Featured American revivalism and Teetotalism

I would have categorized opium as the crack cocaine of those eras. Or maybe regular cocaine. Based off of my Sherlock Holmes collection.

 

The story of Baptist preacher Elijah Craig is another indicator of the change in viewpoint regarding alcoholic drink. The only distilled beverage native to the United States is bourbon. A Baptist preacher from Kentucky, Elijah Craig (1738–1808), is credited with the invention of bourbon whiskey. He and his brother Lewis and the "Traveling Church" came from Virginia and arrived in central Kentucky circa 1781.

According to Wikipedia, Elijah Craig "was ordained a Baptist minister in 1771, and was imprisoned briefly in South Carolina, apparently for disturbing the peace with his sermons. He then moved to what was then Bourbon County, Kentucky and settled in the area of Frankfort, Kentucky in 1785. In 1777, he became pastor of Blue Run Church."

The first Baptist college founded west of the Allegheny mountains -- Georgetown College (in Georgetown, Kentucky) -- has a connection back to Baptist preacher and distiller Elijah Craig. He founded the Rittenhouse Academy in 1798. Silas Noel helped persuade the Kentucky legislature to charter the Kentucky Baptist Education Society in 1829. Citizens of Georgetown offered to raise $20,000 and donate the assets of Rittenhouse Academy for a new college. So Georgetown College's roots were fed from Craig's school.

I ran across the bourbon info in "The excommunication of wine" in the Searcy, AR Daily Citizen (Thursday, February 8, 2007 6:38 PM CST) That article carried this interesting statement:

"...Prohibition can be viewed as one of history’s most successful marketing campaigns."

From "Just when you think you know"

 

Elijah Craig, my father in law's standard Christmas present.

 

Until the mid-Nineteenth Century, the most dangerous drink in the world was......water!
When the Russian composer Tchaikovski wanted to commit suicide, all he needed to do was drink a glass of water. In cities, especially, it contained all sorts of bacteria, including cholera. Until the coming of refrigeration and pasteurization, things like milk, orange juice or grape juice went off terribly quickly, but the alcohol and hops in beer acted as a preservative and of course the water was boiled in the brewing process..

In Tudor England it was normal for people to drink 8 pints of beer a day. Because of the large amount of manual labour that folk did back then, they tended to sweat it out. If someone was drunk, he was described as being 'one over the eight.'

TCassidy is right that Billy Sunday was a major influence on the Temperance Movement. He had been a heavy drinker when he played baseball and swore it off completely when he was saved. In Britain, the largest brewery in the world at one time was the Charrington brewery in East London. In the mid-19th Century, the heir to the brewery, Robert Charrington, was saved, and went out to do good works in the area. He was so appalled by the effects of his brewery's products on the people that he renounced his inheritance and became a supporter of the Temperance Movement. He was a friend of Spurgeon.

 

No disrespect to Sproul, but the Bible itself without Sproul proves there was good water in Jesus's day. For example, Matthew 10:42; John 4:7; 1 Tim 5:23; et al., shows that they drank water.

 

I could be wrong, but I'm thinking that spring water was generally a healthier source than river water. Jerusalem, being in the hills and using spring water from Gihon, would have been better served than the areas drinking from rivers or lakes.

 

evangelist6589, to clarify, I do not intend to say there was no bad water -- just that there was evidently plenty of good water, because we can read throughout the Bible drinking water spoken of, and in a positive sense.

 

Also Daniel 1:12!