THE SACREDNESS OF BLOOD ACCORDING TO THE BIBLE AND THE JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES

Christians today pretend that animal sacrifice was once commanded by God who has done away with it. The book God wrote through men, the Bible, teaches that animal sacrifice is not banned and that we must not eat blood.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses forbid blood transfusions and say that they will prevent a person from being raised to life and salvation.

The Bible is against eating blood which is why they oppose it.

In his Encyclopaedia of Bible Difficulties (page 85), Gleason L. Archer tries to answer the question if Christians are allowed by God to eat blood. He correctly concludes that Christians are not supposed to eat blood. God told Noah not to eat flesh with the blood still in it (Genesis 9:4). Nobody can say that the prohibition was about avoiding infection for Noah would hardly have eaten raw meat. If he had there would have been no need for a blood ban and it would have been enough to tell him to cook his food.

In Leviticus 17 God explains that the reason he wants nobody to eat blood is because it is the life of the creature and life is sacred. He gives an ethical reason for the ban meaning that it can’t be done away for right cannot become wrong. Acts 10 where Peter seems to be told that unclean food is now clean mentions only animals not blood so it does not lift the ban. When the apostles later decreed that sexual sin and blood are to be banned for the Gentiles in Acts 15 it proves that the two crimes are equally unjust not because they are forbidden but because they are bad. It shows that Peter was not told that blood was clean but the opposite.

It is said that God only forbade blood because he wanted to impress upon the primitive peoples that life was sacred because they did not understand that the soul gave life more blood did so he had to make do by banning blood. This accuses God of deception and denies his omnipotence and is refuted by the fact that God said the ban was forever and allowed a lot of murder and this motive is not declared in the Bible.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses are right to teach that true Christians cannot have blood transfusions. Transfusions are eating blood in a different way. If it is so bad to take blood into the stomach where it is broken down then it is worse to take it into the veins where it is not.

It is said that eating blood is literal in the Bible for blood transfusions are a recent invention. But eating blood means that it is being taken into the body. It is this taking in that is censured not the actual swallowing or chewing. The argument is like saying that when a person forbids stabbing another to death he allows you to poison her or him! Orthodox Christianity and famously antichrist Catholicism especially will do all sorts of gymnastics to steer clear of teaching what the Bible says on many issues and including the blood one.