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I wanna share a few thoughts about the word of wisdom. Now, the word of wisdom is AAA set of dietary instructions that were given to Joseph Smith or, or through Joseph Smith to the church at the time, a long time ago, right? So specifically, they have special meaning to Mormons. But even if that's not your jam, I hope you stick around because I think there are very important lessons to learn about this um that we're gonna get into towards the end of this presentation, application specific to today, dealing with some of the mechanations of evil people today in the food industry in particular and what things you can do to take yourself out of that and therefore avoid the consequences that so many people are struggling with today that, that come from the food industry at large? Ok. So what was the word of wisdom for? And how would it be different today? That's what we're gonna use as a vehicle to get to the point, which is what kinds of dietary changes can we make to be in a better place? So, um first off, I want to make the point that amongst the various branches of Mormonism. You're gonna be hard pressed to find even one person who lives the word of wisdom. As recorded. There are multiple branches of Mormonism. The L DS church is not the only facet of this, this jewel which unfortunately is, is not so shiny these days, this jewel but the movement that Joseph Smith founded, it's split into multiple churches. The L DS church is the most numerous, but it's only one. But it doesn't matter which one you pick. If you read this revelation DNC 89 and you compare it to what they consider to be the word of wisdom, you're gonna see huge differences, huge differences. Every single branch completely ignores a couple of parts. And from there, there are differences in, in what those branches have added to the word of wisdom where it's not written and, and of course, like I said, taken away. So let's go through this. And if you want some details about these changes, particularly for the L DS church, you can go and read the relevant chapter in a book. I wrote a while back called Teaching for Doctrines and Commandments of Men. And I don't want to rehash all that here. So this is just very focused. First off, there are these phrases, hot drinks, strong drinks and mild drinks. And people have had numerous disagreements about what those phrases mean, um whether temperature is considered or not. So the L DS church interprets this as tea and coffee but not hot chocolate, right? So, um, that interpretation has changed over time again, check out the book for the receipts but strong drinks and mild drinks, those are interpreted to being alcohol of, of various types. And it's, um, not the case that, that any Mormon branch that I know of interprets mild drinks as non distilled alcohol, which that's my personal opinion of what it was intended to mean, but you're not gonna find people. Um And this is just because the, the Mormon movement got caught up with prohibition and that's across the board. You're gonna see this and it doesn't matter that early Mormons during and even after the life of Joseph Smith drank al alcohol. Joseph Smith drank alcohol. Uh almost up until the day he died. He, he never renounced it. He didn't consider that drinking alcohol was violating the word wisdom. Brigham Young owned a distillery . So that's a real hard thing to wrap your head around if you're L DS because not only did he drink alcohol, he drank distilled alcohol, the strong stuff, right? Anyway, not to dwell on that point. What about produce? Does anyone live? What the word wisdom says about produce? Which is that you should only, I'll just quote it directly. Every herb in the season thereof and every fruit in the season thereof. All these to be used with Prudence and Thanksgiving. Do you know any Mormon who won't eat fruits and vegetables in the winter time because they're out of season or do they just go to the grocery store and buy whatever is imported from Chile or California and eat it anyway. What about meat? In verses 12 and 13? It says yay flesh also of beasts and of the fowls of the air. I the Lord have ordained for the use of man with Thanksgiving. Nevertheless, they are to be used sparingly and it is pleasing unto me that they should not be used only in times of winter or of cold or famine first. Do you know anyone who goes to the buffet and eats tons of meat and has commensurate gratitude for the lives of those animals. Do you see if you go to a Chuck Aama in Utah, which may have gone out of business? But anyway, some buffet in Utah. Are you gonna see people just, just gushing with gratitude as they eat 15 pounds of meat in one sitting? No. Uh If you go to to a Mormon dinner on a Sunday night, are you gonna see meat being used sparingly? No, you're gonna see a pile of meat. Are you gonna see meat only being used in times of winter or cold or famine? No, in fact, you, you will see that Mormon people are just as obese as anyone else by and large. No, no pun intended. Ok. And they eat tons of meat. All right. Moving on animal feed. That's probably one you hadn't thought of. Do you raise animals? Have you been exposed to this at all? If so you understand that, that meat that you're buying at the grocery store came from an animal that was probably fed corn almost exclusively, right? Some, some cow was on a feedlot eating corn. And that's ok as far as this verse says, but animal feed is, is there's a lot of corn and animal feed and it's not this, this stratification of grains for different animals. In, in verse 17, you see nevertheless, wheat for man and corn, for the ox and oats, for the horse and ride for the fowls and for swine and for all beasts of the field and barley for all useful animals and for mild drinks as also other grain. Ok. So, um, what pigs, what pork do you buy at the store that was fed rye? The answer is zero that those swine were fed corn. The, the modern commercial breeds require corn and soy based feed because nothing else will, will help them gain weight as fast as they're bred to. There are varieties of pig that will eat rye. I have some right now actually. And they are eating rye in my field, right this second. But this is not something that you will find anywhere else. This is not why I'm doing it by the way, but it just so happens that I guess mark up one incidental uh obedience point for me because I accidentally am obeying this verse in that way. Ok. But again, wheat for man, it, and in another place it says it's supposed to be the staff of life for man. It's supposed to be the, the, the main source. However you want to interpret this. Is it caloric, is it uh just the standby? Like I've got wheat for when I can't get anything else who knows? But no one lives. It is the point, right? All right. Why am I making that point so often in religion? We say we're living something and we say, hey, this is what makes us different and we're obeying this commandment, yada, yada yada. But if you check the receipts, it has no connection to where you say it comes from. If you ask a Mormon, any flavor, it doesn't matter. Ask a Mormon, do you live the word of wisdom and find one that says yes. And there are a lot. If you say, what is the word of wisdom, they'll give you a list and they say, where is that? Where does that come from? They'll say DNC 89 or whatever. They number it as in their flavor of Mormonism. But if you look at the text, you will see that there are places where there's no connection between what it says and what they believe. You say, well, where did the changes come from? They say, I don't know. I don't know. But this is what it is. That's not good. God blesses us for keeping his commandments, but he doesn't just give us a right to go willy nilly and call whatever the heck we want his commandments. If your goal is to learn what he wants you to do , you need to have a clear path between what you're doing and when he said to do it where he said to do it and how he said to do it, it's very important. OK. Part of the, the disconnect here is that we've lost the whole purpose of why the word of wisdom exists. No one reads it and thinks about these questions. Why was it necessary? Um What was it meant to accomplish and how and so without that framework, you can shove anything you want into that or rip anything out that you want and say, yeah, it's still the word of wisdom. I mean, imagine calling something a car where the wheels have been turned uh taken off and replaced by tracks, the engine's been ripped out and replaced with a flower pot. I mean, how many changes can you make and still have it be a car? You can still call it a car, but at some point you're wrong, right? All right. So let's dig into the necessity. This is the verse that answers the question. Why is this necessary? This is verse four in consequence of evils and designs which do and will exist in the hearts of conspiring men in the last days. And the Lord says, I have warned you and forewarn you warning in present tense is about today, which was back in the 18 hundreds. Forewarn you is about the future, which includes our today here in 2024. OK. If you were to grab a random word of wisdom, abiding member, uh according to them, and you said, what are the evils and designs which do and will exist in the hearts of conspiring men in the last days? Uh I don't know. Well, that's a dangerous position, my friend, because that means that any old person could shove whatever they want into this framework or rip out anything they want. And you wouldn't even notice if it's no longer a car, right? What are the means? Verse two by revelation and word of wisdom. What does that mean? This came through Joseph Smith. It's, it's spoken in the voice of the Lord and whether you believe that that's the case or not is a different question, but that's the form in which it was given. It's wisdom given from the Lord through man. Verse three says, adapted to the capacity of the weak and the weakest of all saints. In other words, from the outset, this is not given as an end, all be all I will now tell you the specifics that shall never change throughout all time. It doesn't say that it says, look, there are situations that are constantly changing in this world. But the general principle is there are some evil people and they will try to do evil and they're gonna use the food supply to do it. And this is the case and it will be the case. Therefore, I'm telling you some wisdom from heaven that's designed to work for everybody, especially the weak and weakest. Now there's this phrase, lowest common denominator, right? And when we use this phrase in society, when we're talking about rules, you can guarantee that those rules will not be best suited to those who are not the weakest, but everyone's gonna take a hit. So that the the lowest people on the chain can be the best off that they can be. In , in other words, it, it's going to help those that struggle the most and it might occur at the cost of those who don't struggle so much right now, let me ask you just, just while we're here, do you think, let's say that that our objective with health rules is to be healthy? Do all people struggle in the same ways to be healthy? No. And the people who have a less hard time with it probably don't have to operate by such stringent rules is the, is the one who ones who do, right? So surprise if we want to make the rules around. I if we want to spell out what the rules are for the weak and the weakest they're gonna be more constrained than they would be for others who don't need that help, right? OK. So we shouldn't mistake specific rules given as the ideal or the full measure or anything else. And in fact, it, it specifically says later, we'll get to this, that this is given as a principle. It's , it's meant to help us discover the general overarching higher level principle, right? And it's given to help people discover that all this being said, one of my points here is it should be really freaking clear that if this revelation were given today, it would not contain the same words as it did back then. Hopefully, that's obvious. Given what we've talked about, we'll come back to that. So what, what was the intent? I already referred to this? But in verse two, showing forth the order and will of God in the temporal salvation of all saints. In the last days, it's given to demonstrate a principle . It's not, they are rules, but they're not given as rules, they're not given as a commandment. It says they're given to help you discover the principle principles are higher than rules. They're more general rules are by definition, very specific and there will be situations where the rules break that , that the rules can't cover. So what is the principle? It's actually quite simple. You've probably never heard it put into words, but it's really simple. What you eat affects your physical, emotional and spiritual capacity. Well, duh. However, do you live in recognition of that fact? Do you live that principle? You know, that's, that's really nice. Let's ring the bell for all the people who don't drink coffee and think that they're somehow spiritually superior for that. And yet can't explain how that's connected at all because uh newsflash is not, but in aggregate what you eat, how much you eat and when you eat, it absolutely affects your physical, emotional and spiritual capacity. But if you don't state that principle and orient your, your actions according to it, it's really easy to just rip out things that should obviously be part of living that principle and ignore them and shove things that have absolutely nothing to do with it and might even work counter to it in its place. And that is exactly what has happened in the Mormon branches. It's a joke. It's a joke and the leaders of those branches ought to be ashamed for how off the mark they are in this particular thing. There are a lot of other things too, but we're focusing on this one. If they were in any way who they say they were, they are, they would know this and far more. But it's the blind leading the blind. Now I'm gonna read to you verses 18 through 21 which goes into more details about the intent and all saints who remember to keep and do these sayings walking in obedience to the commandments shall receive health in the navel and marrow to their bones and shall find wisdom and great treasures of knowledge, even hidden treasures and shall run and not be weary and shall walk and not be faint. And I the Lord give unto them a promise that the destroying angel shall pass by them as the Children of Israel and not slay them. Now, we could spend 2 to 3 hours dissecting those four verses because there's imagery in here, scriptural imagery that is not defined in this place there. It's, there are elements of language that are employed idioms, scriptural idioms, for example, health in their navel and marrow in their bones. What does that mean? That actually means something and it, it, it's not about your belly button or what's inside your bones. It's, it's an idiom from scripture. Um hidden treasures, wisdom, great treasures of knowledge, those those are exactly what they sound like, but they're connected to many, many, many different ideas to run and not be wary and walk and not faint. That's also an um a connection to other parts of the scriptures. This destroying Angel. It's an enormous topic. The idea of perishing in Hebrew, the, the diminishment of people. If, if that's a word, it's, it's about decline. About decay. Decay is probably the closest English synonym. So a destroying angel is a messenger angel of destruction or, or decay connecting it to the Hebrew word for, for parish, which is all over the scriptures . It's all over the Old Testament, for example. And so, so what it, it's a connection to uh how can I describe this? I, if you had a skyscraper, every single window leads into that building and there are a lot of windows and the idea of the destroying angel, it's like a channel into the much broader topic of, to parish. It's all the things that cause you to diminish and decay. It's to be out of the way of the Lord, which is growth and improvement and the way it works is if you're not growing and improving, you are decaying. Those are the only two options in life. You are either growing towards life , which is to be in eternal life or you are out of the way and you are perishing. OK? So what you eat when you eat it and how much you eat it and why you eat it, all of those things are absolutely part of the equation that determines whether you're in the way of life or not. So much, much more could be said about that. But that's the intent and that all sounds really, really complicated, but it's actually, it's wonderful because it takes us in the direction where we can accurately distill this into something so much simpler, which is what you eat, how you eat it, why you eat it and how much of it you do? Did we say when all of those things around what you eat, you can make choices, you can orient your choices in that space towards the greatest benefit and you should and you must, or else what, what will result will be less than, and less good than what God would like you to have. Isn't that beautiful ? And it packs up into a really small suitcase which is do everything you do for the greatest benefit. That's it. And by the way, eating is not excluded from that. Amazing. Huh? So what would it contain if it were revealed today? Instead of the 18 hundreds? I'm not gonna tell you. And the reason is because I promise you it would be beyond what you're willing to receive because you're willing to do so little as is. So I will leave it to your imagination because that way you don't have to trust some random dude on the internet to be telling you thus saith the Lord. It's your own conscience, your own understanding . That's condemning you for living against it. But I will give you some tips. Here are some very clear indications that you're not living this principle. Are you deciding what you eat and when you eat it and how much based on what benefits the most or something else? You know, frequently I've heard people say things like God doesn't care what you have for breakfast. Oh yes he does. He cares about everything you do in every moment. He is not so sloppy, a creator to have generated this system that we live in. Everything on this planet. Everything we know about life where there are vast swaths where he doesn't care, that's not how it works. All things testify of Christ, all things, all moments are opportunities to learn more about what he's like and to live more like he would in your place, he does care what you eat for breakfast. And your challenge is to find out why and to build a model of how he would decide what to eat, for breakfast, for lunch and for dinner and in between and why? Because it matters. Are you living this principle? If you're not thinking about the life and death of the animals you eat, I've met many people who will eat meat, but they won't kill animals with their own hands. I don't mean in some gruesome way. I mean, if, if the choice is catch the fish and gut it yourself or don't eat fish, they wouldn't eat fish, but they do eat fish. And that's a problem. God is not happy with those people. For that reason. You should think about how the animals you eat live and die. Does this mean that you should never ever eat a chicken from the store because they live in a cage. That's exactly the size of their body until they hit eight weeks and they're butchered and they never see daylight once during their lives or should you never eat chicken because they take a whole bunch of them and just grind them up because the males grow faster than the females. So they don't want to raise the, the female chicks. And statistically half of them are, are female. No, that doesn't mean that you just shouldn't ever eat, uh, chicken from the store. It means you better have a reason that justifies that. And if your reason is because it's the fourth of July and we're gonna have a barbecue that probably doesn't cut it. Ok. It's a sophisticated and personal decision. That's why you need to know the principle because rules can't cover everyone's different situation, but you should be thinking about it and you should know about it. You should know about how they butcher cows in commercial meat plants. You should look at the video and if you're not OK with that, you should make changes in your life. It's not so much about removing things from your life as it is adding the meaning that is required to justify it. Um, it, it's obviously it's a mix of both. But what, what I'm saying is if you just look at a steak and you're like, yeah, who cares? This is meat. Oh, it's a little freezer burnt, I'm gonna throw it away. There's a big difference between that and understanding the life and death of that animal and where it came from and being grateful for it. That's the principle. And then you can go from there and make choices differently. Like if, if, uh well, we'll get to that. There's one more slide after this. Are you living this principle? If you're not moving towards independence from corporate food, as much as practical? Ok. As much as practical practicality is gonna differ from person to person for whatever their situation might be. But, but maybe it's a long term journey. But the question is, are you making steps today? Real steps, not just saying one day, I'm gonna take steps but real steps, we'll talk about that in a second. Corporate food is, is it, it's bad news? Ok. In general, it's bad news for, for many reasons. So I wanna give you some, some baby steps here. So these are things that you can do to move towards alignment with this principle. The first thing is you can get a copy of my book called Joy on Purpose and read about what a life plan is and learn how to live your life more intentionally. And as you make your plan and live it, make sure that your eating habits are a part of your plan. The beauty of the system presented in that book is it's, it covers all of life. There's not some part that's left out and you're the boss, right? So you're the one that's empowered, but you look at everything and you decide what is best and you move towards that. There aren't pockets of your life that are just sort of flapping in the wind and that's how most people treat their eating habits and it's not good. It does not please God to suspend your agency in random parts of life. Another first step is if you are in the majority of the American populace, you are probably overweight. Most people are overweight today. Most adults that does not please God. Now again, everything is prioritized for the greatest benefit in his will. And maybe in your case, you know, let's say that you're working graveyard shifts plus eight hours in the day because you're supporting some widow with no legs who doesn't have any family. And you're, you're the only one that can help her and all these other things and that's, you're, you're gaining weight because you're under these really constrained conditions and it's still for the greatest good. And you look at your gut and you say, you know what? Ok, that's fine because widow lady doesn't have legs and she needs somebody to take care of her. Ok? And there's no possible way I can do this without losing my mind except by carrying an extra 20 pounds. Cool. Ok. Fine, whatever. Right. But there are a whole lot of people who are only overweight because they eat too much and it's just more comfortable and easy to eat too much that doesn't please God, you can very , uh, simply lose weight by implementing a regular program of fasting, you should do this with your own research and checking with doctors and all that stuff. So don't sue me for doing this. But you can go without calories, not water, you drink water like it's a full time job when you're fasting this way. But you go without calories for AAA specified amount of time. Some people find that it's easier to do this on a regular basis. So every other day or four times a week or something where they're skipping two meals. Say me personally, I like going all out for longer because it's less uncomfortable for me. And so my, my go to is three day fast and I've made other videos about that, but you can start whatever structured program that works for you to, to begin to lose weight. And that's, that's one piece of this puzzle. And the, you know, the one of the greatest benefits to fasting is you learn just how much suffering you have to go through to reverse your mistake of eating too much and it helps you not eat too much. That's one of the greatest benefits of fasting is you, you get exposed to the consequence of your bad decision and you say, you know what, it's not worth this. And so you don't eat too much in the future. Another thing you can do no pun intended, you weigh the decision of when to eat a meal and how much to eat based on the good that you do with it and whether or not it's necessary. So I'll tell you, for example, one time I, I tried out, uh, vegetarianism for a month or two, it was in support of my wife who was pregnant at the time and the smell of meat made her want to vomit. And so I said, ok, let's just go vegetarian for a while and I think I lost 20 pounds in a month. I just could not eat enough food to keep my weight. So, and, and I didn't really have 20 pounds to lose . Um, it was nice for like the first five and then, and then it wasn't so nice anymore because I was losing things. I wanted to keep so uh different strokes for different folks. But the point is, are you actively thinking about it and making honest decisions based on the greatest benefit? Another initial step you can take towards all uh living. This principle is you can do what is practical to grow more of the food that you eat. I don't care if you live in an apartment complex. If you have a window, you can start in this direction. There's a really interesting story. I, I heard of a couple trying to think, I don't think they had kids at, at the time and they lived in an apartment and they decided that they wanted to grow some tomatoes on their balcony and they got a bucket and they started growing tomatoes and bucket and that just sort of grew and grew and grew pun intended. And eventually they decided to move out of the city and buy a farm. So you never know what's gonna happen with that. But the key is to be practical about it, you do it in a P at a pace. That makes sense for you. But you need to take the steps in that direction. Right. If you, if you live in a townhouse and you've got a postage stamp yard and it's allowable under the ho A, you know, you always have to navigate those rules and adjust accordingly. But you could have a little tiny garden and I, I know someone who's got very strict ho A rules and they have a decent size yard in a subdivision, but they're not allowed to dig up the grass and plant things. So he's got planting pots all around the perimeter of his fence because as long as you can pick it up and move it, it, it uh isn't violating his ho a rules and he's got all sorts of things growing in these buckets, right? He's got a whole garden so you can move in that direction. Um This is part and parcel with the next piece of advice. So just try to reduce the amount of processed food that you eat. Now, am I saying you should never eat potato chips again? No, I'm saying think about why you eat them and ask yourself if that's the best way to get that result and think about, if there's something better you could be doing and think about eating chips in terms of the good that it does. Not just I'm brainlessly eating chips because they're on the shelf or in my cupboard. Right. That's the difference. So, if the reason you eat chips is because you crave salt. There's a much less expensive and healthier way of getting salt. It's called eating salt, put salt on your other food, right? If that's what you're after, but, but maybe the chips are the greatest benefit and you can think about the quantity and how often it's all about the why, but it's, it's good to reduce the amount of processed food that you eat because there's all sorts of nonsense in there. And I'm gonna get to that in a minute, try to reduce the foods that you consume that we talked about processed. But also that are sprayed with pesticides or herbicides that are injected with hormones or vaccines or that are genetically modified. Now, there's a huge caveat to this, which is that none of these things, the fact that foods processed or it's pesticides were used on it or herbicides or hormones or vaccines or genetically modified. None of that guarantees that it's bad. However, it is much more likely to exceed your ability to tell. Do you understand if you are the world's expert on genetically modified food. Maybe you can look and say these things are worth it. These things are not. If you're just the, the normal person that goes to the grocery store and buys things, you probably don't have enough information to say. And what happens in a complex system. You've heard me say this before, the more complicated a system becomes, the less likely changes are to be positive. Do you see? So the anchor should be towards how things always have been. Not to let's make changes and assume that they're gonna work out for the best. So do what you can to stay away from all of that. Now, you have to be reasonable about this. Um I, I have an orchard with something like 100 fruit trees in it, mostly apple trees and so far in the seven years or so that we've been doing this since we started planting those trees . We really haven't been hit by too many pests. I've never blanket sprayed my orchard ever. We do uh spot corrections. There is a specific kind of worm that comes into the orchard and they make these webs, which is wonderful because you can see them and then you can do something about it. We'll cut branches off and then go burn them. Um But usually what we do because typically when they appear it's really dry and I don't wanna burn down the world. Um is that we will use neem oil and in a bottle and we, we spot, apply it to a specific place or we have another chemical that, that we use. Uh neem oil I think is considered organic and that's, you can't oversimplify this to say, oh, if I just buy organic food, you can put all kinds of trash on food and it, and still call it organic. That organic does not mean free from all the problems of pesticides. Ok. Herbicides, I just wanna mention you probably don't even know this but almost all of the wheat in the United States is sprayed with roundup. That, that sounds like a conspiracy theory, but I invite you to look it up. It's really not. What happens is wheat ripens unevenly, but when the date comes where they have to operate these very expensive combines to harvest it, um they need it all to be ripe. And so in order to correct the natural variation of when it ripens, they'll spray the whole field with roundup because guess what roundup does it kills grass and wheat is a grass, it's a grain and so they'll spray it all with roundup and then harvest it . And the authorities say, oh, but it's safe because the percentage that ends up in the food is within allowable limits. Maybe, maybe not. So there are wheat products you can buy that have not been sprayed around it. But you really have to look um if you, if you wanna be on the safe side, you can buy things from Costco that, that are imported because in Europe, they're not allowed to do that. So for example, if you buy your pasta noodles uh from Costco and they were grown that they were made in Italy, you're good to go, right? So that's a for example, so the point is that the, you're probably not gonna do all the research to find out the, the details and all this. So whatever you can do to get it closer to home and, and know how all this was treated from the beginning to when you put it in your mouth the better. So that concludes this, I hope that this was fruitful, but I'm sh um but these are really important things. I can't stress enough how vast the effects of what you eat when you eat it and how much of it you eat are to your life. And this is all the more important if you're, if you are the one that makes decisions about people you care about and what they eat and when these are really things that you need to pay attention to. So I hope this is helpful.