- This article or section should be merged with Council of Jerusalem
Jerusalem Council is a council that the apostles and elders of the Jerusalem ecclesia (church or congregation) in the first Century took place to render a decision as to whether non-Jewish believers in Christ needed to be circumcised outwardly in the flesh. There were those who argued for fleshly circumcision as being necessary to eternal salvation for sixteen years after the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus in Antioch where Christ's disciples were first called Christians. (Acts 11:26) The Antioch ecclesia sent Paul and his missionary companion Barnabas and others to go up to the apostles and elders in Jerusalem regarding this dispute. (Acts 15:1, 2) So this council was held.
Finally, after much discussion and the producing of evidence bearing on the case, the disciple James appealed to the pertinent words of Amos 9:11, 12 that had been inspired by God's holy spirit and that were already being fulfilled under the guidance of the holy spirit. Plainly this was the direction of God's holy spirit that outward circumcision in the flesh was not necessary for Gentile believers who had been taken out from the nations for God's name. Undoubtedly God's holy spirit had called up this deciding scripture in James' mind and also guided him as to recommending the salient points to be covered in the resolution to be issued by the Jerusalem Council. Here is how the Council's decree read:
The holy spirit and we ourselves have favored adding no further burden to you, except these necessary things, to keep abstaining from things sacrificed to idols and from blood and from things strangled and from fornication. If you carefully keep yourselves from these things, you will prosper. Good health to you! (Acts 15:3-29; 21:25; NWT)
Thus it was decided that what was necessary for Christians to realize a heavenly inheritance was, not outward circumcision in the flesh, but one's being a "new creation." And this decree also rests on God's command not to eat blood, as given to Noah and his sons and, therefore, to all mankind. In this regard, the following is found in The Chronology of Antient Kingdoms Amended, by Sir Isaac Newton (Dublin, 1728, p. 184): "This law [of abstaining from blood] was ancienter than the days of Moses, being given to Noah and his sons, long before the days of Abraham: and therefore when the Apostles and Elders in the Council at Jerusalem declared that the Gentiles were not obliged to be circumcised and keep the law of Moses, they excepted this law of abstaining from blood, and things strangled, as being an earlier law of God, imposed not on the sons of Abraham only, but on all nations, while they lived together in Shinar under the dominion of Noah: and of the same kind is the law of abstaining from meats offered to Idols or false Gods, and from fornication."-Italics his.
Jehovah's Witnesses refuse blood transfusion for this decree. They think that blood tranfusion means eating blood against God's command.(Gen 9:4)
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