Guinness uses "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms" in "Empty Chair" commercial

David,

Respectfully, please explain Luke 7:33-35 as well as Mark 7:14 - 23.

gratsi…mp

David, as I’ve pointed out before, the methods you mention to make unfermented grape beverages find no support in the Bible.

Regarding the passages you cite, please look the words up in Strong’s and inform this forum whether the word used is “tirosh” or “yayin”. I am guessing the former, and the use of “new wine” to characterize this simply describes the process, not the result. This process is, by the way, singularly unsuited to produce unfermented beverages in the way you describe, even if the Hebrews could be persuaded to waste precious fuel doing so.

dmicah,

You asked me to explain verses in Luke and Mark:

Luke 7:33-35

John Baptist did not eat and drink with the people. He did not socialize.

Jesus did just the opposite.

Jesus ate and drank with the people; He socialized with them.

I eat and drink with folks often, but I don’t drink alcohol.

But how could Jesus’ enemies call Him a winebibber if He did not drink alcohol at all?

The same way those who hated Jesus called Him demon possessed (John 10:20).

Jesus was no more a social drinker just because His enemies called Him a winebibber, than He was a little demon possessed because those who hated Him falsely accused Him of demon possession.

No matter what Jesus did, His enemies slandered Him.

Mark 7:14-23

1. This passage is not speaking of alcohol at all.

2. The context clearly shows it is speaking of the ceremonial Jewish practices of washing hands, pots, etc. See first verses of chapter 7.

3. Jesus is speaking of food, not drugs.

4. Jesus’ point is not, drink all you want and it will not defile you.

5. Jesus’ point is that whether you keep or don’t keep the ceremonial laws - that will not defile you; an evil heart is what defiles you.

6. This passage no more justifies drinking alcohol, than it justifies eating poison mushrooms, arsenic, smoking marijuana, taking meth, etc.

7. This passage in no way cancels out Proverbs 20:1; 23:19-35; 1 Thessalonians 5:6-8; 1 Peter 5:7.

Disclaimer: Ceremonial washing is not required, but you should still wash your hands often!

David R. Brumbelow

The above verse was supposed to be 1 Peter 5:8, not 5:7.

David R. Brumbelow

defending drunkenness (self medication to escape the realities of life) or the use of alcohol as a recreational drug (“I need a martini [or other drink] to relax after a hard days work.”)

My position comes in part from the question why wasn’t total abstention from beverage alcohol the position of men (and women) who were saved and loved the Lord and His Word and who sought to live Godly lives, before the early 19th century and were located in North America or Great Britain (mind you this was before Irish independence). There were folks who knew Greek and Hebrew as well as any person alive today. Yet, as far as I know, there were any discussions like, “If we could drink the water, we wouldn’t have to drink beer.”

One of the arguments I seem to be reading on this thread stems from some equating the consumption of any amount of alcohol with total debauchery.

“I had one sip of beer,” said Bob.

“That’s enough to make you drunk,” said Joe

I believe this line of thinking arises from America’s history of saloons in contrast to the British tradition of pub(lic house)s and private clubs and the German tradition of beirstubes and taverns.

Bottom line if total abstention was as clear as some here make it out to be, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.

FWIW, the only problem I’ve had with alcohol came from my cough syrup interfering with my daily dose of warfarin. The two thinned my blood out too much.

Why did abstaining from alcohol only become prominent recently? Many reasons. As we have stated on this blog water was often polluted with bacteria…alcohol in small amounts helped to kill it. People often mixed alcohol as a purification procedure. Second, without refrigeration you get fermentation…BUT…fermintation unless it is done right leads to vinegar, not usable tasty alcohol (so I am told). Third, since everyone drank alcohol due to 1 and 2 above, there was large part of society that responsibly drank. It was a part of life, not just an escape mechanism.

Fast forward to 2014. We have refrigerators and multi-million dollar water purification plants. Thus 1 and 2 are eliminated. The only reason to drink alcohol today IS BECAUSE YOU WANT TO. As a result alcohol has become a social drug of fun and frivolity. It is the definition of worldliness. Thus, while you might have the liberty to drink, it is best to not as an ambassador of Christ in America today.

Example: A few houses down from me is a “youth leader” at an independent, non-fundamental Baptist church. It happens to be the largest Baptist church in the city I live by far. He is proud of the fact he is a beer brewing aficionado. He brews it at home and talks about it often. What does that tell the kids he teaches?

What does that tell the kids he teaches? It tells the kids he teaches the brewing beer is a wonderful way to “create.” That enjoying beer is a good gift of God to be enjoyed responsibly for His glory.

See, here’s the rub. You and the others who believe that Christians should abstain believe that questions like “What does that tell the kids he teaches?” creates a problem for those of us who imbibe. From our perspective, it doesn’t. For me, I’m thankful for another Christian Brother who is crafting the narrative about beer and alcohol for his own kids (assuming that he has kids) and the kids in his congregation. I teach my children about alcohol. I shape the narrative. I want them to learn to enjoy alcohol to the praise and glory of our Creator God who gifted us with things like beer and Scotch. You will disagree. That’s because your presuppositions are different than mine. We’re never going to agree about things like “what does that tell the kids he teaches?” until we reach an understanding on our presuppositions about alcohol and our understanding of the role or lack of role that alcohol should have in the lives of Believers.

It’s worth noting that one possible reason for our country’s teetotaling tradition is that prior to the discovery of the New World, most nations had to scrape to get their bread. It was one thing to use barley for beer or grapes for wine—they grow where wheat does not and the nutrition stays with the drink to a degree—but an entirely different thing to make whiskey, where the nutrition stays on the “wrong” side of the distillation column. Carbohydrates don’t boil off with the alcohol. If you made your crop into whiskey, you risked starvation.

Enter the U.S., where it was often hundreds of miles to market instead of five, and yard-thick topsoil in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky allowed grain yields far greater than before. John Deere’s steel plow (~1837) and the McCormick Reaper (1834) enhanced this. But how to get that grain to market? Whiskey. And hence, for really the first time in history, ordinary people could make large amounts of whiskey without starving, and had the incentive, money, to do so.

Just like Noah with his vineyard, those farmers and their families learned the results when not all of that whiskey made it to New Orleans, and so it is not a surprise that the temperance movement got started as Americans moved west and made John Deere and Cyrus McCormick into household names. It was simply a response to the culture.

worldliness does not equal sin necessarily in my opinion. For example, last night I did not take the 18 month old twins to Wed night service because they refused to nap earlier and were emotionally in need of one. So I took the wife and 2 older kids to church and drove the twins in the van trying to get them to sleep! It worked for only one btw, #2 collapsed around 9pm after a desperate fight against sleep…Anyway, while driving I noticed around a dozen churches with nice large buildings. NOT ONE OF THEM had a Wed night service or any mid-week service. When I looked at the church sign they all had only Sunday services ( a few did have Sun pm services). Now is that a sin? No. They gather together to worship the Lord on Sunday so they aren’t disobeying Heb . But is it worldy? Yes. Now I am not looking to start a debate on mid-week services, only to point out an example of worldliness that is not sin.

Will never agree unless I kow-tow to your worldly position;-) Creating… Yeah, that’s what’s he’s doing. Drinking a beer to God’s glory…hey, enjoy what that creates in our culture. I’ll certainly be paying the taxes for it!

NOT ONE OF THEM had a Wed night service or any mid-week service. When I looked at the church sign they all had only Sunday services ( a few did have Sun pm services). Now is that a sin? No. They gather together to worship the Lord on Sunday so they aren’t disobeying Heb . But is it worldy? Yes.

How do you know they weren’t meeting for a mid-week service? And how did you conclude this is worldly?

you can only think it worldly if you think alcohol sinful.

Actually, no. One can think drinking to be worldly without attributing any moral characteristic to alcohol. I don’t know anyone who thinks alcohol is sinful. It is a non-moral entity, isn’t it? It has no capacity to sin. However, all agree that sometimes the use of alcohol can be sinful. And one can think a commercial mixing alcohol with a Christian hymn to be worldly without thinking alcohol is sinful.

The consumption of alcohol can be worldly on any number of fronts, including a desire to unrestrained freedom, a desire to numb one’s soul to something, a desire to elicit immoral activity, etc. These all stem from the human heart, to be sure, but that is exactly the point. Alcohol is used by some in some cases to heighten the expression of the sinfulness already in the human heart. This is not disputed by anyone outside of a narrow few. It is one of the most widely accepted axioms in the world today. The use of alcohol impairs thinking and response.

Therefore, you must prove alcohol sinful before you can disparage the commercial’s adaptation of the hymn.

Again, not true. One can object to the mixing of a Christian hymn or song with something quite apart from alcohol being sinful. For instance, I love sports (of just about all types). I do not consider them sinful. But I would object to using a Christian song to promote a sport or a sporting event. One can object to the adaptation of a Christian hymn to a beer commercial, merely on the grounds of mixing the sacred with the secular, without making any moral evaluation of the alcohol itself.

Your type of argument simply won’t stand up. It is insufficient to deal with the issues at hand.

Larry, you’ve really made more of an argument against the worldliness of fornication, libertinism, and drunkenness, not alcohol. It is entirely possible to drink without indulging these, as Jesus did.

Again, let’s try actually figuring out what sin is from the Bible, and not from our own prejudices. If we build morality from our own prejudices—remembering as it were the empty flatboat that should have made it to New Orleans with the crop—we are no better than the Pharisees.

Larry, you’ve really made more of an argument against the worldliness of fornication, libertinism, and drunkenness, not alcohol. It is entirely possible to drink without indulging these, as Jesus did.

I am glad to know we agree.

How did it come about that the church (largely fundy church) became the modern day Women’s Christian Temperance Movement?

Suggestions:

• It’s more fun to denounce other peoples’ sins than our own
• It’s a whole lot easier than evangelism

Meanwhile I love this photo