Image123: Most of this guys don't fail to disappoint. Unfortunate if i may so say. Perhaps it has something to do with the drinking.

Anyways, for those interested in learning instead of amusing themselves. Please read this link and its following chapters. It pretty much explains what i may want to say on this thread,

http://www.biblicalperspectives.com/books/wine_in_the_bible/1.html

You don tire to follow systematic teaching but na link you dey tell us make we click. Why not tell us to click the Deuteronomy 14:26 starring in your face abi that one is not part of the all scriptures you often dey talk about or make we say no be God talk that one ni?

Abeg park for one side before you start dey fall hands.

Image123:

There's no fight and i have nothing to lose or gain. i've given evidence and answers on the same subkect matter in the past. The link is free for you to read and learn if you want to. It offers you detailed and educated explnations on all the wine scrptures instead of the emotional amusements prevalent here. Read if you have the mind.

There's no emotional whatever here. You are the one that should give better argument or evidence rather than your legalistic opinion. People have shown you moderation is what is required of a Christian but yours is, no drinking wine at all.

2. While you're a tithe advocate here, the same God said one can use tithe converted to money and drink ogogoro but you said no. Who are we to believe? If you can't deal with drinking in moderation, deal with it rather than saying what the bible doesn't say. And don't say those who drink ogogoro commit sin just because you can't drink or don't like it.

3. The Apostles wrote to the church, we have liberty in Christ only restricted not to use our liberty to gratify the flesh. That's enough and we know the works of the flesh which includes drunkenness. If a man drinks to moderation and don't get drunk, what sin has he commited? That he drank wine or that he got drunk?

4. This is not Image123 I know. The one I know will login his various I.Ds to canvass folks here or will open a thread doing some exegesis. But, this one is bigger than you. However, you can go ahead and do as above. You don chew pass wetin your mouth fit contain. You know say our people dey talk say, cow wey no get tail, na only God dey help pursue butterflies. Na only God fit help you for this one o. Swallow your pride and revisit some Christian teachings or doctrines you have long held unto.

Goshen360:

You don tire to follow systematic teaching but na link you dey tell us make we click. Why not tell us to click the Deuteronomy 14:26 starring in your face abi that one is not part of the all scriptures you often dey talk about or make we say no be God talk that one ni?

Abeg park for one side before you start dey fall hands.

if Image no direct us to "small book", he will direct us to "link" , its like he is tired of the bible, or the bible does not support his positions.

If image have conscience and the fear of God, he by now should have taken a stand for the truth and abandon fales tradition that is unsupported by the bible.

Image123: Proverbs 31:4 It is not for kings, O Lemuel, it is not for kings to drink wine; nor for princes strong drink:

:However, the earth is God's, and context is profitable to direct.

They usually say that silence is the best answer for folly. i'm yet to agree, but i think this thread supports that. hehehehe. Watch them all come out now like wounded people. Or better still, maybe they went and read the link given, and changed their ways and thoughts. Alleluia to God oh if it is so. Anyways, me i go still talk one or two. Here is the link again, for those who are interested in educated and serious study instead of the prevalent amusements seen so far. THE LINK
The OP asked for matured answers and the above quote is what i gave. Notice that i have not stated anything about sin or no sin. My angle is avoid it, but however note that every drink contains some percentage of alcohol as it were. Many drugs too.
Learned people know that the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, and that there is nothing unclean of itself. Learned people also know that every fruit contains sugar and ethanol. The content/percentage increases with fermentation. This is basic science and rural palm wine knowledge. Your sugar, your coca-cola, your medicine, lt all contains the likes of alcohol, cocaine, hemp and such banned substances.
Google is still free for your learning. You can't compare the fruit of the vine and whatever other fruit juice with alcohol content of about 0.1% or less to the likes of gin and whisky(above 40% alcohol), spirit(above 80%), brandy(35%) or beer(above 2% depending on which and not to mention the fishes and carton devourers that help multiply the percentage).
The bible solemnly discourages intake of alcoholic wine.

These are statements i made on this same thread and they are verifiable. i will however post some points from the link for posterity, and in case something(404 things ) happened to the link in future.

Pastor Kun:

You are the one that needs to research well. You would not find that term[wine] on most of those non alcoholic drinks you buy. They are always labelled as 'sparkling fruit juice' and not wine. I repeat the term non alcoholic wine is a Nigerian terminology.

Remember Kunle giving us this fabu on October 20. i gave this link that showed that there is non alcoholic wine and it is not just a nigerian thing. Of course he and his accomplices didn't see it, or did they?

Just did a quick search to help some to a link that says something similar. Note the following quote from the link.
"In many countries any drink with less than 0.5% ABV can legally be
described as non-alcoholic , because your body can metabolise the
alcohol as fast as you consume the drink. Although all orange juice
contains alcohol, the quantity is low enough that you won’t get
intoxicated from it, even if you drink many glasses of it. However in
places with zero-tolerance rules against driving with any measurable
alcohol in your blood, you might need to be careful if you are a very
heavy orange juice drinker."

http://quezi.com/14067

Anyway, next is the main link

-This "beloved enemy," as Jack Van Impe calls it, claims at least 100,000 American lives per year, 25 times as many as all illegal drugs combined.
-... alcohol is a habit-forming narcotic which weakens one’s capacity for self-control.
- the four related words—wine in English, vinum in Latin, oinos in Greek and yayin in Hebrew—have been used historically to refer to the juice of the grape, whether fermented or unfermented. This significant finding discredits the claim that the Bible knows only fermented wine
-most of today’s English dictionaries define"wine" as "fermented grape juice" or "the fermented juice of grapes," making no allowance for unfermented grape juice to be called "wine."
This assumption, known as the "one wine theory," has greatly prejudiced the study of the Biblical teachings on the use of alcoholic beverages by leading many sincere Christians to believe that God approves the moderate use of fermented, intoxicating wine.
We intend in this chapter to examine if indeed the theory of two kinds of wine has no Biblical and historical foundation, as many contend.
The procedure we shall follow is to trace the secular usage of the word "wine" backward, from English, to Latin, Greek and finally Hebrew. This historical survey across four languages is justified by the fact that the English word "wine" is directly related linguistically to the Latin vinum, the Greek oinos, and the Hebrew yayin

PART I: SECULAR USAGE OF THE WORD "WINE"

1. The Meaning of "Wine" in English
-Current Usage of "Wine." Most people assume today that the word "wine" can refer only to fermented, intoxicating grape juice, or to the fermented juice of any fruit used as beverage.
-Past Usage of "Wine." This restrictive meaning of "wine" represents, however, a departure from the more classical dual meaning of the word as a designation for both fermented or unfermented grape juice.
-the 1955 Funk & Wagnalls New "Standard" Dictionary of the English Language defines "wine" as follows: "1. The fermented juice of the grape: in loose language the juice of the grape whether fermented or not."
-New Webster Encyclopedic Dictionary of the English Language (1971) defines "must" as "Wine or juice pressed from the grapes but not fermented." This definition clearly equates "wine" with grape juice.
-the 1828 Webster’s Dictionary defines the word "must" as "new wine—wine pressed from the grape, but not fermented."
-The 1759 Nathan Bailey’s New Universal English Dictionary of Words and of Arts and Sciences offers the following definition for "wine": "Natural wine is such as it comes from the grape, without any mixture or sophistication. Adulterated wine is that wherein some drug is added to give it strength, fineness, flavor, briskness, or some other qualification."
- A New English Dictionary, published in 1748, defines "wine" as follows: "1. the juice of the grape. 2. a liquor extracted from other fruits besides the grape. 3. the vapours of wine, as wine disturbs his reason."
The above sampling of definitions of "wine" from older English dictionaries suggests that when the King James Version of the Bible was produced (1604-1611) its translators must have understood "wine" to refer to both fermented and unfermented wine. In view of this fact, the King James Version’s uniform translation of the Hebrew yayin and Greek onios as "wine" was an acceptable translation at that time, since in those days the term could mean either fermented or unfermented wine

2. The Meaning of the Latin Vinum

Latin Usage of Vinum.
- A large four-volumes Latin lexicon, Thesaurus Linguae Latinae, published in 1740, gives several definitions for vinum, all supported by ancient Roman authors. Two of these are especially relevant: "Aigleuces vinum—("sweet wine", "Defrutum vinum—("boiled wine", both of which are unfermented grape juice.
-Theatrum Botanicum published in 1640, explains that "The juyce or liquor pressed out of the ripe grapes, is called vinum, wine.
-Pliny (A. D. 24-79), the renowned Roman scholar and author of the celebrated Natural History, lists the boiled wines sapa and defrutum among the vinum dulce—"sweet wine." To these he adds other kinds of unfermented sweet wines
-W. Robertson in his Phraseologia Generalis, published in 1693, defines the Latin mustum as "new wine" and the phrase vinum pendens as "wine yet on the tree."
- Thomas Aquinas, the "Angelic Doctor" of the Roman Catholic Church, explains that "grape juice—mustum" can be used for the Eucharist, because it already "has the specific quality of wine [speciem vini]."
The foregoing examples suffice to show that the Latin word vinum, like its derived English wine, has been historically used to refer either to fermented or unfermented grape juice.

3. The Secular Usage of the Greek Oinos
- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.). In his book Metereologica, he clearly refers to "grape juice" or "must" (gleukos), as one of the kinds of wine : "For some kinds of wine [oinos], for example must [gleukos], solidify when boiled."
- In another passage of the same book, Aristotle refers to a sweet grape beverage (glukus) which "though called wine [oinos], it has not the effect of wine, for it does taste like wine and does not intoxicate like ordinary wine."
In this text Aristotle explicitly informs us that unfermented grape juice was called "oinos—wine," though it did not have the taste or the intoxicating effect of ordinary wine.
- Athenaeus, the Grammarian (about A.D. 200), explains in his Banquet that "the Mityleneans have a sweet wine [glukon oinon], what they called prodromos, and others call it protropos."19 Later on in the same book, he recommends this sweet, unfermented wine (protropos) for the dyspeptic: "Let him take sweet wine, either mixed with water or warmed, especially that kind called protropos, the sweet Lesbian glukus, as being good for the stomach; for sweet wine [oinos] does not make the head heavy.
- Proclus, the Platonic philosopher, who lived in the fifth century, in his annotation to Hesiod’s Works and Days, has a note on line 611 where he explains how the grapes were first exposed to the sun for ten days, then to the shade for ten days and finally "they treaded them and squeezed out the wine [oinon]."24 Here also the freshly squeezed juice of the grape is explicitly called "oinos—wine."

"In the Septuagint, the Hebrew word for grape-juice, tirosh, is translated at least 33 times by the Greek word oinos, wine, and the adjective ‘new’ is not present. Oinos without qualification, then, can easily mean unfermented wine in the New Testament." It is interesting that the translators of the Septuagint used oinos to translate the Hebrew word for grape juice (tirosh), instead of a less ambiguous word like gleukos, which means "must."

4. The Secular Usage of the Hebrew Yayin
Before examining the Biblical meaning of the Hebrew yayin and of the Greek oinos, we shall consider the usage of yayin in Jewish literature,
- The Jewish Encyclopedia provides a concise description of the various usages of yayin: "Fresh wine before fermenting was called ‘yayin mi-gat’’ (wine of the vat; Sanh 70a). The ordinary wine was of current vintage. The vintage of the previous year was called ‘yayin yashan’’(old wine). The third year’s vintage was ‘yayin meyushshan’’(very old wine)."
-Encyclopaedia Judaica (1971): "The newly pressed wine prior to fermentation was known as yayin mi-gat (‘wine from the vat;’ Sanh 70a), yayin yashan (‘old wine’) was wine from the previous year, and that from earlier vintages, yashan noshan (‘old, very old’)."
Both of these standard Jewish Encyclopedias explicitly attest that the term yayin was used to refer to a variety of wines, including "the newly pressed wine, prior to fermentation."
Conclusion. The investigation into the secular usage of the related words—wine, vinum, oinos and yayin—has clearly shown that these words have been historically used in their respective languages to designate the pressed juice of the grape, whether fermented or unfermented. This means that those who boldly claim that "the two wines view" is devoid of Biblical and historical support, base their claim on their ignorance of the parallel secular usage of the related words for wine in English, Latin, Greek and Hebrew.

PART II: THE BIBLICAL USAGE OF YAYIN AND OINOS
At this juncture it is important to ascertain if the same dual meanings are found in the Biblical usage of these two related words. This information is essential because it will explain why Scripture sometimes clearly approves of wine and sometimes strongly disapproves of it, while using the same word to designate both.
As already noticed, there is an apparent inconsistency in the use of this word, since sometimes it receives God’s approval and sometimes His disapproval.
-According to Robert Teachout’s tabulation of the 141 references to yayin in the Old Testament, 71 times the word refers to unfermented grape juice and 70 times to fermented wine.
-One of the clearest passages is Isaiah 16:10. The context of the passage is God’s judgment upon Moab for its pride.
The important point which this passage clarifies is that what the treaders tread out in the pressing vat is called yayin. This is obviously unfermented grape juice, since fermentation is a time-controlled process. Some people wrongly assume that if one just lets grape juice alone, it will automatically ferment into a "good" grade of wine. Such an assumption is wrong. Pressed grape juice (must) allowed to ferment without a controlled environment becomes spoiled grape juice (vinegar) which no one wishes to drink.

There's much more in the link for those who want to really know the truth on the matter.

-A major objection to the view that Scripture approves the use of unfermented grape juice is the alleged impossibility in Bible times of preserving grape juice unfermented.
- Columella, a renowned agriculturalist who lived in the first century A.D. In his treatise On Agriculture and Trees, Columella discusses at great length the various methods used by different people to preserve such produce as lettuce, onions, apples, pears, berries, plums, figs, olives, unfermented grape juice and fermented wine.
- It is widely believed that in the ancient world it was much easier to preserve fermented wine than to preserve unfermented grape juice. Such a belief rests on the mistaken assumption that the preservation of fermented wine was a simple process requiring only that the pressed grape juice ferment naturally. The truth is quite different. Fermented wines are subject to a number of infections which cause them to become acid, malodorous and moldy.
-The ancients were acquainted with the fact of fermentation, even though they did not understand its causes. Just what happens during the conversion of grape juice into wine was not clearly understood until the 1860’s, when Louis Pasteur undertook his study of fermentation. The ancients, however, were familiar with some of the methods by which fermentation can be prevented.
-The process of fermentation occurs only in the presence of certain conditions such as a moderate temperature, moisture and air in the grape juice. Now there are four major methods by which these conditions can be altered or eliminated and thus grape juice be preserved fresh and unfermented.
These are Boiling, Filtration, Cold storage and Sulphur fumigation, all of which were known by the ancients. You can read this for more detail.


Many well-meaning Christians find the fundamental justification for their moderate drinking of alcoholic beverages in the teachings and example of Jesus.
PART I: THE WEDDING AT CANA

The belief that the wine Christ provided in Cana was alcoholic rests on five major assumptions. First, it is assumed that the word oinos "wine" indicates only "fermented-quality grape drink, i.e. wine." Second, it is assumed that since the word oinos "wine" is used in reference both to the wine which ran out and the wine that Christ made, both wines must have been alcoholic. Third, it is assumed that the Jews did not know how to prevent the fermentation of grape juice; and since, as argued by William Hendriksen, the season of the wedding was just before Spring Passover (cf. John 2:13), that is, six months after the grape harvest, the wine used at Cana had ample time to ferment. Fourth, it is assumed that the description given by the master of the banquet to the wine provided by Christ as "the good wine" means a high-quality alcoholic wine. Fifth, it is assumed that the expression "well drunk" (John 2:10) used by the master of the banquet indicates that the guests were intoxicated because they had been drinking fermented wine. Consequently, the wine Jesus made must also have been fermented.

-The popular assumption that both in secular and Biblical Greek the word oinos meant fermented grape juice exclusively was examined at great length in Chapter 2.(see my last post or go to chapter 2 for detail). The fact that the wine made by Christ at Cana is called oinos, offers no ground for concluding that it was fermented wine. Its nature must be determined by internal evidence and moral likelihood. The record of the evangelist, as we shall see, affords information for determining this question.
- as mentioned earlier, the word oinos is a generic term referring either to fermented or to unfermented wine. Thus the fact that the same word oinos is used for both wines in question does not necessitate that both wines be alcoholic.
Abbott, Dictionary of Religious Knowledge, ‘It is tolerably clear that the word wine does not necessarily imply fermented liquor. It signifies only a production of the vine.’ The eminent Hellenist, Sir Richard Jebb, former Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge, declared oinos "a general term which might include all kinds of beverages."
- The third assumption is clearly discredited by numerous testimonies from the Roman world of New Testament times describing various methods for preserving grape juice. We have seen in Chapter 4 that the preservation of grape juice was in some ways a simpler process than the preservation of fermented wine. Thus, the possibility existed at the wedding of Cana to supply unfermented grape juice near the Passover season, since such a beverage could be kept unfermented throughout the year.
-The fourth assumption is based on twentieth-century tastes. the Roman world of New Testament times, the best wines were those whose alcoholic potency had been removed by boiling or filtration. Pliny, for example, says that "wines are most beneficial (utilissimum) when all their potency has been removed by the strainer." Similarly, Plutarch points out that wine is "much more pleasant to drink" when it "neither inflames the brain nor infests the mind or passions"
Referring to some of the same ancient authors, Barnes(Albert Barnes in his commentary on john 2v10) says: "Pliny, Plutarch and Horace describe wine as good, or mention that as the best wine which was harmless or innocent—poculis vini innocentis. The most useful wine—utilissimum vinum—was that which had little strength; and the most wholesome wine—saluberrimum vinum—was that which had not been adulterated by ‘the addition of anything to the must or juice.’ Pliny expressly says that a ‘good wine’ was one that was destitute of spirit. Lib iv. c.13.
The wine Christ made was of high quality, not because of its alcohol content, but because, as Henry Morris explains, it was "new wine, freshly created! It was not old, decayed wine, as it would have to be if it were intoxicating. There was no time for the fermentation process to break down the structure of its energy-giving sugars into disintegrative alcohols. It thus was a fitting representation of His glory and was appropriate to serve as the very first of His great miracles (John 2:11)."

Another reason leading us to reject the assumption that "the good wine" produced by Christ was high in alcoholic content is the negative reflection such an assumption casts upon the wisdom of the Son of God. If, in addition to the considerable quantity of alleged alcoholic wine already consumed, Christ miraculously produced between 120 and 160 gallons of intoxicating wine for the use of men, women and children gathered together at the wedding feast, then He must be held morally responsible for prolonging and increasing their intoxication. His miracle would only serve to sanction the excessive drinking of alcoholic beverages. If this conclusion is true, it destroys the sinlessness of Christ’s nature and teachings.
-It is against the principle of Scriptural and moral analogy to suppose that Christ, the Creator of good things (Gen 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25; Col 1:16), would exert His supernatural energy to bring into existence an intoxicating wine which Scripture condemns as "a mocker" and "a brawler" (Prov 20:1) and which the Holy Spirit has chosen as the symbol of divine wrath.
-"It must be observed," notes Leon C. Field, "that the adjective used to describe the wine made by Christ is not agathos, good, simply, but kalos, that which is morally excellent or befitting. The term is suggestive of Theophrastus’ characterization of unintoxicating wine as moral (ethikos) wine."

-The final assumption to be examined relates to the expression "well drunk"
the Greek verb methusko can mean "to drink freely" without any implication of intoxication. In his article on this verb in the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Herbert Preisker observes that "methuo and methuskomai are mostly used literally in the NT for ‘to be drunk’ and ‘to get drunk.’
The Parkhurst Greek lexicon cites the Septuagint usage of the methuo word group in Old Testament passages as illustrative of the meaning "to drink freely": "Methuo . . . denotes in general to drink wine or strong drink more freely than usual, and that whether to drunkenness or not. Pass[ively] to drink freely and to cheerfulness, though not to drunkenness . . . John 2:10. And in this sense the verb is plainly used by the LXX (i.e. Septuagint), Gen 43:34; Cant 5:1; and also, I think, in Gen 9:21."26 The latter meaning is respected by the Revised Standard Version which renders it more accurately "when men have drunk freely."

-The stated object of the miracle was for Christ to manifest His glory so that His disciples might believe in Him. This objective was accomplished: "This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory; and his disciples believed in him" (John 2:11). Christ’s presence at a marriage feast was intended to show divine approval of the marriage institution and of the innocent enjoyments of social life.
-Christ was aware of the powerful influence His example would have on contemporary and future generations. If, with all this knowledge He created an intoxicating wine, He would have revealed diabolic rather than divine power and glory.

PART II: NEW WINE IN NEW WINESKINS
The first saying occurs in the three parallel passages (Matt 9:17; Mark 2:22; Luke 5:37-38). The second is found only in Luke 5:39.
-Anyone familiar with the pressure caused by the gas-producing fermentation knows that no bottle, whether of skin or glass, can withstand such pressure. Job knew this when he said: "Behold, my heart is like wine that has no vent; like new wineskins, it is ready to burst" (Job 32:19). The Encyclopedia Biblica acknowledges this fact, saying: "It is impossible that the must could ever have been put into skins to undergo the whole process of fermentation, as is usually stated, the action of the gas given off in the early stages of the process being much too violent for any skins to withstand.
-"Jesus was not thinking at all of fermented, intoxicating wine, but of ‘must,’ a non-intoxicating beverage, which could be kept safely in new leather bottles, but not in old skins which had previously contained ordinary wine, because particles of albuminoid matter adhering to the skin would set up fermentation and develop gas with an enormous pressure."
if new wineskins were used to store unfermented new wine, no fermentation-causing agents would be present in the skins themselves. Thus, the wine would be preserved from fermentation and the wineskins from rupture.

-This interpretation is further confirmed by the symbolic meaning of Christ’s saying. The imagery of new wine in new wineskins is an object lesson in regeneration. As fittingly explained by Ernest Gordon, "The old wineskins, with their alcoholic lees, represented the Pharisees’ corrupt nature. The new wine of the Gospel could not be put into them. They would ferment it. ‘I came not to call the self-righteous but repentant sinners.’ The latter by their conversion become new vessels, able to retain the new wine without spoiling it (Mark 2:15-17, 22). So, by comparing intoxicating wine with degenerate Pharisaism, Christ clearly intimated what his opinion of intoxicating wine was."

Fermented wine is given no recognition. It could be put into any kind of wineskin, however sorry and corrupt. But new wine is like new cloth which is too good to be used in patching rags. It is a thing clean and wholesome, demanding a clean container.

PART III: IS OLD WINE IS BETTER?
In the passage under consideration it is legitimate to infer that "new wine" has the same meaning in the whole passage, because it is used consecutively without any intimation of change of meaning. The metaphors in both sayings are used without confusion or contradiction. This means that if the "new wine" of verse 38 is, as shown earlier, unfermented grape juice, the same must be true of the "new wine" of verse 39.

Before discussing whether or not Christ expressed a judgment on the superior quality of "old wine" over "new wine," it is important to determine whether the "old wine" spoken of is fermented or unfermented. From the viewpoint of quality, age "improves" the flavor not only of fermented wine but also of unfermented grape juice. Though no chemical change occurs, grape juice acquires a finer flavor by being kept, as its fine and subtle particles separate from the albuminous matter and other sedimentations. Thus, the "old wine" esteemed good could refer to grape juice preserved and improved by age.
The context, however, favors the meaning of fermented wine, since Christ uses the metaphor of the "old wine" to represent the old forms of religion and the "new wine" the new form of religious life He taught and inaugurated. In this context, fermented old wine better represents the corrupted forms of the old Pharisaic religion.
-A careful reading of the text indicates that the one who says "The old is good" is not Christ but anyone who has been drinking "old wine."
He says simply that anyone who has acquired a taste for old wine does not care for new. We know this to be the case. Drinking alcoholic beverages begets an appetite for stimulants and not for alcohol-free juices.
Christ’s saying does not represent His judgment regarding the superiority of old, fermented wine.
The view that old, fermented wine is better than new wine, would be false even if everyone on earth believed it! And in the passage we are considering is contradicted by the context in which it occurs and by the whole purpose of the illustration. In the immediate context Jesus uses the same word (palaios) of old garments, which He obviously did not esteem as better than new ones. The statement about "old wine" seems to contradict the preceding one about "old garment," but the contradiction disappears when one understands the purpose of the illustration.

-The purpose of the illustration is not to praise the superiority of old wine but to warn against an over-estimation of the old forms of religiosity promoted by the Pharisees.
The common purpose of all the four illustrations is to help people accustomed to the old forms of religion, and unacquainted with the new form of religious life taught by Christ, to recognize that the old seems good only so long as one is not accustomed to the new, which in and of itself is better.

PART IV WAS JESUS A GLUTTON AND A DRUNKARD?
Lovers of alcoholic beverages love to affirm that Jesus was a drinking man in order to shelter themselves under the cover of His example.
-The reasoning that "John drank no wine, while Christ did, therefore we may drink" ignores several crucial considerations. First of all, the phrase "eating and drinking" is used idiomatically to describe not so much the difference in their eating and drinking habits, as the difference in their social lifestyles.
-As the austerity of John’s lifestyle led his slanderers to charge him with being demon-possessed, so the sociability of Jesus’ lifestyle led the same critics to charge Him with indulgence in sensuous delights, with being "a glutton and a drunkard." Both charges were groundless, because both Jesus and John lived exemplary lives of self-denial. They followed different lifestyles because they had their different mission.
-Jesus, not being a Nazirite, was not under the obligation to abstain from drinking grape juice, made from the fruit of the vine. We know He drank at the Last Supper. It is not necessary to assume that because Jesus, contrary to John, "came drinking," that He drank all kinds of wine, both fermented and unfermented. If that were true for drinking, the same would be true for eating. Yet, no one is arguing that Jesus ate all kinds of food, both good and bad, clean and unclean.
-Another significant point often overlooked is that Jesus did not mention "wine" in describing His own lifestyle. While of John the Baptist Jesus said that he came "eating no bread and drinking no wine," of Himself He simply said: "The Son of Man has come eating and drinking."
-Some argue, "Were it the case that Jesus did not drink wine, how could it be alleged that he was a drunkard?"
The weakness of this assumption is its failure to realize that the charge is a lie, based not on factual observations but on a fiction fabricated by unscrupulous critics. Assuming that His critics actually saw Jesus drinking something, they would have readily accused Him of being a drunkard, even if they saw Him drinking grape juice, or water, for that matter. On the day of Pentecost, as we shall see in Chapter 6, critics charged the apostles with being drunk on grape-juice (gleukos—Acts 2:13). This goes to show that no matter what Jesus drank, His unscrupulous critics would have maligned Him as a drunkard.
-To infer that Jesus must have drunk wine because His critics accused Him of being a "drunkard" means to accept as truth the word of Christ’s enemies. On two other occasions his critics accused Jesus, saying: "You have a demon" (John 7:20; 8:48). If we believe that Christ must have drunk some alcoholic wine because His critics accused Him of being a drunkard, then we must also believe that He had an evil spirit because His critics accused Him of having a demon. The absurdity of such reasoning shows that using critics’ accusations is not safe grounds for defining Biblical teachings.

PART V: THE COMMUNION WINE
-Considering how often the New Testament writers mention the Last Supper, their entire avoidance of the term oinos (wine) in its connection is remarkable. The two terms used instead are "the cup" and "the fruit of the vine." The consistent avoidance of the term "wine," especially by Paul in his extended description of the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor 11:17-34), suggests that they may have wished to distinguish the content of the cup from what was commonly known as fermented wine.
- Christ calls the content of the cup "the fruit of the vine" (gennema tes ampelou). The noun gennema (fruit) derives from the verb gennao, to beget or produce, and signifies that which is produced in a natural state, just as it is gathered.
-It seems that in His divine wisdom Christ chose to designate the content of the cup, the memorial of His redeeming blood, "the fruit of the vine" so that future generations of Christians would find no sanction in His words for using alcoholic wine at the Lord’s Supper.

Was the Passover Wine Alcoholic?

Jewish Practice. A second major argument used to defend the alcoholic nature of the wine contained in the "cup" of the Last Supper, is the alleged prevailing Jewish custom of using fermented wine at Passover.
We must never forget that Christ’s teachings and practices were not necessarily conditioned by prevailing customs. Jesus often acted contrary to prevailing religious customs of fasting, hand-washing, and burdensome Sabbathkeeping. In fact, His independent spirit is revealed in the very institution of the Lord’s Supper. He offered to His disciples the symbolic cup only once, instead of the customary four times, and He used only the bread as the symbol of His body, leaving out the roasted lamb and the bitter herbs as symbols of the ordinance. Thus, it would not have been surprising if Christ had acted contrary to prevailing custom by using unfermented grape juice, especially since He viewed leaven or fermentation as the symbol of moral corruption (Matt 16:6, 12)

- But Jesus may not have needed to act against a prevailing custom. There are indications that there was no uniformity in the use of Passover wine by the Jews. Such absence of uniformity is present among modern Jews as well.
-Jesus used unfermented grape juice at the Last Supper because He understood and observed the Mosaic law requiring the absence of all fermented articles during the Passover feast. The law forbade the use and presence in the house of seor (Ex 12:15), which means leaven, yeast or whatever can produce fermentation.
-We cannot imagine that our Lord disregarded a Biblical command by choosing fermented wine to perpetuate the memory of His sacrifice, of which all the other sacrifices were but types.
-Could the redeeming and cleansing blood of Christ have been represented aptly by an intoxicating cup which stands in the Scripture for human depravity and divine indignation?
-The blood of Christ was free from defilement and corruption. There was no taint of sin in His veins. "He whom God raised up saw no corruption" (Acts 13:37) either in life or in death. To symbolize the purity of His blood (life) poured out for the remission of sin, Jesus took a cup and over its content, declared: "This is my blood" (Matt 26:28). The content of the cup could hardly have been fermented wine, because the latter cannot properly symbolize the incorruptible and precious blood of Christ" (1 Pet 1:18-19).
-Fermented wine is an appropriate emblem for decay and death, for fermentation destroys most of the nutrients found in grape juice. On the other hand, unfermented grape juice, on account of its innocent and nutritious properties, is a proper symbol of the blessings of salvation and immortal life bestowed upon us through the blood of Christ. His blood is said to purify our "conscience from dead works" (Heb 9:14), but fermented wine weakens our moral inhibitions and awakens our baser passions, thus causing the defilement of our consciences. Can such a product properly represent the cleansing power of Christ’s redeeming blood? Hardly so.
-Christ commands "all" of His followers to drink the cup. If the content of the cup were alcoholic wine, not all Christians could drink. There are some to whom alcohol in any form is very harmful. Young children participate at the Lord’s table should certaintly not touch wine. There are those to whom the simple taste or smell of alcohol awakens in them a dormant or conquered craving for alcohol. Could Christ, who taught us to pray "Lead us not into temptation," have made His memorial table a place of irresistible temptation for some and of danger for all?

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-The specific references to "wine"(oinos) outside the four Gospels are only thirteen, eight of which occur in the book of Revelation, where "wine" is used mostly symbolically, either to represent human depravity or divine retribution. This could suggest that we have only a total of five texts (Rom 14:21; Eph 5:18; 1Tim 3:8; 5:23; Titus 2:3) by which to determine the attitude of the Apostolic Church toward drinking.

In reality, however, the New Testament provides considerably more information on this subject through over twenty passages admonishing Christians to be "sober" or "temperate." These admonitions, as we shall see, are in most cases directly related to drinking practices. Thus, our determination of the New Testament teaching on drinking should be based both on those texts which speak specifically of wine and on those which offer general admonitions on sobriety and temperance.

ACTS 2:13: "FILLED WITH NEW WINE"
The assumption is that the accusation of the mockers was based on factual observation of Christian drinking. This is a gratuitous assumption, because mockers do not necessarily base their slander on factual observation. Even if they did, what they presumably had seen was Christians under the influence of the Holy Spirit rather than of alcoholic spirits.
-if the mockers really wished to charge the disciples with drunkenness, they would have accused them of being filled with "wine" (oinos) and not with "grape-juice" (gleukos). The term "gleukos" was used to designate unfermented grape juice. Pliny, for example, explicitly explains that what the Greeks call "aigleucos, this is our permanent must." He goes on to tell how to prevent its fermentation.
-Several Greek lexicons and scholars acknowledge that gleukos designates exclusively unfermented grape juice.
It occurs only once [Acts 2:13]

-In view of the meaning of gleukos as unintoxicating grape juice, the irony of the charge is self-evident. What the mockers meant is "These men, too abstemious to touch anything fermented, have made themselves drunk on grape juice." Or as Ernest Gordon puts it in modern speech, "These drys are drunk on soft drink." Bumstead perceptively asks, "If this was not the point of their ‘mocking’ how can the use of gleukos, instead of the common word oinos, be accounted for?" The inadequacy of the cause, grape juice, to produce the effect, drunkenness, is designed to add point to the derisive jest.


1 CORINTHIANS 11:2 "ONE IS HUNGRY AND ANOTHER IS DRUNK"

-Paul’s rebuke suggests that Christians in Corinth had unwisely confused the Lord’s Supper with a social meal; possibly they had even reduced the Lord’s Supper to a social festival similar to the festivals observed among the Greeks.
-Paul’s statement, "When you come together, it is not the Lord’s supper that you eat" (1 Cor 11:20) clearly indicates that the purpose of the gathering was to celebrate the Lord’s Supper, which, however, they had transformed into an ordinary festivity, presumably patterned after the feasts in honor of idols. This leads us to the following conclusion: all that was done at Corinth was irregular and improper.
-any alleged "drunkenness" occurring at the Communion table of the Corinthian church can hardly serve to prove the existence of drinking of alcoholic beverages in the Apostolic Church. A local perversion can scarcely be indicative of a general Christian practice. Moreover, if the Corinthians deviated from the instructions "delivered" unto them, then their misconduct is more a warning than an example for us.

-The Greek translation of the Old Testament, known as the Septuagint, provides numerous examples where methuo is used in the generic sense of "filled to the full." One of them is Psalm 23:5 which says: "my cup overflows" (methuskon—full to the brim). Another example is Psalm 65:10: "Thou waterest its furrows abundantly [methuson]." Yet another is Jeremiah 31:14: "I will feast [methuso—satiate] the soul of the priests with abundance." Examples such as these clearly show that methuo is often used in Scripture in a generic sense to express full satisfaction, satiety.

-Paul’s rebuke and admonition suggest that drunkenness was not the problem at the Communion table of the Corinthian church. His words of rebuke are, "What! Do you not have houses to eat and drink in?" (v. 22). If drunkenness had been the problem, presumably Paul would have said, "Do you not have houses to eat and get drunk in?" The fact that Paul in his rebuke makes no allusion to "drunkenness" suggests that the problem at Corinth was not intoxication with alcoholic wine but rather one of excessive indulgence in eating and drinking.

EPHESIANS 5:18 "DO NOT GET DRUNK WITH WINE"

-The passage consists of two major statements placed in contrast (antithesis) to each other: "drunk with wine" versus "filled with the Spirit." The antithesis suggests that the contrast is not between moderation and excess, but between fullness of wine and fullness of the Spirit.
The fact that inebriating wine and the Holy Spirit are mutually exclusive, because no one can be filled with half of each, precludes the sanction for a moderate use of intoxicating wine.

This point is made clearer by quoting the preceding text, which says: "Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is," namely, that we should be filled not with ardent spirits but with the Holy Spirit. Thus, the structure of the passage suggests that Paul is not recommending a supposedly safe and moderate ingestion of wine, but a full infilling of the Holy Spirit. It is scarcely conceivable that a person "filled with the Spirit" would crave intoxicating wine.
-Luke 1:15 where the angel says to Zechariah concerning John the Baptist: "And he shall drink no wine nor strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit." The second passage is from the story of Pentecost and consists of two verses: "For these men are not drunk . . ." " And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit" (Acts 2:15, 4).

In both of these passages the infilling of the Holy Spirit is connected to abstention from intoxicating drink. The striking similarity between these two passages and Ephesians 5:18 suggests that in the latter text also the infilling of the Holy Spirit precludes the drinking of alcoholic beverages.

ADMONITIONS TO SOBRIETY
In their epistles Paul and Peter employ two terms (sophron and nephalios) both of which are usually rendered as "temperate" or "sober."
-Both secular and Biblical Greek, the primary meaning of the two terms and their derivatives, is to abstain from all intoxicating substances. This means, as we shall see, that several of the apostolic injunctions to sobriety are primarily injunctions to abstinence from intoxicating beverages.

These and much more are seen in this source. Readers should go ahead to digest.

The writer is a scholar by name Dr. Samuele Bacchiocchi.he earned a B. A. degree in Theology at Newbold College. From England he came to America for his graduate studies and earned a M. A. and a B. D. degrees at Andrews University Theological Seminary. Upon completing his seminary training in 1964, he went with his wife, Anna, to Ethiopia where he served for five years as Bible and History teacher. He has served at Andrews for 26 years as Professor of Theology and Church History until his retirement on July 2000. He travels extensively around the world lecturing at universities, theological seminaries, professional meetings, and religious gatherings.
i guess he knows what he is talking about too. What i'm saying is not just borne out of personal emotionalism or what my bush pastor's taught me. The links show many of the references and researched work. With all that said and done, i still stick to my initial comment on this thread. here it is again. Its just that simple ithink.

Image123: Proverbs 31:4 It is not for kings, O Lemuel, it is not for kings to drink wine; nor for princes strong drink:

:However, the earth is God's, and context is profitable to direct.

Great job.

God bless you, @image123.

God2man.

udopee:
John2:1-10. When the governor tasted Jesus wine, he confessed that it is a good wine(non alcohol). By then most people have been drunk with the bad wine(alcohol bcus the people were intoxicated from it).
Woe(curse) unto him that giveth his neighborh wine to drink. Wine is a mocker and strong drink is raging. Proverb20:1.
Escape for ur life and repent before it will be late...

Abeg wch version of bible u dey read 4m, dm specify say good wine na non alcoholic wine? Pple jst twist d bible 2 sooth dm

There is nothing like non alcoholic wine, wine is alcoholic, is drinking wine permissible in Christianity, well, I think it is.

thanks everybody. i've learnt a lot

bump

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