Posted on 04/02/2015 2:21:42 PM PDT by EveningStar
Another denominational hobby horse. Time and experience and better theology has shaved most of these wild hairs off, but this one remains.
As far as I know, Baptists don’t do what you’re saying. They just preach abstinence from alcohol for Christians.
To the point: it doesn’t say in the Bible that the wine was nonalcoholic.
As for why God tells us to be sober minded—it’s to protect against allowing your mind to be vulnerable to bad influences. This is good advice whether taken in a spiritual context or a secular one.
Spiritual context has a lot to do with the meaning of an intoxication, whether it is to the evil or to the good.
A party is not a philosophical gathering.
Most Baptists will back down when shown their wrongful beliefs do not appear in the Bible.
The GOOD WINE was 15% alcohol
Very Dry,
Minerally,
Delineated with multiple flavors
occurring in sequence
& with great length.
Nobody could avoid coming to the conclusion that.
THIS IS GREAT!!
OK, now that one is correct. Fermenting grapes let off gas, and that gas could explode the container it's in. The people had grape juice, grape ferment, and grape vinegar. They couldn't stop the juice from fermenting, so the wine went through all three stages. To avoid an explosion, the wine would have to be either fresh grape juice or vinegar - the final stage, otherwsie the flask would blow open.
Or, doctrinaire Baptists (many quietly agree with a more evenhanded reading of the scriptures).
But still. That’s wine in the process of becoming the kind of wine we know today. If being alcohol was bad, they would toss it out, not try to preserve it, unless there was a need for the vinegar.
I wasn’t talking about merely sparing the mind in order to perpetrate foolishness in the guise of wisdom.
More like protecting yourself against a much broader spectrum of mishaps.
That would be cool. Truth is, most modern fruits don’t resemble their precursors very much. I think someone mentioned that Figs and Dates were still similar to the originals.
Sounds like the way the establishment reads our Constitution.
Dunno what you’re getting at. When you party you party, but you don’t get immoral about it.
I would guess an “evenhanded” reading of the Bible is one which attempts to find “balance” between sin and righteousness.
When someone is drinking water or juice at dinners, and feasts, and parties, do they really drink it with such gusto and in such quantities and with so much commenting and descriptions of it to be written down?
If I walked into a big party that looked exactly like a big drinking party, with big jugs and servers walking the room and constant refilling of empty cups and great merriment, and all the other appearances of drinking alcohol, and someone tried to tell me they were just drinking some grape juice, well, I don’t think so.
How much water or grape juice can someone drink while partying, we don’t need much liquids so why would they be binging after dark, at parties and feasts?
It seems to me the word “party” used as a verb likely has a counterpart from ancient languages.
And I’m sure it describes an activity Jesus would tell us not to do.
These old grapes (iirc) were for very arid regions. With modern irrigation, the grapes grown now are from europe.
In the Bible it talks about when Mose’s spies were in Israel that one bundle of grapes took two men to carry - hanging from a pole! Not sure if that was the truth, or a bit of hyperbole to convince the people that this really was the “promised land flowing with milk and honey”.
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