Blood and Things Strangled The New Testament makes it clear that Gentile Christians are not bound by

the Mosiac dietary laws. No animal God created is "unclean" to us. If any plant or animal is safe to eat,
we are free to eat it. This does not mean that there are no moral restrictions on eating. We are not to be
gluttons, for example, and cannibalism is off-limits, but there are no "unclean animals today. I can eat
bacon-wrapped crab cakes with a clean conscience. The prohibition on eating meat with the blood still
in it (i.e., things "strangled," things killed without draining the blood) is of a different sort than
prohibitions on pork or shellfish. As a Gentile Christian grafted into the New Covenant, I am free to eat
the meat of a rabbit, a pig, even a horse i Such a need arose, but I still ought not to eat that meat
without first draining the blood from the animal.

The command against eating blood goes back to long before the law of Moses. It is part of the covenant
God made with Noah and all his descendants after him (i.e. all mankind). where he says:

"Every moving thing that is alive shall be food for you; I give all to you, as I gave the green plant. Only
you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. Surely I will require your lifeblood; from every
beast ] will require it. And from every man, from every man's brotherI will

require the life of man. Whoever sheds man's blood, By man his blood shall be shed, For in the image of
God He made man. As for you, be fruitful and multiply; Populate the earth abundantly and multiply in
it," (Genesis 9:3-7).

God has declared life to be sacred, and life is in the blood. To shed a man's blood is wicked. For the same
reason even animal blood, while we may shed it, we may not eat it. We must drain the blood before
eating the meat (which all modern butchers do). Interestingly, when God promises the future salvation
of the Gentiles, He does so in words like:

"And I will remove their blood from their mouth And their detestable things from between their teeth.
Then they also will be a remnant for our God And be like a clan in Judah," (Zechariah 9:7).

Likewise, we see these same four things paired together when God pronounces judgment on Judah at
the exile:

"You eat meat with the blood in it, lift up your eyes to your idols as you shed blood. Should you then
possess the land? You rely on your sword, you commit abominations and each of you defiles his
neighbor's wife. Should you then possess the land?" (Ezekiel 33:25-26).

Shedding blood, idolatry, eating meat with blood in it, and sexual immorality. Thus, to me, it seems that
the New Testament does not revoke the universal Noahic command against eating blood any more than
it revokes the universal Noahic command against murder. That is what is going on with the restrictions
on "blood" and on "things strangled" (i.e., killed without draining the blood).

Things polluted by idols

Now, when it comes to the issue of "things polluted by idols," the issue does get a little more
complicated. This is the