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God’s Word surely is the answer to all of life’s problems. Psalm 119:104-105:
104 Through thy precepts I get understanding: therefore I hate every false way.
105 Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.
When once reviewing various archaeological discoveries, I came across an ancient foot lamp. The user would light this lamp and it would extend out from the body by about 5’—just above ground level. By the use of this contraption, one could safely walk on a starless night. The Word of God is a lamp unto our feet, but, as the foot lamp of old, it must lead in order to deliver the needed results. The Bible speaks of man’s condition prior to salvation in Matthew 4:16:
The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up.
Have you seen the Light? John 1:6-9:
6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.
7 The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe.
8 He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.
9 That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.
Have you been born again? Are you ready for the eternal Light that will eliminate all your darkness, the Light that will satisfy all your needs? Today is your day of salvation. Click onto “Further With Jesus” for childlike instructions and immediate entry into the Kingdom of God. NOW FOR TODAY’S SUBJECT.
GOD SAID, Leviticus 25:2-4, 20-22:
2 Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye come into the land which I give you, then shall the land keep a sabbath unto the LORD.
3 Six years thou shalt sow thy field, and six years thou shalt prune thy vineyard, and gather in the fruit thereof;
4 But in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land, a sabbath for the LORD: thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard.
20 And if ye shall say, What shall we eat the seventh year? behold, we shall not sow, nor gather in our increase:
21 Then I will command my blessing upon you in the sixth year, and it shall bring forth fruit for three years.
22 And ye shall sow the eighth year, and eat yet of old fruit until the ninth year; until her fruits come in ye shall eat of the old store.
GOD SAID, Leviticus 25: 11-12:
11 A jubilee shall that fiftieth year be unto you: ye shall not sow, neither reap that which groweth of itself in it, nor gather the grapes in it of thy vine undressed.
12 For it is the jubilee; it shall be holy unto you: ye shall eat the increase thereof out of the field.
GOD SAID, Galatians 6:7:
Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
MAN SAID: Our science has mastered agriculture. We can chemically control the pests of the field and our genetically modified products will fill the earth with plenty.
Now THE RECORD. The Bible was authored by God and penned by His holy men. Its narrative is historically accurate, the miraculous accounts fully certified, and inherent within His commandments are a blessing or a curse. Because God’s commandments are true and righteous altogether, obeying them yields the blessing of doing the right thing; disobeying results in the curse of doing the wrong thing. It really is just that simple. The results of man continually rejecting the direction of the Creator are negative and even deadly. Those looking for proof need look no further.
The first five books of the Bible—known as the Torah or Pentateuch—were given by God to Moses. The examples and commandments pronounced by God in these books were given for the purpose of building a holy nation full of good fruits and contentment. The laws and directives were national in nature. Every Israelite was obliged to obey. For the purpose of this feature, GodSaidManSaid has placed the commandments in five categories:
- Myriad of laws that ensure the underwriting of the expense of government, that alleviate guilt and stress, regulate social conduct, and establish a national rhythm and identity.
- The strict commandment to bury in the ground all human waste—not to flush it into the waterways, treated and untreated, as is commonly done today.
- God’s dietary laws concerning what not to eat or even touch, and what to eat, such as clean meats purged of blood and fat, and raw milk, raw honey, olive oil, and more.
- God’s law of the quarantine for running issues of any nature, even the common cold. Contagious issues were separated from the general population for seven days outside the camp until the individual was pronounced clean by a priest.
- God’s commandment to give the land its Sabbath, as well as the commandment of the Jubilee every 50 years, where two Sabbaths of the land were back-to-back.
These national laws were designed to build a powerful and happy people.
It should make good sense that obeying the instructions of the Manufacturer of life would be the right thing to do, but man has found a “better” way. This feature will air several different pieces of information which seem slightly unrelated, but a closer look will reveal their commonality. First, several preparatory paragraphs from the GodSaidManSaid feature, “The Dirt You Eat” follow:
They always end up here. No matter how the sons and daughters of Adam rail against and malign, they always end up here—at the inerrant Word of God. Thousands of years before man’s science begins to comprehend the error of his ways, he discovers that God’s Word has already laid out the immutably correct position.
The headline in the November 22, 2008 issue of Science News reads, “Farm Chemicals Can Hammer Frog Populations.” A short excerpt follows:
Amphibian populations around the world have been declining recently, with many species on the brink of extinction. Infection with trematodes, tiny flatworms, can trigger debilitating limb deformities, and severe infections can kill the amphibians.
Researchers wanted to know why high rates of those deformities began showing up in the mid-1990s. The study suggests that one answer lies in atrazine’s quick rise to dominance in U.S. agriculture. [End of quote]
“The Rise of Slime” is the headline in the January 2009 issue of Discover. The following passage is from that feature:
More than half the fish that people hunt in the sea are gone, more than half the corals are gone too, and pollution is strangling the vast stretches of seafloor. Writing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last August, marine ecologist Jeremy Jackson of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography sounded an ominous tone: “Mass extinction of multicellular life will result in profound loss of animal and plant biodiversity, and microbes will reign supreme.”
As excess plant matter sinks to the seafloor, microbes rot it and suck oxygen out of the water in the process. The hypoxia suffocates seafloor animals. In summer, the Chesapeake Bay becomes a “dead zone.” So does the Gulf of Mexico where the Mississippi dumps into it.
Some 400 regions of the world are now afflicted, permanently or occasionally, with dead zones, according to a report published in Science in August. When seafloor animals die off, the energy in the ecosystem flows into microbes and jellyfish, a trend Jackson refers to as “the rise of slime.” If we do not alter the way we fish, farm, and generate electricity, he predicts, similar dead zones will spread across continental shelves all over the world. [End of quote]
A January 2008 headline in Discover magazine reads, “Unsustainable Soil Use Can Cause Civilizations to Collapse.”
In Robert Boyd’s book, Scientific Facts in the Bible, found in the Library of Congress, we found the following concerning the land and its Sabbath:
A sure-fire remedy for pest control was given centuries ago, yet we are plagued today with insects, ofttimes with no remedy. Moses commanded Israel to set aside one year in seven when no crops were raised (Leviticus 25:1-24). God promised sufficient harvest in the sixth year to provide for this period. Following this plan, here is what would happen—insects winter in the stalks of last year’s harvest, hatch in the spring, and are perpetuated by laying eggs in the new crop. Now, if one year in seven no crops were raised, there is nothing for the insects to subsist upon and the pests are controlled by this method.
Our method today is “crop rotation,” but we are still pestered with insects. “God’s ways are not man’s ways” (Isaiah 55:8, 9). Man will never approach God’s method. “Then there was the ‘Year of Jubilee’ after every seven Sabbatical years [every fiftieth year], which served to eliminate the insects which had a cycle of seven years or more or less, and which were not affected by the one year in seven.” [End of quote]
A national move is underway in Israel to restore the Sabbath of the land. Many farmers there have already implemented the principle. God’s Sabbath of the land is the solution to pest control and mineral management, and the real remedy for agricultural dead zones.
The sub-headline in the August 2012 issue of Psychology Today reads, “Pesticide traces render too many foods unwise to eat except if organically grown.” A few excerpts from this feature, “Food without Fear,” follow:
There is no question that fruits and vegetables are an essential part of a healthy diet and provide benefits to the body and mind that go far beyond conventional nutrition. Most are rich in phytochemicals whose natural power to support health and even combat disease is only now under serious study.
But industrial agriculture relies on hundreds of chemicals to target insects and diseases that can afflict crops. Unfortunately, many remain after the crops are harvested, even after produce is washed at home.
In the Psychology Today feature, under the page heading, “Foods Best Eaten Organically Grown,” the following EPA findings are listed for 12 popular foods. Seven of them follow:
Apples: Of every ten apples, 9 have traces of the fungicide thiabendazole, a carcinogen; 8 also have diphenylamine (DPA), linked to bladder tumors; workers applying it are required to wear long sleeves and gloves. Apples carry 40 other pesticides: carcinogens, hormone disruptors, neurotoxins, developmental toxins.
Strawberries: Of every two strawberries you enjoy, one probably contains the fungicide captan, a probable carcinogen. It is usually accompanied by fellow fungicide pyraclostrobin, a known skin and eye irritant.
Peaches: Not all is peachy with peaches. They carry residues of 62 pesticides. Almost every other peach has fludioxonil, which targets the liver and kidneys. Some 30 percent of samples contain traces of iprodione, a possible carcinogen, and phosmet, which target the nervous system of insects and humans, along with our reproductive system.
Grapes: The USDA found traces of 34 pesticides on Chilean grapes. Of every 10 imported grapes, almost 3 have the fungicide cyprodinil, which can irritate eyes, nose, and especially skin. One in 5 has the neurotoxin imidacloprid.
Bell Peppers: Behind the colorful coats of bell peppers lurk traces of 49 different pesticides, among them 26 possible hormone disruptors and 13 neurotoxins. More than 80 percent of samples have imidacloprid. The neurotoxin methamidophos, found in 30 percent of samples, is no less harmful.
Lettuce: This common salad and sandwich component comes with a side of 51 pesticides. At the top of the heap is imidacloprid, in 73 percent of the lettuce tested. Traces of the herbicide DCPA were found in 30 percent of samples. The fungicide dimethomorph found on lettuce can damage lungs if inhaled.
Blueberries: Open a box of blueberries and 3 in 10 have residues of the fungicides boscalid and pyraclostrobin. Boscalid is toxic to the human liver and thyroid. Pyraclostrobin can irritate skin in high doses. The USDA found traces of 52 pesticides in blueberries. [End of quote]
Today, there are physical and psychological diseases and disorders that defy medical remedy. Many of these ailments, which were once rare, are at pandemic proportions. You can be sure man is at the root of the dilemma.
The headline of the January/February 2014 issue of Psychology Today reads, “Rich Dirt, Poor Dirt,” with the sub-head of “Just when we want more from our food, we are getting less, and the declining quality of soil may be the root of the problem.” In this article, changes in mineral content of 10 common vegetables and fruits between the years 1963 and 1999 were measured. For example purposes, we chose six of the ten, specifically measuring calcium decline, and found the following:
Calcium decline in:
- Beans, snap green à 34%
- Broccoli à 53%
- Carrots à 27%
- Peaches à 44%
- Strawberries à 33%
- Tomatoes à 62%
Several paragraphs from the 2014 Psychology Today feature follow:
Here’s an irony to consider: Could it be that one fallout from a century of increasing agricultural efficiency is nutrient deficiency?
In order to support ourselves nutritionally, we are increasingly encouraged to eat more whole foods, especially fruits, vegetables, and grains. We focus much concern on pesticide-free agriculture and the lag time in getting food from farm to market.
Yet the soil itself is the key to the nutrient content of food. The nutritional value of our produce is determined more by the abundance of minerals and microbes in the soil it’s grown in than by any other factor. An array of studies shows that not all soil is the same, and the widespread practice of fortifying low-grade soil with fertilizer doesn’t even begin to remedy the problem. To the degree that agriculture has reached for high yield and engages in farming practices that maximize harvests, soil quality has declined.
And so has the nutritional value of many whole foods over the last 70 years. The calcium content of broccoli average 12.9 milligrams per gram of plant tissue in 1950, for example, but only 4.4 mg per gram by 2003.
In a landmark study published in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition in 2004, biochemist Donald Davis documented nutrient decline with hard numbers. Davis and coworkers at the University of Texas at Austin focused on 43 vegetables and fruits and pored over data on them from the U.S. Department of Agriculture going back to 1950.
“We found that six out of 13 nutrients showed apparently reliable declines between 1950 and 1999,” he reports. Perhaps more worrisome would be declines in nutrients we could not study because they were not looked at in 1950—magnesium, zinc, vitamin B-6, vitamin E, and dietary fiber, not to mention phytochemicals.
Diminished nutrients included protein, calcium, phosphorous, iron, riboflavin (vitamin B-2), and ascorbic acid (vitamin C). The declines ranged from 6 percent for protein to 38 percent for riboflavin.
Robbing soil of living and decaying matter impairs its ability to self-regulate. What gets tilled out of the soil has to be replaced by chemical fertilizers that are mined and, through the use of vast amounts of fossil fuels, transported from far corners of the world. Even then, they boost yield but not overall nutritional value. By not tilling soil, farmers allow their crops to die off and form a protective armor over the soil that helps retain carbon, nutrients, and water. [End of quotes]
The following excerpts are from The Healthy Home Economist, November 13, 2014. The headline reads, “The Real Reason Wheat is Toxic (it’s not the gluten).”
The stories become far too frequent to ignore.
Emails from folks with allergic or digestive issues to wheat in the United States experienced no symptoms whatsoever when they tried eating pasta on vacation in Italy.
In my own home, I’ve long pondered why my husband can eat the wheat I prepare at home, but he experiences negative digestive effects eating even a single roll in a restaurant.
I reasoned that it couldn’t be the gluten or wheat hybridization. Gluten and wheat hybrids have been consumed for thousands of years. It just didn’t make sense that this could be the reason for so many people suddenly having problems with wheat and gluten in general in the past 5-10 years.
The good news is that the reason wheat has become so toxic in the United States is not because it is secretly GMO as I had feared (thank goodness).
The bad news is that the problem lies with the manner in which wheat is harvested by conventional wheat farmers.
You’re going to want to sit down for this one. I’ve had some folks burst into tears in horror when I passed along this information before.
Standard, recommended wheat harvest protocol in the United States is to drench the wheat fields with Roundup several days before the combine harvesters work through the fields as withered, dead wheat plants are less taxing on the farm equipment and allow for an earlier and easier harvest.
Pre-harvest application of the herbicide Roundup and other herbicides containing the deadly active ingredient glyphostate to wheat and barley as a desiccant was suggested as early as 1980. It has since become routine and is used as a drying agent 7-10 days before harvest within the conventional farming community.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, as of 2012, 99% of durum wheat, 97% of spring wheat, and 61% of winter wheat has been doused with Roundup as part of the harvesting process. This is an increase from 88% of durum wheat, 91% for spring wheat, and 47% for winter wheat since 1998.
Here’s what wheat farmer Keith Lewis had to say about the practice:
I have been a wheat farmer for 50 years and one wheat production practice that is very common is applying the herbicide Roundup (glyphosate) just prior to harvest. Roundup is licensed for pre-harvest weed control. Monsanto, the manufacturer of Roundup claims that application to plants at over 30% kernel moisture result in Roundup uptake by the plant into the kernels. Farmers like this practice because Roundup kills the wheat plant, allowing an earlier harvest.
A wheat field often ripens unevenly, thus applying Roundup pre-harvest evens up the greener parts of the field with the more mature. The result is on the less-mature areas, Roundup is translocated into the kernels and eventually harvested as such.
This practice is not licensed. Farmers mistakenly call it “desiccation.” Consumers eating products made from wheat flour are undoubtedly consuming minute amounts of Roundup. An interesting aside, malt barley which is made into beer is not acceptable in the marketplace if it has been sprayed with pre-harvest Roundup. Lentils and peas are not accepted in the marketplace if they were sprayed with pre-harvest Roundup—but wheat is ok. This farming practice greatly concerns me and it should further concern consumers of wheat products.
This practice is not just widespread in the United States either. The Food Standards Agency in the United Kingdom reports that use of Roundup as a wheat desiccant results in glyphosate residues regularly showing up in bread samples. Other European countries are waking up to the danger, however. In the Netherlands, use of Roundup is completely banned, with France likely soon to follow.
Using Roundup as a desiccant on the wheat fields prior to harvest may save the farmer money and increase profits, but it is devastating to the health of the consumer who ultimately consumes those ground-up wheat kernels which have absorbed a significant amount of Roundup!
While the herbicide industry maintains that glyphosate is minimally toxic to humans, research published in the journal Entropy strongly assume otherwise by shedding light on exactly how glyphosate disrupts mammalian physiology.
Authored by Anthony Samsel and Stephanie Seneff of MIT, the paper investigates glyphosate’s inhibition of cytochrome P50 (CYP) enzymes, an overlooked component of lethal toxicity to mammals.
The currently accepted view is that glyphosate is not harmful to humans or any mammals. This flawed view is so pervasive in the conventional farming community that Roundup salesmen have been known to foolishly drink it during presentations!
However, just because Roundup doesn’t kill you immediately doesn’t make it nontoxic. In fact, the active ingredient in Roundup lethally disrupts the all-important shikimate pathway found in beneficial gut microbes which are responsible for synthesis of critical amino acids.
Friendly gut bacteria, also called probiotics, play a critical role in human health. Gut bacteria aid digestion, prevent permeability of the gastrointestinal tract (which discourages the development of autoimmune disease), synthesize vitamins, and provide the foundation for robust immunity. In essence:
Roundup significantly disrupts the functioning of beneficial bacteria in the gut and contributes to permeability of the intestinal wall and consequent expression of autoimmune disease symptoms.
In synergy with disruption of the biosynthesis of important amino acids via the shikimate pathway, glyphosate inhibits the cytochrome P4500 (CYP) enzymes produced by the gut microbiome. CYP enzymes are critical to human biology because they detoxify the multitude of foreign chemical compounds, xenobiotics, that we are exposed to in our modern environment today.
As a result, humans exposed to glyphosate through use of Roundup in their community or through ingestion of its residues on industrialized food products become even more vulnerable to the damaging effects of other chemicals and environmental toxins they encounter!
What’s worse is that the negative impact of glyphosate exposure is slow and insidious over months and years as inflammation gradually gains a foothold in the cellular systems of the body.
The consequences of this systematic inflammation are most of the diseases and conditions associated with the Western lifestyle:
- Gastrointestinal disorders;
- Obesity;
- Diabetes;
- Heart Disease;
- Depression;
- Autism;
- Infertility;
- Cancer;
- Multiple Sclerosis;
- Alzheimer’s disease; and the list goes on and on.
In a nutshell, Dr. Seneff’s study of Roundup’s ghastly glyphosate, which the wheat crop in the United States is doused with just days before harvest, uncovers the manner in which this lethal toxin harms the human body by decimating beneficial gut microbes with the tragic end result of disease, degeneration, and widespread suffering.
How to Eat Wheat Safely:
One way to avoid the problem is to do what we do in our home. We only source organic, preferably low-gluten, unhybridized Einkorn wheat for bead making, pancakes, cookies, and more. But, when we eat out or are purchasing food from the store, conventional wheat products are rejected without exception. This despite the fact that we have no gluten allergies whatsoever in our home—yet. [End of quotes]
RealFarmacy.com published the following under the heading, “Scientists Reveal Why Amish Children are Immune to Allergies & Asthma:”
Studies in Sweden have determined that kids raised on dairy farms are considerably more resistant to allergies than those who live elsewhere, including nearby rural areas without non-dairy farms. This wasn’t the only study displaying this phenomena.
Allergies and asthma have been on the rise in the West over the past few decades, especially among younger children. In addition to vaccinations and our immersion into chemicals that permeate a fetus from mothers’ exposure to them, there has been conjecture that our obsession for cleanliness is a contributing factor.
The argument posits that exposure to dirt and its natural microbes helps an immune system develop in a young child, so playing in the dirt is a good thing. This theory is known as the “hygiene hypothesis,” where too much hygiene or cleanliness for babies and toddlers disables development of a mature immune system.
Recently, researchers conducted an epidemiological study at the University of Gothenburg, located in Sweden’s second largest city, Gothenburg. They monitored children’s health from birth to age three in a large nearby rural district. Around half of them lived on dairy farms while the rest did not.
Those who lived on dairy farms tended to be allergy-free, while the others were 10 times more prone to developing allergies. (http://sahlgrenska.gu.se)
These farms were all smaller traditional farms. Besides breathing in or absorbing microbes from poop [animal dung] and earth in the immediate air, the kids drank or used raw milk. More importantly, so did their moms. The researchers mentioned the prevalent raw milk evidence briefly but tap-danced around it.
After Swiss Amish were studied with similar results as other traditional European farm studies, the researchers seemed stuck on what differentiated these types of farms from others.
But an American researcher followed up with Indiana (USA) Amish study to find similar results, higher immunity to disease, asthma, and allergies. The Amish tend to use raw milk from humanely-treated, grass-fed cows while avoiding or minimizing toxic chemicals on their crops.
You won’t find higher immunity on factory farm dairies and large monoculture farms that indulge in excessive amounts of toxic pesticides, herbicides, and chemical fertilizers.
As a matter of fact, more and more children on or even near those farms are experiencing autistic spectrum disorders or autoimmune diseases beyond asthma or allergies. [End of quote]
Disregard for God’s given ecological protocols generate debilitating results such as the rejection of a national law to give the land its Sabbath. Today’s research has not even addressed the biological benefit of eating the preserved old fruit of the land during and following the Sabbath of the land. The Word of God is the foundation of all truth. Build your life here.
GOD SAID, Leviticus 25:2-4:
2 Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye come into the land which I give you, then shall the land keep a sabbath unto the LORD.
3 Six years thou shalt sow thy field, and six years thou shalt prune thy vineyard, and gather in the fruit thereof;
4 But in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land, a sabbath for the LORD: thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard.
GOD SAID, Leviticus 25: 11-12:
11 A jubilee shall that fiftieth year be unto you: ye shall not sow, neither reap that which groweth of itself in it, nor gather the grapes in it of thy vine undressed.
12 For it is the jubilee; it shall be holy unto you: ye shall eat the increase thereof out of the field.
GOD SAID, Galatians 6:7:
Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
MAN SAID: Our science has mastered agriculture. We can chemically control the pests of the field and our genetically modified products will fill the earth with plenty.
Now you have THE RECORD.
References
Authorized King James Version
GodSaidManSaid, “The Dirt You Eat”
Louis, PF, “Scientists Reveal Why Amish Children are Immune to Allergies & Asthma,” RealFarmacy.com
Sarah, “The Real Reason Wheat is Toxic (it’s not the gluten”, TheHealthyHomeEconomist.com