The Dirt You Eat

What a mess!  What a mess this world is in.  If it weren’t for Jesus, I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone, but thanks be to God, there is a Jesus Christ, the Lord of Glory.  Of Him, John 3:16 reads:

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

The world is made up of an aggregate of individual lost souls, foraging around, looking for the satisfactions that destroy—and then looking for the solutions to their dilemma—in all the wrong places.  John 14:6 offers up the only answer:

Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

But to those who are born-again, those who have made a covenant by sacrifice, those who have surrendered their lives to Christ, there is a most glaring and contrasting offer made by God where even our bad times are transformed to good—very good.  Moses commands the children of Israel to obey God’s commandments with the marvelous promise of Deuteronomy 11:19-21 attached:

19 And ye shall teach them your children, speaking of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.

20 And thou shalt write them upon the door posts of thine house, and upon thy gates:

21 That your days may be multiplied, and the days of your children, in the land which the LORD sware unto your fathers to give them, as the days of heaven upon the earth.

Imagine verses like:

• Proverbs 4:18:
  But the path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.
  
  
• Romans 8:28:
  And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.
  
  
• I Thessalonians 5:18:
  In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.

Are you born-again—born a second time, this time of the Spirit of God?  Are you ready to be transformed in a supernatural moment?  Do you yearn for real meaning and for cleanliness of soul?  Come on in and leave the world’s mess behind.  Don’t procrastinate.  Do it now while there is still time.  Click onto “Further With Jesus” for childlike instructions and immediate entry into the Kingdom of God.  NOW FOR TODAY’S SUBJECT.

GOD SAID, Leviticus 25:2-7, 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.

5 That which groweth of its own accord of thy harvest thou shalt not reap, neither gather the grapes of thy vine undressed: for it is a year of rest unto the land.

6 And the sabbath of the land shall be meat for you; for thee, and for thy servant, and for thy maid, and for thy hired servant, and for thy stranger that sojourneth with thee,

7 And for thy cattle, and for the beast that are in thy land, shall all the increase thereof be meat.

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:  We are the masters of agriculture.  We can chemically control the pests of the field and our genetically modified products will fill the earth with plenty. 

Now THE RECORD.  They always end up here.  No matter how the sons 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.

Welcome to GodSaidManSaid feature 691 that will once again prove that God authored the Scriptures and will hold all men accountable to His Holy Word at a very soon-to-come Judgment Day.  All of these features are archived here in text and streaming audio for your edification and as ammunition in the battle for the souls of men.  Every Thursday eve, God willing, they grow by one. 

Thank you for visiting today.  May God’s face shine upon you with Light and Truth. 

Hebrews 11:1:

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Hebrews 11:6:

But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.

All of God’s promises, from eternal salvation in Christ Jesus to the healing of the body or the solution for a bad home situation, and more, are accessed through faith.  Without faith, we are sheer vanity and cast adrift on the ocean of mess to fend for ourselves.  This most valuable faith is built as we immerse ourselves in the Word of God.  Romans 10:17:

So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

Today’s dose of Holy Ghost Word Therapy will once again confirm the childlike confidence of the blood-bought. 

The Creator, perfect in knowledge and wisdom, created the earth to be inhabited. He laid out specific instructions on how to maximize the yields from its many natural resources and how to care for it.  Several GodSaidManSaid features deal with today’s subject, the Sabbath of the land, which is once again in the news.  Excerpts from two GodSaidManSaid features follow for your consideration.

From “The Land, Its Sabbath, and Your Table:”

Carnaldom will, without fail, reject the Word of God.  Man will then seek a remedy outside the commandment.  Instead of success, he will reap compounded dilemmas, and these dilemmas are glaringly obvious in regard to the Sabbath of the land. 

As a result of rejecting the Sabbath of the land, the overworked soil suffers mineral depletion that results in deficient crops as well as pest infestations.  The work-around remedies include chemical fertilizers, dangerous pest control chemicals, and genetically manipulated seeds.   Unfortunately for the people of the earth, the work-around has serious detrimental side effects to man and beast. 

Dead Zones are what they are being called.  The world has 58 known Dead Zones and 13 of them are off the coasts of the United States.  These Dead Zones are swaths of sea void of life and they are expanding.  The cause of Dead Zones is fertilizer and sewage runoff which feeds the runaway growth of algae.  As the huge quantities of algae plants die, they decompose, drawing the water’s oxygen.  Fish can escape the oxygen-starved waters but creatures such as mussels, lobsters, clams, and more cannot.  They just die.   Robert Diaz of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science predicts a doubling of Dead Zones in the next decade unless something is done.  He claims that half of all American estuaries are oxygen starved. 

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 Institution 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]

The October 21, 2006 headline in Science News reads, “Waters near croplands impair frogs’ immunity.”  An excerpt follows:

Pesticide-containing waters leave frogs more susceptible to fungal infections than pristine environments do, new field data suggest.  [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 commandment.  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.  [End of quotes]

The following paragraphs are from the GodSaidManSaid feature “EPA: Give the Land Its Sabbath:”

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. 

The Environmental Protection Agency tests the toxicity primarily of individual pesticide agents, but scientists are increasingly concerned about combined effects and the possible synergistic effects of consuming many chemicals, even in small amounts, at one time. 

Using data from tests conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Environmental Working Group has ranked 53 foods by amount and frequency of pesticide contamination.  [End of quote]

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 targets 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. 

When God’s Word is disregarded, the consequences reveal themselves in different levels of death.  God’s Word is true and righteous altogether—surely a place to build a life. 

GOD SAID, Galatians 6:7:

Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

[End of quotes]

The headline in 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 → 34%
• Broccoli → 53%
• Carrots → 27%
• Peaches → 44%
• Strawberries → 33%
• Tomatoes → 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.  All that wilted lettuce looks so unappealing. 

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 B2), 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]

Every commandment of God is inerrant truth and has inherent within it a blessing or a curse.  Obey the commandment and reap the blessing of doing the right thing.  Disobey the commandment and reap the curse of doing the wrong thing.  It’s just that simple. 

Now, more than ever, I Timothy 4:4-5 needs to be a part of meal time:

4 For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving:

5 For it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer.

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:  We are the masters of 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, “EPA: Give the Land Its Sabbath”

GodSaidManSaid, “The Land, Its Sabbath, and Your Table”

Marano, D., “Rich Dirt, Poor Dirt,” Psychology Today, January/February 2014

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