if i serve blood sausage (black pudding) according to 1st cor' 10:27 would they be ok to eat - Fairlane
No they wouldn't. Since they would know that the meat was made with blood they could not eat it knowingly.
If you think my explanation is bizzare can you explain why the council in Jerusalem had needed to explain to gentile converts to keep their pants on? Are gentile converts allowed to murder, steal etc? Contex - Steel
I explained it some detail in the link I provided for you...
A more succinct version here does not discuss Acts 15...
You obviously didn't bother to read them. Here is an extract of the section on Acts 15...
By the way it's "Cofty".
Only by properly understanding this Old Testament background of the laws concerning blood can the key text at Acts 15 in the New Testament and its significance for Christians be properly understood.
A fact often overlooked by modern Christians is that they’re religion began as a Jewish sect. The burning issue in the early church, that almost divided it in its infancy, was whether gentile believers could be acceptable without complying with the full requirements of the law.
In Galatians 2 Paul recounts how tension between Jewish and gentile believers led him to go up to the apostles in Jerusalem to settle the matter. In Acts 15 we appear to have a historical account of what Paul is referring to in this letter. A summit meeting is held involving a large number of believers including some of the elders and apostles as well as Paul and Barnabus.
Then some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said, "The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to obey the Law of Moses." Acts 15:2
So here is the problem; it is offensive to Jewish Christians that some of their brothers are ignoring the basic requirements of the law including circumcision. This did not just have theological implications; it was an obstacle to the unity and fellowship of the early church. A Jewish Christian could not, in good conscience, have fellowship with an uncircumcised person.
The solution that was finally adopted was a stroke of genius.
It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things. Farewell. Acts 15:28,29
So where did the meeting come up with this particular set of requirements for gentile believers? Why no injunction against murder? What about theft, drunkenness and lying? This verse is not a new set of commandments for Christians; it is a restatement of those things that had always been required to maintain fellowship between Jews and gentiles.
The question of how Jews and gentiles could live together peacefully and what was required of non-Jewish residents in Israel was already established in the Law. In Leviticus 17 and 18 these very same prohibitions which could neatly be summarized as idolatry, blood and fornication, are set out as being those things that a foreigner must adhere to while living amongst the Israelites. They were not required to be circumcised, and to stipulate they were to abstain from murder or theft would have been to state the obvious. The crimes that a foreigner were likely to commit, perhaps without even understanding their offensiveness to their Jewish hosts, were these three things, idolatry, fornication and eating blood.
The words of James who proposed the content of the letter sent out to the congregations leaves us in no doubt about the reason for its contents.
"It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood. For Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath." Acts 15:19-21
How can there be any room for doubt that these things are not about fundamental laws but about how to maintain unity under the specific circumstances of the early congregation?
Finally, the letter requires Christians “abstain from food sacrificed to idols” but in 1Cor 8 Paul explains clearly that a brother who eats food sacrificed to idols commits no sin but does risk stumbling his brother. The language Paul uses there is identical to the wording of the Acts 15 letter.