Acts 15:21
Acts 15:2121For Moses has been proclaimed in every city from ancient times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath.”
The Watchtower applies 's "abstain from blood" as binding perpetual moral law governing medical transfusions. Verse 21 — "For from ancient times Moses has had those who preach him city by city, since he is read aloud in the synagogues every sabbath" — is rarely engaged, though it is the verse James gives as the reason for the four-item list.
Verse 21 roots the decree in pastoral context, not eternal legislation. James explains that Moses is read in every city's synagogue — so Gentile believers should abstain from these four things as an accommodation to Jewish consciences in the mixed Jewish-Gentile congregations of the apostolic era. This is why Paul later treats one item from the same list — food offered to idols — as a conscience matter in 1 Corinthians 8 and 10, free to eat where no one will stumble. If one item in the four-item decree is conscience-based rather than absolute, the whole list is pastoral guidance for the Jewish-Gentile fellowship question, not timeless moral law abstracted from first-century synagogue context. That recognition opens the blood-transfusion question — lifting out of its pastoral frame and applying it to a twentieth- century medical procedure requires a bridge the text itself does not supply.