Giving that this is now the season of Lent, this marks the moment where Jesus walked through the wilderness/desert for 40 whole days and nights, not eating or drinking ANYTHING for that whole time. I wanted to see if I could try it for Lent.. couldn't even last one whole day!! My body felt weak, my head started hurting, and my stomach felt like it was churning! I quit the challenge that night and went back to eating again. It's definitely the most hardest thing to accomplish, but He was able to pass this. How could He have survived for so long without any nourishment? I'm thankful He went through what He did, just wondering how He handled it?
Posted: Fri Mar 03, 2017 8:23 am
edited to specify wording
Just as a disclaimer: my reply to this topic is not an endorsement nor approval of Lent. The Scriptures exposing it as a God- (and Commandment-) dishonoring festivity were explained in this topic. [Ash Wednesday] speaking against both:
(A) the Ash Wednesday tradition of putting ash on one's face, to declare / make obvious that we're fasting [nullifying Jesus' Commandments with respect to personal fasting, the face during fasting, and to keep the fast secret], and
(B) the imposition of a yearly 40-day fast on the church, as a commemorative ritual, nullifying the purpose of corporate fasting, obscuring why it is done in the first place, when fasting should be done as a church, according to the Word of God, and keeping the holiness of fasting according to the Commands.
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That clarified, to answer the question, concerning the Biblical existence of spontaneous 40-day fasts: we can only speculate on the how's because Scripture doesn't specifically reveal how any of the people (i.e. Moses, Elijah, Jesus), who successfully completed a 40 day fast achieved it. But I think we receive a hint with Elijah (and even then, it's not conclusive):
1 Kings 19:6-8 (NIV)
6 He looked around, and there by his head was some bread baked over hot coals, and a jar of water. He ate and drank and then lay down again.
7 The angel of the Lord came back a second time and touched him and said, “Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you.” 8 So he got up and ate and drank. Strengthened by that food, he traveled forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God.
Based on present-day studies, within recent generations, exposing that crops had better nutritional content decades ago—Exhibit A:[Dirt Poor: Have Fruits and Vegetables Become Less Nutritious?] Exhibit B: [Study suggests nutrient decline in garden crops over past 50 years]—and that we're not keeping YHWH's Commands that would guard the nutritional quality of the soil (e.g. land Sabbaths, when to harvest from fruit trees, etc, as described in Leviticus), but instead inventing pesticide-ridden, and "fast" ways to grow crops, I think the nutritional quality of food was way better back in the day (especially thousands of years ago) and could sustain people for a lot longer. Thus Elijah eating bread and water, twice, (but not even fruits and vegetables along with it) and it being enough to sustain him for forty days and forty nights.
However, I have no proof that Elijah didn't drink a drop of water along the way (or nibble on a berry? a nut? a locust? wild honey?). So, at best, this is just a guess on my part. But if the initial meal is what sustained him along the whole way, then I highly suspect the nutritional quality of the food itself is responsible, and thus why a double-serving of a simple meal (of mere bread and water) could strengthen him for that long. The only other two examples in Scripture of 40 day and 40 night fasts are Moses and, as you know, Jesus, but the passages describing theirs do not offer such hints.
I think Moses' fasting was a bit more extreme because he did back-to-back 40 day and 40 night fasts while receiving the Tablets due to how he smashed the first ones in anger at the people's sin and had to go back up and have God write them over again (though the second time Moses had to provide the stone tablets himself).
Deuteronomy 9:9-18 (NIV)
9 When I went up on the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant that the Lord had made with you, I stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights; I ate no bread and drank no water. 10 The Lord gave me two stone tablets inscribed by the finger of God. On them were all the commandments the Lord proclaimed to you on the mountain out of the fire, on the day of the assembly.
11 At the end of the forty days and forty nights, the Lord gave me the two stone tablets, the tablets of the covenant. 12 Then the Lord told me, “Go down from here at once, because your people whom you brought out of Egypt have become corrupt. They have turned away quickly from what I commanded them and have made an idol for themselves.”
13 And the Lord said to me, “I have seen this people, and they are a stiff-necked people indeed! 14 Let me alone, so that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under heaven. And I will make you into a nation stronger and more numerous than they.”
15 So I turned and went down from the mountain while it was ablaze with fire. And the two tablets of the covenant were in my hands. 16 When I looked, I saw that you had sinned against the Lord your God; you had made for yourselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. You had turned aside quickly from the way that the Lord had commanded you. 17 So I took the two tablets and threw them out of my hands, breaking them to pieces before your eyes.
18 Then once again I fell prostrate before the Lord for forty days and forty nights; I ate no bread and drank no water, because of all the sin you had committed, doing what was evil in the Lord’s sight and so arousing his anger.
Exodus 31:18 (NIV)
18 When the Lord finished speaking to Moses on Mount Sinai, he gave him the two tablets of the covenant law, the tablets of stone inscribed by the finger of God.
Exodus 34:1 (NIV)
34 The Lord said to Moses, “Chisel out two stone tablets like the first ones, and I will write on them the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke.
Exodus 34:4 (NIV)
4 So Moses chiseled out two stone tablets like the first ones and went up Mount Sinai early in the morning, as the Lord had commanded him; and he carried the two stone tablets in his hands.
Maybe Moses ate after descending from the mountain and going back up a second time, but that detail was not deemed important enough to write down (if it happened). But in keeping with what we know about nutritional quality (and soil depletion causing decreased nutritional quality—because humans are not obeying their Creator, but inventing ways to farm/do agriculture deviantly), it is safe to say that if Moses ate between those two fasts, or only ate one initial meal, that simple meal would have sustained him like it did Elijah. And whatever Jesus ate normally, prior to being led by the Spirit to spontaneously fast for 40 days and 40 nights, would have sustained Him like it did Elijah as well.
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Posted: Fri Mar 03, 2017 2:38 pm
Found this excerpt which might be helpful:
Quote:
First, the Bible never claims that fasting for 40 days is naturally or physically possible, anymore than it is naturally or physically possible to walk on water or rise from the dead. Instead, the Bible teaches that Jesus did this through the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit (Lk. 5:17; Acts 2:22; Acts 10:3cool. Second, the text says that Jesus “ate nothing” (Lk. 4:2). This means that he certainly drank water during this time. Third, scientifically, there are many examples of people fasting for incredibly long amounts of time—sometimes several weeks on end. In a recent Scientific American article from 2004, Alan Lieberson (MD) documents many cases of people who have fasted for several weeks long. For instance, Mahatma Gandhi survived 21 days with only sips of water. Other hunger strikers have survived for 28, 36, 38, and even 40 days long.
Posted: Sun Mar 05, 2017 5:18 pm
Lady Kariel
Found this excerpt which might be helpful:
Quote:
First, the Bible never claims that fasting for 40 days is naturally or physically possible, anymore than it is naturally or physically possible to walk on water or rise from the dead. Instead, the Bible teaches that Jesus did this through the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit (Lk. 5:17; Acts 2:22; Acts 10:3cool. Second, the text says that Jesus “ate nothing” (Lk. 4:2). This means that he certainly drank water during this time. Third, scientifically, there are many examples of people fasting for incredibly long amounts of time—sometimes several weeks on end. In a recent Scientific American article from 2004, Alan Lieberson (MD) documents many cases of people who have fasted for several weeks long. For instance, Mahatma Gandhi survived 21 days with only sips of water. Other hunger strikers have survived for 28, 36, 38, and even 40 days long.
Mulling over this, I must point out, there is instability and dishonesty at times in the reasoning presented here in at least three areas (of what I can verify):
1. Unstable / dishonest: "the Bible never claims that fasting for 40 days is naturally or physically possible".
Making such a statement would disregard Elijah's example where the double serving of a simple meal of bread and water was identified as "what" enabled him to journey 40 days (thus natural, physical means). The text is not describing the 40-day fast as a miracle. But as, "eat this meal beforehand so that you can withstand the long journey". Thus possible, by natural means, as the Bible claims.
I don't understand why he (or she?) is even offering these words AGAINST natural possibility when, by the third point, he/she tries to argue FOR natural or physical possibility (with Mahatma Gandhi and the like). So he/she is contradicting his/her own claim by suggesting that: "the Bible does not say it is naturally or physically possible, just Supernatural,” and yet “here are examples of it being naturally possible"...? But, on the contrary, the Bible does say this is naturally and physically possible, thus not surprising that we find similar natural and physical examples out in the world, even by unbelievers. The Bible conforms to reality. It is the truth.
Having clarified that, the following may initially sound confusing, seeing as they conflicted their own claims (having flip flopped between "this is not possible to achieve in the natural, must be Supernatural, wait no, natural is possible, forget Supernatural"), but I'll explain it as simply and clearly as I can:
2.The verses that the writer cited (Lk. 5:17; Acts 2:22; Acts 10:38) and paraphrased by saying, "Instead, the Bible teaches that Jesus did this through the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit", is misleading, on two points (which I'll describe separately as A and B):
(A.) It could lead the reader to think that those specific Scripture passages explicitly attributed Jesus' ability to fast for 40 days as having been a miracle by the Holy Spirit, when the content of those passages make no such claims (nor address the matter whatsoever). Just because Jesus did a miracle in totally unrelated events, does not mean that everything He did in life was miracle-related / in the sense of overriding natural laws (e.g. walking on water). What the verses that the writer cited actually do comment about:
Luke 5:17 (NIV)
17 One day Jesus was teaching, and Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there. They had come from every village of Galilee and from Judea and Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was with Jesus to heal the sick.
Acts 2:22 (NIV)
22 “Fellow Israelites, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know.
Acts 10:38 (NIV)
38 how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him.
Miracles. These miracles have nothing to do with the subject of His fasting. Appealing to these verses to address the subject of His 40-day fast is equivalent to saying that when Jesus went to the bathroom (or relieved Himself), that this was a Supernatural event because all these other verses describe Him as having been empowered by the Supernatural and having healed at certain times; therefore, everything He did must have been a "walking-on-water" miracle and cannot be attributed to natural causes. That's unstable reasoning.
Side note, and unstable reasoning on another matter (though related): even when Jesus miraculously healed, sometimes He used the natural as a conduit for the miracle (like utilizing saliva and dirt in the process of healing a blind man Supernaturally). So I don't understand why the writer is trying to draw this "natural vs. Supernatural" dichotomy in the first place...
John 9:6-7 (NIV)
6 After saying this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes. 7 “Go,” he told him, “wash in the Pool of Siloam” (this word means “Sent”). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing.
Same thing with the deaf and speech-impeded man, and Jesus using His saliva in the process of healing him:
Mark 7:32-35 (NIV)
32 There some people brought to him a man who was deaf and could hardly talk, and they begged Jesus to place his hand on him.
33 After he took him aside, away from the crowd, Jesus put his fingers into the man’s ears. Then he spit and touched the man’s tongue. 34 He looked up to heaven and with a deep sigh said to him, “Ephphatha!” (which means “Be opened!”). 35 At this, the man’s ears were opened, his tongue was loosened and he began to speak plainly.
Whether "Jesus' saliva + dirt + pool of Siloam", OR "finger into the ear + Jesus' saliva into the afflicted one's tongue + Command from God", it is a case of natural + Supernatural coming together to result in the miraculous healing.
I don't know if there was something strange about Jesus' saliva, in and of itself, but He used it on more than one occasion to heal (in addition to using purely mundane things like dirt, water in the pool of Siloam [though perhaps the latter, this water, was like the pool of Bethesda, e.g. John 5:4, water that had been momentarily touched by an angel, thus had healing properties because of the touch by a non-earthly being? in either case, natural things that would otherwise not heal on their own, are being used in addition to involvement [either by touch or Command] from a divine/other-worldly/Supernatural being, to result in healing). For the record, I'm not insinuating that Jesus is a mere prophet, nor a mere angel; He is YHWH-incarnate as the rest of Scripture reveals.
Philippians 2:5-8 (NIV)
5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
6 Who, being in very nature[a] God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; 7 rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature[b] of a servant, being made in human likeness. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!
Footnotes:
a. Philippians 2:6 Or in the form of b. Philippians 2:7 Or the form
John 8:57-58 (NIV)
57 “You are not yet fifty years old,” they said to him, “and you have seen Abraham!”
58 “Very truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am!” 59 At this, they picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself, slipping away from the temple grounds.
...but this (the Supernatural healing involving the natural) leads me into:
(B.) The writer says "instead"...as if anything that is done in the natural is devoid of the Supernatural. It's inextricably related.
The reality is that even when NOT fasting, but eating on a daily basis, even then it is the Spirit of God, the breath of God, that keeps us alive, who sustains us. So what is the argument here?
Job 33:4 (NIV)
4 The Spirit of God has made me; the breath of the Almighty gives me life.
Genesis 2:7 (NIV)
7 Then the Lord God formed a man[a] from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
Footnotes:
a. Genesis 2:7 The Hebrew for man (adam) sounds like and may be related to the Hebrew for ground (adamah); it is also the name Adam (see verse 20).
Genesis 6:3 (NIV)
3 Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not contend with[a] humans forever, for they are mortal[b]; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.”
Footnotes:
a. Genesis 6:3 Or My spirit will not remain in b. Genesis 6:3 Or corrupt
Numbers 16:22 (NIV)
22 But Moses and Aaron fell facedown and cried out, “O God, the God who gives breath to all living things, will you be angry with the entire assembly when only one man sins?”
Acts 17:28 (NIV)
28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’[a] As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’[b]
Footnotes:
a. Acts 17:28 From the Cretan philosopher Epimenides b. Acts 17:28 From the Cilician Stoic philosopher Aratus
Job 14:10 (NIV)
10 But a man dies and is laid low; he breathes his last and is no more.
Without the breath of God (which is Supernatural empowerment) all living things are dead. And if we do not have enough nutrition stored up in the body, once those stores are up, the body dies. Not either/or, but both. Supernatural + natural work together. Both are needed for earthly life to exist. Obviously the Supernatural is more vital, because you can have all the stores of the body filled up with water and other vital nutrients, but still have the breath of life snuffed out of you. But if you have the breath of life in you, you can go without fresh supplies of food and water for a time before you die. It just may take a little longer, until those stores/caches deplete, but they too are also vital to stay alive on earth.
So, this natural-Supernatural divide in the argument is unnecessary to make: the reality is that if we do NOT have enough nutrition stored up in the body, the body dies. And even when we are not fasting, but eating daily, even then, it is the Spirit of God that keeps us alive, sustains us, so what is the point in bringing up the Supernatural? It's a given. Whatever is done in the natural always has a supernatural influence involved (be it coming from YHWH [or other clean spirit], or demonic).
But again, not to forget the initial point (what was dishonest about citing those verses in the first place): (A) they're irrelevant to the 40-day fast, never mentioning it, but how those verses were paraphrased and led into may lead people to think that they explicitly provide proof of such a claim when they don't (if the reader doesn't open up the verses and bother to fact check) and (B) it's unstable to suggest that everything Jesus did was a miracle, just because He did miracles on other occasions, nor imply, by the way they reasoned using those verses, that everything He did then was something lacking a natural or physical cause (because He had the Holy Spirit in Him).
And relating this to the first point, those verses do not offer anything to differentiate His fasting from Elijah's, which, going by what the verses state, the double serving of bread and water is what strengthened Elijah to complete the task at hand (thus the simple, double serving of a meal of bread and water, that he ate beforehand, strengthened him for the journey). According to Scripture, Elijah could not have endured the long journey without that meal of water and bread (a natural, physical cause), a meal which he ate prior to the 40-days, not during.
3.Lastly, the following is unstable reasoning, [...] the text says that Jesus “ate nothing” (Lk. 4:2) This means that he certainly drank water during this time.
...unstable because there are instances in Scripture where the absence of the word "drink", and only the presence of the verb "eat", includes abstention from consuming liquids as well.
Leviticus 3:17 (NIV)
17 “‘This is a lasting ordinance for the generations to come, wherever you live: You must not eat any fat or any blood.’”
Leviticus 7:26-27 (NIV)
26 And wherever you live, you must not eat the blood of any bird or animal. 27 Anyone who eats blood must be cut off from their people.’”
(slight tangent: for the record, this is why we have the prohibition against eating literal blood in the New Testament as found in Acts 15:29 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. [NIV]—and also for the record, whether “eating the animal without the blood drained out”, thus taking mouthfuls of the blood that was circulating in it, or whether drinking a cup filled with literal blood [i.e. decapitating a sea turtle and pouring out its blood into a cup/bowl to drink it, as is done in Japan, they mix it with sake [alcohol], the Command would prohibit both—even if the blood comes from a clean animal. Blood should not be eaten [so make sure that clean animal is drained of blood and cooked to well-done], and much less, collecting literal blood in a cup to drink it).
Thus, "ate nothing" can include "not consuming" either solids or liquids, or both. We cannot make any assertions of certainty ("He certainly drank water because only the past tense of the verb 'eat' [ate] is present!"). The verb "eat" is like the verb ingest or consume; it doesn't always necessarily tell you whether it was a solid or a liquid, and does not limit things to only being solid. The Holy Spirit could very well be saying that Jesus abstained from both solids and liquids by saying He ate nothing (thus physically consumed nothing during the fast—relying on the stores of nutrition in His body, along with the Spirit of God, to sustain Him).
Similar, though not exactly, to how the metabolism of a desert tortoise slows down and can survive for a year (or more) without water. Obviously, YHWH made the tortoise to be able to withstand such extremes for that length of time (not humans)...
[...] Adult desert tortoises lose water at such a slow rate that they can survive for more than a year without access to free water. They are able to survive lean years, then grow and reproduce during years of favorable rainfall and forage production.
...but there is something similar in us that these Biblical examples of humans fasting in the desert for 40-days are hinting at. However, in light of the information we have (of lessening nutritional content in food nowadays), I would not recommend people mimic these examples.
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Concluding thoughts on the matter: there are events that we cannot be 100% certain about "how" they specifically went down, based on the way Scripture describes (or is silent on), since we didn't see them, but judging by all the evidence, there is both a natural and Supernatural component to all this. The breath of God keeps us all alive—even when fasting, but also when not fasting (when we're eating on a daily basis)—and in order to stay alive on earth, the body needs sufficient nutrition stored up in said body to survive, even during periods of fasting (when we're not providing a fresh source of food or water). There is no such thing as the body surviving (avoiding succumbing to death) while lacking sufficient water and vital minerals in the body's caches/repositories/storehouses. I'm sure Jesus lost a lot of fat and water content while fasting, but evidently He had enough stored up in order to have survived those 40 days without a fresh supply of it and so did Moses (especially him).
Based on the deplorable state of the nutrition quality of food and soil nowadays, I would not recommend people emulate a 40-day and 40-night fast, the kind that entails BOTH going without eating food and without drinking water, like Moses did, and arguably like Jesus did as well. The conditions are totally different. We will not get the same results. We must cheat and take sips of water, just further proving that we are not really fasting like them under present earthly (and thus nutritional) conditions. And we should not even venture to think that we can do so for 40-days and 40-nights, without both food and water, as long as there is deviance from God's Commands in our farming and care-taking of the soil (not to mention, factoring in natural decay, how that may be affecting the body's capabilities to do things that our ancestors naturally / more easily could, but that has been impaired in modern generations to some extent).
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As an aside, reasoning through this excerpt that you provided helped me solidify a concept (the natural-Supernatural relation) that has been floating in the back of mind in another area, specifically as it relates to those who hold to abiogenesis:
When presenting creationist views on origins, we need to account for (and utilize the details of) these Biblical verses to reach those who believe in abiogenesis (that life arose from non-life). I feel like creationists hesitate to draw a light on these details in their pursuit to shoot down the atheistic belief system/philosophical system, which has been dubbed "naturalism", but it can be the very thing that helps us reach them in the first place:
Genesis 1:24-25 (NIV)
24 And God said, “Let the land produceliving creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so. 25 God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.
Yes, the honest-to-the-Bible reading is that God created within six, literal, 24-hour days (because evening and morning), and the earth is young (thousands of years old, not millions or billions of years old)—God gave a Command beyond the natural that caused life to arise, but to the human eye on earth, what would that detail, bolded above, physically look like? as if the land (lifeless dirt, non-life) is producing life itself. And no human was around to witness any of this, seeing as all the animals (in the ocean, air, and land) had already been created on the sixth day by the time man was created on that same sixth day. However, the Command from beyond the natural (thus Supernatural) is making the natural do something, which to the atheistic observer of today, to him this could look like life arising out of non-life, even basing themselves solely off of Biblical descriptions (while ignoring key details in the verses i.e. God said). The lifeless land produced the living creatures—but by God's Command (who is the author of life).
Life also separately originated in water and in the sky (prior to the sixth day), but also Commanded by God.
Genesis 1:20-23 (NIV)
20 And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.” 21 So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.” 23 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day.
I include this because of an article previously posted addressing how certain scientists believe life on earth originated in the sea. Those who don't believe the Bible are still finding evidence of / indications of what the Bible describes (even if they deny the Bible). But they will never arrive at the accurate, complete conclusion / interpretation that accounts for all these observations, thus that adheres to reality, if they ignore that there is a sentient Creator beyond/outside this natural realm [thus Supernatural, out there, in a higher dimension] who gave/gives Commands to the natural [in a dimension lower than wherever He is], thus an outside-of-the-created-universe source of information / of instruction / of programming / of Commands to "go" / "do" / "start" revealing things to us, intervening into His own creation with revelation, and Commanding things even if we don't hear it audibly and just see the physical indications that He has Commanded creation to do something).
However, as it relates to this topic: everything natural is being sustained by something Supernatural at all times, miraculous sign and wonder or no miraculous sign and wonder. It's unavoidable. And the presence of the Holy Spirit in a person doesn't mean everything they do is a miracle and/or devoid of natural causes. But given human disobedience causing (and exacerbating) decay, and nutritional quality on the decline, I would not advise people to do a 40-day and 40-night fast from both food and water. I have seen videos of people do 40-day fasts from food, and one do 3 of them back-to-back, she lost a lot of weight by the end and became drastically skeletal [link] (btw I linked to an unbeliever's video who compiled clips of the whole process in a summarized form—hence the anti-religious comments in the video itself, however they are minimal), but she survived at the end of 120 days of only drinking water. However it wasn't a food and water fast, just a fast from food while drinking water.
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