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Desire to be a vessel of honor unto the Lord Jesus Christ?
Join For His Glory for a discussion on how
https://christianforums.net/threads/a-vessel-of-honor.110278/
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Taking the time to pray? Christ is the answer in times of need
https://christianforums.net/threads/psalm-70-1-save-me-o-god-lord-help-me-now.108509/
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G
Grace Alone
Guest
V
victorhadin
Guest
Ack. I think I have been such a person a fair amount in the past. *Cringes.* :-?
The worst part is that horrible feeling when you wake up the morning after a night of excess and your mind ticks away down it's own checklist:
-Mouth tastes vile. Obviously neglected to brush teeth after drinking.
-Head feels OK... -aaargh!!!-.... provided I don't move it at all.
-OK.. memory time.... let's see....
-Holy crap! I did that!?
-Oh hell. I'm going to have to look her in the face sometime next week.
-And why did I say that to him? He's such a nice chap.
-O paracetomol, where art thou....
-I'll never drink again.....
: I have been known to be decidedly over-loud or overly philosophical. I can still remember me talking about (of all things) the space shuttles solid rocket boosters and how their dimensions are connected to the width of a Roman horse's arse last time I went boozing. Yeesh, I feel sorry for the poor lass who was with me. Never lead me on to talking about aerospace engineering.....
I feel I have diverted and gone off on a tangent, but... hey-ho. What is a blog for, after all? ;)
P
presbuteros
Guest
"All things are lawful for me but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful for me but I will not be brought under the power of any."
1 Corinthians 6:12
Question re: alcohol is answered by St. Paul in the above verse.
1 Corinthians 6:12
Question re: alcohol is answered by St. Paul in the above verse.
M
Mr Shadrack
Guest
BOOZING
Seems to be part of our culture in Yorkshire to sink pots of ale daily. Now i am pushing 40 the health issues are starting to concern me.
Does Any one have any useful links concern these issues.A freind of mine at work and me also could benefit if we cut down.
Seems to be part of our culture in Yorkshire to sink pots of ale daily. Now i am pushing 40 the health issues are starting to concern me.
Does Any one have any useful links concern these issues.A freind of mine at work and me also could benefit if we cut down.
R
Rainbow
Guest
I cannot understand why many of you who claim Christ Jesus can condone drinking alcohol. It is wrong to drink a little or a lot. And many people whether they drink at home or at a public bar get so drunk that they don't know what they are doing. And they can't remember the next day what it was they did the night before when they were drunk. Some have woke up in jail because they were acting a fool. Some ended up in the hospital then in jail because they were drunk and got behind the wheel of a vehicle and hit some innocent person(s) head on and killed them. Are these the acts of people who claim Christ as their Lord and Savior? I don't think so.
Proverbs 20:1--"Wine is a mocker, strong drink is a brawler, and whoever is led astray by it is not wise."
Proverbs 20:1--"Wine is a mocker, strong drink is a brawler, and whoever is led astray by it is not wise."
Heidi Mighty Mo said:
I look at it the other way. The world sees christians as religious nutbars. The world also sees t-totallers as either "holier than thou", or addicts in denial. If they see that I'm not someone who is out to put the kibosh on anything that is fun to them, it strengthens my witness. They see that I'm a rational, normal person, who likes to have fun, but who has simply found a higher calling, and they are far more likely to talk to me about my faith than they would to someone with a "holier than thou" attitude.
W
willow the wip
Guest
Well for those who want to be Cutrally Relivent.
It is cultraley relivent to have a glass of wine at every meal for the bases of a brother or sister being offended so i dont cause a stumbling block its best not to do it infront of the person.
Jesus never forbade the drinking of Wine.
1 timothy this was concerning only elders of the church they should live by example not every one is an elder.
1 Timothy 3:1-3
1 It is a trustworthy statement: if any man aspires to the office of overseer, it is a fine work he desires to do.
2 An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, able to teach,
3 not addicted to wine or pugnacious, but gentle, peaceable, free from the love of money.
In verse three the phrase "not addicted to wine" literally means, "one who sits long at his wine." What is clearly indicated here is someone who does indeed drink wine, but does not become intoxicated. To say that the Bible forbids the drinking of wine is to bind where God has not bound. This is legalism.
On the other hand, alcohol is such an evil in our society today that extreme caution should be used when considering one's example.
The most important argument raised by moderationists (Christians who approve moderation in drinking) is that the Bible never forbids the consumption of alcoholic beverages. Many spokesmen for total abstinence have attempted to refute this argument, but their cause would be better served by an honest admission that no text in either the Old or the New Testament may be construed as an absolute prohibition of alcoholic drink.
The closest to such a prohibition is Proverbs 23:31-32, already discussed. Yet this text merely says, "Look not thou upon the wine." A reader searching for the Lord's will might take this text to mean, "Do not look longingly, with an eye of desire, upon alcoholic wine." In other words, do not develop a taste for the kind of wine that produces intoxication. The reader might surmise that whether he is permitted to drink depends on his motive. Drinking wine is all right if he is using it like any other beverage, as a means of satisfying thirst, but wrong if he is seeking the effects of intoxication. The implication he might draw is that he can take wine in moderation but not in excess, to the point of drunkenness. In defense of drinking in moderation, he might point out that the evils enumerated in Proverbs 23:29-35 are all associated with excessive drinking. Moreover, he might cite those texts where Paul seemingly takes some drinking for granted among the believers he addresses. For example, "And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess" (Eph. 5:18). "Likewise must the deacons be grave, not doubletongued, not given ["devoted"] to much wine" (1 Tim. 3:8).
But although moderationists are correct in asserting that Scripture never bans drinking, they are quite incorrect in asserting that Scripture encourages drinking. In fact, Scripture nowhere encourages drinking, even in moderation. The texts that moderationists cite in defense of their view fall in five categories.
Several texts clearly speak of wine as a divine blessing.
14 He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man: that he may bring forth food out of the earth;
15 And wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to make his face to shine, and bread which strengtheneth man's heart.
Psalm 104:14-15
Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart; for God now accepteth thy works.
Ecclesiastes 9:7
The question here is what these texts mean by the term "wine" (yayin).
Moderationists, resting on modern lexical authorities, assert that yayin always refers to the fermented juice of grapes. But unless founded on evidence, the opinion of a so-called lexical authority carries no more weight than anyone else's opinion. What in fact is the evidence that yayin refers only to alcoholic wine? It must be admitted that alcoholic wine is the meaning of yayin in some texts. Surely theyayin which humbled Noah was fermented. It must also be admitted that in no occurrence must yayin be understood as unfermented juice. Yet from these facts we may not leap to the conclusion that yayin is a term for alcoholic wine only. It is also possible that yayin is simply a generic term for any drink derived from grapes. In Genesis 49:11, yayin is used in parallel with the expression "blood of grapes." The Ugaritic cognate to yayin is used in parallel with much the same expression (1). The care taken by the author of Proverbs 23:31-32 to identify the dangerous kind of wine suggests that the term yayin in itself was insufficient to denote alcoholic wine.
We of the modern world make a sharp distinction between grape juice and wine because we recognize that the intoxicating agency in wine is wholly missing from grape juice. But the ancients understood neither that the intoxicating agency is a single substance, alcohol, nor that grape juice is free of this agency. Plutarch records an interesting discussion among guests at a dinner party as to why new sweet wine is less intoxicating than old wine. One guest suggested that the cloying sweetness of the new wine prevents anyone from drinking enough to be intoxicated (2).
In protest against the assertion that yayin can be used of either fermented or unfermented wine, moderationists make uninformed claims like the following: "Unfermented grape juice is a very difficult thing to keep without the aid of modern antiseptic precautions, and its preservation in the warm and not overcleanly conditions of ancient Palestine was impossible" (3). In fact, it takes no more ingenuity to prevent fermentation of grape juice than to prevent vinegarization of fermented wine. The ancients knew at least five methods of making nonalcoholic wine.
Vinous fermentation (fermentation yielding alcoholic wine) proceeds only if the concentration of grape sugar within the must (the unfermented juice) falls within a certain range. Fermentation can be prevented by boiling the must until the sugar concentration exceeds the maximum permitting fermentation. That this method of preserving grape juice was known to the ancients is attested by Pliny (4), Columella (5), Virgil (6), and others (7). Must reduced to a fraction (perhaps a half or a third) of its original volume was commonly known as defrutum (8).
Grape juice with enough sweetness to remain unfermented can be made just by pressing dried grapes. Pliny refers to a wine, called raisin-wine, that was made from grapes dried to half their weight (9). Polybius states that passum, a raisin-wine, was the staple drink of Roman women, who, at least in the early days of the Republic, were forbidden to drink ordinary wine (10).
Vinous fermentation occurs only within a certain temperature range, the lower limit being about 45°F. The ancients knew that if a cooled wine was allowed to sit undisturbed, the clear juice poured off from the sediment would remain unfermented for about a year. The benefit of keeping the wine still was that the yeast bodies responsible for fermentation settled to the bottom. This third method of making nonalcoholic wine is described by no less than three Latin writersâ€â€Cato (11), Columella (12), and Pliny (13).
Salt retards fermentation. According to Columella, "Some peopleâ€â€and indeed almost all the Greeksâ€â€preserve must with salt or sea-water" (14).
The boiling point of alcohol is lower than the boiling point of water. Therefore, by bringing fermented wine to the boiling point of water, the alcohol is driven off. According to Pliny, the ancients made a drink called adynamon (weak wine) by adding water to wine and boiling the mixture until the quantity was considerably reduced. This drink was a favorite preparation for the sick and invalid (15).
The moderationist position takes advantage of our pride in being modern, a pride that leads us to underestimate the technological skill of the ancients. Furthermore, as we have seen and will see again, it takes advantage of the decline in classical learning.
Yet, to all the evidence that the ancients were well aware of ways to preserve grape juice, the moderationist might retort, "Yes, but reference to these methods by Latin authors does not mean that these methods were widely known and employed in ancient Palestine." Of course not, but several lines of evidence establish the probability that unfermented wine was a common article among the people of Israel.
The Mishnah itself indicates that the Jews were familiar with boiled (inspissated) wines (16).
During the last several centuries, foreign travelers and residents in the Middle East have reported that boiling down fresh grape juice to the consistency of molasses is a common practice among the native peoples (17). The syrupy juice so produced, called dibbs, lasts unfermented for a period of years. Dibbs is highly prized as a drink both in concentrated form and when mixed with water. The peoples of the Middle East also make fermented wine, but traditionally have used only a small portion of their grapes for this purpose. Henry Homes, American missionary to Constantinople, wrote in 1848 that of the sixteen different products of grape farming in Asia Minor, fermented wine is the least important (18). Before Western influences began to refashion the culture of the Middle East, the Palestinian Arabs and other Middle Eastern peoples clung tenaciously to the ways of their forefathers. Change was barely distinguishable even over a period of centuries. The culture in existence during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is therefore a window to the distant past. It is likely that just as boiled wines were common among Palestinians of the pre-modern era, so they were common among the Jews of antiquity. We need not maintain that such wines were predominant. It is enough to maintain that the ancient Jews knew how to make them.
We are now ready to consider the texts that put wine (yayin) in a favorable light. I submit that all these texts use yayin in a generic sense, embracing both the fermented and unfermented juice of the grape. Neither the gladdened heart of Psalm 104:15 nor the merry heart of Ecclesiastes 9:7 alludes to intoxication. In the latter text, drinking wine with a merry heart is parallel to eating bread with joy. The idea is that God intends us to enjoy the nourishment He provides. In the former text, the effect of wine upon the heart is conceived as a real benefit, comparable to the inner strength derived from bread. Therefore, what the text means by gladness cannot be the unwholesome giddiness and detachment caused by an intoxicant, but the soul refreshment afforded by a cool, sweet beverage. It is a sign of our roots in a corrupt culture that we should, in our interpretation of this text, imagine that gladdening of the heart is a specific benefit of alcoholic wine. Alcoholic wine is an acquired taste, relished only by those who learn to discount the tartness and to tolerate the alcohol. The taste of grape juice brings gladness and pleasure to every drinker.
It is cultraley relivent to have a glass of wine at every meal for the bases of a brother or sister being offended so i dont cause a stumbling block its best not to do it infront of the person.
Jesus never forbade the drinking of Wine.
1 timothy this was concerning only elders of the church they should live by example not every one is an elder.
1 Timothy 3:1-3
1 It is a trustworthy statement: if any man aspires to the office of overseer, it is a fine work he desires to do.
2 An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, able to teach,
3 not addicted to wine or pugnacious, but gentle, peaceable, free from the love of money.
In verse three the phrase "not addicted to wine" literally means, "one who sits long at his wine." What is clearly indicated here is someone who does indeed drink wine, but does not become intoxicated. To say that the Bible forbids the drinking of wine is to bind where God has not bound. This is legalism.
On the other hand, alcohol is such an evil in our society today that extreme caution should be used when considering one's example.
The most important argument raised by moderationists (Christians who approve moderation in drinking) is that the Bible never forbids the consumption of alcoholic beverages. Many spokesmen for total abstinence have attempted to refute this argument, but their cause would be better served by an honest admission that no text in either the Old or the New Testament may be construed as an absolute prohibition of alcoholic drink.
The closest to such a prohibition is Proverbs 23:31-32, already discussed. Yet this text merely says, "Look not thou upon the wine." A reader searching for the Lord's will might take this text to mean, "Do not look longingly, with an eye of desire, upon alcoholic wine." In other words, do not develop a taste for the kind of wine that produces intoxication. The reader might surmise that whether he is permitted to drink depends on his motive. Drinking wine is all right if he is using it like any other beverage, as a means of satisfying thirst, but wrong if he is seeking the effects of intoxication. The implication he might draw is that he can take wine in moderation but not in excess, to the point of drunkenness. In defense of drinking in moderation, he might point out that the evils enumerated in Proverbs 23:29-35 are all associated with excessive drinking. Moreover, he might cite those texts where Paul seemingly takes some drinking for granted among the believers he addresses. For example, "And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess" (Eph. 5:18). "Likewise must the deacons be grave, not doubletongued, not given ["devoted"] to much wine" (1 Tim. 3:8).
But although moderationists are correct in asserting that Scripture never bans drinking, they are quite incorrect in asserting that Scripture encourages drinking. In fact, Scripture nowhere encourages drinking, even in moderation. The texts that moderationists cite in defense of their view fall in five categories.
Several texts clearly speak of wine as a divine blessing.
14 He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man: that he may bring forth food out of the earth;
15 And wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to make his face to shine, and bread which strengtheneth man's heart.
Psalm 104:14-15
Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart; for God now accepteth thy works.
Ecclesiastes 9:7
The question here is what these texts mean by the term "wine" (yayin).
Moderationists, resting on modern lexical authorities, assert that yayin always refers to the fermented juice of grapes. But unless founded on evidence, the opinion of a so-called lexical authority carries no more weight than anyone else's opinion. What in fact is the evidence that yayin refers only to alcoholic wine? It must be admitted that alcoholic wine is the meaning of yayin in some texts. Surely theyayin which humbled Noah was fermented. It must also be admitted that in no occurrence must yayin be understood as unfermented juice. Yet from these facts we may not leap to the conclusion that yayin is a term for alcoholic wine only. It is also possible that yayin is simply a generic term for any drink derived from grapes. In Genesis 49:11, yayin is used in parallel with the expression "blood of grapes." The Ugaritic cognate to yayin is used in parallel with much the same expression (1). The care taken by the author of Proverbs 23:31-32 to identify the dangerous kind of wine suggests that the term yayin in itself was insufficient to denote alcoholic wine.
We of the modern world make a sharp distinction between grape juice and wine because we recognize that the intoxicating agency in wine is wholly missing from grape juice. But the ancients understood neither that the intoxicating agency is a single substance, alcohol, nor that grape juice is free of this agency. Plutarch records an interesting discussion among guests at a dinner party as to why new sweet wine is less intoxicating than old wine. One guest suggested that the cloying sweetness of the new wine prevents anyone from drinking enough to be intoxicated (2).
In protest against the assertion that yayin can be used of either fermented or unfermented wine, moderationists make uninformed claims like the following: "Unfermented grape juice is a very difficult thing to keep without the aid of modern antiseptic precautions, and its preservation in the warm and not overcleanly conditions of ancient Palestine was impossible" (3). In fact, it takes no more ingenuity to prevent fermentation of grape juice than to prevent vinegarization of fermented wine. The ancients knew at least five methods of making nonalcoholic wine.
Vinous fermentation (fermentation yielding alcoholic wine) proceeds only if the concentration of grape sugar within the must (the unfermented juice) falls within a certain range. Fermentation can be prevented by boiling the must until the sugar concentration exceeds the maximum permitting fermentation. That this method of preserving grape juice was known to the ancients is attested by Pliny (4), Columella (5), Virgil (6), and others (7). Must reduced to a fraction (perhaps a half or a third) of its original volume was commonly known as defrutum (8).
Grape juice with enough sweetness to remain unfermented can be made just by pressing dried grapes. Pliny refers to a wine, called raisin-wine, that was made from grapes dried to half their weight (9). Polybius states that passum, a raisin-wine, was the staple drink of Roman women, who, at least in the early days of the Republic, were forbidden to drink ordinary wine (10).
Vinous fermentation occurs only within a certain temperature range, the lower limit being about 45°F. The ancients knew that if a cooled wine was allowed to sit undisturbed, the clear juice poured off from the sediment would remain unfermented for about a year. The benefit of keeping the wine still was that the yeast bodies responsible for fermentation settled to the bottom. This third method of making nonalcoholic wine is described by no less than three Latin writersâ€â€Cato (11), Columella (12), and Pliny (13).
Salt retards fermentation. According to Columella, "Some peopleâ€â€and indeed almost all the Greeksâ€â€preserve must with salt or sea-water" (14).
The boiling point of alcohol is lower than the boiling point of water. Therefore, by bringing fermented wine to the boiling point of water, the alcohol is driven off. According to Pliny, the ancients made a drink called adynamon (weak wine) by adding water to wine and boiling the mixture until the quantity was considerably reduced. This drink was a favorite preparation for the sick and invalid (15).
The moderationist position takes advantage of our pride in being modern, a pride that leads us to underestimate the technological skill of the ancients. Furthermore, as we have seen and will see again, it takes advantage of the decline in classical learning.
Yet, to all the evidence that the ancients were well aware of ways to preserve grape juice, the moderationist might retort, "Yes, but reference to these methods by Latin authors does not mean that these methods were widely known and employed in ancient Palestine." Of course not, but several lines of evidence establish the probability that unfermented wine was a common article among the people of Israel.
The Mishnah itself indicates that the Jews were familiar with boiled (inspissated) wines (16).
During the last several centuries, foreign travelers and residents in the Middle East have reported that boiling down fresh grape juice to the consistency of molasses is a common practice among the native peoples (17). The syrupy juice so produced, called dibbs, lasts unfermented for a period of years. Dibbs is highly prized as a drink both in concentrated form and when mixed with water. The peoples of the Middle East also make fermented wine, but traditionally have used only a small portion of their grapes for this purpose. Henry Homes, American missionary to Constantinople, wrote in 1848 that of the sixteen different products of grape farming in Asia Minor, fermented wine is the least important (18). Before Western influences began to refashion the culture of the Middle East, the Palestinian Arabs and other Middle Eastern peoples clung tenaciously to the ways of their forefathers. Change was barely distinguishable even over a period of centuries. The culture in existence during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is therefore a window to the distant past. It is likely that just as boiled wines were common among Palestinians of the pre-modern era, so they were common among the Jews of antiquity. We need not maintain that such wines were predominant. It is enough to maintain that the ancient Jews knew how to make them.
We are now ready to consider the texts that put wine (yayin) in a favorable light. I submit that all these texts use yayin in a generic sense, embracing both the fermented and unfermented juice of the grape. Neither the gladdened heart of Psalm 104:15 nor the merry heart of Ecclesiastes 9:7 alludes to intoxication. In the latter text, drinking wine with a merry heart is parallel to eating bread with joy. The idea is that God intends us to enjoy the nourishment He provides. In the former text, the effect of wine upon the heart is conceived as a real benefit, comparable to the inner strength derived from bread. Therefore, what the text means by gladness cannot be the unwholesome giddiness and detachment caused by an intoxicant, but the soul refreshment afforded by a cool, sweet beverage. It is a sign of our roots in a corrupt culture that we should, in our interpretation of this text, imagine that gladdening of the heart is a specific benefit of alcoholic wine. Alcoholic wine is an acquired taste, relished only by those who learn to discount the tartness and to tolerate the alcohol. The taste of grape juice brings gladness and pleasure to every drinker.
G
Grace Alone
Guest
I often wonder why alcoholism is a much bigger problem here in the states than in Europe and other such areas where having a glass of wine or beer is a completely natural and acceptable part of their culture (for Christians and non-Christians alike). Hmmmm......