Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thanks for tuning in to The Baptist Bias. I'm your host, Pastor Shelley, and we've got a great show this evening. We're going to talk about is drinking alcohol a sin?
A lot of people have some crazy ideas on this today, and we're going to start out first with our binologue.
The Bible says in 1 Timothy 4,
For every creature of God is good and nothing to be refused if it be received with thanksgiving.
Now, according to the former pastor of Watermark Community Church, Todd Wagner, this verse isn't just about bacon, sausage, and shrimp, but it also includes booze and illicit drugs.
Talk about treating the Bible with soberness.
On Wagner's podcast, Real Truth Real Quick, he suggested downing a beer on the spot to fight the evils of fundamentalism, but he didn't stop there.
According to Todd, heroin is a gift of God. Heroin. If, of course, we sanctify it first with prayer and thanksgiving.
Now, using that logic, I guess we should also drink arsenic.
If toxic mushrooms sound appetizing, don't hesitate to grab some from a field somewhere for a tasty addition to your next dinner date with your wife.
Every creature of God is good. So, you know, bring on the asbestos, snake venom, mercury, formaldehyde, eat and drink it all to the glory of God.
Of course, if that sounds completely ridiculous to you, perhaps you need another drink or another hit.
Honestly, though, I think even some bartenders might be skeptical of Wagner's doctrine.
But consider Catholics, who turn fermented wine into the precious blood of our Savior, or large non-denominational churches like Greater Purpose Community Church in California, which serves beer and wine during its services.
The timeless proverb says wine is a mocker and strong drink is raging. But who knew the cure was to say grace before your kegger?
Brought to you, of course, by Pastor Jack Daniels.
If what I've said makes any sense to you whatsoever, I think you need to put down the bottle and spend the next hour with us getting the Baptist bias.
We're talking about drinking alcohol. Is it a sin?
A lot of people that are not Baptist or have not grown up in a fundamentalist home would really quickly answer, oh, drinking alcohol is not a sin.
In fact, there's a lot of pastors. In fact, I would say most pastors seem to indicate they don't believe drinking alcohol is a sin whatsoever.
It's more about moderation. It's more about keeping yourself in control. That's important rather than the fact that alcohol just in and of itself could even be a sin.
But it's strange because this doctrine has gone to such an extremity of confusion and weirdness. People are not justifying heroin. I can't even believe it.
And we've got some crazy clips for you. Let's say hi to our co-host, Ben the Baptist. Thanks for joining us.
Thanks for having me here on this podcast. You know, some of the stuff that you're about to hear, I want to give you a reminder, is not satire.
There are actual people who claim the name of Christ, who claim to be teachers of the Bible, who believe, yes, that if you pray for it, heroin would be justifiable.
I mean, it is unbelievable. And obviously, a lot of people are confused about this issue, think that it is OK to drink alcohol, that it would be permissible to drink alcohol, that it's not a sin to drink alcohol.
They twist the word of God in order to advance this narrative. And so tonight we'll be playing some clips for you just so that you can hear their side of the story.
But we're also going to debunk their arguments. We'll show you what the Bible says about this issue. We'll show you what health experts say about this issue.
And at the end of the podcast, you should walk away with the Baptist bias.
Now, I think we need to show this clip that's really spurred this show, because there's this clip from Todd Wagner.
And Todd Wagner was the pastor of a church here in the area called Watermark Community Church. And it's a non-denominational church, pretty large church.
He's recently stepped down because of pride, whatever that means. But maybe it's because he had a few keggers or something going on.
Maybe that's his problem. But this guy, he has a little podcast that he had done in the past called Real Truth Real Quick.
It's really just like real heresy real fast, I guess. But real heresy in real hurry, I guess.
But he tries to articulate why he does not believe that drinking is a sin and somehow brings up drugs in the conversation.
I mean, I can't even understand this whatsoever, but let's tee up this clip here and let's listen to a little bit here of Todd explaining to us if drinking is a sin.
Welcome to Real Truth Real Quick. My name is Rick Smith. I'm the director of digital ministries here at Watermark Church in Dallas, Texas.
I'm here with our senior pastor, Todd Wagner. And so, Todd, the holidays are rolling around.
Yes, they are.
People want to have a wine with their meal. And the question is, is it wrong for Christians to drink alcohol?
What if the holiday is not rolling around? They just want a long neck with their pizza.
Is it wrong? Is that going to send me to hell, that beer?
That's the question. Well, how about this? This is Real Truth Real Quick. Let me just answer this a few ways.
First of all, drunkenness we know is wrong. Wine is a mocker. Strong drink is a brawler. Whoever is intoxicated by it is not wise.
That's Proverbs 20, verse 1. But I want to also read you some other stuff because, again, we're trying to give a biblical take here.
And so I'll say this. All right. 1 Timothy. Let me just read it to you.
It says, But the Spirit explicitly says that in the latter times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to the deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons by means of apocrisies, of liars, seared in their own conscious as with a branding iron.
Men who forbid marriage and advocate abstaining from foods, which God has created to be gratefully shared by those who believe and know the truth.
For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with gratitude, for it is sanctified by means of the word of God and prayer.
And so I want to say, just based on that reading alone, I don't know how you could say that the way you can tell if somebody's a Christian or not is whether or not they drink alcohol.
What I would say is, if you're not a person who, whatever you do, whatever you partake in, doesn't sanctify it by the word of God in prayer.
Whatever you're doing, you shouldn't do.
In fact, we're told to eat and drink to the glory of God.
So if there's anything in your life that you're saying, I've got to have that in order for my holiday meal to be really a source of joy and pleasure to me, that's a problem.
Because if you eat and drink like that food and that drink is the source of your joy, or even worse, is the source of your comfort, then no, you absolutely can't drink that stuff.
But if, on the other hand, you sanctify it by the word of God in prayer, somebody would say, well, wait a minute, Todd, does that mean heroin's okay?
I would say, yes, there is a way to use heroin, sanctifying with the word of God in prayer.
By the way, if you've ever had painkillers after surgery, you've used it in moderation under the administration of a doctor who cares about you to help minimize your pain, which is a gift from God to not go through that pain.
Or we give you some forms of cocaine to help you be even, you know, unaware when you're having surgery done to you.
So we can use every drug. Everything's given from God is good. We use it, though, for our own destruction.
But let me just read you some script.
OK, let's just pause it for a second.
We know that we're not to be drunk.
This is where this guy just goes so crazy.
I can't even believe that he's literally saying that heroin is a gift from God.
Because, you know, it's interesting, they're not King James only, which is a huge problem.
And he's basically saying everything, instead of saying, like, every creature is good and nothing to refuse, like the Bible actually says, he's suggesting just everything's good.
So now, you know, toxic waste.
I mean, literally excrement that comes out of your body is a gift from God.
You might as well consume that if we receive things.
I mean, what do you see from a logical perspective? How's that different?
No, it's not. I mean, everything would be fair game, including poisons like that, waste.
And here's the thing, too, Pastor Shelley, is he claiming that people who would say alcohol is a sin, that that's a doctrine of devils?
I guess just saying anything is actually poisonous or bad for you or unhealthy.
I mean, what about the doctor who literally is just saying, like, don't eat this junk food or something?
Is that a doctor? That's a doctrine of devils now?
I mean, can we not take the Bible in context? Is it not obvious that what we're talking about here is in the Old Testament, there was dietary restrictions.
And in the New Testament, Jesus Christ has brought everyone back together and no more Jew and Gentile.
There's no this separation.
And those pictures of the Old Testament sacrifices of having this distinction between the Jew and the Gentile are now been broken.
So you can actually eat things like pork.
You could actually eat other type of animals that were considered unclean, like rabbit or other different beasts of the field that, you know, weren't dividing the hoof.
And, you know, they weren't chewing the cud.
Now we can actually eat them because we're sanctifying that creature with prayer.
But to go from a camel to cocaine, I mean, I don't even know how.
Where do you stop? Where's the line?
There is no line.
I mean, you know, I've seen there's this show.
It used to be called My Strange Addiction.
And there was this one guy in there, he would eat rocks like that was just he just started eating rocks.
And he was talking about how he started like little tiny rocks and he was like elevating like bigger rocks.
I mean, where is the stopping point to this insanity?
And it's like he's mocking people that have actually struggled with drugs and alcohol.
I mean, people have literally destroyed their lives through drugs and alcohol or someone in their family has destroyed their lives with drugs and alcohol.
And, you know, we want that testimony.
We actually are trying a new feature tonight.
We're trying to call in and we've got a phone number here.
And if you want to call in, we want you to hear your story.
If you've been negatively affected by drugs, specifically alcohol, or maybe you just it wasn't you drinking.
It was a family member or just someone around, you know, that's been hurt or damaged or abused by alcohol.
We just want you to give us a testimony and say, you know, I can testify this thing's dangerous.
This thing causes people problems.
And we've got a number for you.
And even our phone number, Ben, has got a Baptist bias because our phone number is 231-227-8478.
Now, I'm not that great with all those numbers, but you can think of it this way.
231-Baptist. 231-Baptist.
And you can call in and we'll put you on the show.
We'd love to hear from you for a few minutes.
And so try to call in.
And we also have the chat.
So if you want to ask us any questions in the chat, we'll be taking your questions.
But I really want to just highlight how the preaching today has gotten so crazy that people literally are justifying heroin and cocaine.
Now, he goes a little bit further in this little podcast.
He's also going to suggest just downing a beer on the show, apparently.
Let's play a little bit more of this clip.
With wine, that is dissipation.
It makes you less than the man you should be.
There's nobody who has wine or beer or any alcohol or drug that that dilutes their mind.
That becomes a better dad, a better spouse, a better table guest.
OK, if you get somebody so miserable, you want them to drink so they pass out.
OK, the problem is that they drink. The problem is that they're not sanctified themselves by the word of God in prayer.
But watch this. This is worth reading a large section of scripture.
Romans 14 really talks about this. Watch.
Therefore, let us not judge one another anymore, but rather determined not to put an obstacle or a stumbling block in a brother's way.
Here's what I would say to people when they ask me, should I drink?
I would say, well, why would you or why wouldn't you?
Because if you say I'm going to use my liberty for my own freedom and my own pleasure, do what I want to do.
That's not the attitude of Christ. The attitude of Christ is do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit.
So, yeah, maybe you can drink. But the question is not can you, but should you?
Second Corinthians six, three, it says don't do anything that would cause the ministry to be discredited.
Now, certainly that means drunkenness.
The other thing might cause the ministry to be discredited is if you're with what the Romans 14 would call a weaker brother, which to them it's a sin if they partake.
Or maybe that particular thing that you're partaking of has been a stumbling block to them in the past.
And what you do in moderation, they can't do in moderation. They're going to do an excess.
And so you're going to just flaunt your ability to use that wisely before them in a way that's going to be real destructive to them.
That's not loving to do. And so unless you are really sure about everybody's opinion of alcohol and even past suffering from alcohol,
I would really guard against it if you're in any kind of position of leadership or if you're a follower of Christ who cares about other people.
Watch this. Let's keep reading because it's very, very clear here.
It says this. I know and I'm convinced in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself.
But to some it is. To him who thinks it's unclean, to him it is unclean.
If because of food your brother is hurt, you are no longer walking according to love, don't destroy with food whom Christ died for.
Therefore, do not let what is you, to you a good thing, be spoken of as evil.
And there's some people that are going to really struggle if you have alcohol.
It's why I just lay aside my right to drink alcohol and I think of other people when I do that.
That's what I was going to ask everyone. It's on everyone's mind. Do you drink alcohol?
Yeah, I can. The question is not do you or don't you. Okay, the question is why would you or wouldn't you?
It's already clear that Christians can. I would say this. I don't use my liberty just because it's mine.
I want to do everything I do for the sake of others. That's what scripture tells me to do.
Okay, and so really there's not a right answer to that. The question is, am I going to let everything I do be done in love?
And if it's not loving to drink, I won't. By the way, as a dad, I don't want my kids to think that they need alcohol to experience life.
And so I drink non-alcoholic beer. If I like the taste of beer, I'll drink that.
But if I need to show somebody that alcohol is not what separates you from Jesus, give me a beer. I'll drink it right now.
I have no problem with that. But I do have a problem with people who do it thoughtlessly without regard for others.
That's Roman 14. Read the whole chapter. We got to go. There's some real truth real quick.
Join us next week. We'll be talking about medical marijuana.
So apparently, according to Todd, whenever you decide if you're going to drink or not,
you have to first decide if you're drinking for yourself or drinking for others.
Because, of course, we all know that when you drink alcohol, it just blesses other people just so much.
And I think the question in everybody's mind is, does Todd do heroin?
That was the real question. That was on everybody's mind.
He's like, yeah, I drink. Yeah, I sometimes I drink, but I don't.
Dude, what a confusing answer.
I don't think this guy knows the difference between the book of Daniel and Jack Daniels, to be honest with you.
This is someone who it's so funny because you brought it up earlier.
He's taking a verse that is explaining the New Testament truth that there is no more dietary law with regard to certain meats and drinks and things of that nature.
There aren't certain foods that we have to avoid anymore in the New Covenant.
And he's taking that to just blanket say that it's permissible to just do whatever you it could be cocaine, heroin.
He doesn't stop at alcohol, alcohol, and using that argument to claim that alcohol is justifiable in the sight of God would have been absurd enough.
But then he goes the extra mile of drugs as well. Heroin, cocaine, you name it.
Well, so clown world.
Here's the thing. Before you see your friend take a line of coke, you need to ask him, are you doing this for yourself or for others?
Make sure you do it lovingly.
Have you prayed yet that cocaine? Because you don't want to thoughtlessly take drugs and alcohol.
You want to purposely mix them all together in a nice little cocktail for your buddies and make sure that they're OK with your consumption of alcohol and drugs and everything like that.
That is going to bless them. I mean, this is the type of scholarship that we have.
We're going to Romans 14. We're not even actually touching verses that even bring up the word wine or alcohol or soberness or anything like that.
We're going to verses that talk about animal sacrifices, because apparently the Bible doesn't address this issue, does it Ben?
I mean, apparently not. You know, this guy again, it's amazing.
You have verses that are speaking to the New Testament believer that the carnal ordinances, but specifically the dietary law, which was under the Mosaic covenant, has been done away with in the New Testament, that it's been fulfilled.
And he takes that truth that applies it to alcohol. He takes that truth and applies it to apparently cocaine and heroin.
It is amongst the most absurd arguments I've ever heard from somebody attempting to justify the consumption of alcohol.
And frankly speaking, Pastor Shelley, when I first heard about this, when you brought it up after we had gone off the air on one of our shows, I didn't believe you.
I thought maybe you heard it wrong. Like I'm like, there's no way anybody would ever use this argument.
But here we are listening to somebody who claims the name of Christ, who at this point in his ministry claimed to be a Bible teacher.
And this is the argument he's going with. It is absurd. It is preposterous.
Well, and again, sometimes you have to show the video because I don't even me just saying it out loud.
I get nervous thinking like there's no way he actually said. Yeah. And then you watch the clip again.
And it's just amazing the the fact that people I mean, I think they have to be drunk.
They do. I think he might be higher drunk during this. How could you literally say that? I mean, let's let's go ahead.
Let's down some arsenic, as long as we don't do it thoughtlessly. Yeah, let's down some for.
Well, every everything's a gift from God. Yeah, the devil's a gift from God.
So, you know, I mean, we wouldn't want to disparage the devil or demons or, you know, any everything's great.
Everything's wonderful. This is this is the kind of logic that you're getting from scholarship today is to suggest that literal poison,
literal any kind of drug is just somehow a great blessing unto us.
Now, I will say this. Obviously, there is medicine and obviously medicine should be taken with extreme carefulness and soberness.
But a lot of people who have gotten on these drugs, these, you know,
pain reducing drugs end up destroying their entire lives and they wish they had never even taken them.
So while you might say, oh, it's such a gift from God that I don't have to experience this pain by getting in these painkillers.
Yet then they they develop these horrible addictions and they end up destroying themselves or having even worse problems and wishing they'd never even been on these particular drugs.
I mean, people that take these type of painkillers oftentimes end up getting on worse drugs or street drugs or even worse illicit drugs in the future because they do have a similar chemical composition and everything like that.
So why would I use that as an argument to say, well, doctors prescribe drugs, therefore it's a gift from God.
I mean, doctors prescribe a lot of different things. Are we just going to literally say everything that the doctor is prescribing is good?
Now, how about a Planned Parenthood doctor prescribing abortion to handle that?
Is that a gift from God because it's coming from a doctor? Or should we let the Bible tell us what's a gift from God?
Let the Bible describe for us the things that are good and harmful and to say, take this verse out of context, say nothing in and of itself is unclean.
So we now supposed to believe human excrement is not unclean anymore.
That that poison or toxic waste or Joe Biden, these things aren't unclean anymore. This is this is insane.
The Bible literally describes people as being unclean constantly throughout the Bible.
And again, we're talking about a spiritual uncleanness in many cases. And I get that.
But why even wash your hands anymore? I mean, the bacteria on your hands is a gift from God.
God and it's clean. Why did doctors sterilize anything?
I mean, the blood left over from the last surgery is a gift from God for the next surgery.
I mean, this is the type of logic that we have here. Let's let's play another clip, because I could just get mad all night.
We could go on and on about this guy. We got another one.
Jeff Durbin, Pastor Jeff, Pastor Jeff, Pastor Jeff Durbin.
So this clip, I can preview it for you. This here is a compilation of Jeff Durbin asserting that Jesus and John, chapter number two, turned water into,
quote, wine with strong fermentation, that he turned water into wine with, quote, strong fermentation.
And so Jeff Durbin makes this argument, of course, in an effort to push the idea that drinking alcohol is permissible for Christians.
And so we'll go ahead and play this clip now. Brother Tim, if you can get it teed up and ready to go.
I got the thumbs up. So let's listen to Jeff Durbin arguing for alcohol, a proponent of drinking alcohol speaks glowingly about wine in the Bible.
He calls it a blessing, promises to bless his people with the choices of wines.
Jesus turned gallons upon gallons of water into wine with strong fermentation.
Do you think that Jesus turned water into wine for the glory of God?
When Jesus turned water into alcoholic wine, was that to the glory of God or was that a sin? Was that a sin for Jesus to do that?
When he turned water into wine, alcoholic wine at a wedding feast, at a celebration.
Now, drunkenness is a wicked sin that will send you to hell. But you're going to have to face the facts that the Bible actually speaks very highly about alcohol.
And it's as a blessing and not to be abused.
You're actually making your savior look like a sinner because he actually turned water into wine at a wedding.
And it was alcoholic wine. There is no way exegetically around that.
When you look at the scriptures and you see God actually saying he's going to bless his people with the choicest wines.
When you see God telling his people to sell their stuff and to make capital to buy wine and strong drink for a celebration.
You're making God look evil because of your tradition, not because of scripture, because of your tradition.
So he says there's no way exegetically around the fact in his mind that John chapter two is teaching Jesus turned water into alcoholic wine with strong fermentation.
Those are his words. Now, thankfully, we have a pastor sitting to my left who might be able to respond to that.
What do you think about this claim?
He, of course, uses the age old Deuteronomy 14. We'll get to that later.
But John chapter two, I think, is kind of the main portion of his argument where he's claiming that Jesus.
And this is what a lot of this is like the John three sixteen of the alcohol proponent crowd that Jesus turned alcohol or should say turned water into alcoholic wine.
Well, you know, first of all, it's hard to even think of what his name is because I just think Jeff Bourbon every time I see this guy.
I mean, the guy obviously has just a strong proclivity to want to drink alcohol, to think that Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, would make an intoxicating beverage for a large group of people.
Which again, he's he's basically making Jesus a bartender or something, which why in the world would Jesus Christ, the God of the universe, be trying to entice people to become alcoholics or to become drunk at a party that he's there hosting?
This is this is a weird straw man that he tries to paint.
He says, well, you're if you're saying that Jesus didn't turn water into to wine, then you're denying the Bible.
But if you say Jesus turned into wine and you think it's alcoholic and that's wrong, then you're making him a sinner.
So he tries to she tries to say, like, if alcohol is a sin, then Jesus is a sinner, which it's like.
I'm sorry, if I'm sorry, if wine is alcoholic there, then you're making Jesus Jesus into a thing.
It's not alcoholic. What about that option? What about that logic?
And again, this is where you get people and they say it's indefensible. The idea that wine in the Bible would not be alcoholic.
They they didn't even know how to invent it until Welch's. They didn't even know what fruit juice was or anything.
It's like this stupid idea that for thousands of years, no one on the planet ever squeezed the fruit and noticed that juice.
It's like they couldn't even understand that if you take an orange and you like squeeze it, there's juice that they probably never even eaten fruit.
I mean, fruit didn't even exist to these people. You know, there's there's no example of them ever having any kind of fruit juice or any kind of beverage.
And in fact, they basically make it where the only alcohol, the only beverages that exist on the planet were water and booze.
That's it. Just water and booze. There's no other beverages, no other drink. I mean, that's the absurd opinion.
That's the absurd idea. When you want to go and say back in those days, they didn't have the apple juice and the orange juice.
Yeah, maybe they didn't have a plethora of juice. I'll grant you that. But to say that they didn't they didn't invent juice until the last couple hundred years or something like that is complete asinine ludicrous.
I mean, of course they had juice. And of course, Jesus Christ, when giving wine to a whole bunch of people at a party at a wedding, was making non alcoholic wine.
It's very obvious. I mean, most every wedding that I've ever gone to, they have like a wedding punch. I mean, have you been to a wedding? What do they serve?
Yeah, it's a lot of fruit juice, the wedding punch, cranberry juice, fruit punch or something like that.
It's very common to have some kind of a beverage that's a little bit fancier at a wedding.
So, of course, they're running out of this fancy beverage because people normally are drinking water at home or they don't have the luxuries.
So when they're at this feast or at this party, they're all excited about drinking, you know, this this great fruit juice beverage.
And when they run out, they're like, well, they can't just run to the store and get more. It's hard to just get fruit in there.
So Jesus does a great miracle by turning water into fresh fruit juice.
And it was better, more fresh, better tasting than the other juice that they had had before, which is exactly what the whole story is.
There is no insinuation here that anyone has gotten drunk, is getting drunk, is enjoying alcohol.
That is coming from a perverted mind, from perverted hearts that want to justify drinking.
That's why we call him Jeff bourbon, because we know what's in his heart, bourbon, and we know what's in his liver, bourbon.
Now, well, sorry, go ahead.
I was just going to say he claims there's no way exegetically around the fact that this was alcoholic wine.
I just don't understand where exactly he's getting that claim or where that would come from at all, because I look at the text.
And in John chapter two, what it says in verse seven, Jesus saith unto them, fill the water pots with water and they fill them up to the brim.
And they say to them, draw out now and bear unto the governor of the feast.
And they bear it when the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that 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.
This is the part that I really wanted to focus on in verse 10, when it says and sayeth unto him, every man at the beginning does set forth good wine.
And when men have well drunk than that which is worse, but thou has kept the good wine until now.
He wants to talk about how there's no way around exegetically.
Of course, he has to use the fancy theological term to put himself on a platform from an intellectual perspective.
But in verse 10, it says when men have well drunk.
So I'm supposed to believe if we're going to look at this through the Jeff bourbon glasses, through the lenses of Jeff bourbon, I'm supposed to believe that Jesus Christ went to a wedding feast in which people had been drinking lots and lots of alcoholic wine, and he gave them more.
So what he did is he enabled these people to get even more drunk.
That's the only conclusion you could possibly come to is that Jesus enabled a bunch of people to get drunk, like severely drunk at this party.
If you want to conclude that this was alcoholic wine, there's no way around that conclusion.
Well, and again, when we talk about these verses and we talk about these scriptures, they want to try and suggest that Jesus would be a sinner if he made alcohol.
And, of course, this is kind of an interesting proposition, because number one, if Jesus did it, it wouldn't be a sin because Jesus can't sin.
He's incapable of sinning and even suggest that any Christian believes that is really just not even trying to have an intellectual argument.
But, of course, you know, I do believe it would be wrong for any person to serve a large group of people alcohol after they've drunk a ton of alcohol.
I mean, this what kind of logic? Because these people will say, well, it's not a drink.
It's not a problem to drink moderately, but in the passage doesn't say anybody drink moderately.
It's saying they drank to the full. Yeah. So how how could you then argue that no one's drunk?
I mean, what would be the it's drink, drink, drunk.
And and again, this passage, if that's true, Pastor Shelley would contradict even their narrative that getting drunk is the sin, because that's what they would say.
They would say the line is drunkenness.
Well, how could these people not have been drunk?
How is it possible for them not to have been drunk after they drank all this wine and then Jesus gives them even more?
Think about what they're doing to the Messiah. Think of the way that they're portraying Jesus.
He wants to sit there and say we're turning him into a sinner.
Well, he's turning him into a guy that makes a bunch of drunk people even more drunk.
Well, how about Habakkuk 2, which says, woe unto him that giveth his neighbor drink that putteth thy bottle to him and maketh him drunken also.
I mean, how is that not just a literal violation of Habakkuk 2 saying, hey, oh, you guys well drunk?
Let me let me fill you up some more, buddy.
Give me some more. I mean, that's their Jesus.
Their Jesus is a drunk Jesus just partying at a college frat boy.
Let's just have some more wine and some more bourbon and some more Jack Daniels.
Forget Daniel the prophet. How about Jack Daniels?
I mean, this is the absurdity.
And we know that people out there have been suffering from this type of stupidity, from this drunkenness.
And we want you to call in and share your story with us.
We've got a phone number you can call in. It's two three one Baptist, two three one Baptist.
Even our phone numbers got that bias.
And, you know, we need some more people to wake up and get the Baptist bias and realize alcohol is poison here.
Alcohol is not helping anybody. And, you know, some people say, why preach a sermon on this or why do a podcast on this or why share this message?
The problem is, is there's so many people that advocate that drinking is not a sin.
It's really like the majority position. It almost feels like I want to show.
Let's show a lot more clips real quick. Let's just show a handful.
Let's show some more people that are saying this stupid narrative.
Now, I have some clips that I want to share for our production.
Chris, down there at the bottom for the Tim, if you look in our sheet, it's Pastor Shelley clips is the one minute apologist.
There's the beat by Alan Parr. And then I want to go to our our favorite false prophet, Ray Comfort of dead water.
I mean, living waters or urban waters. I don't really call.
They're all going to sit here and justify drinking for us. And it's not going to take long.
I just want to play just a little bit. Let's do the one minute apologist.
Welcome to the one minute apologist apologetics seeks to give credible answers to curious questions, to give a defense.
Is drinking alcohol a sin? The Bible is replete with scriptures about drinking alcohol.
And one thing is clear. The Bible doesn't condemn drinking in moderation.
Rather, it forbids drunkenness. The Bible says, do not be drunk with wine, but be.
So there's a clip. Hey, no, it's fine to drink in moderation, right?
Just a resounding message here is going to be coming from all of these guys.
Not drinking is fine in moderation. You just can't get drunk. Don't get drunk.
Which again, where's the line to that? Let's hear from another guy, another popular.
Drinking alcohol, a sin. That's what we're going to talk about today on the beat.
Hey, what's up, everybody? Welcome back. My name is Alan Parr.
And so today we are asking and answering the question, is it a sin to drink alcohol?
Now, the quick answer is no, it is not. However, people tend to go to one of two extremes when trying to answer this question.
Either they'll say, you know what, a Christian is. Oh, people go to extremes here.
You mean like heaven and hell? You mean like good and evil? You mean like God and the devil?
Yeah, God is a God of extremes. God says thou shalt not.
He's not just sitting here giving you all these gray, like, well, you know, you drink a little bit.
You know, just don't get beyond the BAC level of .08, Brother Ben.
Right. Well, I think you hit the nail on the head when you said that the God we worship, the God of the Bible, is a God of extremes.
And there's so many verses about that. How about when it says he that hath the Son hath life and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life?
I mean, there's a verse right there. That seems like it's pretty extreme. Like you mentioned heaven or hell.
You believe, you go to heaven, you don't, you go to hell. God is a God of extremes.
All right, let's go ahead and play our third clip here. This is from Ray the False Prophet Comfort.
The lit remover. That was great. So we hope that that was good conciliation for all of you cat lovers who don't like us anymore.
Please don't hate us. All right, on to serious subjects.
Can you tell me if it is wrong to drink and where does it talk about it in the Bible?
I was raised in a non-drinking home and my husband is Catholic and we argue about this all the time.
Non-drinking. You say cat flick.
Oh boy, Ray. Now you're going to get us in trouble with other folks.
So this person is saying that they grew up in a non-drinking home. They must have been really dehydrated.
I thought you were going to get on that one.
No, I thought I just let it go because it was a little corny.
Yeah, there's nothing wrong with drinking. It's drunkenness the Bible condemns, you know.
I don't drink alcohol mainly because it's poison.
If you ask a chemist, what is alcohol? It contains toxins.
When someone gets intoxicated, they are poisoned and your body sends up little signs like you throw up.
You can't steer a car straight. You feel woozy and the next day everything in your body is screaming.
Headache, nausea, all this. Your body is saying please don't send any poisons down there.
And yet people drink and you know they say don't drink and drive. They never say don't drink.
Alcohol is the only...
Now here's what's so crazy about this clip.
He literally asks, he says, oh there's nothing wrong with drinking.
And then he randomly just says like, but it's a poison.
And you can't even think straight. You can't even walk right. You can't even drive a car.
But you know, no problem with drinking.
What kind of absurdity is this? It's like the most incoherent response I've ever heard.
It's preposterous to sit there and admit that it's poison but then you know claim that it would be okay.
And so just a little bit of poison isn't going to hurt you.
I mean if we were talking about anything else then nobody would take an argument like that seriously.
But because it's alcohol it's normalized that if you just take a little bit of poison it ain't going to hurt you. It'll be okay.
Yeah and his buddy's just making jokes about it like, oh this guy's never had a drink of any liquid in his life.
Yeah I know. Guy sounds...
I mean he sounds like a queer.
We're feminine, queer.
What kind of a weird bizarre show is this?
Now I have a few clips of this so I want to keep showing here. We've got another segment of this.
They're going to kind of explain their position a little bit from another guy that's on the show.
And then they're going to talk about, shocker, Jesus turning water into wine.
It's what Ray had said. You know I see more negative coming from it than good.
It's not a sin necessarily to drink alcohol. If you're going to drink alcohol you have to drink it in faith.
Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
You can't get drunk to the glory of God and guess what? You can't get drunk if you're not drinking.
So I don't even put myself in that position. I'm not against alcohol. Like I said, I'm against getting drunk.
I go over to a friend's house and they'll have wine with their meals and I don't even think twice about it.
I don't think, oh wow I'm more spiritual than this person or they're not as spiritual as that next person.
You know Jesus turned water into wine. That was the very first miracle that he performed there.
He turned wine into water. It was a mistake.
You know I saw a funny post by Lane Chaplin the other day and he had said,
Let's see, Jonah into the belly of the well? Literal. Jesus rising again from the dead? Literal.
Let's see, water into wine? Well I'm not sure. Maybe that was figurative.
And we grab a hold of these miracles right and we begin to go, ah let's try to fit this because it's done with wine
and it's so taboo within our culture. Like I said, I'm not a big alcohol guy.
There's nothing wrong with drinking alcohol if you could do it in faith. I just tend to stay away from it.
I have no problem going out with friends and I'll have a beer and I just don't drink a beer myself. I'll drink a cup.
Now here's what's crazy. He is suggesting that alcohol is not a sin. Drink it in faith.
See the problem is not that you drink poisonous substances that hurt you. It's the fact you weren't drinking the poison in faith.
You know or food poisoning is not really because you had bad food. It's because you didn't pray hard enough for the food when you were eating it.
Now I just we played a lot of clips here so let's kind of back up for a second.
We got the one minute apologist and this guy's a pretty popular YouTuber.
He's constantly putting out little quick snippets and just right off the bat is drinking a sin.
No, you got to drink it in moderation. Please explain for us, Ben, what is moderation?
I mean I don't really have an answer. Maybe just a couple drinks. I don't know what they would mean by that.
It's so vague and I think it's vague on purpose.
Yeah, I mean we're talking about the commandments of God here and it's like well don't get drunk.
Who defines what drunkenness means? Because everybody that I've ever met that drinks alcohol says they never get drunk.
So just no one gets drunk?
Yeah, I mean I guess that's what the argument would be is that nobody ever gets drunk.
Or maybe the only state of drunkenness that they would accept as drunkenness would be if someone is just vomiting all over themselves and about to pass out.
Maybe that's all that they would claim is drunkenness whereas they don't or maybe they think that's the only state that somebody has to be in in order for them not to be sober.
I think is the argument they would make. You're only not sober if you're vomiting all over yourself.
Well here's the thing. If you're getting drunk, how can you even tell if you're getting drunk?
Because isn't the point of being drunk you like lose your mind, you forget where you are?
I mean this is just an absurd line of logic that these people are taking.
And they might have some catchy like music. I mean we got the beats over here.
Yeah, I noticed that about every clip.
I mean this is kind of some catchy music.
Every clip's got the music.
And it's just like, hey is Drake and Allison? Short answer? No.
It's like are all these guys sponsored by beer? I mean it makes me feel like I'm watching CNN with Pfizer's commercials or something.
It's like we just want to make it clear. Pfizer's great and we love it and there's nothing wrong with Pfizer.
We just want to make it clear. It's like they're all falling over themselves like don't stop buying alcohol.
Get your Budweiser. Get your bourbon. Just do it with faith, man.
You know, have some more faith when you're going and drinking liquor.
But again this guy, all of these guys are self-appointed YouTube prophets and apostles.
These like one minute apologist guys, these Alan Parrs.
We're going to show a clip from a Jefferson Bethke guy.
These like self-proclaimed men of God, Ray Comfort, self-proclaimed men of God.
They're just reiterating the same message that's coming from these other pastors.
Pastor Bourbon, Pastor, I think you had a clip from another guy, John Piper.
We might play it in a minute. We had Todd Wagner.
So it's not just coming from the pulpits of America, it's coming from these online pulpits too, from all these apologists.
And you know what, you need to stop listening to online apologists and start getting into a fundamental Baptist church and start hearing the truth from God's word.
Rather than this opinion of just community.
Because again, none of these guys have a differing opinion.
Why is there a need for them to make all these videos when they're all saying the same thing?
I mean they're going along with what the majority opinion apparently is.
They put up their one minute videos on YouTube.
People consume this content and that's it.
That's all they need and they don't go and look up the issue for themselves or study their own Bibles themselves.
And Pastor Shelley, it seems to me like according to these guys, wine is always alcoholic in the Bible.
They appear to be making zero distinction between fruit juice and the alcoholic fermented wine.
According to them, wine is just carte blanche.
It's just always alcoholic every single time.
And that appears to be the bedrock of the argument that they're making in all these videos.
At least that's what it seems like to me.
Well and we need to show one more clip from this Living Waters.
He's going to make that point for us.
So let's play it here.
He's going to make it clear like, oh it can't be fruit juice or whatever.
It's definitely alcohol and everything like that.
So let's play this last little section of his clip.
Ray at Pharmacist.
Because kids buy them and they use them.
Because there's so much alcohol in them.
Right.
And it does warm the stomach.
You know I think the problem with this whole issue and I think the problem that some Christians who do drink have is when certain believers say it is an absolute sin.
Yes.
And honestly folks, you cannot make that case from scripture.
And we have to be honest.
As much as some of us may dislike drinking, as much as we've seen a lot of negative effects from it, you cannot make a case scripturally that it is a sin for someone to drink alcohol.
And here are some of the scriptures that deal with alcohol in a positive sense.
Ecclesiastes 9-7 instructs, drink your wine with a merry heart.
Psalm 104, 14-15 states that God gives wine that makes glad the heart of men.
Amos 9-14 discusses drinking wine from your own vineyard as a sign of God's blessing.
Isaiah 55-1 encourages, yes, come buy wine and milk.
And so those are just a few passages.
Isn't it in Proverbs that says this one's dying, give them alcohol, give them drink?
I think it does.
It'll speed up the process.
Right.
Make it go quicker.
But those are some of the positive aspects of alcohol.
Mark alluded earlier, of course, Jesus turned alcohol or water into wine.
We see that in John 2.
And then in Matthew 26, 29, during the great supper or the last supper, the disciples obviously partook of wine.
And Jesus said, I'm not going to drink it again until I drink it new in my Father's kingdom.
So would that have been fermented wine or just grape juice?
That's the argument some try to make.
And I think it's really tragic that some try to stretch it so fast.
So they're saying it's so tragic that people try to make this argument that wine is actually fruit juice at some times.
Well, let's challenge accepted.
He said you cannot defend our position.
You cannot show up from the scripture.
Yet these are the guys that are avoiding all the passages that the Bible clearly condemns alcohol.
And then they try to bring up positive mentions of wine.
Well, of course, because there's two different kinds of wines in the Bible.
There's a wine that's unfermented and there's a wine that's fermented.
And you have to just let the context tell you.
It's real easy when you actually let the Bible tell you what it means when you read the context.
But of course, they're going to cherry pick verses that use the word wine in a positive sense and try to suggest to you that that's alcohol.
But then ignore all the verses that talk about it in an extremely negative sense.
So from my perspective, if you believe that alcohol is is the only thing that the word wine means in the Bible.
How do you solve the inherent contradiction of the fact that the Bible says wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise?
That's a clear verse saying that wine is bad, saying it's mocking you.
You're deceived and you're an idiot. You're a fool.
If you've been deceived by wine specifically, that has to be alcohol.
Are we going to now say that that's the fruit juice?
No. So either a you just believe the Bible is full of contradictions and you're an atheist or something.
Or if you say, I actually believe the Bible, you have to resolve these conflicts by realizing the obvious fact that juice exists.
And that people in the Bible drank fruit juice at times.
I mean, is this really that radical, Ben?
Not at all. And I don't think it's radical to believe that during this time period, people knew how to squeeze fruits in order to make juice.
It is preposterous to assert, to argue that this didn't exist.
I'd like to share this verse as well.
In Isaiah chapter number five, verse 11, where the Bible read, woe unto them that rise up early in the morning, that they may follow strong drink that continue until night till wine inflame them.
In verse 22 of the same chapter, the Bible says, woe unto them that are mighty to drink wine and men of strength to mingle strong drink.
We see the word wine here used in conjunction with strong drink, which I think, again, shows that there are certain passages in scripture where it is alcoholic.
But they're claiming that I guess it always is.
And so therefore, the passages that would portray it in more of a positive light is some sort of endorsement of alcohol coming from the word of God.
But as you mentioned, Pastor Shelley, when it comes to interpreting the Bible, we have to allow the context to help us do that.
And I think in Isaiah chapter five, you had mentioned Proverbs chapter 20 as well.
The context is clear as to what wine is referring to there and what kind of drink is being condemned by the word of God.
But these passages that would say that wine makes the heart marry or would sort of view it in a positive perspective, Pastor Shelley, they would mock us for saying, well, that's not alcoholic.
But I don't think that that's an argument that deserves to be mocked whatsoever. I think it's a sound biblical argument.
Well, let's go to some passages that condemn alcohol. Let's bring up some of the Bible. I know we have some patches here.
To me, a really important passage is Proverbs 23. That's something that I want to kind of look at in the Bible.
I already gave you Proverbs chapter 20, verse number one.
But the Bible talks about people that have a horrible life. Their life is just completely destroyed through alcohol.
And it talks about them having all kinds of problems. And then it makes some clear statements about drinking alcohol that I think a lot of people are just ignorant of.
I never seem to see anybody going to Proverbs 23 in defense of alcohol. They're always, they're just like ignorant that this is even in the Bible.
But in Proverbs 23, the Bible says, Who hath woe, who hath sorrow, who hath wound, who hath contentions, who hath babbling, who hath wounds without cause, who hath redness of eyes.
They that tarry long at the wine, they that go to seek mixed wine, look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth its color in the cup, when it moveth itself aright.
Now, let me ask you this question, Ben. Have you ever seen Welch's grape juice just start moving itself?
I have not observed that, no.
So if we're going to talk about juice moving itself, what do you think is being described there?
I would imagine fermentation, the fermentation process, perhaps.
I mean, is there any other possibility? Have you thought of anything else? Telekinesis? Do you think we're talking about people that, you know, are just looking at it and just starts moving?
I mean, that's not what came to mind.
What kind of witchcraft is this? Of course, it's clear we're talking about the fermentation process, which means the slow decay of a beverage, and it's talking about it changing color.
Again, wouldn't that indicate to us very clearly about fermentation type processes, a slow moving process that's moving the drink, it's changing, it's bubbling, it's now turning into what? Some kind of an alcoholic beverage.
The Bible says look not at it, meaning you shouldn't look at it, you shouldn't touch it, you shouldn't be dealing with it.
You know, once it's gotten to that state, it's now dangerous for you because it says at the last it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder.
Thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thine heart shall utter perverse things.
Yea, thou shalt be as he that lieth down in the midst of the sea, or as he that lieth upon the top of a mast.
They have stricken me, shalt thou say, and I was not sick. They have beaten me, and I felt it not. When shall I awake? I will seek it yet again.
So they're saying when you drink this wine, you will go after women that are not known to you, whether that be an adulterous affair or just being a whoremonger, committing all kinds of fornication.
It says you're going to say really perverted things that you wouldn't normally do.
It says you're going to literally get punched, beaten, smitten, kicked, whatever, and you're going to say I didn't even feel it, and then when you wake up, you're just addicted to this thing.
Now has anybody ever done that to juice?
Not that I know of.
Have you ever had Welch's and then it's just like super human strength, someone punches you and you can't even feel it, you lose your mind.
So obviously we're talking about alcohol here, and it's saying don't even look at it. Don't even go around it.
How could that not be clear? Why would I then take this passage and then pair it up with the thing that's saying it's making my heart so happy?
How is that compatible with who has woe, who has sorrow, who has wounds without cause, meaning you don't even know what happened, it's just you're getting injured.
I mean this is a clear passage in the Bible saying have nothing to do with alcohol, when the wine changes, don't have anything to do with it.
This would be no different than food today. When the bread turns green, don't look at it. Don't have it. Throw it away. Don't eat it.
I'm not going to start saying moldy bread is a gift from God. Actually scrape off the green mold and snort it up your nose.
I mean just make sure it's with thanksgiving and make sure when you're doing it it's not for selfish reasons, it's for others.
I mean this is the type of scholarship that we have today. They refuse to look at the Bible and then say big pharma is prescribing painkillers that are similar to cocaine, so start praying for your cocaine before you snort it up, brother.
Your expired food maybe, something that went bad in the fridge, if you pray over it then it shouldn't hurt you or something like that or that it's totally fine to eat, you shouldn't complain about it.
The Bible does mention fruit juice. It's weird, they act like this argument that we're making is so absurd. You have Joel chapter 3 where it talks about the mountains dropping down the new wine.
You have the fruit of the vine mentioned in scripture as well. I mean there's some clear passages that would refer obviously to fruit juice, but I've heard it said, Pastor Shelley, that we shouldn't derive this doctrine from Proverbs.
I don't know if you've heard that before. How about when the Bible just uses the word juice? In Song of Solomon, the Bible says, I would cause thee to drink of spiced wine of the juice of my pomegranate.
So juice just doesn't even exist, but the Bible makes it? It wasn't invented. Remember? So Solomon didn't have juice. Obviously they didn't use wine there in a repetitive sense because wine and juice can be used synonymously.
We're talking about fermented juice or unfermented juice. They're both considered wine. You can look up through antiquity. Wine has always been referenced to the possibility of a non-alcoholic beverage or an alcoholic beverage.
But perverted minds want to only see the world through the lens of Jack Daniels or Mike Hard's lemonade or whatever instead of realizing that under the pure all things are pure.
Yeah, of course, when I read the scripture, I don't think that Jesus is serving shots up on the bar and giving a kegger to everybody that's already gotten drunk.
That's foolishness. That's nonsense. It's blasphemous. And I hate it. I find it completely repulsive that people will get up and try to say that we're, you know, blaspheming the Bible by saying Jesus didn't, you know, become the bartender for his first miracle,
as opposed to realizing the word juice is even in your Bible. Look it up.
I have heard it said, though, and people have argued this, that we shouldn't go to Proverbs, that that's not, we shouldn't derive doctrine from Proverbs.
And so if we're deriving our perspective on alcohol from Proverbs, that it's wrong or that we shouldn't be doing that, there should be someplace else where we can get it, which you can.
I mean, there's New Testament scriptures to go to, but what do you say to those who would claim that the fact that we go to Proverbs to make our point somehow discredits the point we're making?
Well, I don't know where they're getting their information from. Are they just reading the back of the label of their Jack Daniels bottle or something?
I mean, how can you disregard any part of scripture?
In fact, you know, even people that only are New Testament only, they'll still throw like a Proverbs and Psalms in the back of their New Testament just because Proverbs are timeless.
There's no such thing as the idea of you can't derive doctrine from Proverbs. This would be a foolish argument, but we don't have just Proverbs.
We have plenty of verses in the Bible. I know you have a couple of verses you wanted to share. Why don't you share us a verse here in your mind, brother Ben, that talks about alcohol.
How about just being sober? I know you got a lot of good verses. How about, okay, let's go to New Testament. You say we can't use Proverbs. All right, let's use the New Testament.
How about the commandment to be sober? Titus chapter number two. I know brother Ben's got a lot of verses here for you. Give us some, some scripture here.
Well, you've got Titus chapter two. I'll start in verse one where it says, but speak thou the things which become sound doctrine, that the aged men be sober, grave, temperate, sound in faith and charity and patience.
In verse four, it says that they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children. Verse six, it says young men likewise exhort to be sober minded.
Some might argue, well, that's just talking about being serious. And my response to that would be how in the world could you be serious if you're drunk, if you've got a bunch of alcohol in your system?
The soberness there would be in reference to not having any alcohol. And Pastor Shelley, here's my question for you. Some might ask, okay, well, what constitutes soberness? What if I do have a beer? Am I no longer sober if I just had one beer or if I just had a small amount of alcohol?
Well, again, the command of being sober is going to be clear. Everyone that's a drunk, everyone that's an alcoholic knows what sober means. It means complete abstinence from alcohol.
So if we even take just the world's definition of sobriety, no one would say that they're sober after having alcohol, after consuming any portion. In fact, there's been studies done where they've tried to see how quickly alcohol can affect your system.
They took professional typists, people that are very good at typing, and they had them all take a test, completely sober, no alcohol whatsoever. And then they had a control group who remained sober, didn't drink any alcohol, and they took another half or section of the typist and gave them a thimble full of beer.
And beer is not the most potent of alcoholic beverages. There are plenty of alcoholic beverages that have a higher concentration of alcohol. Typically beer is around 5%, maybe less or more depending on if it's a light beer or whatever. But around 5% alcohol, whereas sometimes wine could be 12%, 14%. But even just a 5% beer, a thimble full, so we're not even talking like a full shot glass, it had a dramatic difference in the typist's ability just to type.
And people are taking, you know, they're drinking multiple beers, going out and driving, driving cars, going on dates, making all kinds of decisions, and their judgment has been tampered with. Because the first thing to go is your judgment. And if your judgment's leaving your body, how can you have the right judgment to even realize that?
It's like the worst thing to go because you instantly now can't even make a good decision anymore. You've already lost cognitive thinking and skills. Whereas you may not feel it per se, you may not actually start stumbling or slurring your speech or your eyes start to change right away.
But just the fact that you're losing judgment, cognitive ability, it's already dangerous. How could you then say you're taking life seriously or soberly? Anybody that's about to take a test or very important, you know, quiz, or maybe they're trying to pass for the bar for a legal exam or a medical exam, no one's going to start taking whiskey or taking beer before they have this really important exam. That's going to cloud the mind. That's going to cause them to do poorly on their exam.
And I look at our entire life as the exam. Your entire life as a test, as an exam. And if I'm going to take that exam seriously, I'm not going to touch alcohol, specifically because God's commanding to be sober.
Yeah. And I don't think that we have to pick between whether it's talking about seriousness or drinking because those are not mutually exclusive concepts at all. In fact, they go hand in hand and that's what I was trying to say earlier.
We have some callers on the line, by the way, but BM Lake says in the chat, does strong drink sometimes in the Bible just mean the potency of the taste? My answer and Pastor Shelley, if you disagree, that's fine. You know, we don't have to agree on everything, but I would say no. I think that it's always in reference to an alcoholic beverage. What do you think about that?
No, I actually agree. I mean, if someone could show me an example of how they're different on that, but you know, the Bible even talks about vinegar of strong drink, which vinegar kind of does have like a strong taste associated with strong drink.
But I believe that the strong drink there is just implying like a higher concentration of alcohol essentially. So today we have beer, then we have wine, and then we kind of have like hard liquors.
And so I would say just the more potent the alcoholic beverages is what we're talking about when we talk about a strong drink. You know, sometimes alcohol can be more watered down or could be less potent.
That would be, you know, typically what we're talking about with the wine probably in the Bible. And the strong drink is illustrating something that's just very high concentration of alcohol.
You can argue that in the Bible times or in past, maybe they didn't always have the exact same potency of liquors and alcohol. I know you have things like Everclear that are really high potency or certain distilled liquors that have a higher level potency.
But at the end of the day, the strong drink is clearly alcoholic. It's not something you're supposed to mess with or touch, and the Bible's always condemning strong drink.
But there is a particular passage that people will go to, and I think you know what I'm talking about here, Deuteronomy 14, and this is their justification to say not only can we drink beer and wine, we can drink hard liquor.
And I know Calvinists will literally have, you know, Crown Royale or something in their desk, or they'll have vodka, or they'll have rum, and they'll mix a little bit with Coke or whatever.
And it's like, oh God, just really wants me to have some of this strong drink. It's what my soul lusteth after. And so I want to go to this passage, but if we have a caller on the line, let's get them tuned in here.
And this is our first time for calling, so bear with us if we have a technical difficulty here.
If it's a train wreck, just give us a break.
You know what, we're excited about this. Let's get our first caller up here. Say hello.
Yeah, give us your name and where you're calling from.
This is Brian Robertson from Weatherford, Texas.
Hey Brian, how's it going?
Doing good. How are y'all?
Hey, it's good to hear from you. Thanks for calling in.
Go ahead.
I was just calling in to say that I was at Proverbs 23, and I think the Bible makes a clear distinction when it is alcoholic and non-alcoholic.
Well, you know, obviously everyone's got a past, and we're all sinners, and the most important thing is to learn from our mistakes.
But, you know, from your perspective, have you had an evolution or a change of mind when it comes to drinking alcohol?
Is there a point in your life where you kind of thought alcohol was good or was not like a sin, and that maybe had an impact on your drinking?
Or share with us kind of your experience.
I was raised. It was a sin. But, you know, in my early 20s, I decided I really didn't care.
And, you know, it don't take you overnight to become an alcoholic, but it will get you.
And it's just like, I mean, if you read Proverbs 23, it's just dead on to what an alcoholic goes through.
Well, it's good to hear at least that, you know, there was good preaching in the past, but even God's people, even hearing right preaching,
can still get addicted to this stuff or fall victim of it because it's just so available, it's so popularized, it's considered attractive, it's cool.
And, you know, again, we appreciate you sharing with us your testimony that Proverbs 23, you know, is still true in the Bible,
even when it was written with David's time all the way to now. It's still the truth.
It absolutely is the truth. And you know what, Brian, I'm sorry to hear that you had that experience,
but, you know, at the end of the day, it's good to see that you figured it out, you know, and you know the right perspective now,
courtesy of the Word of God. But I wanted to just add this to the discussion real quickly in Habakkuk 2.15.
It says, woe unto him that giveth his neighbor drink that putteth thy bottle to him and makest him drunk and also that thou mayest look on their nakedness.
Think about this, because we're talking about the detrimental effects of alcohol here.
That's one of the main points we want to hit on this podcast. The Bible gives us one of the ways in which alcohol can victimize you.
It could make you vulnerable to potentially getting attacked, assaulted by a sodomite.
I mean, it says, woe unto him that giveth his neighbor drink that putteth thy bottle to him.
We're talking about filthy sodomites here in Habakkuk chapter two. And so you don't want to be this person.
You don't want to be somebody who gets intoxicated and then victimized by a predator, victimized by a homo.
Well, and again, you know, it's used to victimize other people. And I mean, would you say, brother Brian, that, you know, alcohol,
there's an experience where you felt victimized by alcohol or by a person putting pressure on you to drink?
Maybe early in my life, yes, I was felt, you know, peer pressure and whatnot like that.
But but you're definitely like he was talking earlier, you lose your judgment, you know, and fairly quickly.
So then, you know, you know, what's to stop you from another and another and another and another?
You know, you just keep going and then you lose your memories.
You don't remember what you've done.
Right. So I think I only have become a victim when you don't know what's going on.
Sure. I mean, you might decide you only have a couple drinks, but then after a couple drinks, you change your mind because you don't have that same soberness or that same judgment.
And it just kind of is a snowball effect.
Well, you know, we we really appreciate you coming on the show with us, Brian, and talking with us.
Let me let me add one thing here in Proverbs 23, where it says don't look on the wine, you know, as it's moving.
I've taken that just one step farther. You know, then billboards have curves right up there and this, that and the other.
Yeah, I don't even look at them. I won't even look at me.
Yeah, I don't even like going down the aisle at the store because they usually have an aisle that's just dedicated only to alcohol.
I don't see any reason to walk down it. So, you know, just go to the next aisle.
Amen to that.
So I think that's a great addition there. Thanks for calling in, Brian. We really appreciate the caller and you have a great night. All right.
God bless you.
Thanks, Brian. God bless. Just to add real quick, Pastor Shelley, the risk associated with going to a party, I think also we can use that as application for Habakkuk chapter two.
You go to a party, you go to a get together where there's alcohol all over the place and somebody might coerce an individual into drinking or, hey, have this drink, have that drink, have a couple of more.
And then that's when they pounce. What I'm trying to say is alcohol is one of the weapons that filthy, disgusting predator freaks use in order to achieve what Habakkuk chapter two says there.
Makes me think of Jeff Bourbon again, who's probably wanting to victimize people by inviting them to a wedding where there's lots of alcohol.
He said it, folks, and I agree.
Well, you know, transitioning from that is Deuteronomy 14, because we're talking about parties where we're just inviting people to get drunk.
That's what a lot of people want to turn Deuteronomy 14 into. But let's address this passage here.
I can't wait for you to address this.
Please do.
You know, of course, people want to twist the Bible and they want to try and suggest that drinking alcohol is a positive thing.
And I've seen this. I found a few clips today. For sake of time, I don't want to share any more of those clips.
But Deuteronomy 14, look at verse 26. The Bible says this.
And thou shalt bestow that money whatsoever thy soul lusteth that.
Now, to give you context, the Bible is talking about the tithe.
And it's saying when you have your tithe,
if you're traveling to Jerusalem or you're traveling to the city to perform your feast,
it may be difficult for you to physically take that tithe because it wasn't always in money.
It could be several oxen or sheep or or your wheat or there was a lot of things that it could be.
So if it was a long journey and an effort to be able to travel quicker and to not be a burdensome task,
the Lord allowed you to change all of your goods into money, take that money with you to Jerusalem,
then buy other cattle or sheep or whatever it was that you had for your sacrifice there and then use that for your sacrifice.
And that's kind of just a real logical conclusion that God's giving us.
It makes a lot of sense, real practical, because God's a very practical God.
He's not looking to give us burdens. His yoke is easy. His burden is light.
Now, when we pick up in verse twenty six, it's saying when you bring that money,
you can bestow that money for whatsoever thy soul lesseth after.
It says 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 thou shalt rejoice thou and thine household.
And the Levite that is in thy gates, thou shalt not forsake him, for he hath no part nor inheritance with thee.
So the Bible says when you come back into town, you buy all the things that you need, you perform your sacrifices.
And when you're performing your sacrifices, make sure to share with your Levite.
So how then if we're literally taking strong drink here, which we've already said is alcohol,
are we now violating a back at two where we're putting our strong drink bottle to the Levite's mouth
and forcing him to get drunk so we can look on his niggas like Ham did unto his father, Noah?
No, that's obviously not how you would interpret this passage.
Only a pervert would translate this passage into meaning something so grotesque as such.
Now, of course, on the surface, it's a little bit misleading, perhaps, as to say like,
oh, you know, the strong drink here, does that mean that we're consuming the strong drink?
But notice in the latter portion of verse 26, it says, shall eat thereof.
It doesn't say drink, but I still believe that the word eat there could be in reference to just general consumption.
Now, when it comes to wine, I would believe that the wine here is non-alcoholic beverage.
OK, so they would be able to drink wine.
But if here is talking about drinking strong drink, then we should have other places in the Old Testament law
that illustrate for us drinking strong drink.
But we actually have the exact opposite.
If you go to Numbers 28, it actually brings up the strong drink offering.
Now, the other offerings, like the oxen or the sheep or the goats or anything like that,
it has plenty of places in Leviticus and other places where it talks about eating it
and what parts of the animal you do eat, what part of the animal you don't eat.
You're not supposed to eat the dung here.
You know what it's saying, whatever thy soul desires, it's not saying eat the dung and pray for it.
You still burnt the dung. You still burnt the flesh.
You didn't have all the colab of the liver and all the fat and all the inwards.
You didn't eat the blood. You didn't drink the blood.
You wouldn't consume these type of things.
So when it comes to the strong drink, though, it was a particular sacrifice or particular offering
that sometimes the children of Israel would perform.
So why don't we just look it up and see what they even did with the strong drink before we jump to conclusions.
Deuteronomy, or I'm sorry, Numbers 28, verse 7, the Bible says this,
And the drink offering thereof shall be the fourth part of an hen for the one lamb.
In the holy place thou shalt cause the strong wine to be poured unto the Lord for a drink offering.
So the Bible talks about the strong wine being poured out,
meaning that what's happening is they would literally take strong drink and they would just pour it on the ground.
And you would say, well, that seems wasteful. That seems bizarre.
Why would you just pour a beverage on the ground?
What would be the illustration there?
What do you think would be the illustration here, Ben?
Give us some spiritual enlightenment here.
What conclusion could we draw from a drink offering being poured out?
I mean, is there anything to test being poured out?
I think what we're seeing here is a picture of the wrath of God being poured out.
That's the drink offering.
You also have also the, you know, you got the blood of Christ could be another way to look at it as well.
The blood of Christ, which was poured out in a sense to save humanity.
But those are the two that I would point to the spiritual pictures.
Well, let's follow up on your answers, OK?
What color is blood when it's poured out?
Red.
Red!
Now, what was when we talked about an alcoholic beverage in the Bible, what color did it say it turns when it becomes alcoholic?
Red.
So how would this not be a great illustration of Jesus Christ's blood that was literally spilt, was literally poured out for us?
In John, chapter number 19, his side was pierced and what came out?
Water and blood.
And that's a great illustration of the Old Testament sacrifice illustrating what Jesus is going to do for us, where his blood is going to be spilt.
Now, some people might say, well, then why is it alcoholic?
Why would it be a strong wine?
Why would it be a strong drink?
Well, again, Jesus Christ is taking on the sin of the world here.
And we all know that leaven is a picture of that sin.
And so him having a strong drink to picture his blood, illustrating how his blood was shed, filled with our sin, it's being cleansed in our sin, in fact.
You know, the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin, is what the Bible says.
And so it makes it very poetic, you know, to have these pour offerings, to have these drink offerings, to illustrate what Christ is doing.
But where does it say here, drink booze?
Where does it say here, now have strong drink?
You know, that makes me think of Micah 2, where the Bible says, if a man walking in the Spirit and falsehood do lie, saying I will prophesy unto thee of wine and of strong drink, he shall even be the prophet of this people.
That makes me think of all the prophets that we heard today, prophesying of wine and strong drink and liquor and trying to get people to booze up and to basically forsake the commandments of God, forsake Proverbs,
become deceived, become a mocker, become raging.
And you know what, these drinkers are mocking the Word of God.
And you know what's really happening is they're getting mocked for being the idiots and the fools that they are.
So you would say verse 26 to follow up what it says, or for strong drink.
Just to follow up with that, and I'm going to ask you point blank, alcoholic or not, in verse 26?
The strong drink, I believe it's alcohol.
Just wanted to make sure I heard you correctly there.
I want to make a point here, verse 27, if you look at the very next verse.
And the Levite that is within thy gates, thou shalt not forsake him, for he hath no part nor inheritance with thee.
I agree 100% with everything you stated there, Pastor Shelley.
I think that this is in reference to the sacrifice.
When you go to Numbers chapter 28, verse 7, you can correct me if I have the reference wrong there.
But when you go to that portion of scripture, we can see that the strong drink was poured out illustrating,
I kind of gave an alternate version, I said the wrath of God.
But it could also be the blood of Christ, like you mentioned, illustrating for us or picturing for us the blood of Christ.
But also, when you go to Leviticus chapter number 10, Leviticus chapter number 10, and we're going to look at verse number 9.
It says, and the Lord spake, verse 8, excuse me, and the Lord spake unto Aaron saying, now verse 9,
Do not drink wine nor strong drink, thou nor thy sons with thee, when ye go into the tabernacle of the congregation, lest ye die.
It shall be a statute forever throughout your generations.
And so my question is, if in Deuteronomy chapter 14, verse 26, God is permitting the Israelites,
which would include the descendants of Aaron, which would include the Levites, to consume alcohol,
we know that there were also components of a sacrifice involved in Deuteronomy chapter 14,
and we know that that involved actually going into the tabernacle of the congregation in order to execute that sacrifice.
My question is, Pastor Shelley, why didn't they drop dead?
If they can consume, again, if you look at Deuteronomy 14 through the lenses of Leviticus chapter 10,
we should have seen a multitude of Levites dropping dead whenever they entered the tabernacle of the congregation
because they consumed this strong drink in Deuteronomy 14.
So that's just another layer, I think, to this that makes sense.
But overall, the connection to Numbers 28, I think, is clear that this drink was poured out.
Yeah, it says they can consume it, but like you mentioned, does that mean, I mean, obviously,
there are certain components of the sacrifice that they wouldn't consume.
How about the dung, like you talked about?
Exactly.
It goes without saying that that would be discarded, and it goes without saying, in my opinion,
it is obvious that when you look at this passage and connect it to Numbers 28,
comparing spiritual with spiritual, like we're supposed to do to help us interpret passages,
that the strong drink is poured out, a picture of the blood of Christ.
Well, and again, I think the reason why he's bringing up eat there is just so he's letting the reader understand
that these sacrifices are accepted with the Lord and they're allowed to eat it.
Because if they offer a sacrifice that's not acceptable to the Lord, they're not allowed to eat it
or consume it in any way, shape, or form, and so it's just talking about that.
Now, do we have any other, I don't know if we have...
I think we had a caller, we had another caller on the line.
I don't want to be dissing them, so let's bring on our next caller, and pardon me,
I don't have the name, so you're going to have to tell us your name here.
You are on the Baptist bias, go ahead and give us your name.
I'm on, this is Cameron Hall, steadfast OKC.
I've never heard of this person.
Who's this?
I don't know, Cameron?
I probably, I think I got kicked out at some point, but I just refused to acknowledge it, so.
Okay.
Well, there you go, Cameron.
Alright, Cameron, you're going to share with us your negative experience with alcohol,
either yourself or someone that you know.
Give us some details.
Yeah, sure.
So, I had a lot of verses that I was going to pull up, but you guys pretty much hit them all.
I don't have necessarily like a huge first-hand experience with alcohol.
I grew up, both my parents didn't drink, my family was very much against it.
I don't ever remember, I think both my parents never drank at all, actually.
And so I never did.
I turned 21, and of course all your friends are always like,
Oh, you can, you know, you could drink now legally.
And I was like, okay.
So, the thing that people don't ever tell you is that it's horrible.
It's not pleasurable at all, right?
You drink, and it tastes awful, and then you end up, usually they'd get like some kind of a strong alcohol.
In this case, it was like a vodka, and they were mixing it with something.
And I just like, give me whatever you're mixing it with.
Like, give me that other thing that's not alcoholic so that I can drink that.
And I remembered that after that, I think I drank once on my 21st birthday,
and then like two other times in the next two or three years, between like 21 and 23,
and then never again, because it's horrible. It's awful.
So you're telling us that it didn't make your wine glad?
What's that?
It didn't make your heart really glad when you were drinking it?
No, yeah, I needed a little for my stomach's sake, I guess, or whatever.
Maybe I didn't get a little enough.
The Bible literally calls it a poison, and I had preached on this at one point where,
when it talks about who hath contentions and woe and on and on,
one of the things it says in there is who hath redness of eyes.
And the reason why, if you study that out, what I believe the Bible is referring to,
is one of the first things that's destroyed in your body when you consume alcohol are the blood vessels in your eyes.
You actually start losing your vision.
And so it's not just like, oh, all these horrible things, and your eyes are a little bit red.
It's literally a poison.
The Bible says in Ephesians 5, obviously in the context of marriage, but also carnally applicable,
no man ever yet hated his own flesh.
So to go this route that it's good or a blessing to drink a toxin or drink a poison,
or to try to teach that Jesus Christ would have literally created poison for these people that are already wasted at some wedding,
it's just a wicked, perverted mentality.
Well, you know, you made me think of a verse where it talks about they stumble in vision.
So it literally says that in the Bible that your vision is going to be impacted.
So I think that's a great parallel there, you know, comparing spiritual to spiritual with the redness of eyes.
And, you know, the Bible, as much as people want to knock, it's a literal science book.
I mean, it literally tells us, you know, scientific truths that we see here in the Bible.
Praise the Lord that your parents weren't drinkers and that you didn't really have a high proclivity towards it, because I agree.
You have to hear this phrase constantly repeated to you from drinkers is it's an acquired taste.
Have you ever heard that?
Yeah, I've heard that. People say the same thing about coffee.
And I'll tell you what, that alcohol and coffee both suck.
And I'll die on that hill.
I'm not going to force myself to acquire a taste of something that's awful.
I don't I don't want to force myself to just enjoy something that's gross.
This is probably like Indian food and crickets.
And I'm going to quit the show here.
Yeah, I mean, well, again, why would I want to acquire a taste of something that's not even healthy anyways?
Like maybe you could argue like carrots or celery or some things like an acquired taste, but at least it's healthy for you.
You know, why would I want to force myself to like something that's not even healthy and it's extremely expensive?
I mean, we haven't even talked about that. But alcohol is just so expensive today.
You know, and it doesn't seem to satisfy thirst because people are drinking large quantities of alcohol.
Whereas if you're comparing it to a water or some kind of other beverage, it'd be literally impossible to consume as much liquid as these people that are consuming alcohol.
I'm sure if you were around somebody drinking, you've noticed that they just they're drinking so much more liquid than they would normally do, doing any other activity.
Yeah, I mean, you I'd have a lot of friends that I hung out with that you're always the lame one, right?
When you don't drink or you don't do drugs or whatever, you're kind of the lame guy. But whatever.
I guess I kind of just accepted that mantle. But I would take some of my friends back then. I didn't know any better.
I wasn't safe. I would take them to like the liquor store and go there so that they at least weren't driving drunk. Right.
And I thought, oh, I'm doing such a great thing, which obviously is not the case.
But you would go in and they're spending literally 80, 90, 100 dollars on high quote unquote upscale alcohol.
And and look, it's a huge cost on your wallet and it doesn't stop there because it's going to cost you your life.
It's going to cost you potentially being raped by a sodomite. I mean, the times that we see in Habakkuk two and Genesis nine.
Right. The matter of the first time we see alcohol in the Bible is Genesis nine.
And look what happens there in that that sodomitic act with him. It's going to destroy your relationships.
You know, people want to make this huge deal about covid and everything. Right.
But on these statistics that I had pulled up and looked at in 2019, there were one hundred and fifty six thousand American deaths just due to acute alcohol poisoning.
That's not even taking into account getting into a wreck or people getting a divorce or cheating on their spouse and then taking their life because of that or alcohol being a gateway.
The cost is severe, whether it's on your wallet or your health. And it's awful to even begin with.
You need to stay as far away from alcohol as you can, period.
I agree. But according to Jeff Bourbon and all these other guys, you'd be a modern day Jesus, you know, driving people to the liquor store and getting them all boozed up.
I mean, you're turning water into wine, but it's what he did in John to serve alcohol to people who had already well drunk.
That's what they believe. You're just doing your part to fulfill the Great Commission of being like Jesus and getting people the best.
Because you talked about it that when you drove them there, you were helping them get the best of the best.
The luxury high end liquors and alcoholic spirits that are out there.
You know, the only spirit I want is the Holy Spirit. And the Bible says in Ephesians, be not drunk with wine.
We're in his excess, but be filled with the spirit.
So the Bible from cover to cover is condemning alcohol on a regular basis, putting wine and strong drink in a negative light.
And yet these guys only want to bring up the, quote, positive versus of wine being mentioned.
And amen. I love fruit juice. I love a fresh beverage. Everybody likes orange juice.
It's like one of the most expensive drinks when you go to the restaurant and they say no refills.
Why? Because everybody loves orange juice. Everybody likes a good fruit cocktail or some kind of beverage like this.
But to suggest that they've never had juice, they never had these things, it really even violates a great passage of the Bible.
You brought this up to me. It's in Genesis. We're talking about the first book of the Bible.
But Pharaoh has a butler who would squeeze into the cup of Pharaoh. Do you know what I'm talking about?
I think you're confusing me with somebody else. I don't remember bringing this up to you.
You didn't bring that up to me?
No, it might have been some other Middle Eastern.
Maybe it was some other terrorist or something like that. I can't remember.
But I feel like there was somebody that brought that up to me.
But the butler is squeezing basically grapes or whatever into Pharaoh's cup on a regular basis in the book of Genesis.
And I mean, is that not just a clear picture of juice?
Yeah. I know what you're talking about. And yes, it is. It's a very clear mention there of juice.
Well, think about this. I'll throw something out for you guys real quick that that kind of made me remember.
In Revelation chapter number 14, the Bible talks about God basically throwing the wicked into the wine press.
Right. And that the wine or the the basically the blood is poured out of the wine press.
If you understand how a wine press works, you do not get fermented wine from a wine press.
So in the same way that new wine is found in the cluster, in the same way that Pharaoh's butler would squeeze and give him the juice in the cup.
This is the context here is people that get stuck on the word wine. Right.
Even a wine press, you press the grapes into a bag or container that then ferments to get the wine.
Exactly. And obviously, it's not like God's pouring out a bunch of Jack Daniels in Revelation 14.
No, I'm sure all the wicked people would love that. That'd be the wrath that they're looking forward to.
Right. But no, it's blood that comes from the wine press. Why?
Because the wine press can be used to make any amount of squeezed beverages, grape juice, orange juice, you know, whatever.
And it's not fermented when it comes out because you're not using old, gross, rotten fruit to do it.
Well, in Deuteronomy 32, it even says, drink the pure blood of the grape.
So we have that you brought up the great verse about the new wine being in the cluster, meaning it's talking about wine being in a grape.
What person on this planet thinks that grapes are alcoholic? I mean, that's that's absurd.
But even in Genesis 40, this is the verse I was thinking of verse 11.
It says in Pharaoh's cup was in my hand and I took the grapes and pressed them into Pharaoh's cup and I gave the cup into Pharaoh's hand.
That is a clear reference of juice being mentioned all the way back in Genesis.
So like, oh, they didn't have they didn't have juice and Jesus time.
Well, did they forget the technology of squeezing a grape from from the book of Genesis?
I mean, is that really the type of scholarship and what its juice of doctrine we have?
It's juice and pants, right? Juice and pants.
Yeah, they haven't invented pants either in the Bible.
They hadn't invented men.
Everyone was just like Scottish. They're just like kilts and drinking all the time.
Yeah, everybody was. That's the Bible.
Everyone is a flat earth drunkard wearing a skirt.
I mean, that's that's basically what they want us to.
And Jesus had hair down to his nipples or something.
I mean, this is the type of scholarship. This is the type of modern Christianity we live in today where just anything goes.
Let's just ignore what the Bible clearly teaches.
Clearly says, well, you know, praise the Lord that you're not you know,
you've overcome the horrible taste of horse piss and you decided not to get the acquired taste for coffee or praco.
I think we lost some viewers when you brought up coffee, but you know what I say?
Amen. So that's OK with me. But at the end of the day, you know, this thing's wicked.
It's hurting people. The testimony. I appreciate your testimony.
We need to get you back on in the future. So good call. Thanks for calling in, brother Cameron.
Thanks. I just want to leave this with this beans belong in Chile. And so I've at least made that known.
That must come from the few times he drank alcohol. You had his favor and then you just lost it.
He was on your side. You have a good night. All right.
Now, I, I really think we could talk about this forever, but I feel like we kind of need to conclude is that is there any other verses, though?
I don't want to leave a stone unturned here, you know, and you guys can comment down below.
But if there's a verse in the Bible that you're still struggling with, you're confused about or you're not sure.
I've heard this a lot that Jesus drank wine. Have you heard that one?
People say, oh, how could it be wrong if Jesus drink wine?
But here's here's a fact for you in the King James Bible.
It never says that Jesus drank wine one single time. Now, he does bring up the fruit of the vine.
How he said he's he's he's going to drink the fruit of the vine again with them in the kingdom.
He's like, henceforth, I shall not drink of this fruit of the vine till I drink it with you again.
And, you know, he's basically talking about in the future.
So from that, you kind of indirectly get the statement that he had drink, drink it with them before.
Plus, the fact that they're having the Lord's Supper would indicate that he's probably also a partaker.
He's eating of the bread and of the wine that's there.
So I have no problem saying that Jesus drank wine. But what do we mean by that?
Do we mean the fruit of the vine, meaning some kind of a fruit beverage?
Or are we talking about an alcoholic beverage?
And it would be obvious that he's not drinking alcohol from all the verses we've already shown you.
But even further, in First Corinthians, chapter number five, the Bible talks about when you're doing the Lord's Supper,
you're not supposed to do it with leaven. You're supposed to purge out the old leaven.
And when you did the Passover, leaven was not allowed anywhere in the house whatsoever.
It wasn't just in the bread. It said purge it out of everywhere. It's not even allowed in the house.
So then why would I then believe that they have a leavened drink sitting right in front of them,
an alcoholic beverage, which has become alcoholic through leaven,
and then they would be consuming that, that would be in direct violation of the Passover.
It would nullify the Passover, make Jesus a sinner.
Absolutely ridiculous. Even if you thought Jesus drank alcohol, he could have never drank it at the Passover.
But I'll go way beyond that. He never drank alcohol.
He wasn't sitting here just getting drunk on the weekends or something like that.
Jesus wouldn't even want to look at it, my friend.
What do you say to this?
Well, I think you have people who, because the Bible says the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God,
everything you just explained would go totally over their head.
They don't understand the spiritual pictures. They don't understand these truths that the Bible attempts to articulate
through the Passover, through the sacrifices, things of that nature.
And so that's why a bunch of Catholics get together, and when they do their twisted version of the Lord's Supper,
they drink alcoholic wine. I mean, because they believe that's what Jesus drank at the Lord's Supper,
which as you pointed out, as we read our King James Bibles, that did not happen whatsoever.
I wanted to bring up Amos 9.13. This is a verse that I think also could be helpful
because we were talking just a few moments ago about the word wine when it says,
Behold, the days come, say the Lord, that the plowman shall overtake the reaper and the treader of grapes,
him that soweth seed, and the mountains shall drop sweet wine, and all the hills shall melt.
So the mountains sort of dropping sweet wine, I also think, is in reference to the grape juice
that we've been describing over the course of the podcast, Pastor Shelley.
And I also believe that it's grape juice that is relevant or that is being referenced
with regard to the qualifications of a bishop.
And this might be an argument some might have is when you read the qualifications of a bishop
that it says, you know, not given the wine, and then you see this verbiage also,
not given too much wine. So people might have a question about the distinction there.
Why is it being made if it isn't alcoholic wine described in that passage as well?
Well, and I'm glad you brought this up because it brings up another point that I think is kind of relevant here.
But the Bible obviously condemns drunkenness, and at least everyone's, you know, at least on par on that.
However, that's a pretty subjective term. What does drunkenness mean?
But this, you know, to illustrate how it's foolish to say, oh, it doesn't say anything wrong with drinking
because it just says something about being drunk.
That would be the same logic as saying it's okay for me to beat someone up because the Bible says thou should not kill.
It doesn't say thou should not beat him up.
Like just because it condemns a worse form or a more extreme version of a sin
doesn't mean that it wasn't a sin in the lesser form or other commandments that are being brought up.
So just because you have an extreme version like murder doesn't mean that you're allowed to just start punching people
and hurting people and doing damage to them because, oh, well, I found a more extreme version in the Bible.
So every verse on drunkenness does not mean that drinking isn't a sin. It just simply means that drunkenness is bad.
We look at other verses that clearly say that drinking is bad as well.
So when it says not given to much wine, let's just play both sides.
Let's just say wine means alcoholic, okay?
Well, for the pastor not to be given a wine, that fits perfectly with the doctrine.
If it's alcoholic, of course, he can't be an alcoholic and be a pastor.
That would be too grievous of a sin. It's affecting his judgment.
Proverbs 31 condemns a king or a person in a position of leadership from drinking alcohol or drinking wine.
Now the deacon, though.
Well, the deacon, though, let's say the much wine, right?
Does that mean, though, that he's okay with drinking a little bit?
Maybe it's just it's more a more extreme statement, but it doesn't mean that the lesser is all of a sudden validated.
You can't just take the extreme statement to then say, well, the lesser is then now validated, right?
Just like the Bible says in Matthew, I'm sorry, Mark 16, 16.
It says he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, right?
That doesn't mean that you have to be baptized to be saved, though,
because when we compare it with scripture with scripture, it was actually just belief that you had to be saved, wasn't it?
So we can't just always take a verse and mal-align it to our own narrative.
If it says not much wine, then it's just not answering the question of can you have any?
But here's the thing. I personally don't believe that wine there is alcoholic.
If it was, that's how I would interpret those verses.
I personally believe, though, that the wine is being described as the juice again.
Now, again, it doesn't say that the pastor can't drink juice.
It's saying not given to wine, meaning suggesting that it's something that is maybe addicted to or consumed with or something that he always has to have.
And wine often is referred to your Bible as a picture of luxury, as a picture of indulgence.
And again, wine is a good beverage to illustrate this because wine is not typically a beverage that's easily accessible, especially throughout history.
It's something that was very expensive.
It's something that's kind of a feast type beverage, as we noticed at the water turned to wine wedding.
It's not a common beverage. It's not a normal thing.
It's something that they don't have a large quantity of necessarily.
They could easily run out of.
So if it's basically saying, hey, this pastor shouldn't be someone that just always has to have luxury, always has to have the finest things.
He has to have the Benny Hinn suit and the Bentley and the mansion.
He has to have all of these type of luxuries.
Or he's given to it in the sense that he can't really survive without it.
He just has to have it.
Whereas with the Apostle Paul, he has times where he's abounding and then he has times where he's lacking.
He's without.
And he's saying, I'm content in whatever state I find myself in.
So a pastor should be content in whatever state he's in and not someone that just has to have luxury, has to have the high end things, has to have the finer things.
And then probably in most cases to just try to avoid it at best.
But, you know, it's not saying that he couldn't have fruit juice or have some nicer things every once in a while.
But it's just something that he doesn't have to have.
He kind of avoids it. He's not that into it.
And then if you take that to the deacon, it's just saying, well, maybe the deacon, you know, he has some proclivities to things that he really wants this little nice thing.
He has a few nice things in his life.
There's a few luxuries that he wants, but it's not like over the top.
You know, he has the few things that he just really would like to have.
So it's just basically showing a little bit more moderation for the deacon in that particular area of life, saying he doesn't necessarily have to abstain as much as the pastor would because the pastor is trying to live a life of approach and not get addicted to covetousness or these type of things.
But to suggest here that this is saying drink booze, again, bizarre.
Now they'll use in this past, they'll use chapter five now because they'll use a little wine for their stomach's sake.
That's right. And again, how is alcohol going to help your health?
I mean, this is foolish. Only modern articles and doctors will they say this, but it's typically coming from the fact that the beverage alcohol doesn't benefit you.
But the fruit juice in the beverage maybe gives you benefits for your heart or your body.
But I would suggest you get all those same benefits if you just drink the juice without the alcohol.
It wasn't the alcohol itself because alcohol itself is poison.
Yeah, the Bible tells us poison.
Ray Comfort tells us it's poison.
Then he wants to drink it.
So what do you say about those interpretations of Timothy?
What do you think about the qualifications of the bishop?
I think when the text says in First Timothy three that the key for me in verse three not given to wine.
That's what makes me side pretty much 100 percent with the interpretation that it's in reference to the grape juice here.
And also in Titus Chapter one as well, when wine is brought up, I would also make the argument that it's in reference to grape juice rather than alcohol with regard to the qualifications of a bishop.
And it makes sense because you wouldn't want your pastor to be given to or have a strong proclivity to want to live a super luxurious life that could potentially distract, that will distract him from the ministry and the things of God and advancing the cause of Christ.
And what you said there about the distinction between the standard for the pastor and the standard for the deacon makes sense as well, because obviously the pastor is leading the church is on the very front lines of the church.
And so you would expect there to be perhaps a difference in standards there between the individual who's leading the church rather than the servant of the church who might have a little bit more leeway with regard to the luxuries of life.
And so I think that lesson, that application makes perfect sense. And Pastor Shelley, in response to what you brought up in First Timothy Chapter five, where they would make the argument that alcohol can help the stomach and that that's what the Bible is pointing to.
The independent fundamental Baptist website magazine Time, which is not independent, that's a sarcasm.
It says this, a new study says any amount of drinking is bad for you.
Here's what experts say, and it goes on. We don't have enough time, I think, to dive into this in great detail. But this study concluded, it said alcohol use is a leading risk factor for global disease burden and causes substantial health loss.
We found that the risk of all cause mortality and of cancer specifically rises with increasing levels of consumption. And the level of consumption that minimizes health loss is zero.
Let me repeat, this is from the study that they cite themselves. And the level of consumption that minimizes health loss is zero, zero.
These results suggest that alcohol control policies might need to be revised worldwide, refocusing on efforts to lower overall population level consumption.
So it says in plain English there, the study that is cited by Time in their article concluded these results of the study suggest that alcohol.
I'm sorry, it says that the let me start over here. The level of consumption that minimizes health loss is zero.
I just wanted to make sure I emphasized that, Pastor Shelley, because it is incorrect, to put it mildly, to claim that a little bit of alcohol will aid in some sort of stomach ailment. It makes you sick.
Well, and again, I think when we look at health articles, you can kind of find both sides of every opinion. You could find doctors that say everything.
Really, we have to look to the Bible as our ultimate authority. And the Bible just says it's poison. And I'm going to believe that. But most, I mean, most every scientific article with any kind of credibility will also say alcohol is poison.
The CDC says it's poison. They say it's dangerous. I mean, why do you think we have laws in America that say pregnant women are allowed to drink, that don't allow alcohol to minors, that are not allowing you to have a certain blood alcohol content level when you're driving?
That have liquor prohibition in the sense that you're not allowed to buy at certain hours of the day or past a certain hour at night. And clearly alcohol is a huge detriment to our society, causing all kinds of drunk driving accidents.
People who get addicted to other substances or self injury or even the worst. I don't know if it's the worst, but one of the grossest things is people vomiting because they're so drunk and then drowning in their own vomit.
What kind of a shameful way to go through life just being a drunkard and then just dying in your own vomit from from your drunkenness?
I mean, this is just a sad Bible says the Bible calls it shameful spewing.
Yeah, the Bible says that the tables are all full of vomit. And, you know, it talks about it being shameful, being staggering, stumbling, saying perverted things.
I mean, these are the all the attributes we see from alcohol. And it's it's just frustrating that we have pastors getting up saying, oh, the Bible doesn't say anything bad about drinking.
So I'm just going to go ahead and say no verses. I'm just not going to bring up I'm going to bring up verses about every creature of God is good.
Preposter when he said first Timothy four, I'm thinking, like, I don't know where he's going with this. Yeah, I thought the same thing as well.
I want to end with this because Pastor Shelley, if you don't tame the broadcast here, we'll go till midnight. So I want to end with this point.
Some people might be listening to this and saying, well, I don't have a proclivity to drink alcohol. This is useless information for me.
And my response to that is we'll take heed lest you fall, because if you decide to lower your standards and you say, well, the Bible says not to look at it, but I'll look at it anyway.
I'll walk down the grocery aisle that sells it. I might even decide just to see how bad it is. Maybe I'll experiment. Maybe I'll try some myself.
You know what? A couple of drinks isn't going to hurt me. I'll go to that party with the alcohol. My friends told me it would be OK.
They're pressuring me to drink. I'll just have one to appease them. Well, you might end up, in fact, you will end up with that proclivity as a result.
You know, it's possible for you to then struggle with it. You know, I'll tell you this. If I'm driving down the road and there's a billboard and I'll just be honest with you, there's a billboard with some hoochie mama on it or something like that.
I have to tell myself no. The Bible says no. I have to tell myself to look away. But if it's some beer or vodka, I don't care. But you really think that I would still be that way toward alcohol if I decided to just indulge in it constantly?
If I decided to make it a habit to drink it habitually? No. Then I would also struggle with that sin as well.
So my warning for people out there is this. If you, and I'm glad that you're in this situation, if you're in the situation where it doesn't bother you, where you don't have the proclivity to go after this sin, hey, just continue to stay away from it anyway.
Do everything within your power to just stay away from it 100%. Run the other direction because you don't want to take for granted the fact that it doesn't tempt you because it will if you decide to indulge in it regardless.
Well, I really appreciate people for tuning on for our podcast. We're going to have our new feature, the call-in feature. I really like the call-in feature. We're going to try and engage with our audience, so make sure to try and catch us live 8 p.m. Tuesday nights, and we've got several great episodes still coming up in the future.
We're on a lot of different podcast systems as well, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podbean, I believe it is, and we're putting these things on YouTube, Facebook, so you can try to catch us, The Baptist Bias.
Make sure to share this with people that are confused on this issue. We need people to share this kind of content because the other message, everyone has it.
This is the message that's not being put out there that people are not hearing, and it's important that we clear up these issues so that we don't turn Jesus into the drunken bartender that these fake false prophets want to turn him into today, but rather we keep him pure, we keep our Bible pure, we keep our wine and our drink pure.
Well, that's going to pretty much do it for us this evening. Ben, why don't you sign us off?
God bless you all. We really appreciate you tuning in, and folks, stay far, far away from alcohol. We'll talk to you guys again after a while.