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a view of the fruit of the vine
over
time we have been asked to share our understanding of drinking alcohol.
we have spent the past few months researching and praying over
the issue and have come to the following conclusion; scripture
does not forbid the drinking of alcohol. the following is
based on our research and interaction with different people.
churches
that have historically opposed the consumption of alcohol are
"main-line american [1]" churches. while
"old-line [2]" churches have historically maintained a
"moderation" approach to drinking. while our
desire is not to be swayed by the historical or the social, the
fact of the history involved in the consumption of alcohol can
not be ignored. we do understand, but do not agree
with the stance of making drinking intoxicating drink a
sin. in this paper was to approach scripture to find the
truth. we have prayed, discussed and debated over all we
read and, as mentioned above, we came to the conclusion that
drinking is no a violation of God's word. in fact, we have
found that most arguments against drinking are a misinterpretation
of the scriptures, or a misdirection of what the scripture
means. we will examine each point and share with you our
findings:
a)
drinking alcohol is a sin. this is usually stated without
scripture support, mainly because there is none. if
it was the case, jesus caused people to sin when he turned water
into wine as his first miracle in john. in fact, if
drinking was is sinful, then jesus himself sinned
- he drank wine
b)
the "wine" in scripture was "new wine" which
was really only "grape juice" and had no alcoholic
content. the greek work for "new wine" is
gleukos and appears in the nt only once in acts 2:13. the
problem with saying that new wine was actually grape juice and
had no alcoholic content it found in that scripture. if
people could not get drunk drinking new wine, why did those
present accuse them of being drunk because of drinking new
wine? in fact, the words "grape juice" appears
only in the ot and never in the nt.
c)
use of alcoholic drink shows weakness in our christian witness.
the scripture used to support this is from romans (14:21).
but this is a misreading of the scripture. if we take the
scripture to mean drinking is wrong and will cause others to
violate God's word and sin, we are misreading the intent and the
words in that scripture. because we can also say the same
about eating meat. the scripture deals with pulling people
away from worshiping God, not drinking.
d)
jesus was a nazarene and as such took the nazarene oath.
there is no proof of this, in fact all sights point the other
direction. to take such an oath (found in numbers 6:1-15
and judges 13:5) meant that jesus could not eat anything that
had any trace of grapes, or any part of the vine in it - no leaves,
no seeds, no vinegar, no part of the vine at all. another
important part of the oath is the inability to touch anything
dead or unclean, meaning no raising the dead and no talking to
women. the vow was so special that if jesus truly took
such a vow it would be in scripture - it was for samson.
we
do not believe drinking wine or beer is against scriptural
teachings or against christian living. we understand that
this stance is not popular and is not what people expect, but we
can not disregard the truth in the scripture for popular
christian stance on the subject. we firmly believe that
the teachings from scripture are more important then any
traditional stance the church may have made over the past.
[1]
we define main-line american churches as any church having it's
roots in the american traditions and being founded between 1800
and 1950, with a great many forming during the temperance
movement of 1800-1930.
[2]
we define old-line churches as churches have an historical europe
root. these churches date back before 1800 and the
founders are not american.
john o'keefe
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