“In my nearly 4 decades of ministry I’ve seen too many families torn apart, marriages disintegrate, children hurt, and untold damage caused because of the exercise of this 'freedom in Christ'”

“I am not a prohibitionist. I believe that efforts to classify wine in the Bible as grape juice border on the silly. People drank alcoholic beverages and the Bible does not call that sin.” - I Hate Alcohol

Discussion

[Bert Perry]

If you’re mixing wine with water to reduce the risk of infection, you’re typically going to be drinking half a gallon to a gallon per day at about 3% alcohol. That’s equivalent to 3-6 beers or 5 oz. glasses of wine, a fairly hefty dose. Long and short of it; saying the ancients mixed their wine with water doesn’t really demonstrate that people back then drank a lot less.

Since alcohol is a diuretic, drinking it for its anti-bacterial qualities–even in a lower concentration–would result in having to drink even more liquid by volume, all other things being equal.