Baptists that have alcohol for Communion

Do you honestly believe it pleases the Lord to represent his cleansing blood with that which "biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder."?

The fact is, however right a man's spirit may be, we have no right to "put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in [our] brother's way."

 

Yes, believe it pleases the Lord to represent his cleansing blood with pure unleavened wine. It always pleases the Lord to do this His way. Since the Lord used wine for the Supper, we have no authority to change it, else it is our Supper, and not His.

Wine is cleansing, which rightly pictures the blood of Christ. "But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin." (I John 1:7) For a reference, check the Good Samaritan story. "And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him." Here we find the Good Samaritan pouring WINE in the wounds. We know this had to be fermented wine, because juice has no cleansing property. Which fruit of the vine is a cleanser? Not juice, but wine.

Wine is endorsed by the Lord to drink. "Butter of kine, and milk of sheep, with fat of lambs, and rams of the breed of Bashan, and goats, with the fat of kidneys of wheat; and thou didst drink the pure blood of the grape." This word "pure" comes from "chemer" which itself comes from a Hebrew word which means to ferment. These folks were not chastised for drinking this wine, but rather God was pointing out that He had blessed them with that drink.

Wine is called "well-refined." "And in this mountain shall the LORD of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined." This verse tells us alot of things. The first thing you might note is that God himself is making a millenial feast with WINE that all people are called to. It is a good wine, and is well-refined. Again, God is endorsing this element.

Wine is unleavened, and therefore was accepted by the Lord as a burnt offering. I know this, not only from chemistry, but because wine (yayin) was the drink offering, and all offerings were considered unleavened. "No meat offering, which ye shall bring unto the LORD, shall be made with leaven: for ye shall burn no leaven, nor any honey, in any offering of the LORD made by fire." (Leviticus 2:11) The fact that the drink offering was "yayin" means that the Lord consumes fermented wine by implication, and it means that while wine is considered unleavened, we can find no scriptural support to say juice is.

I can continue to supply scripture and reason. The fact is, though, that we as the Lord's churches have not one clear reason to change the feast as the Lord delivered it. We must rather do as the Lord did, and use the Lord's elements, or cease to call it the Lord's Supper.

I do not believe that doing something God's way is a stumblingblock. But I do believe that changing what the Lord did is the sin of Nadab and Abihu, " And Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took either of them his censer, and put fire therein, and put incense thereon, and offered strange fire before the LORD, which he commanded them not. And there went out fire from the LORD, and devoured them, and they died before the LORD." (Leviticus 10:1-2) We must not offer strange fire unto the Lord, but we should present in our temple what the Lord has commanded.

 

Amen, Chad!

 

"Non-alcoholic wine" seems a misnomer. "Alcoholic wine" implies that there is a wine without alcohol--which is not true.

Grape juice is not wine--wine is not grape juice.

Is this like saying a caterpillar is a butterfly?

Are the Welches still making money off this confusion? Mogen David probably is too.

Selah,

Bro. James

 

Sorry Bro James, but you are imposing a Western definition upon the word wine - wine is not necessarily alcoholic. Isaiah 65:8 “Thus saith the LORD, As the new wine is found in the cluster, and one saith, Destroy it not; for a blessing is in it: so will I do for my servants' sakes, that I may not destroy them all.” Only grapes are found in clusters. Again in Jeremiah 40:10 & 12 “As for me, behold, I will dwell at Mizpah to serve the Chaldeans, which will come unto us: but ye, gather ye wine, and summer fruits, and oil, and put them in your vessels, and dwell in your cities that ye have taken. . . Even all the Jews returned out of all places whither they were driven, and came to the land of Judah, to Gedaliah, unto Mizpah, and gathered wine and summer fruits very much.” (Jeremiah 40:10 - 12). Again, one would be hard pressed to suggest that the wine spoken of here is fermented and bottled. These Jews were gathering grapes, alongside summer fruits and the grape itself is defined as “wine.”

So when we make reference to those passages speaking of wine in Scripture we need to be much more defined in our understanding of the word being used and how we apply it. It is folly to constantly assume that wine refers only and always to alcohol, so that God is seen at times to condone its use.

There are several key Hebrew and Greek words underpinning the English text of the Bible which are translated “wine.” These include the Hebrew word “Yayin.” Yayin, in its broadest meaning, designates grape-juice, or the liquid which the fruit of the vine yields. This may be new or old, sweet or sour, fermented or unfermented, intoxicating or unintoxicating. “Yayin is a generic term, and, when not restricted in its meaning by some word or circumstance comprehend vinous beverage of every sort, however produced. It is, however, as we have seen, often restricted to the fruit of the vine in its natural and unintoxicating state.” (E. Nott’s Lectures, London edition 1863). Yayin may also refer to fermented wine as well as to any freshly diluted wine cordial which has been shorn of alcoholic content.

The second most common Hebrew word translated wine is “Tirosh.” Tirosh may have been aerobically fermented, but was certainly not subject to the modern science of fermentation. Undoubtedly, even when naturally fermented, it was the weakest wine of all. A third word “shekar” often translated by the term “strong drink” in the Authorised Version, was certainly an intoxicating, fermented wine and as such is met with a great deal of condemnation in the Old Testament. The New Testament word translated “wine “ is the Greek word “Oinos” which scholars agree correlates with the Hebrew word “Yayin.”

To some extent these definitions are unhelpful in guiding the believer in determining his ethic on alcohol.

As for alcohol being a cleansing agent, this is only true when it is applied externally to the body, taken internally it is treated as a poison, which is why excessive drinking poses a threat to the liver.

I think it is hard to have communion with those drinking alcohol when Scripture exhorts us to "Be not among winebibbers." (Proverbs 23:20a).

As for the matter of chemistry: Count Chaptal, the eminent French chemist said “Nature never forms spirituous liquors; she rots grapes upon the branches, but it is art which converts the juice into alcoholic wine.” As far as I can see then, alcoholic wine is man's invention, not God's blessing.

I also noticed Chad that you did not address the matter of alcoholic wine proving to be a stumblingblock for some.

 

Some interesting botany: http://botit.botany.wisc.edu/toms_fungi/dec2002.html.

From the above: "Fermentation of sugar with SACCHAROMYCES proceeds according to the (unbalanced) chemical reaction: C6-H12-O6 +H2-0--->C-O2 +CH3-CH2-OH (or C2-H5-OH) or sugar(glucose) plus water yields carbon dioxide plus ethanol(ethyl alcohol)".

Using the above, is it unreasonable to surmise that ethanol is being produced "on the vine"?--where sugar, water and fungi are present.

Or, does it take man to make the right chemistry?

Interesting: ethanol is produced in the making of bread--the heat of the oven boils it out.

Each man believes according to his own paradigm.

Selah,

Bro. James

[ June 01, 2005, 06:22 AM: Message edited by: Bro. James ]

 

Sorry, I couldn't access the link.

It certainly takes man to produce a palatable drink, else the distilleries would be out of business.

If you want to go "au natural" with your communion wine, be my guest, but I reckons there will be rapidly falling numbers around the table!

 

Actually, wine does ferment on the vine. And, when I make wine, I add nothing to it. There are yeasts are on the hulls. The last "batch" I made was with Merlot grapes, donated to the church by a local vineyard. I took 20 lbs of grapes, bagged them and set them on the counter. I was fairly busy that day, so I had no time to get around to them. A couple of days later, I opened the bag. The weight of the grapes laying on themselves acted as a mini-press, and the fermentation process had already begun. I took them to press immediately, and the CO2 bubbles were forming as we pressed.

I found that there are a couple of reason why table grapes do not automatically ferment. First, they are kept at a very cold temperature, which discourages the natural process. Second, many farmers that own vineyards for supplying the table spray their grapes with a chemical that stalls the blooms of yeasts on the hulls. These two factors are obviously unnatural, and stall the grapes from their natural state- fermentation.

I must state that there is a natural barrier to the grape not usually fermenting on the vine. The sugars are contained in the grape itself, where the liquid is. This liquid is actually clear, by the way. The hull stands in between the grape sugar and the yeasts on the outside. It requires the hulls to be broken before fermentation commences. You might try to peel the grapes to obtain an unfermented, unleavened juice, but there are several problems with this idea. First, it is almost impossible for no hulls to come in contact with the juice while you are peeling the grapes. Second, the grape juice obtains its color from the hull. The clear liquid you would obtain from peeled grapes hardly represents the blood of Christ. Finally, I just can not imagine first century Jews peeling grapes in their celebration of the Passover.

You guys might find it of interest to note a few things about alcohol production. First, it does not take a man to produce wine, but it does take a man to produce juice. Before the middle of the nineteenth century, there was no such thing as Welch's grape juice. The juice industry is, in fact, a modern invention.

"Dr. Thomas Bramwell Welch, wondered if the theories of Louis Pasteur could be applied to the processing of grapes to produce an unfermented wine that could be used in his church's communion service. One day with his wife and 17-year-old son, Charles, he picked about 40 pounds of Concord grapes from the family's yard. Taking over Mrs. Welch's kitchen, they cooked the grapes for a few minutes and then squeezed the juice through cloth bags into twelve quart bottles. After sealing the bottles with cork and wax, Dr. Welch lowered them into boiling water long enough to kill all yeast organisms in the juice and prevent fermentation - the same technique used in the pasteurization of milk. For weeks the family waited, listening for the explosion that would signify failure. But no explosions occurred and when the bottles were opened, Dr. Welch discovered he had succeeded in producing a sweet, unfermented grape juice. He convinced his pastor to try his unfermented wine, as he called it, and began processing and selling a limited amount to churches in Southern New Jersey and Southeast Pennsylvania. Little did he realize that he was starting a new industry - the fruit juice industry." (This is from the booklet, This Is Our Story, printed and distributed free by the Welch Food Company.)

Now, for those who know better, there is a huge difference between a brewery, distillery, and a winery. Pure wines are not distilled beverages. There come from the vine alone. Distilleries produce an unnatural form of alcohol through an evaporative system, whereby they are able to supersaturate drinks with alcoholic content. Breweries make beer, and other such high-carb drinks. Beer was originally designed, in fact, as a food to end poverty. Wineries, on the other hand, use as much as possible that which is naturally found in the grape as their method of fermentation.

As much as I have researched these things things, though, I still make my own wine here at home for the church. That is just so I can make sure that everything is clean and clear of any added ingredients. I am amazed at the success we have had using God's method of natural fermentation to purge the juice of its leaven.

I would encourage each person to thoroughly research fermentation before coming to a hasty decision.

 

Whoopee! You're onto something, bro! So, according to your paradigm, if God made it and it's natural, then let's use and enjoy! If so, let's smoke dope and chew peyote. After all, marijuana and peyote are natural botanicals. God created them. Let’s use them! What da ya say?

 

The strongest arguement against alcohol, IMHO, is that drinking, even social drinking without drunkeness, encourages others to do so. There will be a certain percentage that will become drunken which is definitely forbidden by Scripture. So, if we do anything unnecessarily that may lead or cause our brother to stumble, we violate the spirit and example of I Corinthians 8:13. Therefore, the loving Christian will do nothing, including the drinking of beverage alcohol, that may cause others to do the same and sin. In the context of I Corinthians 8, we will abstain from anything, including alcohol, that would cause another brother to partake and violate his conscience. Alcohol is a case in point and fits naturally here. Nuff said.

 

This is not about a rationalization to justify substance abuse. The subject is the element of the Lord's Supper which represents His blood--grape juice or wine.

The point has been made: wine goes back to Noah--OT. Grape juice goes back to Mr. Welch--19th cent A.D. (1869). Any relationship any of this has to do with alcoholism is purely coincidental.

Selah,

Bro. James

 

You are right about wine going back to Noah. Just remember that Noah became drunken and sinned.

I do admit that I was off-topic regarding the thread somewhat but the whole illustration was for the benefit of your supposed paradigm. It appeared to me that you were arguing if God made it and it’s natural, then it’s good. My sarcasm was against such balderdash. You paradigm crashes.

Furthermore, concerning the Lord’s Table, would we not agree that the wine (grape juice or fruit of the vine as we call it) and bread are symbolic and representational. Nowhere in Scripture do you find specified clearly that the wine must be fermented and the bread of a certain type. It is merely according to custom. Dare we go beyond and say that has said or specified what He has not?

 

That is right--keep it simple, without change.(no magic words, no real presence, no continual presence, no eating of literal flesh or drinking literal blood)

Back to the last supper: Jesus and the Apostles were observing Passover; which means they used unleavened bread and wine.

"This is my body...this is my blood...this do in remembrance of me"

Selah,

Bro. James

 

I posted this a few days ago in another discussion. As it has pertinence here, I will submit it here as well. History, Bible and chemistry show that we should use wine, and not juice for the Lord's Supper.

LEAVEN

Leavening is a thing, a noun - it is yeast - not an action! Bread Yeast and Wine Yeast are of the same strain (Saccharomyces cereviseae). This yeast is the most frequently used because of its powerful ability to convert sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide. This happens in bread and in grape must (juice, skins, seeds, stems). However, leavened bread and grape juice have yeast still in them. There is no yeast in wine and no yeast in unleavened bread.

Jeremiah told the nation of Moab that he had rested too long "on his lees" and had not been "poured from vessel to vessel".(15) We cannot understand what God had against Moab if we are ignorant of wine-making. If the Jews had been "grape juice drinkers," they would not have understood, either.

But, the Jews did know. They knew because they were winemakers. Grape juice can not "sit on its lees". Only wine does that. The "lees" are the by-products of the fermentation process. The lees are the dead yeast from the grape skins, other sediments from the fermentation process, and the grape skins themselves.

Unless we understand that the normal reason for the hard labor of nearly all of the first-century Jews in planting and tending vineyards was to make alcoholic wine, then I contend that we cannot really understand much of scripture.

Archaeologists have found many wine-presses in Palestine, dating to Jesus' time and before. What were these wine-presses for? Why were they called "wine-presses" if not for making wine. Otherwise, wouldn't they have been called "juice-presses"? Fermenting vats were connected to the wine-presses. What were the fermenting vats for? You don't need fermenting vats to process grape juice!

How about harvest time? Whole families built temporary structures - tents, watch-towers, or booths - on the tops of stone fences which they had built to protect their vineyards. They moved out into these tents because when grapes are ripe, unless they are made into wine with great urgency - the wine is ruined.

"What is fermentation? Fermentation is the process by which the grape juice turns into wine. The formula for fermentation is: Sugar + Yeast = Alcohol + Carbon Dioxide (CO2). Sugar is present naturally in the ripe grape. Yeast also occurs naturally, as the white bloom on the grape skin . . . . The fermentation process ends when all the sugar has been converted into alcohol or the alcohol level has reached 15 percent, which kills off the yeast. The carbon dioxide dissipates into the air, except in the case of Champagne and other sparkling wines where it is retained through a special process." (Zraly, Windows on the World Complete Wine Course)

When grapes are pressed to get the juice out, what happens? The juice immediately comes into contact with the yeast on the skins. There is no easy way to avoid that. When the juice is squeezed out, the conversion of sugar to alcohol begins within minutes. Perhaps, within seconds! I have had wine "ferment on the vine on my counter at the house. It's true.

So, when grapes have been pressed to release their juice - where is the yeast?

In this process, the yeast begins on the grape skins. The yeast begins to react immediately with the sugars in the grape juice, turning the sugars to alcohol and carbon dioxide. There can be no question but that the yeast - that was on the skins - is now in the juice.

Yeast in grape juice?

There's just no way to keep it out.

The devout Jew would have been "cut off from the people" if there had been anything with yeast in it in his house during Passover and the week of Unleavened Bread!

Think about that. You can conclude as well as I that Jesus did not have grape juice in his cup. Grape juice is not the Fruit of the Vine which he blessed.

IS WINE A POISON?

From the Alexis Lichine's New Encyclopedia of Wines & Spirits, Fourth Edition, Lichine, Knopf, New York, 1985.

From Chapter 7, we find,

"The study of wine is necessarily the study both of the particular and of the general effect - of the component and the composite. In France it is held that men who drink wine are happy, men who drink beer are heavy and often slower-witted, and men who drink spirits may be hectic and are often ugly-tempered. Professor Arnozan has said: `Wine taken every day in moderation gently excites the intellectual faculties of him who absorbs it. It ends by giving him certain special characteristics: sharpens his wits, animates, renders more amiable, confers a great facility of assimilation, producing a sort of self-confidence - such are the traits of the man who every day makes use of wine.

"Vitamin B is significantly present in wine. Red wine is richer than white in many food elements because it is obtained by maceration or steeping with the skins during fermentation; this is not the case with white wine, yet studies at the University of California College of Agriculture have established that in vitamin B content there is no difference between red and white wine, nor between dry and fortified wine. In riboflavin, white wines tend to lead, some of them having two-thirds the value of fresh milk. The vitamin B complex in wines remains stable and does not deteriorate as they age; but the freezing or pasteurizing necessary to preserve unfermented grape juice destroys vitamin B, including riboflavin, the content of which may reach 120 micrograms in 100 grams, with 50 micrograms of thiamine and other elements.

"Besides vitamins and minerals, which help to maintain the body and its metabolism, are the nutritive components in the grape sugars poly phenols, proteins, and alcohol. ('It has been demonstrated that natural grape sugars in wine are readily absorbed by the human system and are desirable in the diet, that the alcohol in wine is a quick source of caloric energy, that wine has a definite blood-building iron content.' - Encyclopedia Britannica.) Ninety-five percent of the energy in alcohol is converted for immediate use - so Neumann said in Germany at the beginning of the century, and it has been confirmed by Atwater and Benedict. 'Ethylic alcohol is absorbed directly and progressively unless the stomach is empty.' (Starling.) 'Carried by the blood to every part of the system, it is burned up in the tissues.' The nutritive value of wine has been recognized in Spain, where it is placed under the same price controls as bread. Because of the nourishing quality of the other ingredients in wine the alcoholic content is taken into the body more slowly and utilized more efficiently than when it is absorbed in a higher percentage from more potent drinks.

"Research by Professor Georges Portmann of Bordeaux, president of the International Committee for the Scientific Study of Wine, and by Max Eylaud has revealed that while a small amount of alcohol can increase the vigor of the human machine by 15 per cent, a double and triple dose does not have a proportionately greater effect, and it has been found independently that in larger quantities of alcohol there is an inhibition which actually decreases its utility. The approximate 11 per cent of alcohol in natural wine is believed to be the most effective proportion. Even more surprising is the claim that alcohol as an internal disinfectant seems to be most powerful in solution in wine and even in wine-and-water. The increase of prophylactic effect with the decrease of proportion of alcohol remained totally baffling until very recently, when it was discovered that certain elements of wine, other than alcohol, prevent or impede the growth of the germs of certain diseases in the human body."

Wine As Medicine

"Some specific curative effects of pure unadulterated wine in cardiology, neurology, geriatrics, etc., are as follows:

"(1) In France the general opinion is that by their richness in tartrates, certain wines add to the intestinal secretion, although red wines with high tannin content decrease it. Such red wines have long been well known for relieving diarrhea, particularly through the influence of the tannin in red wine on the large intestine. (But this is only true of good wine, especially Bordeaux; it is not suggested that a wine which has been adulterated with coarser blends will have the same beneficial effect.) Wine is beneficial also in cases of colitis and hemorrhoids. (2) It is indispensable in low-sodium diets: a glass of wine contains from 1.3 to 9.9 milligrams of sodium, whereas an egg contains 40 milligrams; a glass of milk, 120 milligrams; an ounce of Cheddar cheese, 210 milligrams; a slice of white bread, 215 milligrams.

"(3) Regular wine-drinkers are less apt than others to develop gallstones.

"(4) `It is the safest of all sedatives' (according to Haggard and Jellinek).

"(5) Wine that is rich in iron counteracts iron deficiency in anemia."

The remainder of the chapter covers such topics as:

- Wine as a germ-killer

- Wine is not all alcohol, and alcohol does not necessarily lead to alcoholism.

Toward the end of this chapter, Professor Georges Portmann is again quoted as saying something vital:

"Wine is a total complex - balanced, living, and in existence nowhere else. Do you know anything about food and life and think that balance and vitality count for nothing? It is the only thing man consumes that comes to him direct from the earth and alive."

 

Someone tell me this. To what was Paul referring when he told Timothy to "drink a little wine for thy stomach's sake?" Was he telling Timothy to consume juice? If so, what kind of juice has all of the health benefits of wine?

Let us examine a verse that was recently taken out of context,

Proverbs 23:29-25, "Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes? They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine. Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright. At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder. Thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thine heart shall utter perverse things. Yea, thou shalt be as he that lieth down in the midst of the sea, or as he that lieth upon the top of a mast. They have stricken me, shalt thou say, and I was not sick; they have beaten me, and I felt it not: when shall I awake? I will seek it yet again."

If we actually read the questionable verse in the context in which the Preacher wrote it, we find that God is not discouraging the drink, but is discouraging the drunk. I know many Baptists have trouble delineating the difference between a drink and a drunk, but plainly here, with all the word pictures used in the passage, we find that drukards should stay away from consuming too much alcohol. The average guy who drinks a glass a day before bedtime will not suffer the fate of this passage.

Earlier in this same chapter, we are told, "Hear thou, my son, and be wise, and guide thine heart in the way. Be not among winebibbers; among riotous eaters of flesh: For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty: and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags."

Let us use real hermeneutics here, and not craft our own. It is clear that a person that eats three meals daily will not suffer poverty, but the man who overeats will. Similarly, we are built a word picture to demonstrate that drinking to excess will lead folks into trouble, but can we use the whole counsel of God to conclude that we should be teetotalers? I think that would be inconsistent with the mass of Holy scripture.

 

No specific command, just your inference. Following the pattern, we must partake of the Lord's Table only during Passover and in an "upper room." Like the old Plymouth Brethren man said, "Many wonderful things we find in the Bible, most of them put there by you and me."

 

Having pasted your pabulum, perhaps you would like to talk about the effect of alcohol on brain cells. Even moderate amounts kill brain cells. However, the small taken in communion would be insignificant either way unless you plan on violating the proscription in 1 Corinthians 11. So, you are off topic on this thread, as I was told in a previous post, by arguing the supposed health benefits of alcohol.

 

Yes, you can. Use the principle of causing your brother to offend. This could be either applied to offending his weak conscience (he believes drinking alcohol is sinful) whereby your example encourages him to drink against his conscience or creating an acceptable practice of social drinking whereby some people are drunken and sin. Either way, it’s a test of whether you value your desire or your brother’s good more. Face facts; some people, who would drink to excess, will abstain from social drinking if abstinence is the group norm. They are willing to abstain if influenced to do so by others’ example.

Let’s see if you can separate what you want to justify from your hermeneutic. IMHO, most people’s hermeneutics are determined more by their desires (i.e. their wants) than their reason. Can you say with Paul, I will drink no alcohol if it will cause my brother to offend either by his weak conscience or his drunkenness? The rest is just rhetoric.