Featured Moderation is what helps- not teetotalism

I would like to answer that but quite frankly I do not understand what your questions is. What you have posted backs up what I am saying. Of course we all know the passages about being sober minded.

 

You live in Mississippi. Don't they grow tobacco there? Whose reports have you been reading? Tobacco backed junk science is my guess!
It is proven fact of science that pipe smoking is a major cause of cancer to the mouth. Any kind of second hand smoke is damaging to the health of others, not only to yourself.

Smoking won't send you to hell; it will only make you smell like you have already been there.

There is nothing, absolutely nothing, beneficial about smoking.
Smoking and alcohol are the two biggest drains on our health care system. If people gave them up what a tremendous savings in cost to all involved there would be in the health care system. Their resources could be allocated to those who really need it.

Have you been following this discussion?
The context is one who, as soon as he left home began to drink. He also joined the army at the same time, presumably was not married. Marriage was not in the equation. Sex is wrong outside of marriage. And that is what I said. I was also speaking of sex with more than one partner. Is that all right within the bounds of marriage? You don't seem to read and understand well.

Where did you get that lame definition?

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vice

The word "vice" is a noun; "a vice." It is not a verb--something you do, as you have defined it.
--Drinking alcohol, whether one glass or one firkin is a vice. It is the "drinking of alcohol" that is the vice. It is the corruption, the wickedness, the moral depravity. It has nothing to do with the amount. Have you had your firkin today?
(In answer to your other post, just as we don't speak middle English today [most don't have any idea what a firkin is], so people wouldn't speak koine Greek or OT Hebrew today either. Learning to speak Biblical languages would be a vain exercise in discipline, not a profitable one.)

When the government raises taxes on alcoholic beverages and tobacco they deliberately call it a "sin tax." Even the unsaved know that it is a "vice." They call it "sin." It is amazing how the government will label these as sin, but a man who says he is a baptist pastor will not. Truly amazing!

Your opinion. The dictionaries say others.
Even governments say otherwise.

Again, you are foolish enough not to follow this conversation. I mentioned marijuana, cocaine and LSD--all non-prescript drugs. We all have taken prescription drugs at one time or another for varying ailments. That is not the subject. That is an entirely different subject--a red herring.
--But am I to assume that you will inject yourself with heroin, even in "moderation,"? Are you really saying that? Will snort cocaine? Do it in front of your children? Teach them to do it "moderately" so the world doesn't have to teach them? Really--not a vice??
Nooooo. It is not a vice!! It is just illegal; comes with a jail sentence, and in some countries the death penalty is attached to it. A vice??

Taking drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes are not vices you say.
And then you tell me I am the one without knowledge.
You need to do your homework.

 

Yes we can. The Scriptures say what they say, and everything you want to argue will be covered. Paul said weak in faith. Faith does not equal knowledge. So your weakness = ignorance assertion has to be corrected

Are you willing to go verse by verse or not?

 

Excellent post DHK, I agree with you 100%.

Nevertheless, I think even you would enjoy this video;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYJi7dmu590

 

Comment then, on Romans 14:1-4.

 

You contend that completely sober-minded is a Biblical mandate, correct?

In these verses we see that deacons and aged women are allowed to drink wine, but not to excess, however, bishops are not to drink at all. That means that Paul is advocating moderation in the consumption of alcohol when it comes to deacons and aged women.

The ESV renders 1 Tim 3:8-- Deacons likewise must be dignified, not double-tongued, not addicted to much wine,, NASB says the same thing and the NIV does so at Titus 2:3.

So teetotalism is not Biblical, but moderation is.

 

You are reading into it more than is there. Your is an assumption without much support.

 

Maybe your lifespan is about the same? So?

http://www.buzzle.com/articles/harmful-health-effects-smoking-cigarettes.html

http://www.livestrong.com/article/321053-the-risks-of-smoking-pipe-tobacco/

Take that and put it in your pipe.
But you will not take that info because you simply want to justify your vices no matter what they are. Truth is denied at all costs, isn't it?

 

Bible says deacons should not be addicted to much wine, which tells me a little wine, i.e. moderation, is OK. How else can one read these verses? It's plain as day.

 

It is not always as plain as one would like it to be.
Here is what MacArthur says on p. 75 in his book "Pastoral Ministry,"

Even after this process they commonly boiled it.
Either way they could not be given to wine, addicted to wine, etc.
They had to be alert and clear-minded all the time.

 

If you could not get drunk on wine the Bible wouldn't say for deacons to "not be given to much wine." It's really that simple. Why complicate the plain meaning of the verse?

 

Exactly. Moderation not abstinence. DHK and others would struggle in Germany where believers consume beer with no guilt.

 

Hey...good response.:thumbsup:

 

Germany...ha....geeze, my living room.:laugh:

 

I never said moderation was not ok. In fact I believe that scripture never forbids alcohol. But you run into a problem when you get drunk (or buzzed) or anything less than sober.

 

I'm trying to understand your position. You also said:

Is it your position that any intake of alcohol will cause the drinker to lose sobriety? In other words, if a person has, say, 1/2 a beer have they left sobriety?