If God
made
the wine then God made
arsenic, nicotine, morphine and all known poisons. However,
God
created the vine which produces "the fruit of the vine" which
will
not, without lots of science, be chemically restructured into
alcohol.
A recent TV program on
wine
technology pointed out that the grape carries
the seed of its destruction upon its back in the
form of thousands of forms of bacteria. Once the skin is broken the
bacteria attacks the
grape and usually rots it. Therefore, the "skin" is the
God-designed
barrier to keep out bacteria.
By the use of ancient
science
it was possible to get fermented wine but unless the process
was
stopped the wine would turn into vinegar or worse.
Modern science has allowed
vintners to separate out certain yeasts from the grape and
multiply
it. At the same time, all of the natural yeast on the grape
is
destroyed with the ancient practice of using sulphur in
various
forms. Then if intoxication was the goal, the cultured yeast
is added
to the juice to produce wine which will not destroy
itself.
Wine "which gladdens life," along with
milk and
water, was a food product and is innocent. Wine which is
intoxicating
was consumed for a purpose--to get drunk (See Ecc.
10:16-19). Kings
who forgot this admonition were destructive to themselves
and to the
people over whom God had set them.
Woe to thee, O
land, when thy king is a child, and thy princes eat
in the morning Ecc 10:16
Blessed art thou, O
land,
when
thy king is
the son of
nobles,
and thy princes
eat in due season, for
strength (food), and
not for drunkenness Ecc 10: 17
By much slothfulness the building decayeth; and
through
idleness of the
hands the house droppeth through. Ecc 10: 18
A feast is made for laughter, and wine maketh merry: but money
answereth all things. Ecc
10: 19
Get the joke?
He makes grass
grow for
the cattle,
and plants for man to cultivate-- bringing forth food from the earth: Psalm 104:14
wine
that gladdens the heart of man, oil to make his
face
shine, and bread
that sustains
his
heart.
Psalm 104:15
Thou hast put gladness
in
my
heart, more than in the time
that their corn and their wine
increased.
Ps.4:7
Wine is a food
product of
the vine or grape. However, water of the word provides
our new
gladness
Therefore with joy
(gladness) shall ye draw water out of the wells of
salvation. Isa
12:3
Fred Peatross: The Bible doesn't say a
great deal about the use of wine in ordinary life. It was customary to
present wine
to
travelers.
Paul
recommended wine to Timothy as a digestive aid.
God did not supply
wine in
the wilderness ever for those perishing as they turned
back to
musical idolatry:
So the Lord alone
did lead him, and there was no strange god with him.
Deut 32:12
He made him ride on
the high places of the earth, that he might eat the
increase of the
fields; and he made him to suck honey out of the rock,
and oil out of
the flinty rock; Deut 32:13
Butter of kine, and
milk
of
sheep, with fat of lambs, and rams of the breed of
Bashan, and goats,
with the fat of kidneys of wheat; and thou didst drink the
pure blood of the
grape.
De.32:14
But Jeshurun waxed
fat, and kicked: thou art waxen fat, thou art grown
thick, thou art
covered with fatness; then he forsook God which made
him, and lightly
esteemed the Rock of his salvation. Deut 32:15
Actually the Bible says a
great
deal about wine and we don't remember a passage which shows
that
anything good came from it unless it is given like a knock
out drop
to the perishing. If God actually made the alcohol wouldn't
you think
that He would say something good about it and not be so
brutal in
showing that wine is the symbol of the wrath He will pour
out upon
those who reject Him. This is probably the meaning of the
wedding at
Cana.
"The law forbade seor--yeast, ferment, whatever
could excite
fermentation--and khahmatz, whatever had undergone
fermentation, or
been subject to the action of seor." (Temperance Bible
Commentary, p.
280).
"The great mass of
the Jews have ever understood this prohibition as extending
to fermented
wine, or
strong
drink,
as well as to bread. The word is essentially the same which
designates the fermentation of bread and that of
liquors." (Dr. S. M.
Issacs, a Jewish rabbi of the last century, quoted by
Patton, p.
83).
"The restrictions on grape
products
derive from
the laws
against using
products
of
idolatry.
Wine was commonly used in the rituals
of all ancient religions, and wine was routinely
sanctified for pagan
purposes
while it was
being processed. For
this reason, use of wines and other grape products made by non-Jews was
prohibited.
(Whole
grapes are not a problem, nor are whole grapes in fruit
cocktail).
Note: there is even a remedy for
a priest
who ate grape
seed!
"For the most part, this
rule
only affects wine
and grape
juice.
This becomes
a concern with many fruit drinks or fruit-flavored drinks,
which are
often sweetened with grape juice.
You
may
also notice that it is virtually impossible
to find kosher
baking
powder, because baking powder is
made with cream of tartar, a
by-product of wine
making."
"Wine of a place named
"Perogaisa" is of extra-fine quality; its addictive power helped seduce the Exiled
Ten Tribes
from the Mitzvos: Shabbos 147b
Paul used the word "take"
as
when we say: "take the medicine." He did not give the
teetotaler
Timothy permission to drink intoxicants which would have
further
destroyed his stomach. Most of the benefits in wine are also
found in
the unfermented grape juice.
You may want to consult
with
a modern doctor.
"Aspirin is also a
type of anti-inflammatory medicine and if you take it at
the same
time as your ibuprofen (or whatever anti-inflammatory
drug), they
could compete
against each other in your body and/or increase your
chance of
stomach irritation or bleeding. Wine or
any alcoholic
drink can
also cause stomach irritation, so your risks are
compounded, and alcohol may affect your absorption of
the medicine as well.
Health Link
Drinking wine with
many
modern medications (to help us surve church rituals) is
very
dangerous to your health and can drive you to suicide.
Stomach wine
Pliny
mentions a useful GOOD
stomach wine, ADUMION, which is:"without power and without
strength." He states that "for all the sick, wine is the
most useful
when its forces have been broken by the strainer."
The advice to be an
indiscriminate drinker of wine would expose Timothy to
"headaches,
dropsy, madness, and stomach complaints." This is true even
today
where the consent to drink wine might expose the drinker to
wine
spiked with "wood alchol," which is a poison, and can and
does kill
the drinkers. So Paul has a particular wine in view as he
prescribes,
as a Physician, a specific wine for a specific stomach
problem.
Dousing the inflamed stomach with ethyl or wood alchol would
not be
good medical advice.
If its forces have been
broken
by filtering out the yeasts, it would eleminate the
dangerous ones
and it would be harmless.
"Stomach wine, or
wine for the stomach, the old writers of Greek
medicinetell us, was
grape juice, prepared as a thick, unfermented
syrup, for
the use as a
medicament for dispeptic and weak persons...The Apostles told his
friend to
use a little wine mixed with water..."
He continues, "This
beverage given to invalids to whom it was apprehended
that wine (fermented) may
prove
injurious."
(Book
XIV, Ch. 9)
I am not sure where this comes from
but here is some
data
To the third13 rank
belonged
the various wines of Alba, in the vicinity of the City,
remarkable
for their sweetness, and some- [p. 3241] times, though
rarely,
rough14 as well: the Surrentine15 wines, also, the growth
of only
stayed vines, which are especially recommended to invalids for
their thinness and their
wholesomeness. Tiberius
Cζsar used to say that the physicians had conspired thus
to
dignify the Surrentinum, which was, in fact, only another name for
generous
vinegar;
while Caius
Cζsar, who succeeded him, gave it the name of "noble vappa." [oin-inos
, κ,
on,
of wine, oxos wine-vinegar]
vappa, ae, f. [kindr. with vapor;
cf. vapidus] , wine that
has lost its spirit and flavor; palled, flat, vapid
wine.
II. Transf., masc., a
spoiled
or worthless fellow, a good-fornothing,
And in 14:9
We will now, in a
similar
manner, give a description of the varieties found in the
parts beyond
sea. After the wines mentioned by Homer, and of which we
have already
spoken, those held in the highest esteem were the wines of
Thasos and
Chios, and of the latter more particularly the sort known
as
"Arvisium." By the side of these has been placed the wine
of Lesbos,4 upon
the authority of Erasistratus, a famous physician, who
flourished
about the year of the City of Rome
4 It was remarkable
for its sweetness, and aromatics were sometimes mixed
with it. Homer
calls it
harmless.
Lesbos still produces choice wines.
14:19 The first of the artificial
wines has
wine for its
basis; it is called "adynamon,"1 and is made in the following manner.
Twenty
sextarii of white
must are
boiled down
with half that quantity of water, until the amount of the
water is
lost by evaporation. Some persons mix with the must ten
sextarii of
sea-water and an equal quantity of rain-water, and leave
the whole to
evaporate in the sun for forty days. This beverage is given to
invalids to whom it is
apprehended that wine may prove injurious.
1 From the Greek,
meaning "without strength." The mixture, Fee remarks,
would appear to
be neither potable nor wholesome.
glukus
, eia (-κa Herod.4.2 ), u (-un IG14.1890 ), sweet to the
taste or smell, nektar b.
of water,
sweet,
, of
persons, sweet, dear, (sc.
oinos) grape-syrup,
gluxis, eτs, hκ, sweet insipid
wine, Phryn. Com.65, Polyzel.12 (pl.), cf.
Ath.1.31e:--also written
gleuxis in Hsch.
Fred Peatross: It was used at feasts and
marriages.
Corn can be stored, ground
and
made into bread. However, corn as grain has a season. In the
same
way, wine has a season when it comes from the vine. God does
not make
wine: the grapes will rot on the vine and never turn into
wine. Wine
is created by the art of mankind and is the fruit of the
vat:
Therefore will I
return, and take away my corn in the time thereof, and my
wine in the season thereof,
and
will
recover my wool and my flax given to cover
her nakedness. Ho.2:9
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
Hab.2:15
If Fred gives permission
for
people to drink wine just to escape from legalism into grace
he
should also be prepared to answer for the Fetal Alcohol
Syndrome
which assuredly Jesus would have know about. And he should
stand up
for the alcoholics who got permission to drink from the
priest or
preacher. It is a very dangerous game just to prove that
abstainers
are legalists.
"In the Holy Land
they do not
commonly use
fermented wines. The
best wines are preserved sweet
and unfermented."
In reference to
their customs at their religious
festivals,
he repeatedly
and emphatically said:
'The Jews do not, in
their
feasts for sacred purposes, including the marriage feast, ever use any kind of fermented
drinks.
In their oblations and libations, both private and public,
they employ
the fruit
of the
vine--that
is, fresh
grapes -- unfermented
grape
- juice,
and
raisins,
as the symbol of benediction.
"Fermentation is to them a symbol of
corruption, as
in nature and science it is itself decay, rottenness'." (Dr. S. M. Issacs, a
Jewish rabbi of the last
century, quoted by Patton, p. 83).
Jesus never spoke to the
multitudes without using a parable. The story of the wedding
is that
of a fairly large group and the host has not supplied
himself with
wine or "oil" for his lamp. In the Odes of
Solomon
we can get
the view of even common people at the time of Christ:
And I saw the destroyer of destruction, when the bride who is
corrupted is adorned:
and the
bridegroom
who corrupts and is
corrupted.
And I asked the Truth, 'Who are these?'; and He
said to me,
'This is the deceiver and the error;
odes, Ode 38:9-10
and they are alike in the beloved
and in his bride:
and they
lead astray and corrupt
the whole world: odes, Ode 38:11
> and they
invite many to the banquet, and
> give them to drink of the wine
of
their
intoxication,
> and remove their wisdom and
knowledge,
and so they make them without intelligence" odes, Ode 38:12-13
That is the
meaning of Spectacle worship or "holy
entertainment" to replace the church as synagogue or
school.
A wedding party is a
good
place to show that "marrying and giving in marriage" is
the sign of
the end-time religion:
For they shall eat, and not have enough: they
shall commit
whoredom, and shall not increase:
because
they have left off to take
heed
to the Lord. Hos
4:10
Whoredom and wine and new
wine take
away the
heart.
Hos 4:11
My people ask
counsel at their stocks,
and their staff
declareth unto them: for the spirit of whoredoms hath caused them to err,
and they have gone a
whoring from under their God. Hos 4:12
Fred Peatross: In times of scarcity it was mixed with water
and sometimes
even with milk. Its importance is evident in the fact
that God, as a
punishment, deprived Israel
of it.
God never gave them
wine any
more than He gave them barley beer which was often
contaminated with
ergo which made youseem insane. A SANE housewife boiled
the juice
down about one third and then sealed it in a sterilized
jar and
sealed it with was. Many times it was a THICK SYRUP.
Therefore, one
added water just as one adds water to INSTANT TEA.
When Israel turned to
drinking fermented wine and making music in their
religious festivals
He too away the Water as drink. However, the water was
symbolic of
the Word which had been lost beyond recovery.
Normally
fermented wine might average 5% alcohol. A tippler or
wine drinker
was:
Hermes then
defines a tippler:
Oh! the delicious tipple, half-wine,
half-water!
However, it was not
unusual
to
mix the wine with 20
parts of water. One who
drank it straight from the vat (say 5-8%) or a tippler
(say 2.5%)
would be a disreputable character. What would the Lord say
if He knew
that Fred is advocating drinking 18% spiked up hard
liquor?
Fred Peatross: Of the above-mentioned
Bible stories, the most controversial, if not the most
interesting is
the story that came out of Cana.
Three days later there
was a
wedding
in the village
of Cana in Galilee. Jesus' mother was there. Jesus and
his disciples were guests
also.
When they started
running low on wine at the wedding banquet, Jesus'
mother told him,
"They're just about out of wine. "
We
have
looked
this at length elsewhere.
However:
AND the third day
there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus was
there:
John 2:1
So we don't have Jesus as the gregarious
friend
of sinners or a partygoer. His mother was at the wedding but
not
Jesus:
And both Jesus was
called, and his disciples, to the marriage. John 2:2
Kaleo
(g2564) kal-eh'-o; akin to the base of 2753; to "call"
(prop. aloud,
but used in a variety of applications, dir. or
otherwise): - bid,
call (forth), (whose, whose sur-) name (was [called]).
Keleuo (g2753) kel-yoo'-o; from a
prim.
keεlloΡ , (to urge on); "hail"; to incite by word, i.e.
order: - bid, (at, give) command (- ment)
And when they wanted
wine,
the
mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine. John
2:3
Jesus saith unto
her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour (for
miracles) is
not yet come. John 2:4
The statement of Jesus
was
that this wedding was not his time to work a miracle.
However, Mary
pushed Him.
We should remember that the miracles of
Jesus
didn't convince the people: they were interested in wine and
not in
the word. Second, this was to accomodate the timing of Mary
and not
Jesus. Pouring out wine, if the group is already
intoxicated, would
be a sign of His glory as He poured out His wrath upon
those,
including His mother, who took no note of the Word of Jesus.
From the following, the
wine
and blood of the grape comes from the vine and then crushed
in the
vat. If one gets drunk on "wine" then it is intoxicating.
However,
the word is used of fresh grape juice as the product of
crushing the
life out of the grape:
The sceptre shall
not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his
feet, until
Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the
people be.
Isaiah 49:10
Binding his foal
unto the vine,
and his asss colt unto the choice
vine;
he washed his garments in wine,
and his clothes
in the blood
of
grapes:
Isaiah 49:11
[Wine equals the
blood
of
the grapes]
His eyes shall be red
with
wine,
and his teeth
white with milk. Isaiah 49:12
Wherefore art thou red in thine
apparel,
and thy
garments like
him
that treadeth
in the
winevat? Isaiah 63:2
Both "wine" and "milk"
are
natural food products: only if you want to get drunk do
you ferment
the wine or blood of the grape.
He might say, "sleep on" or "drink on,
your
Messiah has been here and left. Therefore, I
will
give
wine:
Give beer to those who are perishing (wandering
away),
wine to those who
are in anguish; Pr.31:6
The bitter or anguished are:
Mar
(h4751) mar; or (fem.) 4784 (rebelious or disobedient) maw-raw'; from 4843; bitter
(lit. or fig.); also
(as noun) bitterness, or (adv.) bitterly: - / angry, bitter (-ly,
-ness), chafed, discontented, great,
heavy.
Marah (h4748) maw-raw'; a prim.
root; to be
(caus. make) bitter (or unpleasant); (fig.) to rebel (or resist; causat. to
provoke): - bitter, change, be
disobedient,
disobey, grievously,
provocation,
provoke (-
ing), (be) rebel (against, -lious).
If you are Post Modern or Post Biblical
then
God says that you are rebelious and disobedient.
Therefore, it is ok
to supply the fellowship hall with all of the beer and
wine you
wish.
Fred
Peatross: Jesus,
however, not only replenished the supply, he made an
additional 120
to 160 gallons.- Not only does this behavior contradict
everything we
have ever heard from prohibitionists, it causes us to
re-evaluate the
conventional understanding of the proper limit of
drinking.
If this is intoxicating then Jesus
manufactures
and distributes what a modern person knows to be a poison.
He not
only approves of drinking wine but drunkeness for those Fred
believes
were already drunk.
Fred
Peatross: I certainly
know the dangers of drinking, both privately and
publicly, and this
may be reason enougl to discount my thoughts on the
wedding Jesus
attended almost two tllollsalld years ago in Cana, but I
can't help
but wonder if we've denied Christians the scriptural
freedom to drink
with moderation?
Fred has just given Christians the freedom
to
drink beyond moderation. Tests have shown that an earthworm
will not
go through a maze on the path which shocks him after three
times.
Just what is it about wine (wineskins) which demands that we
give
Christians permission to do what an earthworm would not do.
If you
ferment grapes naturally and dilute it with up to 20 parts
water you
have my permission. If you drink wine diluted to about 2.5%
alcohol
the people of the time would identify you as a tippler.
It is extremely rare to
hear
one claiming to speak for God who would accuse Jesus of
being a base,
evil person. And even rarer to hear a "scholar" who does
not know the
historical facts:
Q. In John,
Chapter 2, where Jesus turned the water into wine; was
this
intoxicating wine?
A. The answer is, "No", and here
are the
facts.The Greek word for "wine"
here is "oinos".It is a GENERIC word which
includes all
kinds of wine and all
stages of the juice of the grape, sometimes the clusters, and
even the vine.The word
itself, therefore, cannot give us the answer. In Proverbs
20:1 we are
told that "Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and
whosoever is
deceived thereby is not wise."Would it not be derogatory to the
character of
Christ to
suppose that
He exerted His miraculous power to produce 60 gallons of
intoxicating
wine. Wine which the Bible had denounced as "a mocker" (Proverbs 20:1), "biting like a serpent" and "stinging
like
an
adder"
(Proverbs
23:32), as the "poison of
dragons"
(Psalm 58:4),
"the cruel venom
of
asps
(Deuteronomy
32:33), and which the Holy Spirit had selected as the
emblem of God's
wrath (Revelation 16:19).
"Another fact is that alcohol does not
occur naturally in any product of
nature,
was never
created by God; but is essentially an artificial thing prepared by man through the
destructive process of
fermentation. A man who visited Palestine 130 years ago,
researching
Bible wines, quoted the following:
"All who know of
the wines then used, well understand the unfermented
juice of the
grape.The present wines of Jerusalem and Lebanon, as we
tasted them,
were commonly
boiled and
sweet,
without
intoxicating qualities, such as we here get in liquors
called
wines.The boiling prevents fermentation.
Those were esteemed
the
best
wines which were least strong."
"This event, the Wedding
at
Cana, furnishes no sanction for the use of alcoholic
beverages
today. Dr.
Max D. Younce
George
Whitefield:
"When men have well
drunken," but it nowhere appears that they
were the men. Is it to be supposed, that the most holy and unspotted
Lamb
of
God, who
was
manifested to destroy the
works of the devil, and
who, when at a Pharisee's house,
took notice of even the gestures of those with whom he sat
at meat;
is it to be supposed,
that
our
dear Redeemer, whose constant practice it was to tell
people they must
deny
themselves,
and take up
their crosses daily; who bid his disciples to take heed, lest at any time their
hearts might be over-charged with surfeiting and drunkenness; can it be supposed, that
such a self-denying
Jesus
should now turn
six large water-pots of water into the richest wine, to encourage excess
and drunkenness in persons,
who,
according
to this writer, had indulged to
pleasure and cheerfulness already?
Had our Lord sat
by, and seen
them
indulge,
without
telling them of it, would
it not be a sin? But to
insinuate he not only did this, but also turned water into
wine, to
increase that indulgence; this is making Christ a
minister of sin
indeed.
What is this, but
using him like the Pharisees of old, who called him a glutton, and a
wine-bibber?
Alas! how may we
expect our
dear Lord's
enemies
will treat him, when he
is thus wounded
in the house
of his
seeming friends?
Sirs, if you follow
such
doctrine as this, you will not be righteous, but I am persuaded you
will be wicked
over-much.
Lenski: "Those who charge Jesus
with
manufacturing intoxicants are "eager to mar, if by any
means they
could, the image of a perfect Holiness, which offends
and rebukes
them." (Quoting Trench)
Can we drink a mocker
in
moderation? Should be just get stung moderately by an
adder? Would
you suggest drinking the poison of dragons in moderation?
How about
the venom of asps in moderation?
Go ahead if you please
but
why is it important to charge churches of Christ with some
kind of
legalism for rejecting what the world's knowledge base
rejects?
Moderation to Fred
might be
almost instant addiciton to others. What is the point of
making
moderation in drinking poison a part of the dogma of the
emerging
church of Christ? We won't go there and we won't subscribe
to the
false charge of the adversaries of God that Jesus was a
wine
drinker.
Kenneth
Sublett
See Rubel Shelly
and the New Wineskins
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