“It shall be a perpetual statute for your generations throughout all your dwellings, that ye eat neither fat nor blood.” Leviticus 3:17

On the basis of this text, some have taken a position against blood transfusions. But the position is entirely untenable in the light of these considerations:

1. The prohibition applied only to animal blood and fowls (Leviticus 7:25-27). It does not apply to humans because we don't eat humans.

2. God gave proper instruction for slaughtering an animal or fowl so as not to eat any blood (Leviticus 17: 13, 14).

3. God's prohibition against eating blood also applies to Christians (Acts 15:20).

4. That which is eaten goes through the digestion into the stomach (Matthew 15:17). Blood transfusions go directly to the veins and thence to the cells.

5. If we love our neighbor as ourselves, can we watch him die for lack of life-giving blood (Matthew 22:39)?

6. Jesus came to save men's lives (Luke 9:56); why shouldn't we?

7. Since the life is in the blood (Deuteronomy 12:23), Christ condoned the giving of blood to save a life (John 15:13).

“And while the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man that gathered sticks upon the sabbath day. ... And the Lord said unto Moses, The man shall be surely put to death: all the congregation shall stone him with stones without the camp.” Numbers 15:32, 35

Some have made a big point that Sabbathbreakers were stoned to death in the Old Testament, therefore the Sabbath must not be in force today since stoning is not in force. But take note that not only Sabbathbreakers were stoned to death, but adulterers as well (Leviticus 20:10). Those also who broke the second commandment were put to death (Leviticus 24:16). Surely no one feels that adultery and blasphemy are any less wrong today just because God prescribed death for such sins in the Old Testament.

The fact is that under the theocracy of Israel, God ruled the people directly. He commanded punishment immediately for certain flagrant acts of disobedience. Today the same sins are equally abhorrent to God, but punishment is delayed until the day of judgment.

“And he declared unto you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform, even ten commandments; and he wrote them upon two tables of stone.” Deuteronomy 4:13

The dispensationalist doctrine makes the Ten Commandment law the old covenant that was abolished. Even though the Ten Commandments were indeed a commanded covenant, they did not constitute the old covenant which vanished away (Hebrews 8:13). Here are the reasons:

I. The old covenant was faulty, had poor promises, and vanished away (Hebrews 8:7, 8, 13). None of those points apply to the perfect law of God (Psalm 19:7).

2. The old covenant was made “concerning all these words” of the written law (Exodus 24:7, 8). It was not the law itself.

3. Referring to the Ten Commandments, God said to Moses, “After the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with thee and with Israel.” Exodus 34:27, 28. It was not the law itself but over the keeping of the law—”the tenor of the words”—that the old covenant was made.

4. Moses referred to the golden calf as “your sin, the calf which ye had made.” Deuteronomy 9:21. (Please note: The calf was not the sin, but the sin took place concerning the calf.) In the same way, the old covenant was not the law, but it was concerning the law. Thus it is called the covenant.

5. Romans 9:4 proves that the old and new covenants were different from the law itself. “Who are Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law.” Here the law is mentioned, as well as the covenants (plural). This would include both old and new covenants, plus the “giving of the law,” which is the Ten Commandment law.

6. To prove positively that the law is not the old covenant, let's try to make the words interchangeable in Romans 3:3 1: “Do we then make void the [old covenant] law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the [old covenant] law.” Clearly the old covenant and the law are not the same.