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The Apostle Paul and Jihad Turkeys

The Apostle Paul and Jihad Turkeys
By Jack Kinsella

According to their website, Butterball is one of the largest global turkey producers in the world, currently exporting 100 million pounds of turkey annually to fifty countries.

“As an international turkey provider, we have the expertise in serving different countries and different customs, and will work with you to meet any and all product needs. We have met the requirements for the following certifications: USDA Approved, Russian Approved and employ a Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HAACP) food safety system with Good Manufacturing processes. From great customer service to new product innovation to the proper certifications, Butterball has the experience you need to get our great tasting turkey in your market.”

The ad used to include its halal certification until the website was scrubbed of any reference to halal just before Thanksgiving when America discovered what halal really meant.

According to Jihadwatch’s Robert Spencer, Butterball even managed to scrub the Google cache page, a difficult and expensive proposition. Why go to all that effort if it is no big deal?

The revelation that Butterball turkeys are dedicated to Allah when slaughtered in accordance with Islamic law spawned a media war. The mainstream media immediately pounced on those who objected to eating turkeys sacrificed to idols as “Islamophobes” afraid of “jihad turkeys”.

Astonishingly, Butterball chose at first to cover it up, then denied it, saying only exported turkeys were halal. In the end, Butterball was forced to admit all its turkeys were certified halal, but then took the curious step of denying that Islamic prayers were said during the slaughter.

The denial is made all the more bizarre by the fact that if the denial is true, then Butterball is admitting to selling turkeys as halal that weren’t really halal in the first place. (???)

“Butterball claims that the manner in which the company slaughters its turkeys “allow for Halal certification.” The company, however, qualified that it does not go the extra step in reciting ritual prayers over the meat once slaughtered – that process, according to Butterball, is reserved for Islamic second-party distributers who purchase the company’s turkeys. Once in the hands of Islamic distributors, the turkeys, according to Butterball, can be marketed any way the distributor deems fit.”

This would be extraordinary admission of fraud, if true. If the prayers aren’t recited at the time of slaughter, the birds aren’t halal.

If Butterball is selling them as halal certified when they are not, that is far more offensive to observant Muslims than selling stealth halal turkeys would be to most Christians.

Muslims don’t like to be offended.

Assessment

“And certain men which came down from Judaea taught the brethren, and said, Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved. When therefore Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and disputation with them, they determined that Paul and Barnabas, and certain other of them, should go up to Jerusalem unto the apostles and elders about this question.” (Acts 15:1-2)

When Paul arrived in Antioch, he was an outsider. Neither James nor John believed he should be numbered among the Apostles. The Apostle Peter was the top apostle, and was accepted as such by the Church at Jerusalem.

“And when there had been much disputing, Peter rose up, and said unto them, Men and brethren, ye know how that a good while ago God made choice among us, that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear the word of the gospel, and believe.” (Acts 15:7)

Luke’s account of the Antioch meeting records that James, the brother of Jesus, decreed Gentiles did not have to be circumcised, but instead:

“That ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication: from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well. Fare ye well.”

The Apostle Peter, having broken the Jewish law against not keeping kosher and eating with Gentiles, justified it by saying God told him in a vision, “What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common.”

The question before the Apostles at Antioch was a simply one. Was anything, circumcision or anything else, necessary for justification in addition to faith in Christ Jesus?

What Luke does not reveal about the meeting in Antioch, Paul reveals in his letter to the Galatians.

“But when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed.” (Galatians 2:11)

The word the KJV translators elected to translate as “blamed” is the Greek word, kataginosko. It means, “to condemn.”

That Paul, the outsider, would take on Peter, the top Apostle, and in his own bailiwick and in front of James and John, is astonishing.

That Paul would publicly condemn the Apostle Peter is more astonishing still. Most astonishing of all, however, is that Peter not only stood there and took it, he backed down.

“For before that certain came from James, he did eat with the Gentiles: but when they were come, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision. And the other Jews dissembled [Gk: hupokrisis] likewise with him; insomuch that Barnabas also was carried away with their dissimulation.” (Galatians 2:12-13)

Why did Peter refuse to eat with the Gentiles? Because they were not ‘of the circumcision’. If Peter was right, Paul reasoned, then circumcision was still for profit, inasmuch as it conferred an advantage on the Jew.

In other words, it would mean that a work of the law must be added to faith in Christ for justification. It seems a small thing, but this “small thing” undermines the whole truth of grace and returns us to the bondage of the law.

It was therefore a supreme moment in the history of the Church. To have accepted this addition to the gospel of Christ would have perverted it, made it “another gospel”.

So Paul didn’t just publicly condemn Peter, he condemned him as hypocrite and accused him of subverting the Gospel. Again, in front of James, John and the assembled elders!

“But when I saw that they walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel, I said unto Peter before them all, If thou, being a Jew, livest after the manner of Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why compellest thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews?” (Galatians 2:14)

What was it that Paul thought was so compelling that he was willing to stand down the Apostles, Peter, James and John? It was that “a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ. “

And as a consequence he adds, “we,” [we Jews,] “have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.”

And so, if circumcision is a work of the law and if the law is a consequence of sin, then that makes Christ a minister of sin, as well.

“For if I build again the things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor. For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God.” (Galatians 2:18)

Through the law, which had exacted the penalty of transgression from Him who was “made a curse for us,” Paul argues he was made “dead to the law,” for he had been “crucified with Christ”; and the object of his being dead to the law was that he might live unto God.

Additionally, although Paul was crucified with Christ, Paul says, “nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith in the Son of God who loved me, and gave Himself for me.”

When crucified with Christ, Paul’s old self, over which the law had authority, was dead. It was now Christ that lived in him; and the Christ who lived in him is the object of his faith, not Paul’s ability to keep the law.

The truth exposed by this conflict was forgotten almost as soon as the last Apostle went home, replaced by religions and institutions and rules and sacraments, but it is no less true today than it was the day that Paul stood up to Peter and the Apostles at Antioch.

We are saved by grace through faith and that not of ourselves, it is the gift of God lest any man should boast.

Your salvation is eternal and secured by Jesus Christ, not by following a ritual, obeying a set of rules, or behaving in a certain way.

“For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39)

And neither could eating a Butterball turkey at Christmas.

(I still won’t buy one. It’s the principle of the thing. But if I already had one in the freezer, I probably wouldn’t throw it away, either.)

Note: Originally Published in December 2011.

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