Alcohol and Christians (Part Three)

God has given us a book—a holy book—preserved for those who seek rightness, for thousands of years. This book tells of our beginning and our end, and how to navigate to paradise and eternal life. This book tells of God—the God of the Bible—and separates all of the world's other gods, properly placing them far, far below His feet. This book holds all the secrets of life and teaches the childlike how to participate. This book records how man fell from paradise and immortality to this present sorry state. And this book teaches us, in John 3:16-19:

16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.

18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.

Have you, as Jesus said, been born again? Did you know that Jesus' name is officially "The Word of God" (Revelation 19:13)? He is God's book. He alone is God's salvation. There is no other. Are you ready to enter the Book? Would you like to have all your sin and shame expunged and forgotten? Would you like today to be your new beginning in a most literal way? GodSaidManSaid has marvelous news for you. Today is your day of salvation. Click onto "Further With Jesus" for childlike instructions and immediate entry into the Kingdom of God. NOW FOR TODAY’S SUBJECT.

GOD SAID, Proverbs 23:29-35:

29 Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes?

30 They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine.

31 Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright.

32 At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.

33 Thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thine heart shall utter perverse things.

34 Yea, thou shalt be as he that lieth down in the midst of the sea, or as he that lieth upon the top of a mast.

35 They have stricken me, shalt thou say, and I was not sick; they have beaten me, and I felt it not: when shall I awake? I will seek it yet again.

GOD SAID, Habakkuk 2:15:

Woe unto him that giveth his neighbour drink, that puttest thy bottle to him, and makest him drunken also, that thou mayest look on their nakedness!

GOD SAID, Proverbs 20:1:

Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise.

GOD SAID, Proverbs 3:10:

So shall thy barns be filled with plenty, and thy presses shall burst out with new wine.

MAN SAID: A little moderation: a little bit of wine, a little bit of beer, whiskey, marijuana, cocaine, fornication.  Jesus made wine. Didn't He?

Now THE RECORD. The Bible calls them the wages of sin. Romans 6:23:

For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Sin pays wages and these wages are drawn on and act as the depletion of goods and all wholesome things. Sin equals death and the wages of sin are deadly, and if not rejected, the results are the destruction of goods and wholesome things, with the final payday being eternal, cognizant damnation in outer darkness—the lake of fire.

Sin will destroy the fruits of your labor and it does it in sundry and often subliminal ways. It is sin that destroys home and family, that destroys health and length of days, that destroys joy and peace.

One glaring example of the wages of sin is discovered in the consumption of alcoholic beverages. Consider the following:

(1.) 7.4% (or nearly 15 million) of Americans meet the criteria for alcohol abuse or alcoholism.

(2.) 48.2% of 21-year-olds are binge drinkers.

(3.) The annual cost of America's alcohol problems is a staggering $175.9 billion.

(4.) About one in four children under 18 are exposed to alcohol abuse.

(5.) Women with alcoholic partners are 360% more likely to be physically assaulted than other women.

(6.) Alcohol is a major contributor to liver damage, pancreatitis, cancer, brain shrinkage, and the second leading cause of dementia.

(7.) Children from alcoholic homes are admitted to the hospital 62% more often, with stays 29% longer.

(8.) 25-40% of all patients in U.S. hospital beds, excluding maternity and intensive care patients, are being treated for alcohol-related problems.

(9.) In 1998, alcohol-related accidents killed 15,935 Americans on the open highways.

(10.) In 2008 in the U.S., 19,000,000 needed treatment due to alcohol abuse.

The Scriptures clearly condemn the consumption of alcoholic beverages. GodSaidManSaid has published much research on the deadly effects of alcohol use and has thoroughly covered the Biblical subjects of "Did Jesus make alcoholic wine at the marriage supper, the Bible's use of the word wine, the idea of moderation," and more. At the end of this article we will list features for your review. A few highlights follow:

The popular doctrine of moderation is basically anchored in one verse found in Philippians 4:5:

Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand.

Moderation does not mean to do just a little sin—a little booze, a little homosexuality, a little murder, a little cocaine. Drinking wine that has passed the line as well as consuming other alcoholic beverages is condemned in the Word of God.

GodSaidManSaid thoroughly established that in the Bible, all grape juice is called wine. It is the non-fermented juice of the grape, as well as the fermented. Scripturally, it is called wine right from the cluster on the vine. Also, as an aside, I should note that the ancients had various techniques for preserving unfermented wine. Additional information regarding the wine issue follows.

Concerning the Marriage Supper and Jesus

In the first article on this subject, in some detail we explained the miracle of turning water into wine, performed at Cana by Jesus. Fully dispelled was the notion that this wine would cause drunkenness. Here's more on this subject.

John 2:9-10:

9 When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and knew not whence it was: (but the servants which drew the water knew;) the governor of the feast called the bridegroom,

10 And saith unto him, Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine until now.

Concerning the words good wine, in verse 10, ancient writers Pliny and Plutarch stated that "good wines" were those which would not intoxicate, having had their alcoholic content removed. Concerning "good wine," Dr. Samuele Bacchiocchi of Andrews University, author of Wine In The Bible, said:

Scriptural and moral consistency requires that "the good wine" produced by Christ was fresh, unfermented grape juice. This is supported by the very adjective used to describe it, namely kalos, which denotes that which is morally excellent, instead of agathos, which means simply good. [End of quote]

Concerning the Last Supper

In regard to the wine that was drunk at the Last Supper (the Passover supper), Dr. Bacchiocchi states:

The "fruit of the vine" Christ commanded to be used as a memorial of His redeeming blood (Matt 26:28-29; Mark 14:24-25) was not fermented wine, which in the Scripture represents human depravity and divine indignation, but pure unfermented grape juice, which is a fitting emblem of Christ's untainted blood shed for the remission of our sins. This conclusion was established through a study of the language of the Last Supper, the Jewish Passover wine, the Passover law of fermentation, the consistency of the symbol and the survival of the use of unfermented grape juice at the Lord's Supper. Most telling is the fact that Josephus calls the freshly squeezed grape juice "the fruit of the vine." This establishes unequivocally that the phrase was used to designate the sweet, unfermented juice of the grape. The evidences submitted shows that Jesus abstained from all intoxicating substances and gave no sanction to His followers for using them. [End of quote]

The Christian Courier notes the following quote from the Theological Workbook of the Old Testament:

To avoid the sin of drunkenness, mingling of wine with water was practiced. This dilution was specified by the Rabbis in NT times for the wine customary at Passover. [End of quote]

Also, it is known that ancient Romans watered down their wine—three parts water to one part wine.

Concerning Timothy's Stomach

Much to do has been made about the instructions that the Apostle Paul gave Timothy in I Timothy 5:23:

Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine often infirmities.

Again, from A Preview of Wine in the Bible:

Ancient writers such as Aristotle, Athanaeus, and Pliny indicate that unfermented wine was known and preferred to alcoholic wine for medical purposes, because it did not have the side effects of the latter. In the light of these testimonies and of the other Biblical teachings regarding wine, it is reasonable to assume that the wine recommended by Paul for medical use was unfermented grape juice.

The conclusion of this whole study on the Biblical teaching regarding the use of alcoholic beverages can be summarized in one sentence: Scripture is consistent in teaching moderation in the use of wholesome, unfermented beverages and abstinence from the use of intoxicating fermented beverages. [End of quote]

Alcohol consumption is Satan's snare.

Several years ago, new research was published touting the powerful, healthful effects of resveratrol, found in the skins of red fruits such as grapes. Immediately the "health benefits" of wine drinking ensued. Now for what they forgot to mention about consuming the juice of the grape:

The following excerpt is from the publication Better Nutrition:

Solid research indicates phytonutrients in the wine, not the alcohol, are the awesome antioxidant workers. Red wine and its non-alcoholic equal, purple grape juice, are brimming with the antioxidants resveratrol, grapeseed anthocyanidins, quercitin, ellagic acid, phenolic flavonoids, and epicatechin. Purple grape juice is, perhaps, the most powerful antioxidant on earth, having demonstrated the highest ORAC rating of more than 40 fruits, vegetables, and juices tested in the lab! [End of quote]

ORAC, by the way, stands for Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity. This measurement calculates the ability of a certain entity to destroy free radicals that cause cell damage, aging, disease, and cell death. And it is now known that ellagic acid, which is also a component of grape juice, reduces cancerous growths. Ellagic acid is also found in the seeds of berries.

More on the information many forgot to mention is the following excerpt in an article written by J. Miles under the title "I Got It Through the Grapevine:"

Good news for teetotalers. Researchers have found that grapes may prevent heart disease similar to the way wine does.

Scientists at Columbus Children's Hospital in Ohio served up reconstituted grapes (the equivalent of about a cup and a quarter of fresh ones) to healthy adults who had just eaten a high-fat meal. "We're talking about a meal that could have come straight from the drive-through," says John Bauer, the researcher who led the study. The grapes completely prevented the harmful effects such meals have been shown, in other studies, to have on vascular cells.  [End of quote]

This following "Q & A" exchange took place in "Letters to the Editor" in Energy Times:

I see repeated articles regarding the benefits of red wine/grapeseed extract, including the March 1999 Energy Times. Would not unfermented grape juice have the same health benefits? After all, some people choose to avoid alcohol.

– E.L., Texas

Editor's reply: In the April 1999 Energy Times:

[W]e ran a report of a study by the University of Wisconsin Medical School demonstrating that red or purple grape juice contains the same tannins and flavonoids as wine that diminish cholesterol and may fight blood clotting. [End of quote]

New research just published damns the consumption of alcohol at any level. July 12, 2011, an article from the Los Angeles Times, under the heading, "Alcohol and Cancer, How Much is Too Much?" reported the following:

LOS ANGELES—How much alcohol is it really safe to drink? Possibly less than you've been led to believe, say French researchers writing in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

In a piece published Monday, Paule Latino-Martel, a cancer researcher at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research, and co-authors argued that many countries' alcohol consumption guidelines - which typically define a moderate, "sensible" level of drinking designed to help consumers drink safely - fail to take into account long-term risks associated with drinking.

The problem? Such rules may have kept people from getting too drunk, but they failed to take into account the growing body of work linking alcohol use with cancer, according to the authors. In recent years, alcohol consumption has been shown to increase the risk of mouth, throat, breast, colorectal and possibly liver cancers, in such reports as this one from the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute for Cancer Research and this one published in the journal The Lancet in 2009.

For this reason, Latino-Martel and coauthors cautioned health authorities—including the government of Canada, which is expected to release new drinking guidelines later this year—against telling consumers that any amount of drinking is truly safe, at least, when it comes to cancer risk.

"It can be concluded that there is no level of alcohol consumption for which the cancer risk is null," they wrote. "Thus, for cancer prevention, the consumption of alcoholic beverages should not be recommended."

And no: The reported benefits of drinking for heart health don't change that, they added. Recent research has pointed out flaws in studies showing a positive link between alcohol use and cardiovascular health, they said. The team also pointed to a World Health Organization committee's recent conclusion that "there is no merit in promoting alcohol consumption as a preventive strategy" for heart disease. [End of quote]

God gave us a book—a holy book—which contains the inerrant truth, and when that book—the Holy Bible—commands against an issue, wise men and women comply. Those who reject God's Words must, by necessity, participate in the wages of sin. A good motto is "We drink no wine that's passed the line."

GOD SAID, Proverbs 23:29-35:

29 Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes?

30 They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine.

31 Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright.

32 At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.

33 Thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thine heart shall utter perverse things.

34 Yea, thou shalt be as he that lieth down in the midst of the sea, or as he that lieth upon the top of a mast.

35 They have stricken me, shalt thou say, and I was not sick; they have beaten me, and I felt it not: when shall I awake? I will seek it yet again.

GOD SAID, Habakkuk 2:15:

Woe unto him that giveth his neighbour drink, that puttest thy bottle to him, and makest him drunken also, that thou mayest look on their nakedness!

GOD SAID, Proverbs 20:1:

Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise.

GOD SAID, Proverbs 3:10:

So shall thy barns be filled with plenty, and thy presses shall burst out with new wine.

MAN SAID: A little moderation: a little bit of wine, a little bit of beer, whiskey, marijuana, cocaine, fornication.  Jesus made wine. Didn't He?

Now you have THE RECORD.



Related articles:
Alcohol and Christians
WINE
Wine II
Alcohol and Christians (Part Two)



References:

Authorized King James Version

Bacchiocchi, S., Ph.D., "A Preview of Wine In The Bible," Biblicalperspectives.com

Brown, E., "Alcohol and Cancer, How much is too much?" Los Angeles Times, July 12, 2011

"Grape Juice = A Fountain of Youth," Better Nutrition, February 2000, p68

Jackson, W., "Was the 'Fruit of the Vine' Fermented?" Christian Courier, 7/11/2000

Miles, J., "I Got It Through The Grapevine," Alternative Medicine, July/August 2003, p18

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