ya beat me to it Alex.
My first thought reading the article was “what about Peter’s vision?”
And my first thought was from 1 Timothy:
Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer. (1 Tim. 4:1-5)
One of my rules of thumb for life is, "don't trust people who put their faces on the covers of their books." Mr. Osteen is one of those.
Peter’s vision was actually representative of three “unclean” men who were coming to visit him and whom he would have ordinarily not associated with (as a devout Jew), so the sheet was lowered three times in his dream to represent these three men.
Getting back under the Jewish law (which didn’t apply to Gentiles anyway) is not for me and any time I feel any compunction about that, I read Hebrews again.
Having said that, just from a common sense approach, there ARE animals that aren’t so good for us to be eating just from a health perspective, and I guess that’s why God told his people those meats weren’t good for food. In Jordan Rubin’s book, “The Maker’s Diet”, he explains the nitty gritty about the hog that will give you pause as well as on the scavenger shellfish and fish. We don’t eat much pork at all as it causes my husband to have gout. I do like a well-cooked slice of bacon once in a great while, though. Having been raised on bacon (cooked to a burned crisp), it would be very hard for me to NEVER have any of it again.
Remember, if you’re going to undertake to keep the LAW about this or that, then you better from that day forth and forever keep the WHOLE LAW because if you break one slight one of them, you are then guilty of breaking the whole thing (a considerable lot of them). Hint: You can’t do it; that’s why Christ had to die for us.
Maybe I’m wrong, but wasn’t Peter’s vision more about taking the Gospel to the Gentiles (non-Jews), rather than what he ate?
Meaning - that God made EVERY man, not just the Jewish people, and every person is open for salvation if they’ll just make that choice?
See my post 80. I agree with you on Peter’s vision though. but some will argue (incorrectly in my opinion) that he was not talking about food, but gentiles who needed his attention, and was using food as an analogy.
That would be odd since if Peter was to go away believing, after the vision, that it was STILL not ok to eat the food on the sheet then the analogy would not work.