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The plain truth about fasting

Is it starvation?
Is it nature's way of healing sickness and disease?
Is it dangerous or beneficial?

 

IT SEEMS almost no one knows the real TRUTH about fasting. One doctor called it the "Fast Way to Health." Another called it "starvation diet."

One person asked, "If I missed two meals in a row, would I die?" Apparently many people seem to feel that if they missed more than one meal a day they would at least be in serious danger.

Some people believe in fasting from the very moment they feel the first warning signs and pains of a cold or an approaching fever. Many people say: "You should always feed a cold, but starve a fever." But is this true?

Is fasting dangerous? Is it beneficial? Is it nature's way of healing?

 

Time to Know Truth

You think you already know the answer? Don't be too sure!

I know of hundreds, if not thousands of our readers who think they know the truth about fasting — but who do not — and EVERYBODY needs, seriously, to read this article!

On the one hand sensible fasting is not a starvation diet, and those who have the starvation fear are at one erroneous extreme — whether ignorant layman or professional physician. Most doctors, incidentally, have studied medicine, not fasting, as an aid toward elimination of disease. One doctor said to me: "We doctors have been kept so busy treating sick patients with drugs and medicines, we have had little time to study the causes of sickness and disease, or much about diet and nutrition."

In the "healing arts" (an unfortunate and incorrect term) professional men have tended to specialize each in his one field only. The medical physician seeks the cure almost exclusively by drugs or surgery. The chiropractor seeks to cure, by manipulating the spine — perhaps with the aid of prescribed diet. The naturopath by "natural" means. Medical doctors generally ridicule fasting in the case of sickness or disease, just as they would avoid recommending chiropractic treatments, or any other method outside their one field of medicine. Fasting is simply outside their field. A few medical doctors have advocated fasting, but certainly they are in the minority.

But to look on sensible fasting as starvation is an untrue extreme, based on plain ignorance.

On the other hand, some go to the opposite extreme of regarding fasting as a CURE-ALL.

NEITHER EXTREME IS THE TRUTH!

Wise fasting, under proper conditions, is beneficial, not dangerous!

On the other hand, just as I say, truthfully, "there is not a cure in a carload of medicine," so I say FASTING NEVER HEALS!

Those two statements, in the paragraph above, will come as a shock to many. Millions firmly believe that medicines cure diseases. I have never heard a physician make such a claim. Many doctors have admitted candidly that medicines Do NOT CURE. "We only use medicines," these doctors have said, "to aid nature."

But, the few who do believe in fasting when ill will surely be shocked to see the statement under my by-line that FASTING NEVER HEALS! Yet that statement is absolutely true — and it's about time we come to UNDERSTAND what fasting is — and what it is Not!

 

Fasting Never Heals

Fasting does not HEAL!

Healing is a divine miracle. Healing is the forgiveness of SIN — and none can forgive sin but GOD. Fasting is self-inflicted — a human effort, not divine miracle — and fasting cannot forgive sin.

Jesus Christ healed the sick. It was always HIS WILL. He healed the sick in ancient Israel, long before his human appearance, born human of the Virgin Mary. One of his names is Yahweh-Ropheka which, translated into English, means OUR GOD-HEALER.

To the griping, complaining Israelites in the arid lands approaching Mt. Sinai, he said, "I am the LORD that healeth thee." And in the original Hebrew language, in which Moses wrote this, his name was given as "Yahweh-Ropheka."

David knew God heals, as surely as he forgives sin: "Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases" (Ps. 103:3). Isaiah explained how. When Jesus was spending a whole night healing all that were sick, we read, in Matthew 8:16-17: " . and healed all that were sick: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet [Isa. 53:4], saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses."

How, then, did Jesus "take them" — that is, bear them — or pay the penalty in our stead? Peter explains it: "by whose stripes ye were healed" (I Pet. 2:24).

 

Sickness Is a Penalty

What is sickness — disease — debility — pain and suffering? It is the penalty being paid for the violation of the physical laws of the human body.

It is not natural to be sick, it is unnatural! God so designed the mechanism of the human body that, given proper food (and few indeed know what that is!); drinking the right amount of pure water; breathing properly of pure air; getting sufficient exercise — and that is not necessarily a great amount; obtaining sufficient rest, recreation and sleep; maintaining normal regularity of elimination, which includes more frequent bathing and rubdowns than many realize; and keeping the mind in a positive, cheerful, active and peaceful state, the body would never be sick!

Very few understand this. I have just named the seven laws of health, which God has given each of us, as a human individual, the RESPONSIBILITY of regulating.

Of course, it is true that even many if not most doctors know so little about proper food and diet that they are unable themselves to observe the dietary law of health. That law is the one most frequently broken.

Most people think they can put anything that pleases the palate into the mouth and call it food. That is not true. Potassium cyanide might taste good — I really don't know, for I never experimented, and never intend to! — but every doctor will agree that it is not FOOD! It will kill you — QUICKLY! The only difference is that excess of starchy "foods," sugars and greases, kills you — slowly, gradually, over a duration of perhaps 10, perhaps 60 years — and sets up colds, fevers, rheumatisms, tuberculosis, heart diseases, diabetes, kidney disorders and dozens of other ailments along the way in the meantime!

Very few know that they ought to breathe more deeply and be sure to obtain fresh air during sleep — even by leaving a window partly open. And so millions upon millions of people violate this simple health rule. And all cigarette smokers!

Almost no one knows the value, to health and long life, of regular daily RUBDOWNS — good, brisk, vigorous (not necessarily over-vigorous or violent) rubdowns, with a bath towel, brush or other means.

The food we eat passes through the alimentary canal, with needed elements being absorbed into the bloodstream on the way, and the waste then expelled. God has given every normal human a very plain signal to know when elimination time arrives — and this can be regulated into an established HABIT at regular convenient times of day. Yet probably many women, and a large portion if not half of men, are suffering from constipation — due to pure neglect, and, probably, faulty diet and in some cases lack of exercise!

 

Your Responsibility

The point is this: Obeying THESE seven laws is the responsibility of each individual. This knowledge is AVAILABLE! There is no excuse for human ignorance. Such knowledge always has been accessible. These laws we, ourselves, either observe and obey — or else we violate them and bring on lowered vitality, depleted energy, befogged and dulled minds, a feeling of "dopey" laziness, and almost countless diseases.

Now Jesus Christ never broke a single one of these laws! And Jesus Christ WAS NEVER SICK — not for a minute!

Yet his body was just like our bodies! He set us the example. He demonstrated that, if WE obey the laws God has given as our responsibility to obey, the BODY ITSELF will function regularly, in perfect health, strong vigor, vitality, energy and strength — and NEVER get sick!

It is a far more precision designed-and-made mechanism than a Rolls-Royce automobile. It just won't break down or get sick — OF ITSELF! It functions automatically. But, like your automobile, it needs "being taken care of," as one conscientious chauffeur put it. Your automobile needs the right kind of fuel, oils and greases. It needs watching to see that there is proper amount of water in the radiator. Yes, it needs attention.

The trouble is, most of you give careful attention to your automobiles, but give almost NO ATTENTION to the care of your own bodies!

Now what is the BIBLE definition of SIN? Sin is the TRANSGRESSION OF LAW (I John 3:4). Of course it means law of God — but it includes these physical laws. These physical laws, too, were set in inexorable living motion by GOD.

Sin, spiritually, is the transgression of THE spiritual law of LOVE — divided into the TWO great commandments, love toward God and love toward neighbor — enlarged into the Ten Commandments, and magnified by Jesus, and all through the Bible — especially the New Testament.

This law is a SPIRITUAL LAW! It can only be fulfilled — or kept by spiritual love, which is the LOVE OF GOD, which one can have only by God's GRACE, through his Holy Spirit — which IS that spiritual LOVE! The penalty for violation of that law is THE SECOND, and ETERNAL, DEATH!

When you are sick, the physical laws that regulate the human mechanism have been violated! Of course, there can be injury from accident or violence. You, yourself, may or may not be responsible for that. Accidents nearly always result from carelessness — but of course it could be the other fellow's carelessness! Perhaps you drank a germ in drinking water — supposing it was pure water. Yes it is possible — and sometimes happens — that the sick or injured one did not, himself, violate the physical law. But, regardless, NATURE'S LAWS WERE VIOLATED.

SO, SICKNESS, DISEASE, INJURIES ARE THE PENALTY of physical SIN! Jesus Christ himself said so! Healing is forgiveness of the sin and miraculous removal of the PENALTY.