“J!,
Lions don’t eat straw!
They eat red meat, fool!
With those canines in their jaw,
What a mean, meat eating tool!”
Oh really? Do you
know there are some current day stories of lions that refuse to eat meat, but gobble up veggies and grains? 1
The Bible reveals, originally, no animal nor mankind was carnivorous (meat eating), but ate every
seed yielding herb and of every tree whose fruit yields seed… and ‘it
was so.’ (Genesis 1:29-30) (Straw
is dried herb. Now who’s the fool?)
Still sounds illogical that we were all initially vegetarians?? Consider
this. Imagine Noah and his family, the only human survivors of the
worldwide flood, locked in the ark for 150 days with hundreds of meat eating
animals! Now imagine the amount of food (fruits, veggies and…other animals!) he would have had to
import to feed, not only that crew, but also his own family for that long! The
Bible further reveals only after the flood did God
instruct/allow mankind (and presumably animals, too) to eat meat. In Genesis
9:3, He said, ‘Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. I have
given you all things [to eat], even as [I gave you] the green herbs [to eat].’ Now since there were only a pair (male/female) of each ‘unclean’ animal that
survived the flood, and at least a similar pair of ‘clean’ animals who survived
Noah’s post-flood sacrifices, it must have taken quite some time before the
animals could repopulate earth, and before Noah and his growing family could enjoy
their first savory meal with meat.
(Yummy!) 2
Could
it be that, in killing animals for food,
mankind
may have, in some manner,
‘taught’
animals to do likewise?!
As discussed in another post (Life Span – How Long?), I note my curiosity about
whether this change in diet policy on Earth may have been one instrument to implement God’s stated intention to
shorten the (then) life span of (always sinful) mankind from several hundreds of
years to ~120 years. (Genesis 6:3) 3 Take some time to compare pre- and
post-flood life spans! Moreover, consider this. On multiple occasions in
the Old Testament, God identifies His most severe means of
judgments/punishments for persistent/gross sins: the sword, famine,
wild beasts and pestilence. 4 Well, in order for wild beasts to be included in this
‘God quiver’, they would have had to
develop a taste for blood, including human blood!
Imagine
all of this in their future,
as
these vegetarians (human and animal)
were
released from the ark!
Friend, as you might
suppose, I am not talking about the Garden of Eden – no, not at all.
(There were no babies or children there!) I am talking about the first
millennium of mankind’s existence on planet earth! Correction:
the initial 1,656 years. Why? Noah
was reportedly not born until after
the first millennium (1056 BC), and the flood reportedly occurred in 1656 BC, so he
was a young 600 years old when he, his family and all those vegetarian animals
entered the ark. (Genesis 7:6) Allowing time for humans and animals to
repopulate the earth, it may have been somewhere near the end of our second
millennium on earth before we and many of the animals became carnivores.
Difficult/impossible to imagine? Well, please consider
this: People in Noah’s day similarly found it impossible, even ludicrous to
imagine something as far fetched as a flood that would destroy all life on the
planet! And they paid with their lives for their dis-belief.
Enough of history! The good news is about their (and our)
future. God revealed to Isaiah that, once again, for a thousand years, ‘the
lion shall eat straw like the ox’. (Isaiah 65:25) More interesting is the
broader context within which this shall happen.
Can
you imagine a purpose for lambs other than for food,
and for snakes, other than fleeing from or
killing them?!
What
about fish? Imagine an ocean swim or forest walk
with no
concern of being attacked by any creature;
lions,
wolves, leopards, cows, bears, goats and lambs
together,
eating, not each other, but fresh/dried grass and/or tree products;
and children & babies innocently playing near asps and cobras!
Now
it’s your turn…to believe or dis-believe what God predicts
in His Word, The Bible. If you choose to dis-believe, you will be risking not
only the duration and quality of your natural life, but your eternal life as
well.
Throughout The Bible,
God reiterates a few insights here and there about mankind’s final
millennia, when Earth will, once again, be filled with the
knowledge of/about Him. Why once again? Millennial Parallelisms (Series) discusses the fascinating topic of some parallelisms between the first and
last millennia.
NB: The Millennial Reign of Christ with us holy saints will not be the final millennia, because the Bible clearly predicts what will be happening on Earth after The Millennial Reign! Read about it in Revelation 20.
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1 Search Google and YouTube
2 Genesis 7:2 and 8:20 reveals there were more ‘clean’ animals in the ark than ‘unclean’ animals, presumably for use in post-flood sacrifices.
3 There may be other reasons for expanding human diets to include meat. For example, what if the global flood significantly diminished (washed away) soil nutrients such that the original diet would be nutrient diminished?
3 There may be other reasons for expanding human diets to include meat. For example, what if the global flood significantly diminished (washed away) soil nutrients such that the original diet would be nutrient diminished?
4 Iterated multiple times across the pages of the Old Testament, and summarized most succinctly in Ezekiel 14:12-23). It is also insightful how God depicts world hegemon governments as being like beasts! (See: Daniel 8. The USA is the current global hegemon government, and China is the wanna be hegemon.)
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