POOR EVE, SHE WAS JUST MISUNDERSTOOD

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'RED DELICIOUS' APPLES
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Yoey O’Dogherty, the pastor at The Holy Vineyard Church in Napa Valley, California, recently had his Sunday school children tested to determine how well they were learning their Scriptures. The results were mixed and a bit disappointing. One child wrote that “Saint Paul cavorted to Christianity. He preached holy acrimony, which is another name for marriage.” Of course, since Saint Paul didn’t “cavort” to Christianity but rather “converted” to it, this child was given just a 50% correct grade on this particular question.
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Another child who scored just 50% correct on a question answered, “Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. Noah's wife was called Joan of Ark. Noah built an ark, which the animals came on to in pears.” You don’t need me to tell you that Adam and Eve were NOT created from an apple tree. (Everyone knows that it was Little Johnny Appleseed who was created from an apple tree.)
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One kid who did manage to score 100% on a question said that, “The first Commandment was when Eve told Adam to eat the apple.” Although The Bible doesn’t actually say that the “forbidden fruit” was an apple, we know this to be a fact because it can be found in all of the famous paintings from that era. (But what even few very devoted Bible students today realize is that Eve’s second bite into the apple exposed a worm, and when she began shrieking and yelling at Adam to “Kill it! Kill it!” this became the real Second Commandment. You couldn't make this stuff up!)
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Genesis 3:16 tells us that after Eve transgressed God’s rule and then enticed Adam to also eat the forbidden apple, God pronounced judgment on her and stated, “I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; In pain you shall bring forth children; Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.” And this goes to show that sometimes even God is only 50% correct.
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Since that time, a lot of men have gotten down on women, and while some people say this is only “natural”, I say, “You shall not muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain.” (Hell, I don’t know what that means, but I quote it frequently because I found it in Gideon’s Bible in 1986 while trying to survive an excruciating hangover in a little roach-infested motel in Virginia City, Nevada. I credit that particular verse for saving my life, and this is a story as American as apple pie!)
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I still regularly read from The Bible, but sometimes my theology doesn’t comport with that of the typical Christian church. For example, I believe that Eve has gotten a bum rap. I think that in eating the apple she was merely trying to clean her colon. The health benefits of a clean colon have since been established and there are a few ways to acquire one: some people ingest these herbal formulas found in health food stores. Other folks undergo colonics. (I’ll admit that when I was a teenager, my buddies and I sometimes pushed our way IN the OUT door at the theater in order to see a movie for free, but I would NEVER pay money to someone to push something IN MY OUT door!) The best way to a healthy colon that I have found involves apples...
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I was once pretty much an expert on the Edgar Cayce psychic readings. After a thorough and objective investigation into them, however, I eventually determined that some of them relating to spirituality are downright dangerous.
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Cayce's “health” readings, on the other hand, I still believe were gifts from God. Cayce was way ahead of his time (some readings are still beyond our ken) and the information in his health-related readings was unquestionably supernaturally obtained. (How could he have known so long before anyone else discovered it that the Vitamin B-17 [Laetrile] content of “bitter almonds” would prevent the growth of cancer? See the books 'WORLD WITHOUT CANCER: The Story of Vitamin B17' by G. Edward Griffin and 'ALIVE & WELL: One Doctor's Experience With Nutrition in the Treatment of Cancer Patients' by Dr. Philip Binzel, Jr.)
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In all the years that I have done the Edgar Cayce 3-Day Apple Cleanse, and promoted it amongst my friends and acquaintances, only two people other than myself have completed it -– both of them women. (I always did suspect that women have more ’intestinal fortitude’ than men do.)
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THE THREE-DAY RAW APPLE CLEANSE
[According to Edgar Cayce’s reading #543-26]:
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“[F]or three days... take NOTHING except apples – RAW APPLES! Of course, coffee may be taken if so desired, but no other foods but the raw apples. And after the last meal of apples of the third day, or upon retiring on that evening following the last meal of apples, drink half a cup of olive oil. This will tend to cleanse the system.”
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In reading #294-182 Cayce elaborated that the apples to use for this colon cleanse are “the Jonathan variety, or the jenneting; the Black Arkansas, the Oregon Red, the Sheepnose, the DELICIOUS, the Arkansas Russet; any of those that are of the jenneting variety.” Because the Red Delicious apples are always readily available, it is the variety that I use when I administer the cleanse to myself. (Ideally once a year, since I’m a vegetarian. A flesh-eater might consider doing it every 6 months.)
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How many apples should you eat? Cayce didn’t say, but what happens is that the fiber and pectin in the apples loosens up all of the matter that has collected in the crevices of your intestines over time, and then the olive oil flushes it all out. So the more apples you eat, the better. I always begin with the idea of eating 9 per day, but by day three, I’m so sick of apples that I can usually only manage to get 5 or 6 of them down me.
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The hardest part, of course, is slugging down half a cup of olive oil (for crying-out-loud, DON’T SIP IT!!! The coward dies a thousand deaths, the hero dies but once). I get it down in one or two gulps and then have some Listerine handy to immediately wash out my mouth. (It sure beats the Ivory soap my Ma liked to use on me.)
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While one might think that the results would be immediate, and that racing to the bathroom will soon be necessary, I have never found it to be so with me. In fact, I take the olive oil after the last apple just before bed, and I sleep through the night, never needing to make “the mad dash” at any time.
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Does this Apple Cleanse REALLY clean out your colon? Well, without getting too graphically disgusting let me just say that... well, just check... -- well... YES! IT WORKS, and you will find all the evidence that you need in the bowl.
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I personally feel that Eve’s reputation has been unjustly maligned. I think that in eating the “forbidden fruit” she was simply trying to improve her health by cleaning out her colon. And if God had understood that, she would have remained the apple of His eye, and Man wouldn’t still be walking around with a lump in his throat (i.e., an Adam’s Apple) at the thought of her painful punishment.
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But even if Eve was merely thumbing her nose at God, I wouldn’t allow that to color my feelings toward all women; I wouldn’t judge them all based on one bad apple.
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~ Stephen T. McCarthy
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