Drinking

[John of Japan]

Actually if you go to YouTube and take a look at Dan Buettner's talk on how to live to be 100 + you will find that in America the Seventh Day Adventists weho follow the dietary counsels of their Church Prophet, Ellen White, have the greatest longevity in America, and all three with the top longevity in the World are Vegetarians. Obviously your Diet is important, along with other factors.

I don't deny that proper diet and exercise help, just like not playing in traffic. But remember Jim Fixx, the running expert and author who keeled over dead at age 52 while jogging? The time of death is determined by God, not man. "And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment" (Heb. 9:27).

 

[Yeshua1]

I don't deny that proper diet and exercise help, just like not playing in traffic. But remember Jim Fixx, the running expert and author who keeled over dead at age 52 while jogging? The time of death is determined by God, not man. "And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment" (Heb. 9:27).

And the theology of their false prophetness, the wrong Gospel, outweighs any physical health benefits!

 

[Earth Wind and Fire]

Well that's the thing. This article also urges against heavy drinking saying heavy drinking will have an opposite affect and increase heart-attack risk.

My Grandmother drank scotch every night until the day she died at the age of 95. Never drunk or anything like that, but had that scotch every night.

My dad (her son) also drank moderately in the evenings, and has been in pretty good health. But now he has a baptist girlfriend (long story different thread) who's talked him out of moderate drinking and now some heath issues are popping up. Kind of making me rethink things.

BTW, I've totally abstained from all alcohol for the last 25 years since I was saved.

Why do you abstain?

 

[Esther Thompson]

This should be under the "What does unscriptural mean?" topic, It is a good example.

 

[Esther Thompson]

Proverbs 20:1 says, “Wine is a mocker, Strong drink is a brawler, And whoever is led astray by it is not wise.” A few chapters later, in Proverbs 23:29-35, we read a very vivid description of what happens to people when they drink alcohol,.

29 Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes?

30 They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine.

31 Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright.

32 At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.

33 Thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thine heart shall utter perverse things.

34 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.

35 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.

The wine which Christ provided for the wedding feast a, and that which He gave to the disciples as a symbol of His own blood, was the pure juice of the grape. To this the prophet Isaiah refers when he speaks of the new wine “in the cluster,” and says, “Destroy it not; for a blessing is in it” (Isaiah 65:8).

It was said in the Bible that John the Baptist should drink neither wine nor strong drink. There was enjoined similar abstinence upon the wife of Manoah. And ijn the Bible there is pronounced a curse upon the man who should put the bottle to his neighbor’s lips.

 

[Esther Thompson]

And the theology of their false prophetness, the wrong Gospel, outweighs any physical health benefits!

Well they got their ideas about the Seventh Day Sabbath from the Seventh Day Baptists, It was a Baptist named Rachel Oakes who brought it to their attention, so...

All they really did was to bring to light Doctrines that were already there in the Bible that had been long neglected or lost by the wayside.

"She (the Catholic Church) took the pagan Sunday and made it the Christian Sunday... and thus the pagan Sunday, dedicated to Balder (Baal) became the Christian Sunday sacred to Jesus". (Catholic World, March 1894, pg.809)

"They (the Catholic Church) allege the Sabbath changed into Sunday, the Lord's day, contrary to the Decalogue, as it appear, neither is there any example more boasted of than the changing of the Sabbath day. Great, they say, is the power and authority of the church, since it dispensed with one of the Ten Commandments." Martin Luther, Augsburg Confession of Faith, art. 28.

“I hope that the last day is at the door. Things could not become worse than the Roman see makes it. It suppresses the commandments of God, it exalts its own commandments above God’s. If this is not Antichrist, then some one else must tell what it is.” - “Luther’s Reformatory Works,” p. 280. Copenhagen: 1883.

Philipp Melanchthon
Philip Melanchthon, on the prophecy on Daniel 7:25, declared: "He [the papal Little Horn] changeth the tymes and lawes that any of the sixe worke dayes commanded of God will make them unholy and idle dayes when he lyste, or of their owne holy dayes abolished make worke dayes agen, or when they changed ye Saterday into Sondaye. . . . They have changed God's lawes and turned them into their owne traditions to be kept above God's precepts."—Exposition of Daniel the Prophete (1545), tr. by George Joye, p. 119.
Source: The Augsburg Confession, edited by Philip Melanchthon (1530), Article 28: Of Ecclesiastical Power.

And the whole false idea of an eternally burning Hell was brought in by the Roman Catholic Church, it was never scriptural to begin with. T e Believers never taught that way at the beginning, it was a false Doctrine, brought in from the Catholic Church, then accepted by the so-called Protestants who were supposed to be protesting the false Doctrines of the Catholics. The idea originated from the Pagan Greeks who believed people were naturally immoratal like gods,

 

[Earth Wind and Fire]

Ecclesiastes 10:19

 

[Esther Thompson]

Lotta difference between being 'merry' and wilfully voluteering to impair your own judgment.

1 Peter 5:8
Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour

Giving men liquor, Satan beclouds their perceptive faculties, making them incapable of distinguishing between right and wrong.

Moderate drinking is the school in which people are educated for the drunkard’s career. Yet so insidious is the work of these milder stimulants that the highway to drunkenness is entered before the victim suspects his danger.

Many a Man has taken that first drink and then ended up killing someone else out on the highway, killing other peopel's families, and children. That first drink impairs their judgment and they have more and more until it is too late. That is why Alcoholics are warned not to even have that first drink and to abstain entirely.

This is why in Peter's Ladder, one of the rungs is TEMPERANCE. There is a reason why Daniel refused to drink the King's Wine, see Daniel Chapter 1. And he did not 'just have a little bit' of it. He abstained from it entirely. Daniel is an example for people who are living in the End Times. The Bible said because he refused to eat the Kings food and Wine, he and his friends were given the gift by God of being able to understand Bible prophecy. And they were ten times better off mentally and physically than those who worked under the King. Daniel and his friends were given a pulse Diet, meaning Vegetarian.

There are those in our day, who, in order to excuse their own sins, follow the example of the Jews, and charge Christ with being a Sabbath-breaker and wine-bibber, notwithstanding he declared that he kept his Father's commandments, and his whole life was an example of temperance and self-denial. Had he been a wine-bibber he could not have been a perfect offering, and the virtue of his blood would have been of no avail. But this charge, as well as the former, is best refuted by the character and teachings of Christ himself.

Christians should there be taught how unsafe it is to tamper with temptation, to dally with sin; that there is no such thing as being a moderate and temperate drinker; that the path of the tippler is ever downward. They should be exhorted to “look not upon the wine when it is red,” which “at the last biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.” But instead, many Churches are 'placing the wine-cup to their neighbor's lips' by telling them that they can be 'moderate drinkers'.

 

[John Yurich]

Saw this article this morning. It's challenging to some Churches that urge total abstinence. Mainly because the study says that moderate drinking could lower heart-attack risk, and heavy drinking would increase it—which seems very compatible with biblical teachings on drinking.

At a Church years ago, I mentioned in a class that perhaps moderate drinking shouldn't be frowned upon so much, and was really blasted for it. The speaker went into a tirade, and I backed down pretty quickly. Wonder, though, how that speaker would react to this article.

I'm pasting a good portion of the article, but click top link for full article.

Moderate drinking teaches heart cells how to toughen up...

How alcohol protects the heart: Scientists discover moderate drinking teaches heart cells how to toughen up

• The heart produces the same reaction to alcohol and to interrupted blood flow
• Drinking could effectively train the heart cells how to react to heart attack
• The effect is not the same for all and excessive drinking has opposite effect

By SAM BLANCHARD FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 09:45 EDT, 19 June 2018 | UPDATED: 10:34 EDT, 19 June 2018

Alcohol can strengthen the heart because it teaches cells how to cope with stress, a study has found.

The organisms the body produces to clear toxic chemicals from alcohol are the same ones it needs to protect the heart from damage, researchers say.

The body produces organisms called enzymes which break down the toxic parts of alcohol when people drink it, and they are the same enzymes which are released to protect the heart when it suffers major damage, such as during a heart attack.

So exposing the heart to low levels of alcohol effectively trains the body how to create the enzymes needed to cope with a heart attack.


However, drinking excessively has the opposite effect and makes the heart more vulnerable than not drinking at all.

Researchers at the University of São Paulo in Brazil say the findings could lead to a drug which does the same thing but does not carry the risks of drinking alcohol.

Scientists say drinking alcohol causes a similar reaction in the body to a heart attack but on a smaller scale, meaning it could effectively train the heart how to cope with damage

In their research the scientists said it is already known that drinking alcohol in moderation can improve heart health, but the reasons are not well understood.

Now they say it could be because being exposed to the poisonous ethanol in alcohol builds up the same protective reaction that is needed to reduce damage during a heart attack.

The researchers do not explain how much alcohol is optimal and say it varies depending on the individual.

They used the equivalent of two cans of beer for an average man, but drinking that every day would be 28 units per week – double the NHS's recommended amount.​

I would not have backed down. I would have got up and went over to that jerk and told that jerk to shut up and that he or she was insane for being against drinking one alcoholic beverage a week.

 

[OnlyaSinner]

Think that there is a known genetic link to being more addictive to alcohol, and that person should never take any!

Even if research showing a genetic predisposition to alcoholism is valid, that doesn't remove one's responsibility before God to avoid addiction. Both my dad and my maternal grandfather had type 2 diabetes (adult onset), so I'm very confident that I have a genetic predisposition for that disease. That does nothing to reduce my responsibility to have a diet and lifestyle so as to minimize the chances of my getting it. (Praise the Lord, I'm 17 years older than my dad was when he was diagnosed as diabetic, and nothing yet. Still, it would be good if I dropped a couple dozen pounds.)

 

[Yeshua1]

Well they got their ideas about the Seventh Day Sabbath from the Seventh Day Baptists, It was a Baptist named Rachel Oakes who brought it to their attention, so...

All they really did was to bring to light Doctrines that were already there in the Bible that had been long neglected or lost by the wayside.

"She (the Catholic Church) took the pagan Sunday and made it the Christian Sunday... and thus the pagan Sunday, dedicated to Balder (Baal) became the Christian Sunday sacred to Jesus". (Catholic World, March 1894, pg.809)

"They (the Catholic Church) allege the Sabbath changed into Sunday, the Lord's day, contrary to the Decalogue, as it appear, neither is there any example more boasted of than the changing of the Sabbath day. Great, they say, is the power and authority of the church, since it dispensed with one of the Ten Commandments." Martin Luther, Augsburg Confession of Faith, art. 28.

“I hope that the last day is at the door. Things could not become worse than the Roman see makes it. It suppresses the commandments of God, it exalts its own commandments above God’s. If this is not Antichrist, then some one else must tell what it is.” - “Luther’s Reformatory Works,” p. 280. Copenhagen: 1883.

Philipp Melanchthon
Philip Melanchthon, on the prophecy on Daniel 7:25, declared: "He [the papal Little Horn] changeth the tymes and lawes that any of the sixe worke dayes commanded of God will make them unholy and idle dayes when he lyste, or of their owne holy dayes abolished make worke dayes agen, or when they changed ye Saterday into Sondaye. . . . They have changed God's lawes and turned them into their owne traditions to be kept above God's precepts."—Exposition of Daniel the Prophete (1545), tr. by George Joye, p. 119.
Source: The Augsburg Confession, edited by Philip Melanchthon (1530), Article 28: Of Ecclesiastical Power.

And the whole false idea of an eternally burning Hell was brought in by the Roman Catholic Church, it was never scriptural to begin with. T e Believers never taught that way at the beginning, it was a false Doctrine, brought in from the Catholic Church, then accepted by the so-called Protestants who were supposed to be protesting the false Doctrines of the Catholics. The idea originated from the Pagan Greeks who believed people were naturally immoratal like gods,

The Sda is a cult, and their founder was a false prophetess, as she made keeping Sat Sabbath day a requirement to be saved, had to keep Jewish diet, and had that Investigative Judgement, that was where a Christian could actually lose salvation if failing to keep Sabbath, diet, failure to recognize Ellen White as a true prophet.
False Gospel, False revelations equals a false church!

 

[Yeshua1]

Even if research showing a genetic predisposition to alcoholism is valid, that doesn't remove one's responsibility before God to avoid addiction. Both my dad and my maternal grandfather had type 2 diabetes (adult onset), so I'm very confident that I have a genetic predisposition for that disease. That does nothing to reduce my responsibility to have a diet and lifestyle so as to minimize the chances of my getting it. (Praise the Lord, I'm 17 years older than my dad was when he was diagnosed as diabetic, and nothing yet. Still, it would be good if I dropped a couple dozen pounds.)

Yes, we still should do our best to stay healthy, but the one who has shown family history of drinking should avoid partaking.

 

[Calminian]

.... A minority of people are evidently predisposed to alcoholism, for biological and/or mental reasons that I don't think are well understood. For those few, an occasional drink could (not necessarily would) prove harmful. A line from an old country song seems a good portrayal of alcoholism: "One drink is one too many, and a thousand not enough."

I personally abstain, for two reasons: For me, I don't see drinking as glorifying God in my life. Secondly, I've witnessed the results of alcoholism close at hand among people I love. It's a personal conviction, not a command.

I think this is a very balanced view.

 

[Calminian]

Lotta difference between being 'merry' and wilfully voluteering to impair your own judgment.

1 Peter 5:8
Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour

Giving men liquor, Satan beclouds their perceptive faculties, making them incapable of distinguishing between right and wrong.

Moderate drinking is the school in which people are educated for the drunkard’s career. Yet so insidious is the work of these milder stimulants that the highway to drunkenness is entered before the victim suspects his danger.

Many a Man has taken that first drink and then ended up killing someone else out on the highway, killing other peopel's families, and children. That first drink impairs their judgment and they have more and more until it is too late. That is why Alcoholics are warned not to even have that first drink and to abstain entirely.

This is why in Peter's Ladder, one of the rungs is TEMPERANCE. There is a reason why Daniel refused to drink the King's Wine, see Daniel Chapter 1. And he did not 'just have a little bit' of it. He abstained from it entirely. Daniel is an example for people who are living in the End Times. The Bible said because he refused to eat the Kings food and Wine, he and his friends were given the gift by God of being able to understand Bible prophecy. And they were ten times better off mentally and physically than those who worked under the King. Daniel and his friends were given a pulse Diet, meaning Vegetarian.

There are those in our day, who, in order to excuse their own sins, follow the example of the Jews, and charge Christ with being a Sabbath-breaker and wine-bibber, notwithstanding he declared that he kept his Father's commandments, and his whole life was an example of temperance and self-denial. Had he been a wine-bibber he could not have been a perfect offering, and the virtue of his blood would have been of no avail. But this charge, as well as the former, is best refuted by the character and teachings of Christ himself.

Christians should there be taught how unsafe it is to tamper with temptation, to dally with sin; that there is no such thing as being a moderate and temperate drinker; that the path of the tippler is ever downward. They should be exhorted to “look not upon the wine when it is red,” which “at the last biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.” But instead, many Churches are 'placing the wine-cup to their neighbor's lips' by telling them that they can be 'moderate drinkers'.

Without going too much into this, I think this is a good example of the more cult/legalistic side of the subject. And I do agree with Yeshua1, EGW was a false prophet.

 

[Calminian]

This is a helpful article on the grape juice argument.
Did Jesus change the water into wine or grape juice?

Also,
Did Jesus drink wine/alcohol?

 

[Yeshua1]

Without going too much into this, I think this is a good example of the more cult/legalistic side of the subject. And I do agree with Yeshua1, EGW was a false prophet.

She might have had good views on health issues, but on spiritual things, shehad no valid ones!

 

[John of Japan]

This is a helpful article on the grape juice argument.
Did Jesus change the water into wine or grape juice?

Also,
Did Jesus drink wine/alcohol?

So then according to that view, when some people there were already drunk (the Greek word in 2:10), Jesus made alcoholic wine to give to the drunkards. The Greek word methuo occurs 6 other times in the NT, and every time it refers to actual drunkenness. The Jesus I follow would not give alcohol to drunk people.

 

[Calminian]

So then according to that view, when some people there were already drunk (the Greek word in 2:10), Jesus made alcoholic wine to give to the drunkards. The Greek word methuo occurs 6 other times in the NT, and every time it refers to actual drunkenness. The Jesus I follow would not give alcohol to drunk people.

Then just make up your own Jesus. I'll take the one described in Scripture.

 

[John of Japan]

Then just make up your own Jesus. I'll take the one described in Scripture.

That's kind of rude. I didn't accuse you of following another Jesus.

So then you're view is that Jesus (that you and I both believe the Bible describes) made alcoholic beverage for people already somewhat drunk, is that correct? I don't want to misrepresent you.

 

[Calminian]

That's kind of rude. I didn't accuse you of following another Jesus.

So then you're view is that Jesus (that you and I both believe the Bible describes) made alcoholic beverage for people already somewhat drunk, is that correct? I don't want to misrepresent you.

Your argument is very common. I don't like what the straightforward Text says, so I'm not going to believe it. Or, I wouldn't do that if I were Jesus, so I'm going to find an alternative interpretation.

I try to keep myself and my own feelings out of the equation. Jesus made alcoholic wine. Period. You are making the claim that every single guest at the wedding was drunk. I don't see that in the text anywhere. You can argue some were drunk, but that doesn't mean Jesus was telling them to get more drunk.

I think you're making unfair attacks on Jesus. He's not responsible for other people's over indulgence.