His Blood Spoke My Name said:
So you too doubt God's Holy Word. For He states that wine is the venom of asps. You cannot truthfully say it is far less poisoness that most medications.
I don't doubt it at all. I have paradoxic drug reactions and for me wine is one of the few things which will not produce a paradoxic reaction in me. I inherited the condition from my father and my son also has it. I doubt we are the first people in history. In the meantime, I can guarantee to you that medically wine is far, far safer than most drugs on the market today.
Again, you call my God a liar. It has been proven that there was a way to preserve the sweet juice of the grape back in Jesus' day and many centuries prior. Christ came to save mankind, not to make them drunks
Are you calling me a drunk? I am a born again Christian, a child of my Lord, and I have absolutely no compunction about drinking a glass of wine occasionally. There may have been a way to preserve the grapes by making a syrup out of them, boiling it down, and that was fine. But the Passover wine was not that. It was wine. Or do you think that God somehow 'goofed' when He put the yeast on the outer skins of so many fruits?
Again, you call God's Word a lie. God's Word tells us He loves His Children and would not give them the venom of asps.,
In Deut. 32, it is the wine of those who have forgotten God which is considered the poison of asps. Jesus most certainly had not forgotten God. Nor have I. Job 20:14 identifies the very meat in the intestines of the wicked as the poison of asps. Yet I am willing to bet you eat meat...
Now, compare what is said about wine in a couple of other places:
Right after it is said that it is not right for kings to drink wine (Prov. 31:4-5), PLEASE note the very next verse, which states, "Give strong drink unto him that ready to perish, and wine unto those that be of heavy heart."
Now, if it is alcoholic wine in verse four, what makes you think the definition has changed in verse six?
In Genesis 14:18, the wine that Melchizedek brought out to Abram is the same word for wine that Noah got drunk on. Christ is a priest in the order of Melchizedek, and Melchizedek was a king of righteousness, right?
If you look in 1 Chronicles 27:27, you will see that David had vineyards and winemakers. in 2 Chron. 2, Solomon used wheat, barley, wine, and oil as payment for the cedars of Lebanon. Are wheat, barley, and oil evil? I hardly think so!
Proverbs 21:17 is interesting: "He that loveth pleasure shall be a poor man: he that loveth wine and oil shall not be rich."
Is pleasure evil? No, but the love of it can lead to poverty.
Is oil evil? The word there for oil is 'shemen' which refers to perfumed oil, the oil of anointing, or simple olive oil. It comes from a primary root meaning 'to shine.' (Just wanted to make sure this was not confused with the oil in the Mideast turmoil right now...). No, olive oil and perfumed oils are not evil, but the love of being 'shiny' or putting on a good appearance can certainly lead one to poverty.
So is wine evil? No. But the LOVE of wine leads to poverty. Not because the wine is so expensive (although some is), but because loving it means you are drinking a lot of it and therefore are pretty woozy a good part of the time, which makes you a rather chancy bet for supporting your household...
Just wanted to please remind those here that letting Bible explain Bible and NOT taking it out of context (as it was done with the idea that all wine is the poison of asps), is very important if one is to understand God's Holy Word.
Disobeying God's Word. The Word of God says be not among winebibbers (properly translated 'wine-drinkers).
I had to laugh here -- I'm sorry. Let's look at the THREE times the King James translates something into 'winebibber.' The first is in Proverbs 23:20. Interestingly, when you go into the Concordance, there is NO WORD associated with this use of the word 'winebibber.' So I looked up the verse in the NIV and it reads "Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat." So, evidently, the way it is used, this once, in the OT, is simply to drink too much wine, and is not a reference to drinking it at all.
The KJV translates passages only two times in the NT using the word 'winebibber/s". The first is in Matthew 11:19: The Son of man came eatng and drinking, and they say, Behold a man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. But wisdom is justified of her children." Now, if 'winebibber' means drinking TOO MUCH wine, there is the criticism. And the phrase that is used in Proverbs means exactly that, and has NOTHING to do with simply having a glass of wine. In the same way, Jesus was 'eating' and called 'gluttonous', which means eating to excess. But He did eat.... In the same way, He did not drink to excess, but He did drink. And unless you are thinking of drinking water to excess would somehow lead one to be called a 'winebibber'...
The second time the word is used in the NT by the KJV is in Luke 7:34. This is a parallel verse to Matthew, but, interestingly, the word 'winebibber' has no reference number in the Concordance.
My husband, who has never had any alcoholic beverage in his life as a matter of a vow to the Lord when he was young, just looked up the Greek translation of the OT and the same word for 'wine' that is used for what happened to Noah is the word used as the root for 'winebibber', which Jesus was accused of being, and what Jesus turned the water into at the marriage feast of Cana.
In other words, your criticisms are not biblical, but your personal desires expressed trying to use the Bible to back them up. You can only do this by taking the Bible out of context and then supplying your own interpretations.
The Bible does, consistently, condemn the overuse/misuse of any strong drink. It also condemns sex out of marriage, too much food, and the misuse/overuse of a number of good things. That does not make any of those things wrong in and of itself.
However for the man who chooses to remain celibate, sex is out. For the man who, like my husband, chooses to abstain from all alcoholic beverages, all wine is out (although he doesn't mind if I cook with it as long as the alcohol is cooked/boiled out). There are vegetarians for whom all meat is out, although I am unaware of anyone alive for whom all food is out, even though its overuse -- gluttony -- is condemned strongly in the Bible.
Best, in other words, to let Bible explain Bible. And quit taking verses out of context....
Better make sure ya don't speak on wine. If you tell people they can drink you will be preaching contrary to the Word of God and putting many on that road to destruction.
We talk about my husbands work in science and the fact that Genesis 1-11, in particular, can be believed completely as factual and historical. However it is interesting about Noah, for
1. He is never criticized for his episode of drunkeness (nor do we see it repeated!)
2. If Noah, a preacher of righteousness, had thought he was drinking straight grape juice, he would have gagged and spit out that first mouthful, and there would have been no problem with passing out.
3. Noah did not gag and therefore it may be presumed he knew how to make wine and did it on purpose.
4. The evidence here may well be scientific, actually. At high altitudes one is affected by alcohol more quickly and more strongly than at lower altitudes. This is because of the change in air pressure. There is good reason to think the air pressure on earth was significantly reduced after the Flood, and therefore anything that Noah could have safely drunk before the Flood would have made him roaring drunk after, which it did. The fact that he took off his cloak indicates that he was feeling hot and flushed from the wine before he passed out -- he knew what was happening, evidently, and, at that point, was unable to stop it as he had already had too much.
So even though we don't talk much about that incident, we do mention it.
