Where the Argument Collapses
The passage does not say every creature is good. It says every creature of Yahuah is good, and then adds which ones it means — the ones He created to be received.
Not everything alive was created to be eaten. The verse says so itself, and then tells the reader where to look it up.
The Claim
Paul says every creature is good and nothing is to be refused. He also warns against men who command to abstain from meats. Read that way, anyone teaching the food laws is the false teacher this passage predicted.
The Passage
Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the belief, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which Yahuah hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth.
— First Timothy 4:1–3
For every creature of Yahuah is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving: for it is sanctified by the word of Yahuah and prayer.
— First Timothy 4:4–5
Who He Was Warning About
The false teachers are described before they are condemned. Two marks are given.
They forbid marriage. They command abstaining from meats.
Torah does neither. Torah commands marriage as a blessing and commands the eating of meat at the appointed times. A man keeping Torah is not forbidding marriage to anyone.
The men described here are ascetics. They taught that the body is evil and that pleasure is sin, so they banned the marriage bed and banned meat altogether. That teaching was spreading through the assemblies in Paul’s day and it is what he is answering.
Notice the pairing. If this passage overturns the food laws, it overturns marriage restrictions too. Nobody reads the first half that way. Only the second half gets stretched.
The Qualifier in Verse Three
The sentence does not stop at meats. It keeps going, and what follows is the hinge.
Which Yahuah hath created to be received.
Paul is not defending all food. He is defending the food Yahuah made to be received. That is a smaller group than everything that breathes, and the phrase says so.
A man who says every book in my library is worth reading has said nothing about the books in the shop down the street. He was speaking about his own shelf. The sentence never reached the others.
Received by Whom
The verse adds one more limit, and it is easy to read past.
Received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth.
The people doing the receiving are believers who know the truth. Paul is describing a table where the truth is already known and already kept, not a table where anything goes.
Sanctified by the Word
Verse 5 says food is sanctified by the word of Yahuah and prayer.
Sanctified means set apart. A thing that is set apart has been separated from something else. There is no such thing as setting apart everything.
So the question is which word does the setting apart.
There is only one passage in Scripture where Yahuah separates creatures into what may be eaten and what may not. That is Leviticus 11.
These are the beasts which ye shall eat among all the beasts that are on the earth.
— Leviticus 11:2
Paul points the reader to the word for the answer. The word he is pointing at is the one that defines food.
Verse 5 is not a way around Leviticus 11. It is a reference to it.
Thanksgiving Does Not Change a Creature
The common reading is that a prayer over the plate makes anything acceptable.
Test that. If thanksgiving can make anything acceptable, then it can make anything acceptable — and the same logic will clear stolen bread and the meat of an idol’s altar.
Paul himself says otherwise about idol meat, in the same set of letters. So thanksgiving is not a covering. It is how a believer receives what was already given.
Thanksgiving is the right response to food. It is not a way of turning something into food.
The Verdict
First Timothy 4 is written against men who called marriage and meat evil. Paul answers them by saying that what Yahuah gave is good and should be received with thanks.
He limits the sentence himself. Every creature of Yahuah. Created to be received. Received by them that know the truth. Set apart by the word.
Every one of those limits points back to the place where the word did the setting apart. The passage sends the reader to Leviticus 11 rather than away from it.
Foundations Cited
F-09 Commandments of Yahuah, Traditions of Men · F-10 Common Is Not Unclean