214 thoughts on “Twisting Scripture Better Than Those Other Guys Twist Scripture”
Doesn’t wine represent joy in Scripture. Jesus I superior to the Old Testament because He brings life giving joy. He turns water into wine!
Is superior, George.
Jesus! I, Superior.
Yes, that’s what I meant… 😎
I think wine represents joy in more than just scripture. 🙂
First? Oh I hope! 😀
Darn! 😳 C’est la vie.
Have a glass of wine and forget about it….
For once, the first comment was actually meaningful! 😉
Don’t get used to it.
I wonder how these preachers feel about consuming beverages with an addictive mood-altering drug in them? I never hear about that.
Ask me after I’ve had my coffee.
I don’t drink coffee, but as an Irishman I drink a lot of tea. I love tea (though maybe my bladder doesn’t) Tea-drinking will be the urination of me, but I’m cool with that.
😆
I go to bed thinking about how nice that cup of coffee is going to be when I wake up.
I’m totally cool with my addiction.
I suffer (maybe it’s persecution according to the handbook) when I poor the cup that leaves less than a full cup in the pot. 🙁
*pour
Jesus may not have been a bartender, but he was a distributor.
Was he licensed and bonded?
I don’t think so. He ushered in grace and put an end to the law.
No, Jesus wasn’t a bartender. He was a vintner. A person who makes wine is a vintner, not a bartender. The bartender is the one who pours out drinks and serves them in glasses.
I think Semp has a point, though, at least in Kentucky. It is illegal for the spirit’s maker to also make it available to the consumer – law requires he sell it to the distributor. Jesus was such a rebel, man.
a)What is this guy on?
b)Maybe it’s a sin to give your neighbor “strong drink” because your neighbor is a mooch, and ought to go buy his own damn beer?
c)Since when is wine “strong drink”?
It’s quite a jump from saying you shouldn’t slip your neighbor a mickey and then steal his clothes to concluding that Jesus couldn’t have turned water into wine.
Well said! Cheers…
I’ve been told that ancient Jewish “wine” was incredibly weak, and heavily diluted… so that “strong drink” describes anything from beer and stronger in our society.
He may have a point in calling wine “strong drink”.
Not to mention that Magen David means the Star of David. I think he meant Manishewitz. 😉
Mogen David is another sweet Concord wine that many churches use in communion.
Either one sounds good to me. We use some (really cheap) local rose.
Mogen David makes a fine Communion wine, as does Manischevitz. They’re both basically fermented sweet grape juice. I often use Manischevitz for home or nursing home Communion — a bottle of it lasts a lot longer than a bottle of Welch’s, and I’ve found that the old ladies really like it! 😉
He sure know how to pronounce it. Makes my fundy mind wonder how he knew how to say it so well.
Oh, and,
d)There are no capital letters in Hebrew, so, how could it be a capital S, capital I, capital N?
Good point.
There weren’t even vowels in Old Testament-era Hebrew, so if the Bible had been written in English, it would have been “sn.”
and so all the fishes back then had no eyes. they were fshes. 🙂
(i apologize for that, it works better saying it vs. writing it)
Hebrew schmebrew. Who needs those ancient languages when we have the perfect God authorized 17th century English language. Amen?
It’s as clear as day that the perefect language in the perfect Bible states that Jesus turned water into wine. Wait, I mean grape juice.
Well if you look at the Greek word for wine, oinos…….
It would be s-n
No, hyphens were a much, much later development.
While we’re on the topic of Habakkuk, isn’t the real reason for getting the neighbor drunk to be immoral with him/her? Nothing has changed much; I remember plenty of guys talking about getting their dates to be more pliable by supplying them with liquor. That seems to be the point of the passage.
Oh, and Habakkuk says “Woe to him that…” does this – I suppose that can be understood to be SIN, but it does not call it capital S, capital I, capital N.
Hamblin is not the only guy to take what is plain and clear and replace it with what he would rather the text say.
In FundyU I remember one teacher claiming that oinos (Greek word for wine) meant “fruit of the vine” and could be non-alcoholic. This is a bald-faced lie. There are no extant manuscripts anywhere on the planet where the word means anything other than wine (although there are a few passages which are ambiguous – but with no reason to believe the author had any other thing in mind than, you know, wine).
But, I guess we all do this to an extent.
My old fundy preacher taught the same thing. He said basically they were drinking Welch’s grape juice. When I asked him how they kept it fresh without refrigeration, he just looked stunned and mumbled something to himself.
My MOG would only buy Welch’s (1611 recipe I’m sure) because ole man Welch saw that they were serving fermented grape fruit juice.
I’m guessing only sin-hating, church bus driving, skirt wearing, door knocking grapes were used.
Do I really have to watch & listen to this? I’m still recovering from the faux movie trailers. Can somebody post a synopsis?
If you think Jesus changed water into wine at the wedding at Cana, then you’re as bad as the Jehovah’s Witnesses. It was actually O’Doul’s or some other non-alcoholic beverage.
That’s the gist of it. Plus a lot of hollering for no apparent reason.
Oh cool, I do like a bit of nonsensical hollering now and then.
I’ll put this one on my “must watch” list.
He keeps calling it non-alcoholic beverage. And yet the Bible calls it wine. And there is also a command in the Old Testament for people to go buy strong drink and whatever else they had an appetite for, and consume it all in a great feast before the Lord (Deut 14:26). Solomon also recommends wine for the faint and bereaved (Proverbs 31:6).
“Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto those that be of heavy hearts.”
Proverbs 31:6 (KJV)
While I do not agree with Mr. Scream-And-Shout, I will give this caveat. I lived on a vineyard. We grew Cabernet Sauvignon grapes as well as some white wine grapes. My grandmother would walk out to the vineyard when the grapes were ripe and pick a mess of them, bring them inside and make grape juice. It was WAY better than Welches. She would also take grapes and mix them with raspberries and make a jelly that was to kill for.
SOOOoooooo, it could be that it would be wine grapes freshly squeezed, but I doubt it.
Give beer to those who are perishing, wine to those who are in anguish; let them drink and forget their poverty….
Prov 31:6-7
Stunt?? It autocorrected ny name to Stunt? That’s funny.
IDK what kind of a stunt you’re trying to pull…
Now lets not confuse what the bible says, from what I think the bible SHOULD say…
these guys are an endless source of entertainment…
I would find it more entertaining if it wasn’t exactly that, and they weren’t enslaving people to this way of thinking…growing up believing that is pretty devastating. And you have to constantly rely on them to interpret for you, because you can never trust what or how you read for yourself. They like it, they want it that way, because the more you rely on them, the more you can never leave. It’s awful, sickening, isolating creation of dependence.
I don’t know the doctrines of the Jehovah’s Witnesses in much detail, but if they think that the word “wine” (“oinos” in Greek manuscripts) means “wine,” they are at least better readers than those who somehow conclude that “wine” really means Pepsi-Cola.
John 2:7-12 according to fundies:
9 When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and knew not whence it was: (but the servants which drew the water knew;) the governor of the feast called the bridegroom,
10 And saith unto him, Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine until now.
11 And then he saith to Jesus, thou hast performed a miracle. You beith the best bartender ever.
12 To which Jesus replied, I am not a bartender. But I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
That actually makes sense, sort of. 😎
“You beith the best bartender ever.”
Translated: “Jesus, you da MAN!”
After listening to the clip (I really don’t miss that style of preaching!), I looked up Jehovah Witness beliefs about alcohol and drinking. I know they’re off on their doctrines about most things, but what I read about their beliefs concerning drinking seemed in line with what the Bible teaches: drink if you like, but don’t get drunk.
To me, it seemed like he just wanted to get an insult or two in. If we don’t agree with him, then we’re just as bad as those really bad people over there. Instead of intelligent Biblical interpretation, just toss out insults and hope they stick. (I know there’s a debate term for that, but I forget it.)
“Instead of intelligent Biblical interpretation, just toss out insults and hope they stick. (I know there’s a debate term for that, but I forget it.)”
In the fundy debate world, that is called winning the argument.
Elsewhere it’s known as an ad hominem attack:
“A bad person says this is true, so it can’t be true. If you do think it’s true, you’re a bad person, too.”
“In the fundy debate world, that is called winning the argument.”
Truth. There the argument doth rest, amen. It’s such a lazy way of making your points, too.
He’s right. It wasn’t Mogen David. Wrong type of grape. And it was most likely a better quality wine.
His argument, on the other hand, is faulty. Never let the facts get in the way. Or allow people the benefit of self-control or good judgement, but let the mog decide for you..
I’m going to try to walk the line here.
I do believe and preach that the cup of the Lord’s Supper is unleavened (non-alchoholic) wine, because of the clear picture of Jesus’ sinless, perfect blood. If the bread is unleavened and portrays the sinless body of Christ, the cup is no different. That and God takes His pictures of Christ very seriously (ask Moses)! The statements surrounding the cup never mention wine specifically, but do mention “the fruit of the vine”; given the ambiguity, we should fall toward what is certain, which is the sinlessness of Christ and the pictures portrayed.
On the other hand, I do agree that Jesus could have turned this wine into something with alcohol in it. John 2:8-10 talks about the water made wine being given to the governor of the feast (foodtaster, if you will) and being recognized as being “good wine”. This person would have recognized whether this had alcohol or not. This wine too would have probably been the best wine available, which was a white wine (and would have looked like water), even though this “Falernian wine” had a high alcoholic content. This wine was clearly never meant to be a picture of Jesus’ blood, like the cup in the Lord’s Supper (which was a red juice); this was an act of importunate faith on Mary’s part for Jesus (who resisted at first) to create more wine to save the reputation of the bridegroom (who was in charge of the party)!
In response to the statement that Jesus would have been sinning by making alcoholic wine. I guess Paul telling Timothy to drink some wine to fix his stomach was sinning too (they drank more wine than water in those days, because the alcohol killed bacteria) (I Timothy 5:23)!
Here’s a quote from an Anglican friend of mine:
“Wine is unleavened grape juice.
Grape juice (unless it is pasteurized) automatically has yeast in it. Yeast grows on grape skins.
The yeast eats the sugar and converts it to alcohol. At some point a balance is reached; the alcohol content becomes too strong for the yeast to survive, or else all the sugar is converted and the yeast starves.
That’s why the most orthodox of the orthodox Jews will drink wine at Passover; it’s the only way to insure that they are drinking the “fruit of the vine” with no yeast.”
Wow! I did not know that! I’ll have to do a little more research along those lines, but it makes sense from what I’ve found so far today. Thanks for sharing that!
I do wish some colleges would research their dogmatic statements a bit more before teaching impressionable teenagers. Oh, the reprogramming I’ve had to do… 🙄
Looking to Jesus, with all due respect (and I mean this sincerely; you seem to me to be a very sweet person):
There is really no way it could have been grape juice. Jesus lived in a hot Mediterranean climate long before the advent of refrigeration. That means the fermentation process started right away, and there really wasn’t anything you could do to stop it, even if you wanted to.
When the Bible says “wine,” it means “wine.” And there is absolutely nothing wrong with wine. With drunkenness, yes. With wine, no. Wine is very Biblical.
On a related note: The miracle at Cana foreshadows the miracle at the Lord’s Supper, when Jesus turned bread and wine into His very flesh and blood. But we won’t go there right now. After all, I’m just a gate-crasher. 🙂
That is a refreshingly introspective & thoughtful response by LtJ.
Yeast covers many food plants and is probably one of the reasons booze is as old as farming. Heck, apples become alcoholic all by themselves! That whitish covering inside of cabbage is yeast too.
This is true. Grape juice will ferment into wine unless it is sterilized with heat or by some other method, because natural yeast grows on the surfaces of the grapes.
(Modern winemakers sometimes kill this natural yeast on purpose so they can introduce a special yeast culture of their choice.)
Even if you somehow washed all the yeast off the grapes before crushing them, the juice would still turn into wine in most cases, because there are yeast spores loose in the air.
We have a friend with quite a few grape vines of a few varieties. Last year we made our own grape juice. Even refrigerated, it doesn’t take too long before it starts to turn. I would imagine unrefrigerated it would be a fairly quick process.
I wonder if Hamblin realizes that yeast is what makes his bread taste like it does, and that it is actually a form of fermentation. The sugars in the grain turn to alcohol, which gives flavor and texture, making the bread “chewy”. And then there is cooking with vanilla extract. Extremists in Fundystan are so inconsistent.
Historians say that in early America (roughly 1492 to the middle 1800s), most people drank much more fruit (as wines, brandies, hard cider, and the like) than they ate.
Most kinds of fruit have a limited season, and there was no way to store it as fresh fruit. Canning techniques were not perfected until the 1800s, and storing dried fruit does not work well in humid climates. Also, there was not sufficiently rapid transportation to get fresh fruits from most farms to large markets before the fruit spoiled.
So the best way to preserve fruit for storage or transportation was to express the juice, let the juice ferment, and then bottle the resulting wine or store it in casks. You couldn’t eat a fresh plum, peach, or pear in winter, but you could drink wine made from last summer’s crop. Most of the apple crop in those days was made into hard cider or apple jack (now you know what Johnny Appleseed was up to!). You could make it even more compact for transportation by distilling the wine into brandy.
The same thing applied to grain. Farmers who had surplus corn, barley, etc. had no efficient way to move it to market as grain, but if they made it into whiskey, it had added value and was more compact to transport. This was the source of the Whiskey Rebellion in the early Federal period. Farmers believed that a tax on whiskey unfairly singled them out.
There was also, of course, the fact that plain water was often unsafe to drink. A beverage with enough alcohol to kill bacteria and parasites was considered more wholesome.
And if SFL had been around during that time, we couldn’t have cared less about whether there was alcohol or not in society. But, we would have have belittled those darned farmers and merchants who dared to believe in capitalism. How dare those evil farmers steal from our kids by not wanting to pay unreasonable taxes and robbing our schools of funding!
At least all is not lost. We can still fight those silly people who want to rebel against the government spying on us. That can be our fight of the day. How dare those people be for those nasty terrorists and have the audacity to demand privacy?
Huh? What??? 😯
😕
Juno account – the confusion is understandable.
Huh? Somebody’s cider go hard or something?
I’m curious why you think that during the feast of Unleavened *Bread* that there would be the same provision for wine even though wine wasn’t considered leavened (not a grain product) and Moses, who was always very particular, would be silent on that point entirely, that Jesus’ words should always be taken literally, that an agriculture and economy based in wine would have no colloquial phrases to speak of it (see also the figure “blood of grapes” means exactly wine and not juice, Deu 32:14, the NT coinage is pretty much a mirror of that phrase), and that Jesus, when suggesting that he wouldn’t drink *this* with them again, forgot that his audience might know their Old Testament and remember the eschatalogical promise that the LORD of Hosts will make a banquet of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined. Oh, and the fact that the idea that it wasn’t wine is very much a novel interpretation that doesn’t have any support from Justin, Iranaeus, Augustine, (all specifically mentioning wine at the Last Supper) and so on until the 19th century temperance leaders suggested it. There’s pretty much every reason to believe it was wine, and none outside of fundamentalist pre-commitments of piety and alcohol. Some modern interpreters (who know nothing about grapes/wine, evidently) suggest that it’s clearly the freshly crushed grapes — the must! Which is where the yeast is in the first place, while the Biblical teetotalers (under the Nazarite vow) were not allowed anywhere near a vine, seeds, leaves, skin, raisins, all very clearly spelled out.
Also, no wine contains enough alcohol to kill bacteria. You’ll need distilled liquor for that — but not invented yet in the first century. It’s another myth. They drank wine in those days because there was a billion square miles of vineyards, and Thomas Welch and the Sun Maid wasn’t around to give them marketing advice. Water was perfectly viable, see John 4.
I love Deuteronomy 14:25 to 27. I have used this on more than one occasion to leave speechless the fundy who disapproves of alcoholic beverages.
Context. You live a long way from “the place where God sets his name to dwell”, so you can’t take your firstfruits to the temple or tabernacle.
“25. Then shalt thou turn it into money, and bind up the money in thine hand, and shalt go unto the place which the Lord they God shall choose:
26. And thou shalt bestow that money for whatsoever thy soul lusteth after, for oxen, or for sheep, or for wine, or for strong drink, or for whatsoever thy soul desireth: and thou shalt eat there before the Lord thy God, and thous shalt rejoice, thou, and thine household,
27. And the Levite that is within thy gates; thou shalt not forsake him; for he hath no part nor inheritance with thee.”
King James Version even! And lookey, lookey! It says you can turn your offering money into strong drink, invite the preacher or the deacon, and have a party (unto the Lord). Wine! Strong drink! Wow!
Yes, that is alcohol.
When Jesus turned water into wine, he didn’t turn it into nonalcoholic grape juice. People don’t get happy off mere grape juice. And the “governor” of the feast, more than a little bit happy from the wedding wine, realized that *this* stuff was really good, really potent!
Yes, IFBers twist the Scriptures on a regular basis. It took me a long time to realize it. It took me a long time to learn to think differently. And I am still struggling with the issues. But this one I think I have nailed!
A bishop should not be given to much grapejuice “wine” because too much grapejuice is the source of so many issues……
Ding, ding, ding!
I’ll have to ask that to the preacher of the next “drinking is a sin” message I hear. 😈
LOL. Good one. But the Wedding at Cana itself provides a similar example. The steward chides the bridegroom for saving the good grape juice for last? Yeah, right. We all know how carried away people get on good grape juice…so much so that they do not notice when you subsequently serve them bad grape juice. Happens every time. 😆
Exactly, ericbrindamour. How do these preachers explain the biblical warnings of getting drunk on wine if the wine was non-alcoholic?
Ya’ll are making me want a glass! Maybe a bottle of Bass Ale later today. 😀
I’ve got horse piss in my fridge.
Oh. Just in case I have to clarify, that is a brand of ale, not actual equine urine.
Oh, I thought you were referencing Budweiser…
That drink is referenced in both JULIUS CAESAR and THE TEMPEST.
Well, for what it is worth, it earned its name the honest way. Which is prolly why it is still in my refrigerator and not in my belly.
Kreine, we really don’t appreciate your attitude around here and suggest you leave. Where do redneck racists like you come from, anyway? Texas? So just because Budweiser isn’t made by redneck, Republican, white boys but is a Brazilian beer it just HAS to be terrible? Wow, and I suppose you don’t drive BMW’s either because they might have been tainted because an African-American helped design it? I’d like to see you try to have that kind of redneck attitude in Sao Paulo and see how far it gets you.
Huh? What? 😯
Never thought I’d have to call “Poe” on a beer argument!
@Shellymac, who is this ‘we’ you speak of? I personally think beer and pee have a lot in common, whether it’s called Budweiser or Sam Adams.
I don’t get your argument at all. Was there a point to it or was actual beer involved in the formation of it?
Shelly, I hope you’ve had your coffee by now and realize your attack was slightly out of line. If you’re joking, and it’s some sort of an inside thing, my bad.
Plus, I thought Budweiser was a St. Louis thing, Giant Clydesdale horses, and “tah-dah” horse piss!
Lol. Based on the “juno” handle link, I’m gonna have to call poe on this one 🙂
Geez, I don’t access SFL for a few days & I miss the fun.
Thanks for the laugh, Shellymac!
Watched that thing and had flashbacks to way too many chapel and church services.
I think I will retire to my room and rock back and forth humming mindlessly.
Yeah, the phrasing, the intonation, the patterns and pauses–it’s all pretty triggery. Took me right back, too.
I am with you, Liz. I thought I had died and gone back to Bible College. What a wind bag…
I was always taught in the IFB that wine has several different meanings in the Bible. I never had the nerve to ask why the translators didn’t use the correct words. If it is really grape juice, then why didn’t the translators say juice instead of wine? And I’d really have to be off my rocker to suggest that there are translation errors in the “Holy KJV”.
The root cause, AFAICT, is that back when the Temperance Movement was strongly associated with Protestantism, there was indeed a terrible problem with alcoholism in this country. But instead of identifying issues that caused massive displays of public drunkenness and alcoholism to the point of starving women and children so the men could get drunk, one branch of the Temperance Movement emphasized just plain no alcohol ever at all period. So good people enjoying alcoholic drinks in the Bible became unthinkable.
The Temperance Movement intersected with nationally organized feminism, BTW, because men controlled all of the money in the household by law, including the money earned by the women. Women being able to control their own money and thereby protect themselves and their children from being starved by an addict was a huge feminist issue. So that was one good outcome.
But the thing is, that is just a lie. It doesn’t have many meanings. Every single time oinos is used in any manuscript it means wine. The only outliers are passages where it doesn’t have to mean wine (i.e. “I had oinos with lunch”), but trying to make those mean non-alcoholic is a travesty of both grammar and logic.
So let me see if my scorecard is correct:
6 days to create the world: literal
3 days in the belly of a whale or fish: literal
God and Satan shooting craps with Job’s life: literal
Song of Solomon: allegory
Water into wine: not literal
Sell everything you have and give to the poor: ……heresy??
To continue;
Global flood – literal
Living peaceably with mankind – a joke
where is non-alcholic, non-alcholic, non-alcholic, (I seem to be stuck here) where is non-alcholic in the Bible?
Just because the man in the pulpit makes an assertion that does not make it so!!
*sigh*
Mr. (Yeah, I said mister) Hamblin is an ass.
That is an un-called-for insult to donkeys – or are you talking Anatomy here?
Anatomy, but I should have thought it through. I do like donkeys. Thanks for pointing it out. 😳 🙂
How about the south end of a north-bound donkey? 😆
s.e.o.a.n.b.d for short.
Reminds me of A Corner Gas episode. Link brings you to the scene I’m reminded of…
Why are IFB’s so adamant about drinking? Why are they so convinced it’s a sin that they’ll change the Scriptures to say what they want them to say?
Maybe that’s a stupid question after all. They change everything else to suit themselves.
I replied to this in the wrong place–see above.
Tl;dr: Take massive alcoholism issue in the USA, add religious efforts to curb it, subtract any understanding of alcoholism beyond “alcohol = bad,” multiply by generations of unending striving to be more-set-apart-than-thou, and get Jesus turning water into grape juice.
I collect old hymnals, BTW. I have two from the end of the 19th century that include “Temperance Hymns.” They are very topical and earnest, but they didn’t age well.
I was raised in a home with alcoholism, so I made a personal choice to not drink any alcohol at all. I made that choice as a young teenager, before I was a believer. But I have many Christian friends who enjoy a glass now and then.
I never had the dubious privilege of hearing this man speak, but I can imagine it would be a waste of time. What an arrogant so-and-so.
Alcoholism is a real problem, and for many people, it is best not to drink any alcohol at all. But nothing in the Bible says never to drink any alcohol at all.
Just because something seems true doesn’t mean it’s in the Bible somewhere if you look hard enough.
Exactly. My choice to not drink doesn’t give me any reason to decide that no one else should.
I can’t even stand the smell of any kind of wine or beer. I guess cleaning up after a drunk for so many years does that to a kid.
But that doesn’t make it Biblical.
It IS a sin to give your neighbour strong drink… but only if you do it to get him or her drunk enough so that you can also get him or her naked:
“Woe unto him that giveth his neighbour drink, that puttest thy bottle to him, and makest him drunken also, that thou mayest look on their nakedness!”
Habakkuk 2:15
I’m guessing Jimmy Buffett (among others) never read that verse 🙂
Well played. Truly well played.
What if I just get him tipsy enough to get his shirt off? 😉
I get my kicks above the waistline…
…sunshine.
…in a show with everything but Yul Brynner
Habakkuk 2:15 was mentioned a couple weeks ago in relation to alcohol, and I thought it was a Poe. Pulling something that far out of context seemed like stretching to me. (heh heh, naive I know)
That verse is not condemning a person slipping someone a mickey. It presumes that slipping someone a mickey is wrong, and it assumes the reader knows that it is wrong. It uses that assumption to make another point. “Hey, look at those Chaldeans! They’re slipping their neighbors a mickey! God doesn’t like that.”
Read the whole chapter Mr. Hamblin. (Yeah, who am I kidding)
Now, I am not a Christian, but I do find a lot of stuff in Habakkuk 2 that is quite preachable:
“Because thou hast spoiled many nations, all the remnant of the people shall spoil thee”
and
“Woe to him that coveteth an evil covetousness to his house, that he may set his nest on high, that he may be delivered from the power of evil!”
and
“You have plotted the ruin of many peoples, shaming your own house and forfeiting your life.” (NIV, sorry)
and
“Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood, and stablisheth a city by iniquity!”
I think a person living in Habakkuk’s time would know exactly what was meant by “Woe unto him that giveth his neighbour drink, that puttest thy bottle to him, and makest him drunken also, that thou mayest look on their nakedness!” Exactly what they were doing may be lost to history (or maybe not, are there historical records we can reference?) My first guess would be that it had to do with money somehow. Maybe they were credit sharks?
Agreed.
It’s not clear exactly what misdeeds are being condemned in Habukkuk 2:15, but obviously some kind of skulduggery was afoot beyond merely drinking some wine.
The thrust of the whole chapter is a denunciation of violence and exploitation in the public sphere. It’s not personal “standards” that are at issue.
That Poe was one of the Michael’s I’ve seen on this site. His argument was exactly the same as Hamblin’s in the video. Makes one think. I haven’t seen that Michael since I called him a silly person on another thread.
sounds like his drink of choice is …Mogen David!
😛
Maybe someone already mentioned it, but Hamblin’s kid sure likes his beer!
I think that is a new topic in and of itself. How many famous evangelists have completely had their family reject their teachings to pursue their own path?
Maybe that’s why Hamblin Sr. screams when he talks about non-alcoholic beverages. 😐
He needs to try a better brand. How about Fat Tire or Bass or 312 or Harp or … Miller Lite = meh.
Holy Moly! I just looked at who the kid is following on twitter. Beers, country and rock acts. He’s gotten off the Fundy bus.
I’m happy for him! And I’m sure he is happier.
Jesus did not turn water into Mogen David. At the very least, he turned the water into a Pinot Grigio or a Traminette. He didn’t make any cheap nasty wine.
I like to think it was 1945 Château Mouton-Rothschild…
Terrible exegesis aside, why does he walk that? Not exactly a step, not exactly a hop, and as if he can quite stand fully upright. How can I pay attention to his terrible exegesis when he’s walking like that?
Perhaps you answered your own question.
CAN’T quite stand upright. Is this when I blame George? I’m new to this.
Yes, now that you have met George it means you are one of us…one of us…one of us.
Good one, Apathetic!
Until now, I didn’t know the allusion behind our friend Elijah Craig’s nom de keyboard. 😀
Heaven’s Hill is a short trip from my place…
I don’t get his reference to Mogen David. I mean, I realize he’s so afraid of even saying the word “wine” – lest his hearers be tainted, or even worse, realize he’s full of baloney – but urban dictionary says it’s cheap bumwine.
Jesus made the best wine ever, not that junk.
Maybe it was MD 20/20 (aka Mad Dog 20/20).
If MD 20/20 is the only kind of wine he has tried, no wonder he thinks wine is horrible.
If I were so against wine, I wouldn’t be giving the crowd ideas of a new brand to try out….
A very old joke:
A preacher was completing a temperance sermon: with great expression he said, “If I had all the beer in the world, I’d take it and throw it into the river.”
With even greater emphasis, he said, “And if I had all the wine in the world, I’d take it and throw it into the river.”
And then, finally, he said, “And if I had all the whiskey in the world, I’d take it and throw it into the river.” He sat down.
The song leader then stood very cautiously and announced with a pleasant smile, “For our closing song, let us sing Hymn #365: ‘Shall We Gather At the River.'”
Ew, not the kind of mixed drink I like.
IFB logic:
Every positive reference to wine in the Bible = grape juice
Every warning about wine in the Bible = real wine
What’s with Hamblin’s mid-air fistpound?
He hopes that silhouette will grace the black background pages of KJB only websites all over the world. I’m sure he’s been caught pumping that fist in his office frequently.
I’ve been reading a takedown of Debi Pearl’s Created To Be His Help Meet. The reviewer is currently tackling the chapter in which she explains that there are only 3 types of men and that it’s a woman’s job to conform herself to her man’s inexorable unchanging type. Her prooftext is that Eve was created in the image of Adam, so obviously women are supposed to pattern themselves after their husbands.
Except that the creation of women is described twice in Genesis. In one account, men and women are created in the image of God. In the other, the first woman is created to correct a problem in the first man that requires “a help meet for him,” and the problem is that he is alone and that isn’t good. So God takes some of the first man’s own substance to make another person with, and according to the passage, this creates the longing to be together that is the basis of erotic love and marriage, which appear to be the same thing (“one flesh”).
Debi explains that while it’s hard to conform oneself to the unchanging nature of one’s husband, women are created with “this unreasonable desire to be needed by a man.”
I should believe someone who restricts herself to the KJV and then can’t even read that one translation? This isn’t even doctrine. It’s basic reading comprehension!
SFL: Preaching stuff they made up as the infallible word of God.
It’s Debi Pearl who says a woman should never leave or divorce a husband even if he is physically abusing her and their children.
I have no use for her thinking (if you can dignify what she does with that name).
Can you post a link? Sounds interesting, I love a good dissection. 😀
I just had a couple Summer Shantys. Nice and light, just needed a lemon slice.
I remember my grandma telling me it was grape juice. I believed her because that is what kids do. Wasn’t until I was older that I understood the true story. The Baptist church I went to as a kid had glass communion cups. After the service, the cheap old ladies would pour the unused cups back into the bottle. 8 months later it had a funky taste.
Not that i care. But if you are going to use the Bible you probably should know Jesus did turn water into wine. But it was new, better than they had before. He didn’t turn it into fermented wine. The Greek word refers to the first fruit. In those days they didn’t refrigerate and the wine would sometimes sit for weeks and it would ferment. Jesus made fresh wine not old wine. Not going to argue this because it don’t matter if you think it’s right or wrong. And Christ didn’t destroy the law He fulfilled it. Drinking isn’t the law. The idea in the Bible is you can’t be intoxicated with wine and intoxicated with the Spirit. The Spirit is to guide us and lead us. When you give yourself to wine or strong drink it leads you to do and say things you normally wouldn’t say or do. I’m not saying i agree with this guy and I’m not saying i don’t. But most people who argue the Bible have never studied it long enough to know the real truth.
It’s a nice theory. Unfortunately it has no basis in reality.
Please tell me this Greek word you’re talking about. To your last sentence, I have a graduate degree in Biblical languages, so please site your sources and be specific.
BTW, I love how some fundies and others treat Greek like it’s some kind of hidden gnosis that they can lay out when they wish. And since so many people don’t know the language, they sound like they know what they’re talking about. Enlighten us then on “the real truth.”
“Drinking isn’t the law”? Tell that to Deuteronomy 14:26.
Cana was where Jesus fulfilled this part of the law 🙂
Does “fulfilled” mean that nobody else has to think about it any more, or that it doesn’t apply to any else, ever?
No, it means that Jesus did something we couldn’t do in the first place. The Law was given to us to show us we cannot keep it as God requires, thus our need of a redeemer who could keep the Law and fulfill the requirements of the Law in both spirit and letter.
Now that Christ has fulfilled the Law, we are no longer bound by the law to try and keep it but as the redeemed we are justified by Christ’s work and not our own. If we return to trying to fulfill the law then we are saying Christ’s work was for naught.
As the redeemed we are no longer attempting to keep the Law but the Spirit within us now compels us to good works according to the outworking of the inward Grace we have received. As we mature in our sanctification we fulfill the command to “Be holy as Christ is holy.”
1 Peter 1:13-25 Called to Be Holy
Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, 18 knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.
Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; for
“All flesh is like grass
and all its glory like the flower of grass.
The grass withers,
and the flower falls,
but the word of the Lord remains forever.”
And this word is the good news that was preached to you.
Also cf. Romans 3:9-20, 1 Corinthians 9, Galatians 3-5, 1 Timothy 1:5-10, James 2:8-26
(one last thought) To the redeemed the Law is a schoolmaster showing us our need of a redeemer, who is Christ Jesus. To the lost it is condemnation for the Law cannot be kept perfectly as God requires and a transgression of any one part is the transgression of the whole.
Um, no. (Says the guy with about 21 credit hours of graduate level Greek). Oinos means wine. Go ahead, find me one usage anywhere in any extra Biblical text where it means anything else. There aren’t any.
I don’t know Greek, but I do know Latin had two words for grape-sourced beverages – vinum and merum.
Thing is, the real division wasn’t whether or not alcohol was present. It was whether or not the fermented grape juice in question had been diluted with water post-fermentation or not.
Undiluted wine at the time was sickeningly sweet and had significant alcohol content. It was understood in Roman society that people who drank undiluted wine were drinking simply to get drunk. And there could be significant social shaming associated with that practice.
Ancient Greeks had a similar division. There were pottery designs solely made for diluting wine at parties, and there was some amount of social shaming in Athens at least of anyone who drank to get drunk instead of drinking diluted wine at meals or parties.
But fermation was always understood to have taken place.
“But most people who argue the Bible have never studied it long enough to know the real truth.”
There’s that phrase, “the real truth.”
It has been responsible for the splintering of Christianity into 30,000 plus denominations, sects, splinters and “IFB”-type churches all of whom believe *they* have “The Truth” TM, “patent pending.”
Yeah, isn’t it funny how people who profess KJV-only also use the “Greek” and “Hebrew” as a backup to deny what the English text patently says? It all points to a great scam, called, “Make the Bible say what you want it to say.”
And frankly, I am sick of it. Christian “leaders” have practiced a lot of deliberate deception, cherry picking, flat out lying, ignoring context, stringing together disparate and unconnected verses to create “doctrines” with.
The word used for “wine” is the same word in Ephesians with the admonition, “Be not drunk with wine.”
Again, you don’t get happy off grape juice or “unfermented wine”. This was wine, the “good stuff.” Trying to use “Greek” as an esoteric “I know more than you do” ploy to shut people up isn’t nice. It is what the fundies do all the time, deceptively playing their mind games.
I apologize for the rant. But that phrase sets me off, seeing how I have watched it used over the years.
The thing is, they don’t actually know Greek. They’re repeating something they heard or read from someone who misunderstood what someone said. The best case for Temperance is a logical construct. It simply isn’t obvious in Scripture and in fact appears fale on its face.
That should be “false on it’s face.”
But “fale” on its face works also.
The case for abstinance from alcohol can certainly be made. But it isn’t made in the Bible.
“Abstinence,” I mean.
And Numbers 15, pretty much the whole chapter. KJV if you like. Verse 10 is a doozy as it says what God likes. 😆
This was meant to be a reply to “doesn’t think” above.
but, but, but… that’s OLD Testament… we are not under the Old but the New… and we know God changed his mind about drinking alcoholic beverages in New Testament for now it’s a sin. 🙄
Because we all know that sin is something external that must be fought against so that we are not corrupted or contaminated by it. Amen?! I mean just look at Billy Sunday, Bob Jones Sr. and the whole Temperance movement/Anti-Saloon League folks. We have to get back to their “Olde Paths” and stop cuddling up with sin! The longer we are exposed to sin the more damage it does and the more polluted we become. Amen?! Come on now, it got quiet in here… That hit too close to home eh? I’ve quit preaching and gone to meddling now have I?? You know I’m preaching good when it gets all quite and the “Hey-mennin'” drops off. That’s called conviction, and the Lord is dealing with folks and the sin that has crept into their life and polluted them.
Now with every head bowed and every eye closed, no one looking around how many will say, “Preacher, I have not been fighting against sin as I ought, I have allowed it to pollute my life, creep in and get a stronghold in my life. I have allowed the appearance of evil to ruin my testamony… let me see you hands. I see that hand, and that one, bless you for your honest before God. I see that one, and that one, hands all over the building.
*shudder* I can’t even do that in jest without it giving me the hee-bee-gee-bee’s. I just can’t wade through that much manure anymore.
[starts to softly play the first of 25 to 250 rounds of “Just As I Am”, eyes closed, looking forward to getting home and knocking back a cold one, they’re still going, I’m getting drowsy, let’s get crazy and change keys, is he done yet? let’s change the melody a bit, who just walked the aisle? let’s go minor this time, who was the idiot that wrote this dirge? oh good, they’re wrapping it up, now what was I going to play for the postlude?]
He is going to be at my church next Sunday, can I ask him anything for you or do you just want to keep taking shots at him without ever talking with him?
Yeah, talking to him will totally change him mind. Good call.
You can ask him if he’s willing to quit brutalizing the Bible to get what he wants out of it.
Tell you what. Get back to us with the Text he preaches from and then tell us whether or not he actually preached the text or if he preached his own morality sermon. Better yet, Tell us what the focus of his sermon is… sin… or Christ. Odds are that Christ gets second billing if he is mentioned at all.
Sure. Ask him about Proverbs 22:6 as related to his son’s Twitter feed. Does he feel he failed to “train up (his) child in the way he should go”? Why or why not? What, if anything, would he do differently if he could start over?
I want to keep taking shots at him without ever talking with him.
From your mothers basement, in your scoobydoo pjs. Don’t forget to wipe the chocolate milk off of your lip.
Apparently, church didn’t go well, lol
Why not visit another church next Sunday?
So glad you will be there. Rebuke that jerk for me will ya?
Ask him if it’s true that he only wears silver cufflinks?
(from his twitter account, 8 Jun)
Or, ask him why he used a handful of tweets on June 1 to post hypocritically about critics.
If he needed surgery, would he go to a medical doctor with only an honorary doctorate degree?
So … how was church?
I’m guessing that because you ignored the question, it wasn’t so good.
What is the difference between a Baptist and a Methodist? The Methodist says hello to you in the liquor store.
Why must you always take two Baptists with you when you go fishing?
If you take just one he’ll drink all the beer!
Always like that joke! just couldn’t remember the way it went, thanks for getting it right. 😀
I imagine that the buzz of screaming at the top of your lungs and getting a bunch of people to yell affirmations to you tops any state of drunkeness.
😛
After the video ended there was a thumbnail for a video that purports to prove Christianity is a lie. I clicked on it and the young lady actually reminded me of fundy preachers. She went on and on about the purpose of the video. I’m not sure if she ever got to her point because I couldn’t listen long enough to find out. I’m glad that Hamblin’s clip was a short one.
Don’t be misled. Hamblin’s talk wasn’t a short one. The clip just shows a tiny part of it.
I know. But the clip presented was short. That’s what I’m thankful for.
Anyone else think this guy resembles Chris Farley playing Matt Foley on SNL?
Yes, in both intonation and body language.
Which one of them do you think influenced the other?
I know that a Fundamentlist Preacher would NEVER get drunk with wine, but I would guess that more than a few are drunk on POWER……
Don’t tell that to Rod Bell.
Catholic talk show host Al Kresta had a little fun with this “Jesus is not a bartender” yesterday. He didn’t identify the culprit but did play the clip introducing it as an “egregious violation of Scripture.” He explained the historical Christian view and had interesting things to say about “fundamentalists.”
Doesn’t wine represent joy in Scripture. Jesus I superior to the Old Testament because He brings life giving joy. He turns water into wine!
Is superior, George.
Jesus! I, Superior.
Yes, that’s what I meant… 😎
I think wine represents joy in more than just scripture. 🙂
First? Oh I hope! 😀
Darn! 😳 C’est la vie.
Have a glass of wine and forget about it….
For once, the first comment was actually meaningful! 😉
Don’t get used to it.
I wonder how these preachers feel about consuming beverages with an addictive mood-altering drug in them? I never hear about that.
Ask me after I’ve had my coffee.
I don’t drink coffee, but as an Irishman I drink a lot of tea. I love tea (though maybe my bladder doesn’t) Tea-drinking will be the urination of me, but I’m cool with that.
😆
I go to bed thinking about how nice that cup of coffee is going to be when I wake up.
I’m totally cool with my addiction.
I suffer (maybe it’s persecution according to the handbook) when I poor the cup that leaves less than a full cup in the pot. 🙁
*pour
Jesus may not have been a bartender, but he was a distributor.
Was he licensed and bonded?
I don’t think so. He ushered in grace and put an end to the law.
No, Jesus wasn’t a bartender. He was a vintner. A person who makes wine is a vintner, not a bartender. The bartender is the one who pours out drinks and serves them in glasses.
I think Semp has a point, though, at least in Kentucky. It is illegal for the spirit’s maker to also make it available to the consumer – law requires he sell it to the distributor. Jesus was such a rebel, man.
a)What is this guy on?
b)Maybe it’s a sin to give your neighbor “strong drink” because your neighbor is a mooch, and ought to go buy his own damn beer?
c)Since when is wine “strong drink”?
It’s quite a jump from saying you shouldn’t slip your neighbor a mickey and then steal his clothes to concluding that Jesus couldn’t have turned water into wine.
Well said! Cheers…
I’ve been told that ancient Jewish “wine” was incredibly weak, and heavily diluted… so that “strong drink” describes anything from beer and stronger in our society.
He may have a point in calling wine “strong drink”.
Not to mention that Magen David means the Star of David. I think he meant Manishewitz. 😉
Mogen David is another sweet Concord wine that many churches use in communion.
Either one sounds good to me. We use some (really cheap) local rose.
Mogen David makes a fine Communion wine, as does Manischevitz. They’re both basically fermented sweet grape juice. I often use Manischevitz for home or nursing home Communion — a bottle of it lasts a lot longer than a bottle of Welch’s, and I’ve found that the old ladies really like it! 😉
He sure know how to pronounce it. Makes my fundy mind wonder how he knew how to say it so well.
Oh, and,
d)There are no capital letters in Hebrew, so, how could it be a capital S, capital I, capital N?
Good point.
There weren’t even vowels in Old Testament-era Hebrew, so if the Bible had been written in English, it would have been “sn.”
and so all the fishes back then had no eyes. they were fshes. 🙂
(i apologize for that, it works better saying it vs. writing it)
Hebrew schmebrew. Who needs those ancient languages when we have the perfect God authorized 17th century English language. Amen?
It’s as clear as day that the perefect language in the perfect Bible states that Jesus turned water into wine. Wait, I mean grape juice.
Well if you look at the Greek word for wine, oinos…….
It would be s-n
No, hyphens were a much, much later development.
While we’re on the topic of Habakkuk, isn’t the real reason for getting the neighbor drunk to be immoral with him/her? Nothing has changed much; I remember plenty of guys talking about getting their dates to be more pliable by supplying them with liquor. That seems to be the point of the passage.
Oh, and Habakkuk says “Woe to him that…” does this – I suppose that can be understood to be SIN, but it does not call it capital S, capital I, capital N.
Hamblin is not the only guy to take what is plain and clear and replace it with what he would rather the text say.
In FundyU I remember one teacher claiming that oinos (Greek word for wine) meant “fruit of the vine” and could be non-alcoholic. This is a bald-faced lie. There are no extant manuscripts anywhere on the planet where the word means anything other than wine (although there are a few passages which are ambiguous – but with no reason to believe the author had any other thing in mind than, you know, wine).
But, I guess we all do this to an extent.
My old fundy preacher taught the same thing. He said basically they were drinking Welch’s grape juice. When I asked him how they kept it fresh without refrigeration, he just looked stunned and mumbled something to himself.
My MOG would only buy Welch’s (1611 recipe I’m sure) because ole man Welch saw that they were serving fermented grape fruit juice.
I’m guessing only sin-hating, church bus driving, skirt wearing, door knocking grapes were used.
Do I really have to watch & listen to this? I’m still recovering from the faux movie trailers. Can somebody post a synopsis?
If you think Jesus changed water into wine at the wedding at Cana, then you’re as bad as the Jehovah’s Witnesses. It was actually O’Doul’s or some other non-alcoholic beverage.
That’s the gist of it. Plus a lot of hollering for no apparent reason.
Oh cool, I do like a bit of nonsensical hollering now and then.
I’ll put this one on my “must watch” list.
He keeps calling it non-alcoholic beverage. And yet the Bible calls it wine. And there is also a command in the Old Testament for people to go buy strong drink and whatever else they had an appetite for, and consume it all in a great feast before the Lord (Deut 14:26). Solomon also recommends wine for the faint and bereaved (Proverbs 31:6).
“Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto those that be of heavy hearts.”
Proverbs 31:6 (KJV)
While I do not agree with Mr. Scream-And-Shout, I will give this caveat. I lived on a vineyard. We grew Cabernet Sauvignon grapes as well as some white wine grapes. My grandmother would walk out to the vineyard when the grapes were ripe and pick a mess of them, bring them inside and make grape juice. It was WAY better than Welches. She would also take grapes and mix them with raspberries and make a jelly that was to kill for.
SOOOoooooo, it could be that it would be wine grapes freshly squeezed, but I doubt it.
Give beer to those who are perishing, wine to those who are in anguish; let them drink and forget their poverty….
Prov 31:6-7
Stunt?? It autocorrected ny name to Stunt? That’s funny.
IDK what kind of a stunt you’re trying to pull…
Now lets not confuse what the bible says, from what I think the bible SHOULD say…
these guys are an endless source of entertainment…
I would find it more entertaining if it wasn’t exactly that, and they weren’t enslaving people to this way of thinking…growing up believing that is pretty devastating. And you have to constantly rely on them to interpret for you, because you can never trust what or how you read for yourself. They like it, they want it that way, because the more you rely on them, the more you can never leave. It’s awful, sickening, isolating creation of dependence.
I don’t know the doctrines of the Jehovah’s Witnesses in much detail, but if they think that the word “wine” (“oinos” in Greek manuscripts) means “wine,” they are at least better readers than those who somehow conclude that “wine” really means Pepsi-Cola.
John 2:7-12 according to fundies:
9 When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and knew not whence it was: (but the servants which drew the water knew;) the governor of the feast called the bridegroom,
10 And saith unto him, Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine until now.
11 And then he saith to Jesus, thou hast performed a miracle. You beith the best bartender ever.
12 To which Jesus replied, I am not a bartender. But I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
That actually makes sense, sort of. 😎
“You beith the best bartender ever.”
Translated: “Jesus, you da MAN!”
After listening to the clip (I really don’t miss that style of preaching!), I looked up Jehovah Witness beliefs about alcohol and drinking. I know they’re off on their doctrines about most things, but what I read about their beliefs concerning drinking seemed in line with what the Bible teaches: drink if you like, but don’t get drunk.
To me, it seemed like he just wanted to get an insult or two in. If we don’t agree with him, then we’re just as bad as those really bad people over there. Instead of intelligent Biblical interpretation, just toss out insults and hope they stick. (I know there’s a debate term for that, but I forget it.)
“Instead of intelligent Biblical interpretation, just toss out insults and hope they stick. (I know there’s a debate term for that, but I forget it.)”
In the fundy debate world, that is called winning the argument.
Elsewhere it’s known as an ad hominem attack:
“A bad person says this is true, so it can’t be true. If you do think it’s true, you’re a bad person, too.”
“In the fundy debate world, that is called winning the argument.”
Truth. There the argument doth rest, amen. It’s such a lazy way of making your points, too.
He’s right. It wasn’t Mogen David. Wrong type of grape. And it was most likely a better quality wine.
His argument, on the other hand, is faulty. Never let the facts get in the way. Or allow people the benefit of self-control or good judgement, but let the mog decide for you..
I’m going to try to walk the line here.
I do believe and preach that the cup of the Lord’s Supper is unleavened (non-alchoholic) wine, because of the clear picture of Jesus’ sinless, perfect blood. If the bread is unleavened and portrays the sinless body of Christ, the cup is no different. That and God takes His pictures of Christ very seriously (ask Moses)! The statements surrounding the cup never mention wine specifically, but do mention “the fruit of the vine”; given the ambiguity, we should fall toward what is certain, which is the sinlessness of Christ and the pictures portrayed.
On the other hand, I do agree that Jesus could have turned this wine into something with alcohol in it. John 2:8-10 talks about the water made wine being given to the governor of the feast (foodtaster, if you will) and being recognized as being “good wine”. This person would have recognized whether this had alcohol or not. This wine too would have probably been the best wine available, which was a white wine (and would have looked like water), even though this “Falernian wine” had a high alcoholic content. This wine was clearly never meant to be a picture of Jesus’ blood, like the cup in the Lord’s Supper (which was a red juice); this was an act of importunate faith on Mary’s part for Jesus (who resisted at first) to create more wine to save the reputation of the bridegroom (who was in charge of the party)!
In response to the statement that Jesus would have been sinning by making alcoholic wine. I guess Paul telling Timothy to drink some wine to fix his stomach was sinning too (they drank more wine than water in those days, because the alcohol killed bacteria) (I Timothy 5:23)!
Here’s a quote from an Anglican friend of mine:
“Wine is unleavened grape juice.
Grape juice (unless it is pasteurized) automatically has yeast in it. Yeast grows on grape skins.
The yeast eats the sugar and converts it to alcohol. At some point a balance is reached; the alcohol content becomes too strong for the yeast to survive, or else all the sugar is converted and the yeast starves.
That’s why the most orthodox of the orthodox Jews will drink wine at Passover; it’s the only way to insure that they are drinking the “fruit of the vine” with no yeast.”
Wow! I did not know that! I’ll have to do a little more research along those lines, but it makes sense from what I’ve found so far today. Thanks for sharing that!
I do wish some colleges would research their dogmatic statements a bit more before teaching impressionable teenagers. Oh, the reprogramming I’ve had to do… 🙄
Looking to Jesus, with all due respect (and I mean this sincerely; you seem to me to be a very sweet person):
There is really no way it could have been grape juice. Jesus lived in a hot Mediterranean climate long before the advent of refrigeration. That means the fermentation process started right away, and there really wasn’t anything you could do to stop it, even if you wanted to.
When the Bible says “wine,” it means “wine.” And there is absolutely nothing wrong with wine. With drunkenness, yes. With wine, no. Wine is very Biblical.
On a related note: The miracle at Cana foreshadows the miracle at the Lord’s Supper, when Jesus turned bread and wine into His very flesh and blood. But we won’t go there right now. After all, I’m just a gate-crasher. 🙂
That is a refreshingly introspective & thoughtful response by LtJ.
Yeast covers many food plants and is probably one of the reasons booze is as old as farming. Heck, apples become alcoholic all by themselves! That whitish covering inside of cabbage is yeast too.
This is true. Grape juice will ferment into wine unless it is sterilized with heat or by some other method, because natural yeast grows on the surfaces of the grapes.
(Modern winemakers sometimes kill this natural yeast on purpose so they can introduce a special yeast culture of their choice.)
Even if you somehow washed all the yeast off the grapes before crushing them, the juice would still turn into wine in most cases, because there are yeast spores loose in the air.
We have a friend with quite a few grape vines of a few varieties. Last year we made our own grape juice. Even refrigerated, it doesn’t take too long before it starts to turn. I would imagine unrefrigerated it would be a fairly quick process.
I wonder if Hamblin realizes that yeast is what makes his bread taste like it does, and that it is actually a form of fermentation. The sugars in the grain turn to alcohol, which gives flavor and texture, making the bread “chewy”. And then there is cooking with vanilla extract. Extremists in Fundystan are so inconsistent.
Historians say that in early America (roughly 1492 to the middle 1800s), most people drank much more fruit (as wines, brandies, hard cider, and the like) than they ate.
Most kinds of fruit have a limited season, and there was no way to store it as fresh fruit. Canning techniques were not perfected until the 1800s, and storing dried fruit does not work well in humid climates. Also, there was not sufficiently rapid transportation to get fresh fruits from most farms to large markets before the fruit spoiled.
So the best way to preserve fruit for storage or transportation was to express the juice, let the juice ferment, and then bottle the resulting wine or store it in casks. You couldn’t eat a fresh plum, peach, or pear in winter, but you could drink wine made from last summer’s crop. Most of the apple crop in those days was made into hard cider or apple jack (now you know what Johnny Appleseed was up to!). You could make it even more compact for transportation by distilling the wine into brandy.
The same thing applied to grain. Farmers who had surplus corn, barley, etc. had no efficient way to move it to market as grain, but if they made it into whiskey, it had added value and was more compact to transport. This was the source of the Whiskey Rebellion in the early Federal period. Farmers believed that a tax on whiskey unfairly singled them out.
There was also, of course, the fact that plain water was often unsafe to drink. A beverage with enough alcohol to kill bacteria and parasites was considered more wholesome.
And if SFL had been around during that time, we couldn’t have cared less about whether there was alcohol or not in society. But, we would have have belittled those darned farmers and merchants who dared to believe in capitalism. How dare those evil farmers steal from our kids by not wanting to pay unreasonable taxes and robbing our schools of funding!
At least all is not lost. We can still fight those silly people who want to rebel against the government spying on us. That can be our fight of the day. How dare those people be for those nasty terrorists and have the audacity to demand privacy?
Huh? What??? 😯
😕
Juno account – the confusion is understandable.
Huh? Somebody’s cider go hard or something?
I’m curious why you think that during the feast of Unleavened *Bread* that there would be the same provision for wine even though wine wasn’t considered leavened (not a grain product) and Moses, who was always very particular, would be silent on that point entirely, that Jesus’ words should always be taken literally, that an agriculture and economy based in wine would have no colloquial phrases to speak of it (see also the figure “blood of grapes” means exactly wine and not juice, Deu 32:14, the NT coinage is pretty much a mirror of that phrase), and that Jesus, when suggesting that he wouldn’t drink *this* with them again, forgot that his audience might know their Old Testament and remember the eschatalogical promise that the LORD of Hosts will make a banquet of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined. Oh, and the fact that the idea that it wasn’t wine is very much a novel interpretation that doesn’t have any support from Justin, Iranaeus, Augustine, (all specifically mentioning wine at the Last Supper) and so on until the 19th century temperance leaders suggested it. There’s pretty much every reason to believe it was wine, and none outside of fundamentalist pre-commitments of piety and alcohol. Some modern interpreters (who know nothing about grapes/wine, evidently) suggest that it’s clearly the freshly crushed grapes — the must! Which is where the yeast is in the first place, while the Biblical teetotalers (under the Nazarite vow) were not allowed anywhere near a vine, seeds, leaves, skin, raisins, all very clearly spelled out.
Also, no wine contains enough alcohol to kill bacteria. You’ll need distilled liquor for that — but not invented yet in the first century. It’s another myth. They drank wine in those days because there was a billion square miles of vineyards, and Thomas Welch and the Sun Maid wasn’t around to give them marketing advice. Water was perfectly viable, see John 4.
I love Deuteronomy 14:25 to 27. I have used this on more than one occasion to leave speechless the fundy who disapproves of alcoholic beverages.
Context. You live a long way from “the place where God sets his name to dwell”, so you can’t take your firstfruits to the temple or tabernacle.
“25. Then shalt thou turn it into money, and bind up the money in thine hand, and shalt go unto the place which the Lord they God shall choose:
26. And thou shalt bestow that money for whatsoever thy soul lusteth after, for oxen, or for sheep, or for wine, or for strong drink, or for whatsoever thy soul desireth: and thou shalt eat there before the Lord thy God, and thous shalt rejoice, thou, and thine household,
27. And the Levite that is within thy gates; thou shalt not forsake him; for he hath no part nor inheritance with thee.”
King James Version even! And lookey, lookey! It says you can turn your offering money into strong drink, invite the preacher or the deacon, and have a party (unto the Lord). Wine! Strong drink! Wow!
Yes, that is alcohol.
When Jesus turned water into wine, he didn’t turn it into nonalcoholic grape juice. People don’t get happy off mere grape juice. And the “governor” of the feast, more than a little bit happy from the wedding wine, realized that *this* stuff was really good, really potent!
Yes, IFBers twist the Scriptures on a regular basis. It took me a long time to realize it. It took me a long time to learn to think differently. And I am still struggling with the issues. But this one I think I have nailed!
A bishop should not be given to much grapejuice “wine” because too much grapejuice is the source of so many issues……
Ding, ding, ding!
I’ll have to ask that to the preacher of the next “drinking is a sin” message I hear. 😈
LOL. Good one. But the Wedding at Cana itself provides a similar example. The steward chides the bridegroom for saving the good grape juice for last? Yeah, right. We all know how carried away people get on good grape juice…so much so that they do not notice when you subsequently serve them bad grape juice. Happens every time. 😆
Exactly, ericbrindamour. How do these preachers explain the biblical warnings of getting drunk on wine if the wine was non-alcoholic?
Ya’ll are making me want a glass! Maybe a bottle of Bass Ale later today. 😀
I’ve got horse piss in my fridge.
Oh. Just in case I have to clarify, that is a brand of ale, not actual equine urine.
Oh, I thought you were referencing Budweiser…
That drink is referenced in both JULIUS CAESAR and THE TEMPEST.
Well, for what it is worth, it earned its name the honest way. Which is prolly why it is still in my refrigerator and not in my belly.
Kreine, we really don’t appreciate your attitude around here and suggest you leave. Where do redneck racists like you come from, anyway? Texas? So just because Budweiser isn’t made by redneck, Republican, white boys but is a Brazilian beer it just HAS to be terrible? Wow, and I suppose you don’t drive BMW’s either because they might have been tainted because an African-American helped design it? I’d like to see you try to have that kind of redneck attitude in Sao Paulo and see how far it gets you.
Huh? What? 😯
Never thought I’d have to call “Poe” on a beer argument!
@Shellymac, who is this ‘we’ you speak of? I personally think beer and pee have a lot in common, whether it’s called Budweiser or Sam Adams.
I don’t get your argument at all. Was there a point to it or was actual beer involved in the formation of it?
Shelly, I hope you’ve had your coffee by now and realize your attack was slightly out of line. If you’re joking, and it’s some sort of an inside thing, my bad.
Plus, I thought Budweiser was a St. Louis thing, Giant Clydesdale horses, and “tah-dah” horse piss!
Lol. Based on the “juno” handle link, I’m gonna have to call poe on this one 🙂
Geez, I don’t access SFL for a few days & I miss the fun.
Thanks for the laugh, Shellymac!
Watched that thing and had flashbacks to way too many chapel and church services.
I think I will retire to my room and rock back and forth humming mindlessly.
Yeah, the phrasing, the intonation, the patterns and pauses–it’s all pretty triggery. Took me right back, too.
I am with you, Liz. I thought I had died and gone back to Bible College. What a wind bag…
I was always taught in the IFB that wine has several different meanings in the Bible. I never had the nerve to ask why the translators didn’t use the correct words. If it is really grape juice, then why didn’t the translators say juice instead of wine? And I’d really have to be off my rocker to suggest that there are translation errors in the “Holy KJV”.
The root cause, AFAICT, is that back when the Temperance Movement was strongly associated with Protestantism, there was indeed a terrible problem with alcoholism in this country. But instead of identifying issues that caused massive displays of public drunkenness and alcoholism to the point of starving women and children so the men could get drunk, one branch of the Temperance Movement emphasized just plain no alcohol ever at all period. So good people enjoying alcoholic drinks in the Bible became unthinkable.
The Temperance Movement intersected with nationally organized feminism, BTW, because men controlled all of the money in the household by law, including the money earned by the women. Women being able to control their own money and thereby protect themselves and their children from being starved by an addict was a huge feminist issue. So that was one good outcome.
But the thing is, that is just a lie. It doesn’t have many meanings. Every single time oinos is used in any manuscript it means wine. The only outliers are passages where it doesn’t have to mean wine (i.e. “I had oinos with lunch”), but trying to make those mean non-alcoholic is a travesty of both grammar and logic.
So let me see if my scorecard is correct:
6 days to create the world: literal
3 days in the belly of a whale or fish: literal
God and Satan shooting craps with Job’s life: literal
Song of Solomon: allegory
Water into wine: not literal
Sell everything you have and give to the poor: ……heresy??
To continue;
Global flood – literal
Living peaceably with mankind – a joke
where is non-alcholic, non-alcholic, non-alcholic, (I seem to be stuck here) where is non-alcholic in the Bible?
Just because the man in the pulpit makes an assertion that does not make it so!!
*sigh*
Mr. (Yeah, I said mister) Hamblin is an ass.
That is an un-called-for insult to donkeys – or are you talking Anatomy here?
Anatomy, but I should have thought it through. I do like donkeys. Thanks for pointing it out. 😳 🙂
How about the south end of a north-bound donkey? 😆
s.e.o.a.n.b.d for short.
Reminds me of A Corner Gas episode. Link brings you to the scene I’m reminded of…
http://youtu.be/VBxuOlAR5Ck?t=2m23s
Go to 2:23
BINGO !
Why are IFB’s so adamant about drinking? Why are they so convinced it’s a sin that they’ll change the Scriptures to say what they want them to say?
Maybe that’s a stupid question after all. They change everything else to suit themselves.
I replied to this in the wrong place–see above.
Tl;dr: Take massive alcoholism issue in the USA, add religious efforts to curb it, subtract any understanding of alcoholism beyond “alcohol = bad,” multiply by generations of unending striving to be more-set-apart-than-thou, and get Jesus turning water into grape juice.
I collect old hymnals, BTW. I have two from the end of the 19th century that include “Temperance Hymns.” They are very topical and earnest, but they didn’t age well.
I was raised in a home with alcoholism, so I made a personal choice to not drink any alcohol at all. I made that choice as a young teenager, before I was a believer. But I have many Christian friends who enjoy a glass now and then.
I never had the dubious privilege of hearing this man speak, but I can imagine it would be a waste of time. What an arrogant so-and-so.
Alcoholism is a real problem, and for many people, it is best not to drink any alcohol at all. But nothing in the Bible says never to drink any alcohol at all.
Just because something seems true doesn’t mean it’s in the Bible somewhere if you look hard enough.
Exactly. My choice to not drink doesn’t give me any reason to decide that no one else should.
I can’t even stand the smell of any kind of wine or beer. I guess cleaning up after a drunk for so many years does that to a kid.
But that doesn’t make it Biblical.
It IS a sin to give your neighbour strong drink… but only if you do it to get him or her drunk enough so that you can also get him or her naked:
“Woe unto him that giveth his neighbour drink, that puttest thy bottle to him, and makest him drunken also, that thou mayest look on their nakedness!”
Habakkuk 2:15
I’m guessing Jimmy Buffett (among others) never read that verse 🙂
Well played. Truly well played.
What if I just get him tipsy enough to get his shirt off? 😉
I get my kicks above the waistline…
…sunshine.
…in a show with everything but Yul Brynner
Habakkuk 2:15 was mentioned a couple weeks ago in relation to alcohol, and I thought it was a Poe. Pulling something that far out of context seemed like stretching to me. (heh heh, naive I know)
That verse is not condemning a person slipping someone a mickey. It presumes that slipping someone a mickey is wrong, and it assumes the reader knows that it is wrong. It uses that assumption to make another point. “Hey, look at those Chaldeans! They’re slipping their neighbors a mickey! God doesn’t like that.”
Read the whole chapter Mr. Hamblin. (Yeah, who am I kidding)
Now, I am not a Christian, but I do find a lot of stuff in Habakkuk 2 that is quite preachable:
“Because thou hast spoiled many nations, all the remnant of the people shall spoil thee”
and
“Woe to him that coveteth an evil covetousness to his house, that he may set his nest on high, that he may be delivered from the power of evil!”
and
“You have plotted the ruin of many peoples, shaming your own house and forfeiting your life.” (NIV, sorry)
and
“Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood, and stablisheth a city by iniquity!”
I think a person living in Habakkuk’s time would know exactly what was meant by “Woe unto him that giveth his neighbour drink, that puttest thy bottle to him, and makest him drunken also, that thou mayest look on their nakedness!” Exactly what they were doing may be lost to history (or maybe not, are there historical records we can reference?) My first guess would be that it had to do with money somehow. Maybe they were credit sharks?
Agreed.
It’s not clear exactly what misdeeds are being condemned in Habukkuk 2:15, but obviously some kind of skulduggery was afoot beyond merely drinking some wine.
The thrust of the whole chapter is a denunciation of violence and exploitation in the public sphere. It’s not personal “standards” that are at issue.
That Poe was one of the Michael’s I’ve seen on this site. His argument was exactly the same as Hamblin’s in the video. Makes one think. I haven’t seen that Michael since I called him a silly person on another thread.
sounds like his drink of choice is …Mogen David!
😛
Maybe someone already mentioned it, but Hamblin’s kid sure likes his beer!
https://twitter.com/aaroneus0210
And that is Hamblin’s kids twitter?
Wow it is!
Yep…it sure appears to be.
I think that is a new topic in and of itself. How many famous evangelists have completely had their family reject their teachings to pursue their own path?
Maybe that’s why Hamblin Sr. screams when he talks about non-alcoholic beverages. 😐
He needs to try a better brand. How about Fat Tire or Bass or 312 or Harp or … Miller Lite = meh.
Holy Moly! I just looked at who the kid is following on twitter. Beers, country and rock acts. He’s gotten off the Fundy bus.
I’m happy for him! And I’m sure he is happier.
Jesus did not turn water into Mogen David. At the very least, he turned the water into a Pinot Grigio or a Traminette. He didn’t make any cheap nasty wine.
I like to think it was 1945 Château Mouton-Rothschild…
Terrible exegesis aside, why does he walk that? Not exactly a step, not exactly a hop, and as if he can quite stand fully upright. How can I pay attention to his terrible exegesis when he’s walking like that?
Perhaps you answered your own question.
CAN’T quite stand upright. Is this when I blame George? I’m new to this.
Yes, now that you have met George it means you are one of us…one of us…one of us.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBXyB7niEc0
HUGE +1 for working in a reference to FREAKS. 🙂
Gooble Gobble!
Pass the cranberries. 🙂
Baptist preachers have NEVER condoned alcohol.
If “never” means “not since the late 19th century,” then you’re right.
Except for Elijah Craig. But you knew that right?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elijah_Craig
Good one, Apathetic!
Until now, I didn’t know the allusion behind our friend Elijah Craig’s nom de keyboard. 😀
Heaven’s Hill is a short trip from my place…
I don’t get his reference to Mogen David. I mean, I realize he’s so afraid of even saying the word “wine” – lest his hearers be tainted, or even worse, realize he’s full of baloney – but urban dictionary says it’s cheap bumwine.
Jesus made the best wine ever, not that junk.
Maybe it was MD 20/20 (aka Mad Dog 20/20).
If MD 20/20 is the only kind of wine he has tried, no wonder he thinks wine is horrible.
If I were so against wine, I wouldn’t be giving the crowd ideas of a new brand to try out….
A very old joke:
A preacher was completing a temperance sermon: with great expression he said, “If I had all the beer in the world, I’d take it and throw it into the river.”
With even greater emphasis, he said, “And if I had all the wine in the world, I’d take it and throw it into the river.”
And then, finally, he said, “And if I had all the whiskey in the world, I’d take it and throw it into the river.” He sat down.
The song leader then stood very cautiously and announced with a pleasant smile, “For our closing song, let us sing Hymn #365: ‘Shall We Gather At the River.'”
Ew, not the kind of mixed drink I like.
IFB logic:
Every positive reference to wine in the Bible = grape juice
Every warning about wine in the Bible = real wine
What’s with Hamblin’s mid-air fistpound?
He hopes that silhouette will grace the black background pages of KJB only websites all over the world. I’m sure he’s been caught pumping that fist in his office frequently.
I’ve been reading a takedown of Debi Pearl’s Created To Be His Help Meet. The reviewer is currently tackling the chapter in which she explains that there are only 3 types of men and that it’s a woman’s job to conform herself to her man’s inexorable unchanging type. Her prooftext is that Eve was created in the image of Adam, so obviously women are supposed to pattern themselves after their husbands.
Except that the creation of women is described twice in Genesis. In one account, men and women are created in the image of God. In the other, the first woman is created to correct a problem in the first man that requires “a help meet for him,” and the problem is that he is alone and that isn’t good. So God takes some of the first man’s own substance to make another person with, and according to the passage, this creates the longing to be together that is the basis of erotic love and marriage, which appear to be the same thing (“one flesh”).
Debi explains that while it’s hard to conform oneself to the unchanging nature of one’s husband, women are created with “this unreasonable desire to be needed by a man.”
I should believe someone who restricts herself to the KJV and then can’t even read that one translation? This isn’t even doctrine. It’s basic reading comprehension!
SFL: Preaching stuff they made up as the infallible word of God.
It’s Debi Pearl who says a woman should never leave or divorce a husband even if he is physically abusing her and their children.
I have no use for her thinking (if you can dignify what she does with that name).
Can you post a link? Sounds interesting, I love a good dissection. 😀
It’s Libby from Love Joy Feminism
http://www.Patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism
I just had a couple Summer Shantys. Nice and light, just needed a lemon slice.
I remember my grandma telling me it was grape juice. I believed her because that is what kids do. Wasn’t until I was older that I understood the true story. The Baptist church I went to as a kid had glass communion cups. After the service, the cheap old ladies would pour the unused cups back into the bottle. 8 months later it had a funky taste.
It was a Methodist who started the practice of grape juice. I wish we were like the Lutherans who use wine and have grape juice in the middle of the tray.
http://www.gbod.org/lead-your-church/holy-communion/resource/changing-wine-into-grape-juice-thomas-and-charles-welch-and-the-transition-
Not that i care. But if you are going to use the Bible you probably should know Jesus did turn water into wine. But it was new, better than they had before. He didn’t turn it into fermented wine. The Greek word refers to the first fruit. In those days they didn’t refrigerate and the wine would sometimes sit for weeks and it would ferment. Jesus made fresh wine not old wine. Not going to argue this because it don’t matter if you think it’s right or wrong. And Christ didn’t destroy the law He fulfilled it. Drinking isn’t the law. The idea in the Bible is you can’t be intoxicated with wine and intoxicated with the Spirit. The Spirit is to guide us and lead us. When you give yourself to wine or strong drink it leads you to do and say things you normally wouldn’t say or do. I’m not saying i agree with this guy and I’m not saying i don’t. But most people who argue the Bible have never studied it long enough to know the real truth.
It’s a nice theory. Unfortunately it has no basis in reality.
Please tell me this Greek word you’re talking about. To your last sentence, I have a graduate degree in Biblical languages, so please site your sources and be specific.
BTW, I love how some fundies and others treat Greek like it’s some kind of hidden gnosis that they can lay out when they wish. And since so many people don’t know the language, they sound like they know what they’re talking about. Enlighten us then on “the real truth.”
“Drinking isn’t the law”? Tell that to Deuteronomy 14:26.
Cana was where Jesus fulfilled this part of the law 🙂
Does “fulfilled” mean that nobody else has to think about it any more, or that it doesn’t apply to any else, ever?
No, it means that Jesus did something we couldn’t do in the first place. The Law was given to us to show us we cannot keep it as God requires, thus our need of a redeemer who could keep the Law and fulfill the requirements of the Law in both spirit and letter.
Now that Christ has fulfilled the Law, we are no longer bound by the law to try and keep it but as the redeemed we are justified by Christ’s work and not our own. If we return to trying to fulfill the law then we are saying Christ’s work was for naught.
As the redeemed we are no longer attempting to keep the Law but the Spirit within us now compels us to good works according to the outworking of the inward Grace we have received. As we mature in our sanctification we fulfill the command to “Be holy as Christ is holy.”
1 Peter 1:13-25
Called to Be Holy
Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, 18 knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.
Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; for
“All flesh is like grass
and all its glory like the flower of grass.
The grass withers,
and the flower falls,
but the word of the Lord remains forever.”
And this word is the good news that was preached to you.
Also cf. Romans 3:9-20, 1 Corinthians 9, Galatians 3-5, 1 Timothy 1:5-10, James 2:8-26
(one last thought) To the redeemed the Law is a schoolmaster showing us our need of a redeemer, who is Christ Jesus. To the lost it is condemnation for the Law cannot be kept perfectly as God requires and a transgression of any one part is the transgression of the whole.
Um, no. (Says the guy with about 21 credit hours of graduate level Greek). Oinos means wine. Go ahead, find me one usage anywhere in any extra Biblical text where it means anything else. There aren’t any.
I don’t know Greek, but I do know Latin had two words for grape-sourced beverages – vinum and merum.
Thing is, the real division wasn’t whether or not alcohol was present. It was whether or not the fermented grape juice in question had been diluted with water post-fermentation or not.
Undiluted wine at the time was sickeningly sweet and had significant alcohol content. It was understood in Roman society that people who drank undiluted wine were drinking simply to get drunk. And there could be significant social shaming associated with that practice.
Ancient Greeks had a similar division. There were pottery designs solely made for diluting wine at parties, and there was some amount of social shaming in Athens at least of anyone who drank to get drunk instead of drinking diluted wine at meals or parties.
But fermation was always understood to have taken place.
“But most people who argue the Bible have never studied it long enough to know the real truth.”
There’s that phrase, “the real truth.”
It has been responsible for the splintering of Christianity into 30,000 plus denominations, sects, splinters and “IFB”-type churches all of whom believe *they* have “The Truth” TM, “patent pending.”
Yeah, isn’t it funny how people who profess KJV-only also use the “Greek” and “Hebrew” as a backup to deny what the English text patently says? It all points to a great scam, called, “Make the Bible say what you want it to say.”
And frankly, I am sick of it. Christian “leaders” have practiced a lot of deliberate deception, cherry picking, flat out lying, ignoring context, stringing together disparate and unconnected verses to create “doctrines” with.
The word used for “wine” is the same word in Ephesians with the admonition, “Be not drunk with wine.”
Again, you don’t get happy off grape juice or “unfermented wine”. This was wine, the “good stuff.” Trying to use “Greek” as an esoteric “I know more than you do” ploy to shut people up isn’t nice. It is what the fundies do all the time, deceptively playing their mind games.
I apologize for the rant. But that phrase sets me off, seeing how I have watched it used over the years.
The thing is, they don’t actually know Greek. They’re repeating something they heard or read from someone who misunderstood what someone said. The best case for Temperance is a logical construct. It simply isn’t obvious in Scripture and in fact appears fale on its face.
That should be “false on it’s face.”
But “fale” on its face works also.
The case for abstinance from alcohol can certainly be made. But it isn’t made in the Bible.
“Abstinence,” I mean.
And Numbers 15, pretty much the whole chapter. KJV if you like. Verse 10 is a doozy as it says what God likes. 😆
This was meant to be a reply to “doesn’t think” above.
but, but, but… that’s OLD Testament… we are not under the Old but the New… and we know God changed his mind about drinking alcoholic beverages in New Testament for now it’s a sin. 🙄
Because we all know that sin is something external that must be fought against so that we are not corrupted or contaminated by it. Amen?! I mean just look at Billy Sunday, Bob Jones Sr. and the whole Temperance movement/Anti-Saloon League folks. We have to get back to their “Olde Paths” and stop cuddling up with sin! The longer we are exposed to sin the more damage it does and the more polluted we become. Amen?! Come on now, it got quiet in here… That hit too close to home eh? I’ve quit preaching and gone to meddling now have I?? You know I’m preaching good when it gets all quite and the “Hey-mennin'” drops off. That’s called conviction, and the Lord is dealing with folks and the sin that has crept into their life and polluted them.
Now with every head bowed and every eye closed, no one looking around how many will say, “Preacher, I have not been fighting against sin as I ought, I have allowed it to pollute my life, creep in and get a stronghold in my life. I have allowed the appearance of evil to ruin my testamony… let me see you hands. I see that hand, and that one, bless you for your honest before God. I see that one, and that one, hands all over the building.
*shudder* I can’t even do that in jest without it giving me the hee-bee-gee-bee’s. I just can’t wade through that much manure anymore.
[starts to softly play the first of 25 to 250 rounds of “Just As I Am”, eyes closed, looking forward to getting home and knocking back a cold one, they’re still going, I’m getting drowsy, let’s get crazy and change keys, is he done yet? let’s change the melody a bit, who just walked the aisle? let’s go minor this time, who was the idiot that wrote this dirge? oh good, they’re wrapping it up, now what was I going to play for the postlude?]
He is going to be at my church next Sunday, can I ask him anything for you or do you just want to keep taking shots at him without ever talking with him?
Yeah, talking to him will totally change him mind. Good call.
You can ask him if he’s willing to quit brutalizing the Bible to get what he wants out of it.
Tell you what. Get back to us with the Text he preaches from and then tell us whether or not he actually preached the text or if he preached his own morality sermon. Better yet, Tell us what the focus of his sermon is… sin… or Christ. Odds are that Christ gets second billing if he is mentioned at all.
Sure. Ask him about Proverbs 22:6 as related to his son’s Twitter feed. Does he feel he failed to “train up (his) child in the way he should go”? Why or why not? What, if anything, would he do differently if he could start over?
I want to keep taking shots at him without ever talking with him.
From your mothers basement, in your scoobydoo pjs. Don’t forget to wipe the chocolate milk off of your lip.
Apparently, church didn’t go well, lol
Why not visit another church next Sunday?
So glad you will be there. Rebuke that jerk for me will ya?
Ask him if it’s true that he only wears silver cufflinks?
(from his twitter account, 8 Jun)
Or, ask him why he used a handful of tweets on June 1 to post hypocritically about critics.
If he needed surgery, would he go to a medical doctor with only an honorary doctorate degree?
So … how was church?
I’m guessing that because you ignored the question, it wasn’t so good.
What is the difference between a Baptist and a Methodist? The Methodist says hello to you in the liquor store.
Why must you always take two Baptists with you when you go fishing?
If you take just one he’ll drink all the beer!
Always like that joke! just couldn’t remember the way it went, thanks for getting it right. 😀
I imagine that the buzz of screaming at the top of your lungs and getting a bunch of people to yell affirmations to you tops any state of drunkeness.
😛
After the video ended there was a thumbnail for a video that purports to prove Christianity is a lie. I clicked on it and the young lady actually reminded me of fundy preachers. She went on and on about the purpose of the video. I’m not sure if she ever got to her point because I couldn’t listen long enough to find out. I’m glad that Hamblin’s clip was a short one.
Don’t be misled. Hamblin’s talk wasn’t a short one. The clip just shows a tiny part of it.
I know. But the clip presented was short. That’s what I’m thankful for.
Anyone else think this guy resembles Chris Farley playing Matt Foley on SNL?
Yes, in both intonation and body language.
Which one of them do you think influenced the other?
Dos Equis the beverage of fundamentalism! 👿
He brewed bear in the basement?
http://drinkingmadeeasy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/BearBeer.jpg
That must have been strong stuff. 😉
I know that a Fundamentlist Preacher would NEVER get drunk with wine, but I would guess that more than a few are drunk on POWER……
Don’t tell that to Rod Bell.
Catholic talk show host Al Kresta had a little fun with this “Jesus is not a bartender” yesterday. He didn’t identify the culprit but did play the clip introducing it as an “egregious violation of Scripture.” He explained the historical Christian view and had interesting things to say about “fundamentalists.”
Here’s the link (hope it works) It is June 11th first hour podcast and it starts at 25:57. Enjoy. https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/kresta-in-the-afternoon/id316247661#