3753 - Eating and Selling by Dudley Marvin Canright

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · May 21, 1912

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 39, No. 20.

3753 — Eating and Selling

By Dudley Marvin Canright

In Deut. 14:21 we read that it is not right to eat certain things, but we can sell to any one else. Is that right? Is it wrong for us to eat pork that it is right for us to raise for others to eat? D. W. C.

Like other questions of conscience, the individual must settle these things for himself. There were certain things that the children of Israel were forbidden to eat, and this scripture speaks of the things that died of themselves. They could give it to the sojourner, that is, the stranger or foreigner, that he may eat it, or they could sell it to a foreigner. Now the foreigners ate that kind of food all the time. They did not buy it under any deception whatever. The children of Israel did not sell it as that which was killed for that purpose, if they were true or honest. The foreigner knew just what he was buying, or just what he was receiving if it was given to him. We would not understand by this, that, if there were plagues upon either cattle or herds, they would sell those that were sure to bring death upon the persons who ate them; but the flesh of beasts killed by accident or things of that character.

2. The trouble about pork is that it is essentially bad. No doctor prescribes it for a feeble patient. It is about the last thing that doctors will permit in most cases of sickness. The swine is corrupt, and always has been. It is filthy, and its flesh has always been filled with fetid humors. God's people anciently were to have naught to do with it. Those who use it in any quantity are generally troubled with boils, or pimples, or ulcers; wounds heal very slowly, and almost invariably suppurate; whereas after the use of such food has been laid aside, all these symptoms and indications pass. Thousands have been made better by the abjuring of pork and substituting clean food in its place. We do not know why any Seventh-day Adventist would want to raise it. We certainly should not—would prefer to make a little less money rather than to raise swine.