Basil, St. John Chrysostom, and St. Francis of Assisi.
( Denis Giron )

Refrain at all times from such foods as cannot be procured without violence and oppression.
( Thomas Tryon )

Meat Corrupts Your Heart.
Throughout history there has been many vegetarian jews.
Even today, only India has more faith-based vegetarians than Israel.
These vegetarian jews believed meat corrupted your soul.
Eating meat was permitted by God, but so was drinking alcohol.
In fact, just like alcohol, the bible teaches, meat makes you “stumble”, or corrupts your heart (Romans 14-21).
That is why Jesus, the Messiah, would eat butter and honey, instead of meat, so that his heart would not be corrupted.
Before, during, and after Jesus’ time Jews argued whether or not meat was good for people.
There were many vegetarian jews, so why not Jesus?
( Denis Giron )

Until we consider animal life to be worthy of the consideration and reverence we bestow upon old books and pictures and historic monuments, there will always be the animal refugee living a precarious life on the edge of extermination, dependent for existence on the charity of a few human beings.
( Gerald Durrell )

The Prophet Daniel Was A Vegetarian.
In the first chapter of the book of Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon has imprisoned Daniel.
In verse 8, Daniel refused to defile himself by eating the meat being served to him in the prison.
Daniel abstained from the meat offered because he was a vegetarian.
He knew the benefits of such a diet.
Daniel then said to the guard whom the chief official had appointed over him: “Please test your servants for ten days. Give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then compare our appearance with that of the young men who eat the royal food, and treat your servants in accordance with what you see.”
So he agreed to this and tested them for ten days.
At the end of the ten days they looked healthier and better nourished than any of the young men who ate the royal food.
So the guard took away their meat and the wine they were to drink and gave them vegetables instead (Daniel 1:11-16).
( Denis Giron )

Animals have a short life, yet we choose not only to kill them and make it shorter, we abuse and torture the poor souls beforehand.
What does that say about us when we can’t even show a little compassion and kindness before we brutally slaughter them and mutilate their bodies?
( Len Firswood )

Let Us Be Kind To Animals.
Life is as precious to us as it is for an animal.
An animal is as loving, caring, and kind to her children as we are.
She might not be able to tell us but she can express it through her eyes and expressions.
She feels joy and happiness.
She is helpless in our cruel hands and vulnerable to our vicious greed.
Let us be kind to animals.
Let us learn to feel their pain.
Can we kill a helpless baby to feed our greed?
Then how can we kill helpless animal friends that can’t talk?
Often we kill just for fun.
How funny would it be if an animal killed a human just for fun?
Let us be kind to animals as much as possible.
I know we can.
It is easier to love an animal than a human being.
If you love an animal, it will rarely hurt you.
Let us practice kindness and compassion to animals so that we may create a peaceful world.
( Debasish Mridha )

Jesus Did Not Eat Meat.
The prophesy in Isaiah 7:15 said Jesus would eat butter and honey (rather than meat) to be able to know the difference between good and evil.
If Jesus ate meat, then he does not fit the Messianic prophesy of the Jews.
Nowhere in the bible does it ever mention Jesus eating meat.
Now, knowing that the bible never mentions him eating meat, and taking into account the fact that Jesus taught love and kindness, how hard is it to assume he might have been a vegetarian?
( Denis Giron )

The Umbrella Of Compassion.
I encourage everyone to go where their hearts take them, with love, not fear.
If we all travel this road, the world will be a better place for all beings.
Kinder and more humane choices will be made when we let our hearts lead the way.
Compassion begets compassion and caring for and loving animals spills over into compassion and caring for humans.
The umbrella of compassion is very important to share freely and widely.
( Marc Bekoff )

What About Fish?
In the 14th chapter of Matthew (verses 13-21) Jesus takes his boat to a remote island.
Thousands follow him there.
Jesus tells his disciples to feed these people, but they tell him that they only have five loaves of bread and two fish (verse 17).
Jesus gave thanks for the food, and it multiplied into enough to feed five thousand people.
Now the question is, if Jesus was a vegetarian, why was he giving fish to his followers?
It should be noted that some scholars contend that the Greek word for “fish weed” (a dried seaweed) has been mistranslated in this story as “fish”.
It is certainly true that dried fishweed would be more likely in a basket with bread, and fishweed remains a popular food among Palestinian peasants like the people to whom Jesus was speaking.
Also, in the beginning of the story (Matthew 14:13) it says Jesus got to this place by boat.
These people were right by the sea.
If they were out of fish, why not just go on a quick fishing expedition?
Surely with 5,000 men present it would not be that hard to go fishing.
With this in mind, it further supports the thought that fishweed was being used, not actual fish.
Also, when one considers that the disciples did not even think about trying to catch some fish, this helps explain Matthew 4:18-20, where Jesus gets his first disciples by telling some fishermen to give up their profession and follow him.
Jesus even says to them “I will make you a fisher of men”.
Could this be Jesus was having them give up their barbaric line of work to do something more righteous?
It may sound absurd, but it starts to make a little more sense when you take it in the same context as the story of feeding five thousand, where the disciples never even considered trying to catch some fish, despite being beside the sea.
Why didn’t they go fishing ?
Did Jesus teach it was wrong to eat fish?
( Denis Giron )

“Fish” Was Added To Some Gospel Verses Later On.
The original version of the “Feeding of the Multitude” story only refers to bread, not bread with fish ––“Fish” apparently got added to some gospel verses later on.
Matthew 16:9 “Do you not yet perceive? Do you not remember the five loaves for the five thousand, and how many baskets you gathered?”
No fish was mentioned.
Mark 8:15-20 They discussed this with one another and said, “It is because we have no bread.”
Aware of their discussion, Jesus asked them: “Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not see or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear? And don’t you remember? When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?”
“Twelve,” they replied.
“And when I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?”
They answered, “Seven.”
Fish are not always included with the loaves in the various accounts of the “Feeding of the Five Thousand” mentioned in the New Testament gospels and other sources.
We should also bear in mind that fish was a well known mystical symbol.
The Greek word for fish (Ichthys) was used as an acronym whose initials in Greek stood for ‘Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour’.

Surely it is our animal nature that recognises the divinity of the natural world in all its mystery and beauty, despite the distressing habits and limited perception that afflict our species.
So perhaps our hope of redemption lies in the fact that we are animals, not that we are people.
( Elizabeth Marshall Thomas )

A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast.
But the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.
( Proverbs 12:10 )
Meaning a good man is merciful.
He is gentle and kind.
He is ruled by pity and compassion.
He will not be mean or hard.
But the wicked are cruel.
Even their kindness is harsh, for they lack the tender, gentle spirit of the righteous man, who is concerned even for animals.
They are not kind and merciful.

Why Should We No Longer Offer Animal Sacrifices Today?
Animal sacrifices have ended because Jesus Christ was the ultimate and perfect sacrifice.
John the Baptist recognised this when he saw Jesus coming to be baptized and said, “Look, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).
You may be asking yourself, why animals?
What did they do wrong?
That is the point—since the animals did no wrong, they died in place of the one performing the sacrifice.
Jesus Christ also did no wrong but willingly gave Himself to die for the sins of mankind.
Jesus Christ took our sin upon Himself and died in our place.
As 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
Through faith in what Jesus Christ accomplished on the cross, we can receive forgiveness.
Animal sacrifices were commanded by God so that the individual could experience forgiveness of sin.
The animal served as a substitute, that is, the animal died in place of the sinner, but only temporarily, which is why the sacrifices needed to be offered over and over.
Animal sacrifices have stopped with Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ was the ultimate sacrificial substitute once for all time (Hebrews 7:27) and is now the only mediator between God and humanity (1 Timothy 2:5).
Animal sacrifices foreshadowed Christ’s sacrifice on our behalf.
The only basis on which an animal sacrifice could provide forgiveness of sins is Christ who would sacrifice Himself for our sins, providing the forgiveness that animal sacrifices could only illustrate and foreshadow.

Jesus Condemned Animal Sacrifice.
According to the Gospel of the Ebionites, Jesus rejected the Passover meal: “I have no desire to eat the flesh of this Paschal Lamb with you.”
In the Ebionite scriptures Jesus condemned animal sacrifice in the temple of Jerusalem and sought to forever bring that practice to an end.
The Ebionite or Hebrew Gospel quotes Jesus as saying, “I have come to abolish the sacrifices, and if you cease not from sacrificing, my wrath will not cease from you.”

The editing out of vegetarian sayings, adding fish to the Feeding of the Five Thousand in second century Greek manuscripts, and translators choosing the word “locust” instead of carob, giving John the Baptist an unusual diet of bugs, are all troubling examples of slanting the translations or tampering with texts — adding meat to the menu.

People that use the Bible, a book containing words that may have been spoken between 2,000 and 3,500 years-ago, to excuse and justify the unnecessary abuse and suffering and brutal death we inflict on animals, are simply people with no valid reasons and who think their taste for dead flesh is more important than the suffering and the life of the victims.
( Rose Winfold )

Who Gave Us The Authority To Do This?
People pray to God for mercy and justice but continue to eat the flesh of animals that are slaughtered solely for their gustatory desires.
I fail to understand why the masses believe it’s okay to bring gentle animals into the world with the sole intention of hurting them and then brutally killing them.
What, or who, gave us the right or the authority to do this?
Certainly not a loving God or Creator.
( Rose Winfold )